cobalt pet shortwave / mediumwave weblog

16 September 2005

shortwave notes

I've been updating my shortwave cheat sheet with new frequencies and broadcast schedule entries as I find and confirm them. Reception has been rough lately due to solar flares. Lots of recent broadcasts have covered Hurricane Katrina and the US government's response to it. It's nice to hear the international support, both in forms of grieving and criticizing the inadequate emergency response. Other tidbits:

* 03 Sep 2005: I heard a song on Radio New Zealand International (from a New Zealand band) that I liked. I wrote down a description of the song in my notebook, and emailed the station when I got home. I asked them if they could identify the song. Separately, I sent a reception report using their online form. They sent an online QSL but I haven't heard back about the music. This was at approximately 0451 UTC in case anyone else out there can help me track it down.

* 04-05 Sep 2005: Thanks again to prime time shortwave, I found broadcasts from North and South Korea.

* 10 Sep 2005: At 0600 UTC, Radio Havana Cuba was beginning another hour of English language service. They apparently played a tape backwards for about 30 seconds. The station was silent for about 4 minutes, then the broadcast commenced as normal.

3 comments:

Madridkid said...

Yeah, I know what you mean about trying to track down a song through a shortwave station. Back in the 1970s, I had to write three times to radio nederland so that they could tell me the name of their signature music. And with that they only answered my question on air. The same happened with Radio Canada International when I was trying to track down the tune Vive la Canadienne. Good luck. madrid kid

shortwavemusic said...

It is indeed difficult to get ststions to cooperate in the identification of a piece of music. Since my blog consists entirely of music recorded off of shortwave, I've had to rely on the ears of astute readers (and the occasional post to Ask Metafilter) to track down mystery songs. I've learned to just accept the mystery of shortwave music and to consider my personal recordings as the canonical versions thereof, however unsatisfying that may be on some level.

weatherall said...

Thanks gentlemen for the comments! Sadly I never found out the name of the music artist on RNZI.