WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Modulating

For those of you who have followed my “Adventures In Amplitude Modulation” posts here at Beware of the Blog, I want to let you know that the regularity of these posts here is over. And frankly, my weekly posts on BOTB will not continue as well.

However, I’m a guy who likes to keep my options open (and somebody who hates saying goodbye) and this doesn’t mean I’ll never publish here again. I’m looking to take on another project or two, and (especially given my tendency to be a bit of a long winded blogger) I won’t have the time to keep up a weekly grind here as I have.

Nonetheless, I do plan to get together at least one more “Amplitude Modulation” post in the coming weeks, as soon as I can spend some quality time away from my RF infested apartment and roam the world again with one of my portable radios. And I'm leaving my options open to add futher entries in this series when I have the time and have a good scan to offer. Actually, I’m a bit gassed up to take my radios into the countryside after finally getting my 2007 edition of “Passport To World Radio.” I really should have purchased one of these a while ago. In working up these posts it would have saved me a LOT of internet hours stalking station ID’s. While the web is quite an amazing tool for figuring out a reception log (and international broadcasters can and do change frequencies without notice), it’s still much better to have a book like this in front of you when you’re slipping up or down the dial. If you have anything more than a passing interest in shortwave radio it would be a good idea to pick up your own copy of “Passport.”

While I’ve had a lot of fun posting here, it’s been especially rewarding for me personally to publicly delve into my own fascination with DXing. It’s also given purpose to my habit/hobby of recording dial scans, and perhaps along the way I've informed some folks about radio beyond FM, local stations (and the new broadcasting technologies). In over thirty posts I’ve learned a lot and offered some people who will never turn on a shortwave radio (or hunt distant signals out of the atmosphere) a chance to hear what it sounds like to pick up overseas broadcasts the old-fashioned way. And what’s great about this blog (and the way WFMU operates in general) is that all the posts and the accompanying audio will remain available (and subject to search engine hits) for some time to come.

I have yet to find anybody online who is posting realtime dial scans or random shortwave tuning recordings. It’s always baffled me that there isn’t more interest in such things, but through this series I’ve been able to share what I hear with headphones in the middle of the night with you. And it was nice you didn't laugh.

Adventures in Amplitude Modulation - Part 32

These shortwave bandscan recordings are the last I'll offer from my trip to the Catskills at the end of September. This is from September 29, 2006, and the recordings start just before midnight. Officially, this first scan starts out at about 0344 UTC (11:44 EDT). The audio can be found after the jump.

This is the first time I tried to record two scans at once. And I'm using the radios I've used most in this series - the Tecsun BCL-2000 and the Degen 1103. As I've previously discussed, I like a few things about the BCL radios (specifically analog tuning/digital readout, a nice big sound and a bright always-on display), but the Degen is a much better portable and you hear that in these scans. The Degen is a digital receiver (also known as the Kaito 1103 here in the states) which is available for around the same price, or cheaper, than the BCL-2000 (which is known in the US as the Grundig S350 or the Eton S350DL). I bought my versions of these radios directly from China via ebay, which even with the shipping is a considerable savings over their counterparts branded for America. That said, if you happen to have a problem with a radio you bought from China you might have a harder time getting it fixed or replaced. But I took that risk.

These radios are comparable in that they are recent products from the growing and maturing Chinese electronics industry, and are innovative in the fact that they marry elements of digital and analog tuning. And compared to radios in the recent past, they offer more bang for the buck. Specifically, the Degen 1103 is probably one of the best shortwave portables to retail for less than a hundred bucks. The BCL radios are quite sensitive, but there is no filtering of wayward images of strong stations. The Degen is a dual conversion radio, which greatly reduces the chance of hearing signal "images" at places they don't belong on the dial. And it can be a little confusing and annoying to find out you're actually hearing a station from another band instead of a broadcast at the frequency you're scanning. (Reader Ralph did a nice job of explaining how this happens in the comment section of this post.)

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 31

Here’s another foray into the AM band, as explored in the middle of the night. This recording begins just before 1AM local time, and was captured in the Catskill mountains of New York on Sunday October 1st (or the 2nd officially). Usually I start a scan recording at the low end of a band and work my way up, but this time I’m going the other way. Usually when starting at 530kHz and moving up the AM band, I never quite reach the end of the band, so this sample of broadcasting starts at the ass end of AM, and then I roll backwards through the dial.

I don’t spend that much time DXing though the higher end of the AM band. There’s less powerful stations, and especially here in the city there are far more ethnic talk outlets up that way. But unlike the previous post where I offered a taste of these frequencies, this reception was snatched from the sky out in the country away from the RF noise and the bullying strong local signals of the megalopolis. In fact, there are really no local AM stations in the central Catskills where we stayed that weekend. By day, the AM dial was basically silent all the way across the damn thing. Of course, once the sun went down there was some kind of noise or better at every 10kHz stop. Not a bad location to DX medium wave. And this was recorded with my Tecsun BCL-2000, a very sensitive, but buggy analog radio, which should have been on its best behavior on AM without powerful local signals stirring up annoying images across the dial.

