When Something Goes Wrong On Shortwave...

[kenglish]

That's true, a lot of the 'big guns' from the cold war days have left us. I only have vague memories of those times, but I do remember the bands being pretty full, even stuff up in the 21 MHz band (whose meter # escapes me at the moment).

Where you are now, I imagine that RNZI is about the only foreign broadcaster that still has English programming and is strong enough to listen to.

Unfortunately, all my neighbors spent their stimulus checks on 80-inch big screams, which have huge noise stacks across the entire HF band. Nearly every RNZI frequency is completely blocked.

 

[CADXER]

Been gone for years and years, 1999, in fact. Same with the CKWX relayer on 6080 in Vancouver, and just about everything else in Canada, except for CFRX (I think). Radio Canada International has been off the air for probably 7-8 years now, and about as long for the 9625 khz CBC Northern Quebec Service.

CFVP Calgary 6030 kHz just came back on the air this past week after transmitter repairs. They are relaying CKMX AM 1060 Calgary. Have not tried for them yet, but they have been reported with weak signal.

 

[crainbebo]

I have no idea how that signal on 6030 is still alive. Especially with just comedy acts. It probably gets an audience of 2.

 

[kenglish]

CKMX-1060 has been getting a small audience in Salt Lake City, but a new owner just put KDYL back on the air for testing.
They plan to air a Regional Mexican format, I believe.

 

[Theater of My Mind]

 

[tvnut]

I have no idea how that signal on 6030 is still alive. Especially with just comedy acts. It probably gets an audience of 2.

According to swling.com, it's thanks to a couple of area hams. The transmitter was rebuilt. It's running less than 100 watts at the moment. Tuning properly to get it back to full power will have to wait until the AM it relays has a silent period, as it's both 50 kW and on the same property. But at least it's on, joining the CFRX, the CFRB relay at 6070. I can just pick up CFRX in daytime from here in beautiful Chicagoland, believe it or not. I'll have to wait for night to have a shot at CFVP.

 

[cyberdad]

...,. CFRX remains, and its 1 kW signal isn't the easiest to hear right now with conditions being so poor. At least not down here in Alabama. It is still odd to hear it, though, since it's just a typical commercial AM news/talk type station with that broadcast sound that is lacking on shortwave for the most part.

As posted previously elsewhere, I had the experience of occasionally staying in a suburban Toronto hotel less than five miles from CFRX's stick. Receptionn there on 6070 was via groundwave. And pretty bad. My "education" on how groundwave behaves on 49 meter SW.

As tvnut reported, CFRX is reliable daily here in the Chicago area. Reception is fair at best. But better than I ever encounted at that hotel just down the road from the stick

 

[davideduardo]

As posted previously elsewhere, I had the experience of occasionally staying in a suburban Toronto hotel less than five miles from CFRX's stick. Receptionn there on 6070 was via groundwave. And pretty bad. My "education" on how groundwave behaves on 49 meter SW.

I bought a rural AM/SW station in Ecuador in about '67 to move into Quito. It was on the 90 meter band around 3.3 mH/z... you could hear the groundwave for maybe two or three km or so at its 200 watt output, but it had daytime coverage for about 200 km starting maybe 20 km from the station. The AM, on 590 also with 200 watts into an inverted L longwire, got out about 30 km, so the two complemented each other in covering a lot of sparsely populated Andean highlands.

Those SW stations have miserable groundwave, and they are surrounded by a zone that has no skywave, either. I made the SW go away, and saved about $8 in monthly license fees by doing that.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

Not like it used to be. Last time I heard it it was low mod and distorted.

There on it as much as theyve ever been. Theyve always sounded like under modulated muddy dog shit shoved through a paper towel tube that then got microwaved too long

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

They do, and sometimes those Africa-oriented broadcasts do make it into the US, but even on the east coast it can be a dreadful signal. The Beeb was a big loss when they stopped offering English to North America, but since then they've become available in so many other ways — online, on XM/Sirius, via many HD subchannels of NPR outlets — that I don't miss it quite as much as I do some others like Australia.

