Radio Australia Jazz Notes

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If Radio Australia ever stops broadcasting on the shortwaves, one program I will certainly miss is Jazz Notes.

Jazz Notes showcases the best in Australian jazz, often featuring new and original recordings made in ABC’s studios. The show is hosted by Ivan Lloyd and has been offered on Radio Australia for several years.  I listen to the show Wednesday mornings at 9:30 am EDT.

The following ​recording was made on 29 May 2013 on 9,580 kHz at 13:30 UTC. 

Voice of Greece

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For your listening pleasure: almost three hours of music--ranging from modern to folk--and a little Greek commentary, from the Voice of Greece. Recorded today, May 13, 2013 on 9.42 MHz starting around 01:52 UTC.

Click here to download the full recording, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

Radio Strange Outpost 7 and Shrunken Head Rad

While attending the Winter SWL Fest this year in Plymouth Meeting, PA, I left my WinRadio Excalibur running day and night back home, recording spectrum in the pirate radio watering hole. I always find that while shortwave pirate activity is slightly lower during the SWL Fest (because many pirates are in attendance), there are always some interesting stations I miss.

This year, I was chatting with famed Pirate Radio enthusiast/author, Andrew Yoder and mentioned how I love rare pirates like Radio Strange Outpost 7. He then told me that he'd just noticed a logging of RSO7 on a pirate radio forum. I quickly logged into my home computer (via smart phone) and could see that my receiver had been capturing the right frequencies at the right time. When I returned home, I dug through the spectrum and found the broadcasts of RSO7 and Shrunken Head Radio (possibly the same pirate?) via the WBNY relay service. Woo hoo!

RSO7 is semi-cryptic, quirky and always fun (check out my off-air recording from last year). Though this broadcast contains no real music content from RSO7, Shrunken Head radio does.

Click here to download the full recording, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

Myke shares 2012 season of ShortWaveMusic

swm_tkuMyke, over at ShortWaveMusic, has made his entire 2012 season of ShortWaveMusic freely downloadable on SoundCloud. This series was recorded from December 31, 2011 – January 16, 2012 throughout the West African country of Mali. The series contains some remarkable field recordings taken from both the shortwave and medium wave bands.

Note that Myke's ShortWaveMusic series and travels are supported by Kickstarter donors. I don't know where Myke's travels will take him next year, but when the time comes we will post an announcement along with a link for supporters.

Now put on your headphones, close your eyes and you will be transported to Mali:

For full SoundCloud features, click here for the 2012 series on SoundCloud.

Radio Cinco De Mayo

Radio Cinco De Mayo made its annual broadcast on (you guessed it!) May 5th, 2013, starting around 00:17 UTC on 6925 kHz USB.

Early Saturday morning, the band's condition sounded like that of summer, with atmospheric noises (a few static crashes, produced by local thunderstorms), but propagation was steady and the overall quality very respectable.

You can download an MP3 of the full recording by clicking here, or by listening via the embedded player below.

Check out Ragnar's off-air recording of Radio Cinco De Mayo (and more!) on his PiratesWeek podcast.

UPDATE (May 08): Just received my Radio Cinco De Mayo QSL:

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The Mighty KBC

The Art of Noise kicks off this Mighty KBC broadcast. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The Mighty KBC broadcast again early this morning (from 00:00-02:00 UTC) on their new summer frequency of 9,925 kHz. Their signal from Nauen, Germany was packing 125 kW--it was amazingly strong into North America. As we’ve come to expect, the KBC’s Giant Jukebox of music has a lot of rock-n-roll and Euro-pop variety, spanning the decades; DJ, "Uncle Eric" knows how to entertain and spin the tunes!

You can listen to the full recording below in the embedded player, or simply right click this link and save the MP3 file to your computer.

You’ll notice that Kim Elliott has another installation of digital text modes in this broadcast. Decode these digital modes using Fldigi from www.w1hkj.com. Be sure to check out Dr. Elliott's VOA Radiogram website for full details about this broadcast.

Shrimp Boat Radio, WSBR (a.k.a. Freakin' Awesome Radio, WFAR)

(Original source: Wikimedia Commons)

"We're shrimpin,' but they're not bitin'!"

Last night, a very unique pirate radio station emerged from the static on 6,925 kHz USB: Shrimp Boat Radio. It seems a shrimp boat radio pirate found himself bored on board, due to a lack of shrimp--but his boredom became our gain with an offer to talk shrimpin,' fishin,' or just take music requests...live.

This is the stuff great pirate radio is made of.  He started with a request for the Rolling Stones; next Black Cat Radio's Greaser Bob chimed in with a request for GNR.  And there began an evening of pirate radio with live on-air requests.

You can tell that this was a completely impromptu production--and it was all the better for it.  Not too long into the show, he took on the alternate name Freakin' Awesome Radio (WFAR).

Hearing a live pirate radio request show was a first for me, and the sort of thing that gets this "content DXer" enthused. I'm glad I had the tape rolling!  I hope he reappears on the band in the future.

Note that I start the recording at the very first announcement from WSBR. If you want to skip to the first music request, fast-forward to about 11 minutes into the recording (you'll miss some great banter, though). There are a few long breaks of static in the recording where this pirate scrambled to find and play music requests, but this just adds to the authenticity.

Click here to download the full recording of Shrimp Boat Radio, or simply listen via the embedded player below. Enjoy!

Click here to download the full recording of Shrimp Boat Radio, or simply listen via the embedded player below. Enjoy!

Radio Panik injects shortwave audio into mixes

LetrangerI recently discovered that the radio show L'etranger, on Radio Panik, 105.4 in Brussels, used shortwave radio recordings of pirate radio and numbers stations, from the SWLing Post and other sources, in one of their mixes of eclectic music and sound clips. The end result is a splendid piece of sonic art.

Note that their audio is only available on archive.org until May 23, 2013. Click here to download the show, or listen via the embedded player below. You can also hear the show on the L'etranger website.