Again, this starts from the right and the dial moves slowly to the left, stopping at every place a radio station that might be something, and then listening. The first station I found was in rural Michigan. Here's the audio...

Catskills Late Night Medium Wave Scan 10-02-06 A - 1590 to 1410 (Download MP3)

1590 - WTVB Coldwater, MI

A good way to start, with a solid (if faint) station ID from a distant low power station. It’s a one kilowatt oldies station in south central Michigan broadcasting in a directional pattern (to the northwest!). Station identification comes right before the top of the hour. It’s just about 1 AM EDT.

1580 - CKDO Oshawa, ON

An oldies station broadcasting from the other side of Lake Ontario. Starts out with some syrupy 1970's EZ pop song (sounds like Hall & Oates meets Smokey?) that I’ve never heard before. Maybe it’s some of that “Canadian content” the government forces their music stations to integrate into their playlists. Then “Green Onions,” still one of the greatest insurgent instrumentals around. Sounds great with static too.

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 30

Here’s the second half of the scan of the 25 meter shortwave band following my post from last week. And to be honest, I’m including it for completion rather than for compelling content. It’s international broadcasting, and almost none of it is intended for North American listeners.

And speaking of last week, I mentioned that a site I've depended on for identifying shortwave broadcasts, hfradio, has disappeared. Well, I'm happy to say it's only temporary. If you try to pull up their site you get a (MS version of MySpace) page explaining that they took the server down for some maintenance and upgrades. Should be back up in a week or two. I'd personally like to thank the proprieter of the website, Tomas Hood, for all his fine work and service to the online radio geek community.

Almost all the radio reception in this series has been recorded at night, when radio waves get the best bounce out of the atmosphere. But the 25 meter band has more life during daylight than most, and reader Ralph offered his own recorded adventure of these same frequencies a few weeks ago (which you can read and listen to here).

More than most radio recordings offer here, this is more for geeks and completists. No great music and very little English language content. However, if you were to tune in the world one afternoon you might hear voices like these, and radio noise like this.

This scan was captured around the five o’clock hour EDT on my Degen 1103 portable. The first segment of this radio adventure (in the last post) has some swell music and an interesting roundup of the weekly news from Cuba. This is mostly just foriegn language garble. But no less REAL. Most of these signals are being transmitted from overseas. However, I heard them in the Catskill Mountains. And so will you, if you download this file...

Segment 2 - 25 meter band 10-01-2006 (download MP3)

11795 - Deutsche Welle (Germany)

English service for Africa. Not coming in well, and stepped on by an adjacent station.

11800 - Radio Habana Cuba

In Arabic, with a Cuban accent. Reception isn't too bad. Wonder what they're talking about?

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 29

Okay, I'm back again with some shortwave reception. I made a number of bandscan recordings when I was in the Catskills around the beginning of this month and that's where this entry was recorded. And as usual, the audio (and the discussion of it) follows the jump.

While I had hoped to duplicate some of the luck I had upstate while perusing the 31 meter band last June (discussed here in these two posts), that wasn't possible this time around. One of the main reasons shortwave radio is both intriguing and frustrating is that propagation varies so damn much, depending on the weather of our solar system. One day or night a station (or a smorgasbord of stations) will be heard at a certain time, and on another date at the same time you've got radio silence, something else, or just RF noise. And on that weekend, two fairly dependable bands, the 31 and 41 meter band, were clear of many of the stations I hoped to find there in the evening.

The 49 meter band (the most dependable evening shortwave band) was chock full of broadcasts that weekend. However, this piece of spectrum typically offers fewer surprises, and lots of U.S. Christian garbage along the way. However, as far as shortwave listening the real action I found that weekend was on the 25 meter band during the late afternoon. Right when it's gotten dark across the sea, and much of what I found was coming from over there. And as Ralph mentioned in his guest post, most of the overseas broadcasting you hear on the 25 meter band at these hours isn't intended to be heard in the US. Programming meant to be heard in here (and there is sadly less of this all the time) typically starts up a little later.

This band is interesting because it swings both ways. Depending on atmospheric conditions the 25 meter band can provide better propagation during either the day or night. 25 meters roughly covers the 500kHz on each side of 12000kHz (or 12MHz). And as a rule of thumb, the bands with frequencies above 25 meters  (which have lower meter numbers) are better for daytime broadcasting and listening (22, 19, 15 and 13 meter bands). The bands below 25 meters (with higher meter numbers) are generally used at night (31, 41, 49, 60, 75 and 90 meter bands). So, if you turn on a shortwave radio and wonder where all the stations are, try the bands that fit the time of day. In general, I've always had the best luck with the bands between 5000 and 15000kHz (60 to 19 meters).

