Mount Evelyn DX Report

Listening to Radio Republica at 0220 UTC in the warmth and comfort of the car. DXPEDITION: BUSH BASHING WITH RADIOS This week, I am currently in northeastern Victoria, my home state, about 300 km north of Mount Evelyn. This is beautiful countryside in the mountains and in the Alpine region that straddles the borders of Victoria and New South Wales. There was snow here several weeks ago, but it has gone….for now. The "ski season" officially begins in two weeks time. The bush is alive, green, lush and vibrant. I LOVE THE MOUNTAINS!! This trip combines my loves of photography and shortwave radio. The weather has been cool and occasionally rainy. But there have also been some sunny times as well. Radio-wise, this time of year is when the international and tropical bands come alive in southern Australia. 31 and 25 mb are open for virtually the full 24 hours. And shortwave radio during lunchtime and into the afternoons yields many excellent listening opportunities. The bi...

RADIO VERDAD TRANSMITTER PROBLEMS Radio Verdad in Chiquimula, Guatemala is currently the only shortwave station operating from that country. Transmitting on 4055 kHz, the station schedule is from 0920 to 0605 UTC in both Spanish and English. However, Radio Verdad has been off the air since around May 22 due to transmitter problems. Two days ago, I received a friendly email from the station's owner, Sr. Édgar Amilcar Madrid, regarding the problems. Here's the relevant portion of his email: "I am expecting the arrival of Engineer Wyne Ralph Borthwick from Canada, who is coming to repair our short wave transmitter. Our transmitter started to function abnormally since last December, when it increased power by itself. But, it was three days ago when it finally almost collapsed. Both power amplifier modules are working alright, but, it seems that the control card failed. That makes the transmitter work wrong, and I instructed to turn it off, on prevention of further da...

STATION NEWS AND THE LOG BOOK MAY  22, 2015 FIRSTLY! There has been a very strong and encouraging response to some of my recent MEDXR posts. Topics that seemed to have struck a positive chord with regular readers include the following posts: THE QSL CARD....AT WHAT COST?  (posted May 15) has received many comments via Facebook and in personal emails. Thank you to everyone who passed on their praise for the article, which first appeared in The Spectrum Monitor magazine in April. SHORTWAVE RADIO IN  WORLD WAR 2:   "VOICE OF VICTORY" 1944 - HALLICRAFTERS   (posted May 10) created quite some interest in the wartime manufacturing process of this grand old radio. The SURVEY OF ENGLISH BROADCASTS ON SHORTWAVE - A15  (posted May 8) has been heavily downloaded in the past few weeks and enjoyed by many shortwave listeners. Again, thanks to everyone who let me know that the survey was a help in their DXing pursuits. And finally, the other big response ca...

REMEMBER SUPER ROCK KYOI?? One shortwave radio station that is sadly missed is KYOI. Transmitting from Agingan Point, Saipan (the largest island in the North Mariana Islands group), it still retains many fond memories for radio listeners around the world. Here are some links I found that you may like to explore, reminding us why KYOI was such a wonderful station to enjoy during the 1980s: KYOI Story - An Australian Perspective I was not aware of this web site until very recently. It is owned by radio enthusiast Calvin Melen who maintains the site. Reading through it, you can tell that Calvin had a real love for the station. A feature of this site is the many audio clips of station jingles, IDs, station announcements, music programming etc. These have been collected and stored as a recorded library of KYOI in action. Listening to some of these jingles is like a journey down memory lane! In addition, there's some very interesting history and background information o...

During the last days of the Vietnam War, the South Vietnamese government station VTVN was broadcasting news of the war around the world. (from the author's collection) THE QSL CARD......AT WHAT COST? I wrote the following article for the April 2015 issue of The Spectrum Monitor magazine. Check out their website for details on how to subscribe to this great publication.  UPDATE: At the time of writing the original article, Radio Australia was still an international shortwave broadcaster! For many years, the Mexican station XEPPM Radio Educación on 6185 kHz has not regularly verified reception reports sent by listeners. However, recently there was a sudden spate of QSL cards and letters received by a handful of lucky listeners. These DXers had the persistence to keep writing reception reports including many follow-up reports, along with cash in US dollars, International Reply Coupons, stamps, postcards, covering letters, and all manner of inducements in an effort to eli...