Australia was a great companion of mine when I was working my first job right out of high school. I had the luxury of basically being an office gopher in a building all to myself, so I'd bring dad's shortwave radio every day and listen to their programming beamed from Sackville. It was a massive signal back then up and down the east coast! (I certainly got the occasional odd look from the other co-workers when they dropped into my building, though.)


As crainbebo noted, they're gone. Only CFRX remains, and its 1 kW signal isn't the easiest to hear right now with conditions being so poor. At least not down here in Alabama. It is still odd to hear it, though, since it's just a typical commercial AM news/talk type station with that broadcast sound that is lacking on shortwave for the most part.

***

It's worth noting that for all the big boys who've abandoned shortwave, there are a few smaller players still surprisingly hanging in there. Radio Nacional Amazonia from Brazil has been back for a while now after a major transmitter plant fire took them off a while back. Normally something like that should spell the end of shortwave transmissions but they're on 6180 and 11780 with a lot of programming. Ditto XEPPM in Mexico City, which still plays a lot of interesting music. They had a transmitter refurb not too long ago, too. The Solomon Islands are still on (at least I think they are?) after China basically gave them a new TX. And a station called Radio Montaña in Colombia recently signed on as well. Like Radio Clube do Para in Brazil, they're kind of a tough catch with less than 5 kW but it's there if you get lucky.

Oh and Argentina, Slovakia and R. Prague are still available via WRMI. I've heard a lot of interesting music from them in the past few years.

RNZI peels the paint off here.

I can hear The Beeb beaming to Africa quite well sometimes

Radio Nacional De Amazonias Brazil is quite nice here most nights

Paul
QTH: Just east of gods creation nowhere Alaska

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

Unfortunately, all my neighbors spent their stimulus checks on 80-inch big screams, which have huge noise stacks across the entire HF band. Nearly every RNZI frequency is completely blocked.

that is the most absurd thing ive heard all day and im sure its not 100 percent true

 

[tomservo]

As posted previously elsewhere, I had the experience of occasionally staying in a suburban Toronto hotel less than five miles from CFRX's stick. Receptionn there on 6070 was via groundwave. And pretty bad. My "education" on how groundwave behaves on 49 meter SW.

As tvnut reported, CFRX is reliable daily here in the Chicago area. Reception is fair at best. But better than I ever encounted at that hotel just down the road from the stick

I had a similar experience when I drove up to the EWTN site in Vandiver, Alabama many moons ago. Even with 250 kW, the groundwave didn't seem to go more than about 7 miles, and sounded pretty ratty. On the other side of Birmingham, though, it was a weak but usable copy.

Here on the gulf coast, at a certain time of night, it peels the paint off the walls, to borrow a term from SomeRadioGuy. It's a pest for 20-30 kHz up and down the dial because it's such a huge signal.

 

[boombox4]

RE: 6030 Calgary: Here in my section of Western WA it's usually Marti and a jammer on that frequency. Haven't heard the Canadian outlet in 5 years. On rare occasions I get traces of the Toronto station on 6070.

Re: WEWN: They're audible in the PNW. Not great, but audible, and most times it's readable, whether in Spanish or English. Mostly I heard the Spanish transmissions -- apparently aimed at Central and South America.

 

[CTListener]

Those SW stations have miserable groundwave, and they are surrounded by a zone that has no skywave, either. I made the SW go away, and saved about $8 in monthly license fees by doing that.

Eight bucks must have gone a long way in '60s Ecuador!

 

[boombox4]

Did a short tune-through the 49 meter band earlier this a.m., the Asian pipeline is still in, but not as strong as it was a few years ago... But still, it's good to know it's still going. Mostly CNR-1, and some China to Russia in Russian, etc.