Okay, enough of the geeky stuff. It just always seems like a good idea to give a little background for people who might one day dip their toes into the world of shortwave listening. I imagine many readers either will never turn on a shortwave readers and then again some of you know far more about these things than I do.

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 28

At the end of September, I escaped the big city again. And at a little cabin in the Catskills I unwrapped and unzipped a couple radios, my recorder and all the assorted cables, batteries and cassettes and set up another little DX outpost for the weekend. Hey, it's how I have fun...

The reception wasn’t nearly as impressive as the last time I got a chance to scan upstate, but I had some luck on the 25 meter band in the late afternoon with my DE1103. I also had a chance to conduct a couple somewhat simultaneous band scans with the Degen and my analog Tecsun BCL-2000. The results were interesting and somewhat predictable. However, I’ve just gotten all that audio dumped into the computer and haven’t had a chance to go back over it yet. Somewhere in the next couple entries in this series I’ll dig into some of these recordings.

Instead, I'm serving up some ham radio today. Late on Friday (September 29) I had already gone through what seemed to be happening on medium wave and the 49 meter band. I had heard quite a bit of sideband activity as I prowled around, so I decided to turn on the SSB and dig on into that action. The two hot spots I'd come across were the 40 meter band (just above 7000kHz) and 20 meter band (just below 4000kHz) bands. That's where I came across the reception below.

Amateur radio operators, or hams, are licensed independent broadcasters who talk to each other on specially reserved chunks of the radio spectrum, a number of which are within the shortwave (or high frequency) range. Some hams still use Morse Code for communication, other’s have added digital technologies, and some are actually broadcasting television these days. But all I know anything about are the guys who talk to each other, over the radio.

From what I understand (and I don’t know that much), hams typically bond together into roundtable groups for “ragchew” sessions (yes, that’s the term they use). At certain times or days or frequencies, people who have over time become part of a group will look for each for a chat on some agreed schedule. There’s bigger moderated operations called “nets” where large groups of people check in on some frequency and a big radio powwow ensues.

Adventures in Amplitude Modulation - Part 27

Here’s the second installment of an AM band dial scan I began a couple weeks back at BOTB. This little radio safari was recorded while I camped out on the deck of a beach house on the Connecticut coast near Bridgeport in late August.

Serious DXers favor the eastern coast of North America for picking up AM stations broadcasting from Europe and Africa (although a location right on the Atlantic Ocean rather than Long Island Sound would be preferable). However, the best time for that would be early evening and the best results would include employing an external antenna. I’d love to try this sometime, but was hardly equipped to do so on this excursion. One day...

This upcoming weekend I’m headed out of the RF noise of the city for the Catskills Mountains where I plan on scanning the international shortwave bands in search of interesting and exotic programming to feature in this series. With these two posts I’ve made a point of getting back to exploring the AM band again, because it remains the heartland of amplitude modulated broadcasting and sometimes it’s just fun to hear traffic reports from other regions of North America.

I gotta say that I think we may be coming into a prime season for some compelling and strange content on both U.S. AM radio and international shortwave. In a few days we’ll enter October, a month preceding a national election in this increasingly bizarre country of ours, and the polls still hint that the Republicans are at risk of losing the house and possibly the senate. It might just be prime time for a big political firestorm... I mean, a BIG surprise. And it’s not just the constructively paranoid types predicting it. Word is King Pig Karl Rove himself is promising something special for the faithful. So do stay tuned.

Adventures in Amplitude Modulation - Part 26

The geek that I am, when I found out we were invited to join our in-laws for a few days at a beach house rental on the Connecticut coast at the end of August, I wasn’t so much looking forward to sun and sand and seagulls. I was thinking more about the DXing possibilities.

Having a huge body of water at your backdoor is typically a fine place to set up a shortwave set to snatch wandering radio waves bouncing unobstructed from beyond the horizon. While this wasn’t exactly the open ocean, it was Long Island Sound, and it all seemed rather promising. However, from moment I powered up my Degen that first evening I began to realize that this quaint little cottage was NOT going to be the dream radio shack I had hoped it might be. Oh, the reception was pretty good, that is for the stations that were strong enough to overcome the WORST RF noise I’ve think I've ever had to deal with. I'm not kidding when I tell you that it was the worst chorus of buzzing and bleating across the shortwave dial that I’ve ever heard throughout an entire house. And the deck and yard were no better.

