B08 schedules

Most major international shortwave radio stations have turned into the B08 schedule from last Sunday, the 26th. Due to the seasonal condition changes of the propagation, they have usually shifted their frequencies to the lower bands like 60, 49, and 31mb. The higher bands like 25mb or above have been much more quiet than before - and on the contrary, the lower ones are now so crowded with a lot of stations. This has resulted in creating severe interferences here and there. In Japan, Chinese stations are the biggest headache for DXing. They are of course allowed to use the shortwave frequencies for their regular broadcast -- but not for the meaningless jamming against other stations.

I am planning to make a weekend radio monitoring in this coming weekend. Here in Japan, next Monday - the 3rd of November, will be the national holiday, and it will be the 3-day consecutive holidays. Look forward to spending the weekend in my shack. Hope the human jamming of my 3-year old daughter also gets quiet :-)

Busy days :-(

It has been a looooooooooong week so far with a lot of tough works. There are so much headaches. One more day left for the weekend - but you know, I am quite sure that it will be another busy day tomorrow :-(

Just be a little more patient, and I will be running into the weekend for more shortwave listening :-) The A08 schedule will be over shortly, and most of the major international stations will be turning to the new B08 one in a few days. Look forward to seeing how the whole bands are changing next week.

9525kHz - Voice of Indonesia

It is 11:45 UTC (=20:45 JST) now. The Japanese program of the Voice of Indonesia is currently being observed on their usual frequency, 9525kHz. The reception condition is excellent here in Japan - SINPO44433. There are some slight fading on this frequency - but the signal itself is strong enough to cover this, and there is no major interference. Just like a local radio station :-)

Weekend shortwave monitoring

It is so much fun to play with my fellow radios. The recent newcomer, the FRG-7700 of YAESU, has been playing an important role for my shortwave monitoring since this joined in my shack last week :-) I especially love the mild sound of this old receiver. The above photo was taken when listening to the Radio Djibouti on 4780kHz.

Radio Sweden - MDG relay on 7395kHz

It is a few minutes after 21:00 UTC. I just finished listening to the English program of Radio Sweden on 7395kHz. The program was for 30 minutes from 20:30 UTC. There was also the Swedish one for 30 minutes before that. The reception condition was generally fair - SINPO45433. According to their website, this transmission was being sent out from MDG (Madagascar). There are so much chances to observe the MDG relay of Radio Nederland on various shortwave frequency bands - but not so much with Radio Sweden. To be honest, I had never realized the existance of their MDG transmission at all :-(

FRG-7700 - Welcome to my shack!

The used FRG-7700 of YAESU recently purchased through the Yahoo! Auctions safely arrived yesterday in a good condition. There are some tiny scratches on the case - but the overall condition as the old veteran radio is quite well. There is no special quality problem either with this radio as a result of my immediate quality test. At this moment, RX-340 of Ten Tec, NRD525 & 535 of JRC, AR7030PLUS of AOR, IC-R8500 of ICOM, and FRG-7700 of YAESU are sitting on a desk of my shack. I love each of them so much! :-)

Radio Varna on 6000kHz

I am now enjoying the weekend shortwave listening. It is Monday morning - but the 13th is the national holiday here in Japan and this makes me feel as if it was still the weekend :-)

Radio Varna, the weekly Bulgarian program from Varna, is now fair on 6000kHz. Since 21:00 UTC when they started the program, they have being observed with relatively strong signal without no major interference, noise, and fading. Of course, I am currently writing a Reception Report.

FRG-7700

I happened to see the used FRG-7700 of YAESU being sold on the Yahoo! Auctions several days ago. Remembered it when connecting with the Internet last night, and the time remaining was less than 10 minutes at that time. As the price was still under my budget (means the maximum acceptable price), I immediately put a tender in and waited for a completion of the Auction. I had no intention to be involved in a severe price competition - and had decided that I was willing to give it up if the price ever exceeded to my budget.

The end-time was extended for another 10 minutes as someone else made further bids in the last 5 minutes. This happened a couple of times.

The result was ... good to me :-)

This FRG-7700 was knocked down by me for a little less than JPY30,000. Not too bad as long as trusting all the statements the seller prepared. It is nice that the good condition of this old veteran will be joining in my shack shortly :-)

Radio Belarus

Belarus used to be a part of the former Soviet Empire, and their capital is Minsk. I am unable to recall exactly when they changed their station name - and the current Radio Belarus was called Radio Minsk at that time. I still remember that I was successful to catch them on the lower frequency bands mostly in winter.

According to my recent monitoring, there is a chance of receiving them on 7390kHz. They are on the air in various languages by using this frequency. Try at 20:40 UTC for their English program for 20 minutes :-)

Voice of Nigeria

This is a QSL card from the Voice of Nigeria. The mountain behind the road looks like a huge rock - judging from this particular photo. It is hard to tell exactly how tall (or big) this is but seems that it is as big as the Stone Mountain in Atlanta, GA, U.S.A. or even the Ayers Rock in Australia. Does anyone know the truth?

9330kHz - Radio Damascus

It is a few minutes after 21:00 UTC now, and I am just listening to the English program of the Radio Damascus on 9330kHz. Their audio quality used to be extremely poor before - but this seems to have been much improved. The overall reception condition here in Japan can be evaluated as SINPO 44433 with strong signal, no interference, low noise, and some fading.

TWR-Swaziland

I am not confident at all to point to the right place of Swaziland in a white map. As one of the shortwave listeners, I believe I am still good at the geography (in compare to other people) - but this fact seems to show that my knowledge is quite limited. Are you confident to answer the correct locations of other African nations like Chad, Niger, or Cameroon? Maybe we need to build up more studies in geography :-(
It is also a lot of fun to actually catch the wave from those unknown countries. Through this experience, we might be able to 'pretend' as if we were a geography expert (only if we refuse to have any further geography question from someone else).

CRI - China Radio International

The China Radio International now offers wide variety of special QSL cards for the recent Olympic Games in Beijing. I do not know exactly how many different ones they have - but it seems that the series consist of more than twenty different cards. It will be a kind of challenge to collect all of them :-)

CVC

CVC is the Christian broadcast organization owns some transmitting facilities in Australia, Zambia, and Chile. This QSL card is from the one in Chile, the South America. This station can easily be heard with good signal in the evening here in Japan :-)

RFA - Radio Free Asia

Radio Free Asia is such a friendly radio station for DXers. In fact, they issue a new series of QSL cards every two months at regular basis. This is the one I received for my reception report forwarded in February, 2008. Seems to be the special QSL card for the Chinese New Year :-)

DLF - Deutschlandfunk

DLF is the medium wave station of Germany. I was successful to identify their German language program from 19:06 through 19:27 UTC on September 21, 2008. They are the high-power station on 1422kHz - but it is still amazing that they can be observed here in Japan without any major interference, noise, and fading (only while the local Japanese station was off the air in the night of most Mondays).

Their response was extremely quick, and the envelope was filled with a complete QSL card (see the above), sticker, and an advertising material.

New QSLs coming soon :-)

I know - it has been quite a while to leave a new post here in this blog :-(

In spite of my busy days with a lot of tough works, I had not stopped devoting my effort on collecting QSL cards. This is absolutely a part of my life now - and receiving replies from radio stations around the world always helps me to keep the good motivation on my QSL collecting activities.

Will post some QSL cards recently received shortly :-)