 

[kenglish]

that is the most absurd thing ive heard all day and im sure its not 100 percent true

90% then.

 

[MichaelTheZ]

Unfortunately, all my neighbors spent their stimulus checks on 80-inch big screams, which have huge noise stacks across the entire HF band. Nearly every RNZI frequency is completely blocked.

Nonsense. They spent it on gaming consoles, Dogecoin, and AMC stock. Get with the times

On a more serious note, it makes sense that people would stop listening to shortwave when you can get so much more on the internet, and don't have to deal with interference and signal fadeouts. If you really want to hear a shortwave program, you can always find a WebSDR to listen to. I try to be more philosophical, and just treat shortwave radio as a 20th century technology which had its day. It was fun while it lasted.

 

[radioman148]

Nonsense. They spent it on gaming consoles, Dogecoin, and AMC stock. Get with the times

On a more serious note, it makes sense that people would stop listening to shortwave when you can get so much more on the internet, and don't have to deal with interference and signal fadeouts. If you really want to hear a shortwave program, you can always find a WebSDR to listen to. I try to be more philosophical, and just treat shortwave radio as a 20th century technology which had its day. It was fun while it lasted.

Good point. Shortwave was fun back in the day. Now there are so many other ways to listen.

 

[kenglish]

Shortwave, ham radio, hunting and fishing, cooking your own food, building furniture, repairing and restoring an old car.....
Lots of things bring joy in the process of "doing" it, not just in the final result.

 

[SWL_Observer]

These are just a few jumbled and miscellaneous thoughts on the state of shortwave radio, my apologies if this comes out as an incoherent stream of consciousness as opposed to a well formulated post

I do a radio show on one of the brokered U.S stations. I'm well aware of all of the caveats that come along with shortwave radio and if my show only has a few dozen listeners that's fine - this is just something that's done purely for the fun of it.

Shortwave Radio is still in decline and that's undoubtable, though I think it's slowly bleeding out at this point as opposed to rapidly dying. Indeed there were a few new (or returning) stations in the last year, such as La Montana on 4940 kHz from Colombia, Radio Onda Corta Venezuela on 6215 kHz and CFVP Calgary on 6030 kHz but the common theme is that each of these stations are low power - 1 kW, 50w and 100w respectively. With the ever increasing RF Interference and poor propagation, I'm not sure who exactly is able to listen to these stations except the very best DXers.

The days of the high power International Broadcasters are coming to an end, while low power broadcasting may be more economical I don't think it will save this medium due to the aforementioned issues. Many listeners struggle to pick up my own broadcast even when they're right in the heart of the target area and it's via a 100 kW transmitter. I can't see how a 50w broadcast will reach them any better.

Since 2015 the medium has lost... Voice of Guyana, Radio Apintie (Suriname), Radio Cairo, Radio Medi 1 (Morocco), Channel Africa (South Africa), International Radio Serbia, Radio Belarus, Radio Ukraine International, RTE Radio Ireland (there was 1 Relay via South Africa that ended in 2016), Radio Pakistan, Voice of Armenia, Radio Congo, Radio Afghanistan, Radio Nepal, Bhutan Broadcasting Service, Radio Bahrain, many local AIR Stations (in India) and of course Radio Australia.

Most of these stations only broadcast on one frequency, perhaps at a reduced power and their loss wasn't really noticed. Maybe after a few weeks there would be a single post in a DXing group asking if anyone picked up Radio Congo lately... and that's it.

The loss of these stations is largely unnoticed with a few exceptions such as Radio Australia. That's what the decline of shortwave looks like these days, mostly lost in the metaphorical background noise.

I guess the moral of these random and jumbled thoughts is to enjoy what's left, who knows how much longer good stations like Radio Romania International, Voice of Greece, Radio Educacion Mexico City, Radio New Zealand International etc. will be around for. I haven't been a shortwave listener for decades, but I'm so thankful that I'm able to enjoy the tail end of this medium.