The problem? Technology of all sorts in every room. Every light in the house was on a dimmer switch, which are notoriously RF noisy. And entertainment gadgets were everywhere, even a TV (and video equipment) in the bathroom. Not only that, but these beach houses are crammed together on the sand, and I suspect most were loaded up with electronics and gizmos. Hell, from the deck I could see that the people next door had a monstrous billboard-size TV blasting living color chase scenes up on their wall.

Fortunately, the AM band wasn’t so rudely affected by the inadvertent roar of high frequency broadcasting. So, the dial scan I offer in this post is medium wave reception from my first night there (August 28, 2006). I was near Bridgeport, with a nice view of Long Island across the way and waves crashing just a few feet from the stilts supporting the deck. Actually, sitting right on the coast of a continent provides a lot of excess noise as well, but the roar of the sea can easily be overcome with a set of headphones and doesn't affect the recording.

I was determined to overcome my RF predicament without sitting out in a parked car again, and later that weekend I walked down the beach away from all the gadgetry and recreational housing and recorded a somewhat eventful shortwave scan or two. However, after a couple hours of having a sea wind of twenty miles an hour or so blast you in the fact gets a little tiring after a while, and eventually got a little impatient sorting out faint signals. If I have time I’ll sort through those recordings and see if they are worth offering here as well.

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 25

In this outlay of shortwave reception I’m back to the band I believe I’ve featured most often here– 31 meters. I guess I’ve had particular luck finding interesting broadcasts there, along with the least interference. In retrospect, that's how it's panned out  (at least in the hours I tend to listen).

And if you look at (or listen to) the reception offered in these posts, you’ll see that there’s quite a variety of broadcasts be to found in this frequency campground from North America. None of the logs I've posted from scanning this band are even close to being identical to any others. One reason of course, is that all the recordings are from different days of the week and unique times of the evening. But propagation (and local RF) is the biggest factor. Some nights you can catch Stations from the Middle East and Africa. Other nights European and North American stations are most of what you find. And now and then, a few South America signals show up on the dial. In general after dark, mainstays like KOL in Israel, the Voice of Greece, Cuba (in general), CRI, Deutsche Welle, Radio Netherlands, and Spain are usually out there and can be easily heard on this band with little effort. And then there’s always Family Radio. (As if you’d want your kids to hear that...) On this particular Friday evening scan I happened across Iran’s “Voice of Justice” (their nightly English program) for a little while. AND you can almost hear everything they’re saying through most of it.

As a shortwave listener, I must admit that I'm at a particular disadvantage. Not only do I live in a huge megalopolis full of throbbing RF. But in reality, the very worst radio noise culprits are the electronics and wiring in my house (or almost any house these days). I’ve always had the best results listening to a shortwave portable outside. Unfortunately, if I happen to be serious about DXing from home I have to park myself under the bright streetlights illuminating our stoop (with funny looking audio equipment around me), or I’ll end up crouched in some awkward postion out on the fire escape, hoping the landlord doesn’t come out to put something on the clothesline and wonder what the hell I’m doing up there.

So, when I was here at the station here in Jersey City the other night I made a point of bringing my Degen 1103 and a cassette recorder to accompany a meal I brought with me to enjoy on our back deck. (Tomato soup from a Polish deli and a cheese sandwich, if you’re curious.) Then for an hour I slowly worked all the way up and through the 31 meter band (in its slightly expanded form on the Degen-- 9000 to 10000 kHz). And well, here’s what happened:

Segment 1-31 Meter Band (9330 to 9495 kHz) 08-18-06 (Download MP3)

9330 - WBCQ - The Apocalypse Chronicles

Perfect name for a U.S. shortwave show. So much of the religious and “patriot” type programming has this inherent lust for the end of humanity. I guess it must be an exciting life.

All you get here is some detailed information on how to hear the Chronicles (make sure you have a paper and pencil on hand to jot down the details).

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 24

Since I kicked off this blog series late last year I've not only talked about broadcast band (AM & shortwave) listening, but I've also provided audio with every post so you can hear the reception yourself. So far, all the recordings have been created by me and my dial twirling fingers. No longer.

In recent posts, I've asked readers to submit AM and shortwave recordings as content for discussion in this series. And it finally happened. Somebody came through big time. And reader Ralph didn't just provide the audio and some notes (which was all I really asked for), but also offered up informative commentary with his scan of the 25 meter band (from June 28, 2006). Thanks so much Ralph!

So, in this post you'll not only get some shortwave reception snagged by someone with more international radio experience and wisdom than me, but you also get a chance to hear a high-end tabletop receiver in action.

It's an extra treat that Ralph took the time to write about the reception he offered, as well as talk about his shortwave radio experience in general. While this is a wonderful bonus, if you're thinking about offering your own bandscan or radio recording, I'm really only requesting the audio along with some logging if you have it. But it sure was nice to get this whole package from Ralph, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. Plenty of international voices in these archives, as well an excerpt of old Gene Scott showing why he's the still the most normal and manly evangelist on shortwave radio today, even if he's not a living being lately.

