The SWLing Post

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike (KA3JJZ), who writes: Have you ever heard of the SW Radiogram digital broadcasts? These are produced by Dr. Kim Andrew Elliott and started way back when as the VoA Radiogram. They are now carried on 2 other stations (WRMI and WINB) on a schedule (check every week for […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Evans, who notes that R&L’s price on the Icom IC-7300 transceiver is currently $948.89 with discounts and coupons. Click here to view this deal at R&L Electronics. Click here to read our review of the Icom IC-7300.

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul, who shares the following story from the RTL-SDR.com blog: Last month we posted a collection of reviews about the MLA-30 which is a budget magnetic loop antenna designed for receiving HF signals. The overall consensus from the reviews was that it worked decently for the price, but of course could […]

(Source: ABC News via Michael Bird) To NASA personnel, he is VK5ZAI. To his neighbours at Pinks Beach, a small coastal town in South Australia, he goes by Tony. In his 30-year association with the US space agency, Tony Hutchison has been called upon to help in times of crisis, moderate calls between astronauts and […]

(Source: Trans World Radio via Marcus Keulertz) Due to changes to the media landscape and subsequent decline in demand for shortwave radio broadcasts in South Africa, TWR will be reducing our English morning broadcasts in the 49, 60 and 90 metre bands on October 27th – followed by a retirement of these broadcasts on December 31st. We […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Marty, who shares a link to the following video (in Chinese) of the new Tecsun PL-990: Click here to view on YouTube.

I assume people who read this blog have so many things in common, one of them is a love for gadgets, especially radios and SDRs. To others, a radio is a radio, but not to us. We invest so much money and time to obtain and play and experiment with different tools and compare them. […]

Earlier this year I published what I called an “initial” review of the CommRadio CTX-10 QRP transceiver, promising an eventual final review. The reason for this is that I sensed there were important CTX-10 updates on the horizon, and I wanted to re-evaluate the rig once the upgrades had been implemented through firmware. This final […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul W4/VP9KF, who shares the following report from the UK’s National Hamfest: Your travelling foreign correspondent took in a visit to the UK’s National Hamfest held in Newark, Notts. We arrived right on opening time (10am) and were the first in the door. There was a ‘rush’ to the SDRPlay […]

(Source: Southgate ARC) Al Williams WD5GNR writes on Hackaday about bouncing amateur radio signals off the moon One of the great things about ham radio is that isn’t just one hobby. Some people like to chit chat, some like to work foreign countries, some prepare for emergencies, and there are several space-related activities. There are hundreds […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paolo Viappiani (SWL I1-11437), who shares the following guest post: Some Tips For Avoiding Internet Scams by Paolo Viappiani – SWL I1-11437 pviappiani@tin.it Recently, I have been amazed by the growing number of frauds that foul up the radio market on the Internet (I was scammed too), so I […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul, who shares a number of articles about the one-frequency FM radio called the Public Radio: Might be of interest to you and readers of the SWLing Post: https://www.thepublicrad.io/ Why does the Public Radio cost $60? http://pencerw.com/feed/2018/11/21/why-its-sixty-dollars How to program a radio which is sealed inside a cardboard shipping […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Eric McFadden, who shares the following note from the Southgate ARC: The article Decoding Numbers Stations by Allison McLellan which appears in the November 2019 issue of ARRL’s QST magazine is available for free download Download the article PDF from http://www.arrl.org/this-month-in-qst Digital membership of ARRL costs just £40 ($49) https://www.arrl.org/membership-levels

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Srebnick, who writes: Here’s a question to put to your blog readers. I’m looking for a compact portable receiver for travel purposes. It must have AM, FM and shortwave coverage. It should support SSB and RDS. Synchronous AM is a plus, as is FM band coverage starting at […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Kris Partridge, who shares the following antenna construction article from Radio World: Ken Beckwith is a field engineer with EMF based in Nebraska. Being a hands-on engineer, Ken has done his share of construction over the years. One of his projects was the construction of an octagonal-shaped AM loop […]

