Nick B's SWL Blog

I used two Tecsun radios for this experiment. On the left, a PL-380 tuned to 13760kHz; on the right, a PL-310ET tuned to 15245kHz, tuned to this evening's English Language program from the Voice of Korea. Fed into the left and right channels of a Tecsun ICR-100 which I'm using as a MP3 recorder. Both Tecsuns are set for a bandwidth of 3kHz and the volume at 10. The difference in propagation is noticable. Sometimes 13760 is better, other times 15245. Overall I'm hoping nothing is lost in the fades, listen for yourself to decide! Probably some of DPRK's more easy-to-listen-to music followed by the broadcast schedules for the English Languare service. If you cannot see the audio controls, listen/download the audio file here

16 minutes of Emisora Pio XII recorded indoors using just the whip antenna on my Kaito KA-1103! If you cannot see the audio controls, listen/download the audio file here Almost armchair copy!

There's a place I visit occasionally near Holbeach St. Matthew. The site has some old WWII coastal defences and some useful metal fences, handy for securing antenna supports, and  borders the RAF Holbeach Air Weapons Range . On a recent visit I was impressed at the strength of shortwave signals on my Tecsun portables so I though it might be worth trying a larger antenna.

I finally got my old AOR 7030 hooked up to the Wellbrook yesterday. I't's been a love-hate relationship with this receiver, I bought it back in 2000 and spent time and money on upgrades. The RF performance is (or was back then) excellent but the user interface still feels rather unfriendly, even when I use the remote controller - this hasn't mattered much in the past as it has usually been tied up on some kind of long-term propagation or datamode monitoring sessions. It has it's quirks with the extension speaker socket and antenna switch intermittencies but they can be resolved with some minor work. Anyway, it's good enough to pull out more South American broadcasters on 49m, in this case (presumed) R.Chaski Red Integridad. I tried to find a parallel internet stream for this but no luck so far. Timed at 2248UTC 11-07-17. Here's the audio recording, switching between USB/LSB/AM as I try hard to resolve the low modulation. If you cannot see the audio con...

Broadcasting in the Thai language (presumably) on 9390kHz. 2101UTC 10-07-17 If you cannot see the audio controls, listen/download the audio file here

Voice of Vietnam received at 2044UTC 10-07-17 on 9730kHz. If you cannot see the audio controls, listen/download the audio file here

Good reception of this station presumed to be Alcaraván Radio from Colombia. I made a some audio recordings of this station Commentary. If you cannot see the audio controls, your browser does not support the audio element Music for 14minutes. If you cannot see the audio controls, your browser does not support the audio element These were recorded with the Roland wave/mp3 recorder. I'm finding this late-night listening rather addictive...

After previously using cassette and then briefly minidisk media for off-air recording, I now use  PC. As this isn't exactly a portable solution I have now invested in a Roland  R-05 wave/mp3 recorder which can be used together with my Tecsun PL-880 and Kaito KA-1103 receivers. Unfortunately the other Tecsuns don't have a line output socket so I'll need to record via the headphone jack..