But that's only one short moment in these recordings, which are divided up into four segments (for download) from this one listening session. Frankly, this is the first scan of a shortwave band that I've heard that I didn't make myself. I love the pure happenstance of shortwave tuning, and the sport of it (listen to Ralph try to make sense of a Syrian station with his gadgetry). The truth is you can really hear stations from around the world on shortwave, but unless you're local to a transmitter there's no guarantee that you'll be able to hear almost any station (clearly) at a given time. While the reception here isn't always solid here, the scan is rich in international signals. Although it's a fact that shortwave broadcasting (especially for listeners in North America) isn't what it once was, there's still quite a bit going on out there.

More information about submitting recordings for this series at the end of the post. Meanwhile, here's Ralph...

********************************************************************

I've been listening to WFMU, the coolest radio station in the world, for something like 20 years, and was delighted when the station started its own weblog. I was delighted and surprised when The Professor started posting about shortwave radio, one of the geekiest, uncoolest hobbies on Earth.

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 23

In the last week, I went over the tapes from my upstate NY listening session and found another interesting scan to post here. This time it’s a night hike through the 41 meter band. Audio follows the jump.

This recording is from the beginning of June, which seems like years ago as far as world news goes. With the Mideast on fire and Castro in the hospital, now would be good time to sample international news and opinion on shortwave. I wish I had the time to take a listen. Maybe this weekend. Unlike most media, shortwave radio listening can take some time and patience. And for a city dweller like me it takes some effort and dedication to escape from all the RF interference. And weather as it is, it ain’t such a swell time to sit outside with a radio either.

Next week, a special treat. Finally, a reader has actually offered up a recently recorded shortwave dial scan, along with extensive notes and commentary. And it’s a good one. Thanks Ralph!

After asking listeners to contribute radio recordings for this blog series, Ralph was the first one to come through. I had talked about what I was interested in hearing in this post, and if you think you might have something to offer (or would be willing to record some radio from wherever you might be) please send me an email. And thank to Ken Kopp in Topeka for mentioning this series on his blog and in Glenn Hauser’s DX Listening Digest, and for asking readers there to consider submitting audio for this project. Appreciate it.

Meanwhile, back to the third of June, near Catskill in the Hudson Valley, where this recording occured. That weekend the reception was strong and steady on my new Degen 1103. In the last post I offered from that listening session offered very readable reception from Madagascar, and this one touches on Southern Africa as well. But almost more significantly, I came across WBCQ in Maine coming in loud and clear after midnight (something I haven’t heard here in a while), as well as a Christian shortwave broadcast from Utah. That might not sound like much of an accomplishment, compared to picking up signals from the Indian Ocean, but it’s not always easy for me on the east coast to receive shortwave stations in the Northern Hemisphere transmitting from the continental divide and beyond.

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 22

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent a week around the July 4th holiday in Michigan. And many of those evenings were spent in my brother’s backyard scanning shortwave and the AM band for this blog series. Although I’ve yet to dig into all the tapes I recorded, I must admit that I don’t recall that any particular shortwave scan I snagged there to be as compelling as most of the ones I’ve already featured here. To me, what makes a broadcast band tuning adventure memorable is ultimately a crap shoot. It's a roll of the dice under the influence of atmospheric conditions and the happenstance of coming across interesting content. The radio dice weren't so kind this trip.

That’s not to say that in twenty or so hours of recording I didn’t capture some intriguing and revealing broadcasting along the way. But I was ultimately disappointed that most of scans didn't stand out as being blogable or as significant audio artifacts. To me, there’s several factors that make a particular scan worth posting and discussing here. While it’s always exciting to come across viable signals from very far away (or from countries I’ve rarely if ever heard on shortwave), this is an English language blog and it seems imperative to present some radio English content in the mix (although foreign music programs often have a powerful charm all their own). I think it’s safe to say that just discussing the origin of multilingual chatter isn’t what I had in mind when I started this series. And I’m sure most readers would agree.

Of course, exotic non-English programming is part of what makes shortwave so interesting. But in the end radio is supposed to be a communication medium. When I turn on a shortwave set to explore I want to receive information and ideas from around the world, as well as log some far off programming I can’t understand. Actually my recent listening sessions upstate (for only two evenings) yielded more interesting scans, and I may return to those recordings in the next few weeks. Like I said, it’s always a crap shoot.

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 21

This the final installment of the 31 meter band scan (audio after the fold) I began two weeks ago, recorded June 2, 2006. As I said before, it was a rewarding romp thorough one of the dozen or so allotted shortwave bands and seems to portend that there will be lots of eventful DXing to come with my new little shortwave portable (the Degen 1103).