I think this is a brilliant story from the CBC: Almost every morning and night, Therese Mair can be found sitting on her favourite chair in her living room, in front of a ham radio. Mair lives in Georgetown, P.E.I., but by fiddling with a dial and searching through static, she can speak with people […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Edward Ganshirt, who writes: I have seen some very good radio cases for carrying your radio with you with a price tag. I needed one for my DX-440 but did not want to shell out a hundred bux for it, so I made a home brew version out of […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jack Kratoville, who writes: I was once big into Grundig; I owned the YB-400PE, 550, Traveller II, Mini, finally settling on the G5 as one of my favorite radios. I looked at the G3 and probably got a bad one – sold it on eBay. When the G2 “Reporter” […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Carlos Latuff, who writes: Greetings from Porto Alegre, Brazil. Yesterday I listened something unusual. On the shortwave band of 11.520 kHz, 11.525 kHz and then 11.530 kHz, this last the frequency of Kurdish Radio Denge Welat, it was broadcasting military songs from the times of the Ottoman Empire something […]

Encore – Classical Music on Shortwave – Broadcast on Sunday afternoon in Europe and USA Encore – Classical Music this weekend is being broadcast as usual by Channel 292 (Europe) on 6070 kHz at 15:00 UTC Sunday 29th September. And by WBCQ on 7490 kHz at 00:00 – 01:00 UTC Monday 30th September There is […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jim (W4OXB), who writes: I have been involved in SWLing and ham radio since the middle 1960s. Mostly listening before I got my ham ticket in 1969. My current call is W4OXB. I used to record dx catches on mediumwave and shortwave that I put in my logbook. About […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Julian Stargardt, who writes: I was just browsing through eBay when I stumbled on this listing that may interest some SWLing readers: An excellent condition SONY ICF-7600A. The listing is for a Sony ICF 7600 [with box and accessories] – the original ICF 7600, a very different beast from […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ivan Cholakov, who writes: If you are interested, here’s a video where the power consumption of nine different SDRs was compared: Click here to view on YouTube. Fascinating! I’ve always been curious about SDR power consumption because many of my SDRs are rarely turned off. Thank you for sharing, […]

Many thanks to the SWLing Post contributor, Martin Butera, who shares the following guest post: __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Visiting the most important time signal station in South America – PPE Observatório Nacional by Martin Butera Still photographs by: Mark Van Marx (Marcos Melzi) Video by: Ligia Katze English adaptation and correction by: Sudipto Ghose (VU2UT) We invite […]

The relatively new Eton Elite Executive, formerly Eton Executive Satellit, has dropped $50 USD on its Amazon page to $129.99: This rather major price drop lowers the cost to just $20 more than Amazon’s price for the older, silver-cased Eton Executive Satellit. According to Jay Allen’s review the new radio has identical performance to the […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ed, who writes: SWLing Post readers might be interested in learning about Gospell’s newly-announced DRM receivers and active antenna products. The GR-22 “pocket-sized” “full-wave” receiver that’s supposed to be available for purchase by June 2020 seems especially interesting. (Source: Gospell Press Release) Gospell to announce the DRM monitoring system […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Kim Elliott, who shares a link to this short but fantastic photo pdoc about Kumartuli’s radio man, Amit Ranjan Karmakar. Click here to view at The Indian Express.

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Marty Kraft, who asked that I share the following question with our community: I’m still working on a receive-only passive hula loop magnetic antenna for my Tecsun PL-660. After viewing thousands of YouTube videos (LOL), I built the PVC-pipe structure [you can see in the photo below]. But I […]

(Source: Southgate ARC via Eric McFadden) Scientific American magazine reports new data suggest the 1921 ‘New York Railroad Storm’ could have surpassed the intensity of the famous Carrington Event of 1859 In a paper published in the journal Space Weather, Jeffrey Love of the U.S. Geological Survey and his colleagues reexamined the intensity of the 1921 event, […]

(Source: Vanuatu Broadcasting & Television Corporation via Peter Marks) RADIO VANUATU CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT WORK BEGINS With the support of the Government of Vanuatu, the Vanuatu Broadcasting & Television Corporation (VBTC) has begun work this month on a 942 million vatu (US$8.1m) infrastructure upgrade to improve radio and free-to-air television service throughout Vanuatu. The first phase […]

I found this tip from Lorne Waters on the SDRplay Facebook page: I was having a lot of trouble with local noise and not getting really good signal spikes. Well I took a chance after reading many articles on using better USB cables. The picture below is what I purchased from amazon. It’s a USB […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dave Zantow (N9EWO), who writes: One of Glenn Hauser’s more interesting “extra” programs to me over the years was his radio 1981 summer vacation recordings to South Dakota (near the Nebraska border). Attached is the entire WRNO recording of that program (which aired on Sep 8, 1984). This was […]

