radio mirchi is hot

I was searching on Orkut for communities related to radio. A surprising number of the communities referred to India's Radio Mirchi, so I searched again for radio mirchi. There are currently 48 Orkut communities that match this search.

To learn about this radio brand, check out Radio Mirchi on Wikipedia.

If anyone can point me to an online stream or any recordings of Radio Mirchi, I'd like to check it out.

distant am radio targets

I'm becoming more confident in my ability to estimate the distance of a mediumwave station when I hear it. The BCL-2000 will recite a distant signal at a lower volume, which makes the task easy, but the E5 compensates with some gain control. Some local broadcasts have weak signals; they can be identified by their clarity, steady volume, lack of directionality, context clues, and other factors.

My Eton E5 has taken over the mediumwave DX duties in recent days. When I take my east coast trip, I'll take the E5 with me for nighttime mediumwave DX. I'll focus on identifying distant signals rather than trying to comprehensively log every available station. I'm trying to figure out a protective travel case for the E5; any suggestions?

Here in California, I'm still seeking signals from Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, and Texas. The distant north/south signals I'm picking up along the west coast suggest that plenty of long-range reception is possible. I haven't logged any stations at the same distance that Alaska and Hawaii are from me, but there's really nothing but water between us.

1690 khz and the exciting conclusion

11:00pm PST, 08 Dec 2006: "KFSG, Roseville / Sacramento."

A nearby radio enthusiast named Mark let me know that KFSG has an English identification at the top of the hour. I tuned in a bit before 11pm, got a very clear signal, and heard the identification.

more clues for 1690 khz

Several days ago, I picked up a strong nighttime signal on 1690 khz that I couldn't identify. As mentioned in a previous post, the signal had a new-age style song starting at the top of the hour and looping for several minutes.

Tonight, I had another strong signal from 1690 khz on my Eton E5. There was some russian, then english advertisements. At the top of the hour, I heard the same looped song as before, so I put the E5 near my computer in order to record the audio.

Here's a low-quality mp3 of the looped music (2m 40s, 627 kb):
mystery_signal_1690_khz_05_dec_2006.mp3

Can anyone identify the song, or even better, identify the station that loops this song?

I'm guessing that the station runs out of content in the evening, and keeps the transmitter on the air with this music loop.

I searched the FCC site for stations in the United States with a callsign starting with "K" and licensed to operate on 1690 khz. There were two matches:
* KFSG in Roseville, California
* KDDZ in Arvada, Colorado

The use of the russian language and the looped music to fill radio silence seems to rule out Radio Disney. Roseville is only about 90 miles away from me, which would explain the strong nighttime signal despite a nighttime transmitter strength of 1 kW for KFSG.

confiscation of shortwave radios in zimbabwe

A story from SW Radio Africa:

MDC allege police & Central Intelligence Organisation confiscating shortwave radios countrywide

The front page of swradioafrica.com includes this jarring graphic:

identifying an espn radio affiliate

I spent half an hour this evening listening to 700 khz on my Eton E5. "ESPN radio" was announced several times, and the broadcast included sports headlines and football highlights. The radio show was identified as "GameNight". A stronger spanish signal faded in just before the top of the hour, so I thought my chance to identify this station was gone.

ESPN radio has a page of affiliate radio stations that can be filtered based on shows. I set the filter to GameNight, and found only one affiliate on 700 khz: KXLX in Spokane, Washington. Their nighttime power is 600 watts, and the station is about 800 miles away from me.

us air force interfering with garage doors

The U.S. Air Force is using a particular radio frequency to communicate with first-responders in an effort to coordinate homeland security. But when the signal started beaming down from Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, it had a side-effect. "An estimated 50 million garage door openers use the frequency, although technically the Air Force has the right to it."

So the Air Force has the right to use the radio frequency that your garage door opener might use. Throw in a side of eminent domain, and you may just find a bomber parked in your two-car when you get home!

Full story:
Top-secret facility's signal disrupting garage doors

I'm not sure of which frequencies the Air Force is using, but the garage door opener wikipedia article says that many remotes for garage doors operate in the 300 - 400 mhz range.

mediumwave dx wishlist

I've logged a lot of mediumwave stations over the past month. While many of us are making wishlists for the holidays, I made a wishlist of mediumwave stations that I still hope to log:

A circled frequency indicates that I haven't yet logged a station on that frequency. Likely callsigns are included along with the station's state. Values in parentheses show the station's signal strength in kilowatts. If two signal strengths are listed, it uses day-comma-night format.

As before (in April 2006 when I first tried mediumwave DXing), my Tecsun BCL-2000 is doing most of the work. This is the best photo I have of it at the moment, with poor lighting and unfortunately tuned to an FM signal:

(AM station information sources: ac6v.com, fcc.gov, theradiosource.com, ontheradio.net, radio-locator.com)