People around the station think I have a lot of radios at home. And I do, I suppose, compared to most people. Just looking about my room here, I  see over a dozen or so. And there’s certainly more than that tucked away as well. I’d guess that two thirds of them have shortwave, as well as AM and FM. To me, a radio isn’t all that special if I can’t turn in on and hear more than just local stations. Any radio does that.

But I’m not a big collector. I don’t have the space, money or time for that. In fact, it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve gotten some decent receivers. I’ve almost always had at least a couple of radios that received shortwave around, but they were typically Radio Shack portables, or boomboxes with shortwave bands. You can certainly whet your appetite for shortwave and DXing with any number of nominal receivers, but without spending a lotta dough you can graduate up to a more sensitive set or two and be assured you'll find some interesting signals from far over the horizon now and then. And I’ve had a lot of fun doing just that working on these blog posts over the last few months.

I’ll be taking a short summer hiatus from the blog for about two weeks after this. Meanwhile, I’ll be DXing out in the midwest, recording some reception to be posted here. I’m bringing a few radios and lots of batteries. And I’ll hope you can join me here again at that time. Meanwhile here’s most of the rest of that dial scan. It’s the high end of the 31 meter band, recorded the evening of June 2, starting where we left off last week. Here's the first link... 

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 20

This post returns to a band scan I started to post last week from a listening session I recorded June 2, 2006 near Albany, New York. It's a slow cruise through the 31 meter band (9400 to 10000kHz). As with all the posts in this blog series, there’s MP3 audio you can download so you can listen along. And each frequency is listed (or my best guess), along with a brief description of each broadcast.

This was the first chance I had to play with a new shortwave portable (a Degen 1103) away from the radio interference of city life. And in this one long sweep of this band (in just a few hundred kilohertz) I picked up nearly fifty stations. I was impressed.

A good shortwave radio is truly a world receiver, and the Degen is just that. Although the fidelity of signals coming from thousands of miles away is never quite as crisp and steady as a local AM or FM station, many are quite listenable. And certainly some are difficult to hear or understand, but just knowing that they are coming through the air from so far away can make you curious to linger and try to figure out where they’re coming from, and perhaps what they're saying as well. This is DXing.

So, here’s some casual DXing from the East Coast. I’m not using as extra external antenna, and I haven’t researched any particular station or country to hunt out. However, I do plan to print out some pages from websites like this one and try to track down some far-flung English language broadcasts when I get a chance.

As far this scan recording, I skipped a few weak and relatively insignificant signals I happened across, and the first MP3 (or two in this post) picks up where the 31 meter band started to get interesting again.

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 19

It was a brief foray into upstate New York, but a week ago I was able to spend a weekend away from the radio noise of the big city with my new Degen 1103. Sitting on my friend's porch overlooking the Hudson as the rain fell, I was quite impressed with the lively shortwave reception (with very little buzzing and static). I wasn’t able to spend as much time scanning as I would have liked, but even late at night there were plenty of voices to pluck out of the ether.

In fact, the first band scan I recorded (a meander through the 31 meter band on Friday night June 2, 2006) was full of broadcast. So the recording I’ll offer in this post will kick off at the first readable signal on this band and continue on for a half an hour in real time. I'll follow up with more of this scan in the next post (and perhaps beyond that post as well).

A few readers have expressed continued curiosity about my hands-on experience with the DE1103 (which I talked about in the last two post in this series, available here and here), and I have to report that I’m really happy with this gadget. It is a very sensitive little receiver, and once you get used to the odd interface it’s quite easy to maneuver the controls. Besides shortwave, the medium wave reception is quite good as well, and FM reception seems to be better than any radio I have at the house. WFMU comes in well with regularity here in North Brooklyn, and no other radio I have here dependably picks up FMU in a listenable way. 

Although the only bands easily accessible via the main controls are AM, FM and ten of the major shortwave bands, via direct entry of the frequency (on the keypad) the DE1103 picks up all frequencies between 100 and 29999 kHz. Long wave (below 540 kHz) in the U.S. isn’t really a broadcast band in the U.S., but I was digging around down there here in Brooklyn and all I was able to fish out were images of powerful New York City stations at predictable mathematical intervals. The same thing happened when I ventured about just above the U.S. AM broadcast band (1720 kHz and up a few hundred kHz). I have yet to identify images like this on the standard AM and shortwave bands.

Besides these anomalies, there’s those audible blips when cruising through busy bands and the digital edge the radio adds to some standard shortwave noise. (Though I have to admit I’m starting to become fond of how coming out of a strong frequency occasionlly sounds like you're drowning the signal or the announcer.) Other than these minor annoyances (for an analog radio fan) I have very few complaints so far. And considering I gave up less than seventy bucks (via ebay) for the DE1103, I really have nothing to grumble about at all.