(Source: Radio World via David Iurescia and Michael Bird) WOOFFERTON, England — Nestled in the beautiful Shropshire countryside, just a few miles from England’s border with Wales, is the tiny village of Woofferton. That name is synonymous with shortwave radio for millions of listeners around the world as just a short distance from the village itself, […]

So the ALT-512 QRP SDR transceiver has landed at SWLing Post HQ. This little rig is on loan from Aerial-51 and I’ll be spending the next month or so putting it through the paces. I can already tell that the ALT-512 has some strong points: It’s incredibly portable and easy to take to the field, […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Giuseppe Morlè (IZ0GZW), who writes: I’m Giuseppe Morlè from Formia, Italy, on the Tyrrhenian Sea … I had the pleasure of listening to the transmission of LRA36 Base Esperanza Antartida Argentina on 15,476 MHz on 21 September 2019 at 14.01 UTC. I used a 25 meter wire, on the […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who writes: As the DX/SWL community knows, LRA-36 Radio Arcangel San Gabriel in Antarctica Argentina put on a special broadcast on September 21st for listeners around the world. This had some pre-publicity via an announcement from the station, so chances are many people heard it. My listening […]

Encore – Classical Music on Shortwave – Broadcast on Sunday afternoon in Europe and USA Encore – Classical Music this weekend is being broadcast as usual by Channel 292 (Europe) on 6070 kHz at 15:00 UTC Sunday 22nd September. And by WBCQ on 7490 kHz at 00:00 – 01:00 UTC Monday 23rd September There is […]

May thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Srebnick, who writes: Unexpected SWBC QSL in the mail today [see above], the first in years. World Music Radio 5815 kHz (7 kw) for a May 2004 report! Interestingly, mailed from Andorra where the EDXC meeting was just held. Wow! A 5,588 day turn-around! As they say, “better […]

Glenn Hauser’s World of Radio will air episode 2,000 this weekend. The thirty minute World Of Radio show, which covers all things DX, debuted in 1980 on WUOT-FM in Knoxville, Tennessee, and moved to shortwave outlets two years later. Glenn Hauser has faithfully produced the show since then. SWLing Post Executive Producer, Scott Gamble, contacted […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor (and our intrepid radio deal reporter) Christian, who writes: The price of the Eton Executive Traveler was down several months ago, but then increased on Amazon. I’ve been watching and now prices are back down to historic lows for this modelare back down to historic lows for this […]

(Source: Radio Today Ireland via Mike Terry) Pirate radio stations are appearing on unlicenced DAB digital multiplexes in Dublin and Cork, and more are planned for other cities in Ireland. The “FreeDAB” platform, now carrying around ten stations, was born out of frustration over the procedures in place to broadcast legally on DAB in Ireland. […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Adrian Korol, who shares the following announcement: LRA Radio Nacional Arcángel San Gabriel, Argentina Antártida Special issue This Saturday, September 21, LRA 36 will make a special transmission from the Esperanza Base, Antarctica Argentina. From 10 to 1115 Argentine time (13 to 1415 UTC) by 15476 kHz 19 meter […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David Day (N1DAY), who has completed a thorough review of the MLA-30 loop antenna. In this review, he compares the MLA to the Wellbrook ALA1530-LF and a 30 foot square ground loop antenna. In short, he finds that the MLA-30 performs fairly well on the AM broadcast/mediumwave band, but […]

From the Isle of Music, September 22-28: This week we listen to a variety of new and recent releases. The broadcasts take place: 1. For Eastern Europe but audible well beyond the target area in most of the Eastern Hemisphere (including parts of East Asia and Oceania) with 100Kw, Sunday 1500-1600 UTC on SpaceLine, 9400 […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jim Krause, who writes seeking an explanation about a problem he’s experiencing with his Tecsun PL-880: Tescum PL-880 Problem: The speaker will not output any sound when in the FM band. The speaker outputs sound fine when in all other bands (AM, SW, etc.). When switched into the FM […]

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bill Patalon, who shares a link to the following article on Extreme Tech: Last Tuesday at 1744 UTC (1:44 PM EDT) UR3RM, a ham radio station in Ukraine blindly sent out a message on 7040.138 kHz. It was automated. It was text. Maybe someone would hear it. Maybe not. […]