Adventures in Amplitude Modulation - Part 18

After doing almost twenty posts in this series, my impulse is to assume that by now readers who are interested in shortwave and AM DXing are following this blog thread, and others are passing it by for less geeky content on the WFMU blog. But in case you've just come across one of these posts for the first time and you're curious, I'll quickly mention again what's going on here.

Listening to the old broadcast bands for information, sport or adventure isn't so popular in this U.S. these days, for many reasons. And since I’ve started writing these posts, I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve talked to about DXing who can more than feign an interest in listening to lo-fi audio signals from faraway places. I mean, if you experience your media from cable TV and/or through a speedy multimedia computer with a broadband connection, why should you care about complicated radios that offer sputtering static, strange noises, and people speaking in all sorts of languages you don’t understand?

For better or worse, some of us still have fun with this old technology. While it’s easy to be overwhelmed by so MUCH radio content available today– besides AM & FM, there’s internet and satellite radio and many thousands of podcasts flooding the mediasphere every week. However, there's a minority out here who continue to listen to radio the hard way and test the capabilities of our receivers. And with shortwave, it’s remains the only way to hear direct communications from distant countries without somehow going through some corporate communication infrastructure. And you throw in the entertainment value of Christian kooks who have infested the U.S. shortwave frequencies, and a few clandestine operators and shortwave pirates lurking about, you’ve got an eclectic, and often exotic, mix of programming to sample that you'd probably never hear any other way. And it’s important to mention that what has become a fringe medium in America, is still a very popular and important way to hear news, information and music in the developing world.

During the cold war, back in the days before the world wide web, there was no way to hear the OTHER side, except on shortwave. Now we have other strange political and economic forces that are again dividing up our world, and creating many “others” who have disagreements with the west, especially the U.S. (For example, the English language programming on Radio Habana Cuba is NOT available on the internet.) If you REALLY want to balance your news and information intake these days, shortwave is STILL a good way to go. And your listening habits will not be logged or noticed by John Poindexter, or any of his friends. Something to think about.

Adventures in Amplitude Modulation - Part 17

Well, my Degen radio finally arrived from China this week. And I do like it. At the bottom of this post you'll find a few samples of shortwave reception I snagged with it on Sunday, but first I’ll offer a few first impressions of the radio itself.

As I mentioned in the last post in this series, I’ve long been eyeing this shortwave portable on the internet for over a year, and finally decided to go ahead and order one. A recent invention, the Degen 1103 is the same basic radio as the Kaito 1103 that’s marketed here in the states. After paying shipping and insurance from China via ebay, the Degen is still twenty bucks cheaper than the Kaito version. And I’m all for that.

After coming across so many fawning reviews online, I was already convinced that this radio was probably going to be a good performer. It is. That much I could tell from the moment I turned it on. Not only is it sensitive, but the digital tuning is as graceful as you’re going to find on a radio at this price. Of course, scanning the band isn’t quite as organic as using an analog tuner, but it’s damn close.

After pulling it out of the box in the early afternoon I tuned to medium wave and found a couple of fringe AM stations I hadn’t noticed before. And although I have picked up WPHT at 1210 in Philadelphia here in New York during the day before, the Degen also picked up WBZ in Boston at 1030 just past one in the afternoon. Impressive. Then later in the early evening, I found Kuwait and Ukraine coming in clean and strong on shortwave, along with plenty of other stations I didn’t bother to log.

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 16

This week back to shortwave radio-- a backwater of broadcasting in the U.S., but still a dynamic medium around the world. Although it's a relatively antique technology, shortwave still offers unique programming from distant locations on the globe with a little effort. In this post I've included the audio from the beginning of a scan of another popular shortwave band– 31 meters (9250-9995 kHz). This recording is from a week ago Sunday. Easter for some.

Again, I’m using the BCL-2000 at my kitchen table. It’s not the best receiver I have, but it suits the purposes of this series. I have a number of other analog radios I’d like to use to record these shortwave band scans, but the work of deducing the origination of foreign language broadcasts without being able to discern the exact frequency would make it even more problematic to tell you with any confidence where these broadcasts are coming from. Which leads to a bit of a confession. I’ve succumbed to a bit of gadget lust and purchased a new radio which may offer a digital band-scanning alternative to the analog BCL.

I’ve mentioned my interest in the Degen (or Kaito) 1103 in a couple of comments I’ve added to posts in this series. Along with the BCL radios, the DE1103 is a 21st century shortwave receiver that has generated a respectable positive buzz in the shortwave community over the last few years. The 1103 in general gets higher marks than the BCL series across the board (although a number of people gripe about the odd control layout). Look at some of the reviews of the radio here, here and here. Just as the BCL melds digital readout with analog tuning, the DE1103 has digital AND analog readout with digital tuning. It also has a quiet noise floor and no “chuffing” or “chugging” when traversing shortwave in 1 kHz steps. In reviews, owners say turning the tuning knob (or jog wheel) is as close you can get to manual analog scanning you can get in a digital receiver without spending the big bucks.

So, I ordered one from the commie-capitalist kingdom across the sea. When it shows here up I’ll crank the gadget up and see if it really is the band scanning tool it’s made out to be. No doubt, it seems to be a solid digital shortwave receiver, and I’ve never really owned one I actually liked. I look forward to punching in presets for favorite frequencies and fooling around with contemporary radio technology. And if this little unit lives up to half the hype I’ve read on the net, it should be a lot of fun DXing with this it out in the sticks.

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 15

If you’ve followed this blog series at all, you know that it’s based on audio content, specifically radio reception I’ve recorded. After featuring shortwave radio in the last four posts I was ready to go back to some of the sounds of medium wave (AM) again. However, recordings I had thought I would feature were either of poor quality, not all that interesting, or missing in action. What’s worse, it took a few hours of listening and searching to figure this out.

Actually, it would have been easier to comb through some shortwave recordings I have ready to go, but now and then I do want to talk about AM radio in this series as well. While it isn't as exotic as shortwave, the AM band is very 20th century-- an era I’m still rather fond of. Instead of spending additional hours digging through boxes full of cassettes and trying to find something compelling I decided to do the obvious– turn on the radio.

In previous posts where I’ve gone over some AM stations, I’ve barely touched the higher half of the band. There’s a reason for this. A big chunk of the AM up that way is allocated to local and regional broadcasting. In other words, there aren’t any far off high power stations to clearly hear and savor. And unless you’re near one of these minor signals at each 10 kHz stop on the AM band all you usually hear is a cacophony of low power stations meekly throbbing from afar.

Just for fun (and to generate some content for this damn blog post), I decided to explore this AM wilderness late Sunday night (the wee hours of April 10) and record the results. There are no 50,000 watt powerhouses from 1230 to 1490 kHz (and none past 1680 kHz (including the medium wave band extension up to 1700 kHz in the U.S.). And frankly, there’s not much compelling English language programming to be found from New York City on this segment of the AM band. During the day, once you get past WLIB (Air America’s home base/NYC outlet) at 1190 kHz almost everything is in another language. Mostly Spanish. At night it’s not a lot different except that multitudes of non-local low power stations fill the holes on the dial. You’ll hear a lot of that in this recording.

Adventures in Amplitude Modulation - Part 14

This entry ends a four-post arc in this series offering a station by station breakdown of 49 and 41 meter (shortwave) band reception in Brooklyn March 1, 2006 (which started with this post). The recording offered here features the second half of the 41 meter band, a very active segment of the alloted shortwave frequencies for international broadcasting. This recording takes place from just after 8:30 until around 9 p.m. EST (about 0133 to 0220 UTC). The radio I’m using is the cute and inexpensive BCL-2000, an occasionally drifty receiver with “image” issues, which happens to offer analog tuning with digital readout of frequency. Nothing fancy.

As far as the real world a month later, I’ve had rather a hectic week and the only significant time I’ve had to concentrate on shortwave or DXing has been spent reviewing the radio recording for this post. However, I can say that in my brief dips into radio reception around here that the difficulties I've had receiving many of the monster AM clear channel stations has returned to normal over the last week or so. And shortwave reception seems to be pretty good too.

Oh, and one other thing I wanted to pass on before getting right to the audio for this post. I ran into a Usenet thread in the rec.radio.shortwave group that might be of interest to some readers of this series. First contact with a shortwave radio can be a frustrating and/or disappointing experience. The reason people with an interest in shortwave radio spend so much time researching propagation and frequencies (as well as actually logging reception), is because getting to know your way around the shortwave bands and scoring difficult to receive broadcasts is sort of a craft, a sport, even an art. But as I’ve repeatedly said, if you have a decent radio and follow some basic rules you won’t always be disappointed, and eventually you could be amazed. Rather than go into all the problems with location, interference, propagation and radios in general, you might want to take a look at this Usenet discussion. It's launched by an earnest and diligent newbie who has just purchased a Grundig Yacht Boy YB-400 (a fairly inexpensive Chinese-made digital portable) and was NOT having a rewarding shortwave radio experience up in his New England condo. And in this thread (over 70 messages long) all sorts of savvy shortwave listeners offer tips, suggestions and personal experiences that cover almost all of the main points of what it takes to get a little performance out of a shortwave radio. Recommended.