www.rhci-online.net/radiogram/radiogram.htm

██████╗ ██╗ ██████╗ ██╗    ██████╗ ██╗  ██╗
██╔══██╗██║██╔════╝ ██║    ██╔══██╗╚██╗██╔╝
██║  ██║██║██║  ███╗██║    ██║  ██║ ╚███╔╝ 
██║  ██║██║██║   ██║██║    ██║  ██║ ██╔██╗ 
██████╔╝██║╚██████╔╝██║    ██████╔╝██╔╝ ██╗
╚═════╝ ╚═╝ ╚═════╝ ╚═╝    ╚═════╝ ╚═╝  ╚═╝
                                           

 RSID: <<2016-05-09T20:00Z MFSK-32 @ 6070000+1500>>


Hello and welcome to DigiDX 12, a weekly review of the latest shortwave and DX news broadcast mainly in MFSK32 mode. This broadcast includes shortwave news, an article on Shortwave radio monitoring by the KGB in Latvia, the over-the-air QSL card and some of the
listeners emails from the last week.

DigiDX weekly schedule:

Sunday 2130 - 15770kHz via WRMI (Okeechobee, FL, USA)
Sunday 2330 - 11580kHz via WRMI (Okeechobee, FL, USA)
Monday 2000 - 6070kHz via Channel 292 (Rohrbach Wall, DE)

Any changes to this schedule or extra broadcasts will be listed on http://www.digidx.uk

If you enjoy DigiDX and find the service useful please consider donating via our Patreon page. Any money donated will go towards paying for airtime to keep DigiDX on the air to Europe and North America.

Every donation will help no matter how little - https://www.patreon.com/digidx   

Thanks very much to listeners Mike Stapp, Mark Braunstein and Richard Langley for contributing to the Patreon campaign.
 

Latest Shortwave News:

Shortwave returns from Yakutia/Sakha in Russia
Another Oromo clandestine station on air
TIVAR hardware test
 

According to NVK Sakha which is the National Broadcasting Company of the Sakha/Yakutia region in Eastern Russia, shortwave broadcasting in the region has been reactivated as of 6th May.
DigiDX previously reporting that licenses had been given by the Russian communications regulator to the Sakha National Broadcasting Company for broadcasting on shortwave on 7295kHz and 7345kHz.
To see read the news story (in Russian) and to view news story video on the reactivation go to http://nvk-online.ru/news/6819

Ivo Ivanov via DXLD has reported the schedule will be as follows:
2100-2400 on 7295 IAK 250 kW / 045 deg to FERu Russian Sun-Thu
2100-2400 on 7345 IAK 100 kW / 310 deg to FERu Russian Sun-Thu
2200-0500 on 7295 IAK 250 kW / 045 deg to FERu Russian Fri/Sat
2200-0500 on 7345 IAK 100 kW / 310 deg to FERu Russian Fri/Sat
0300-0500 on 7295 IAK 250 kW / 045 deg to FERu Russian Mon-Fri
0300-0500 on 7345 IAK 100 kW / 310 deg to FERu Russian Mon-Fri
0900-1200 on 7295 IAK 250 kW / 045 deg to FERu Russian Daily
0900-1200 on 7345 IAK 100 kW / 310 deg to FERu Russian Daily


Another Oromo clandestine station on air

Another clandestine in the Oromo language aimed at Somalia and Ethiopia has started broadcasting on shortwave via the Issoudun transmitter in France. Radio Front for Independence of Oromo has been broadcasting for the past few days on 1730-1800 on 17765khz.
An associated website appears to be http://bakkalcha.com/  but there is no mention of the shortwave broadcasts on the site. Source : Glenn Hauser/DXLD.
Other Oromo clandestine stations currently on air include Voice of Oromo Liberation, Dimtse Radio Eren, Radio Voice of Independent Oromia, Oromo Voice Radio and Radio Warra Wangeelaa-ti.
 

TIVAR Hardware Test

Kim Andrew Elliott from VOA Radiogram has recently been unsure as to why some people decoding the VOA Radiogram have issues with Olivia 64-2000 modes even though this mode should be much more robust than MFSK32.
Christopher, K6FIB believes that the performance of decoding Olivia 64-2000 may be dependant on the processing power of the PC or mobile device. He carried out a test with the TIVAR Android app and two different android devices. Christopher says:
“I have been using a Wiko Sunset2 4GB Android smartphone as part of a lightweight and compact ("hiker biker") portable receiving station for VOA Radiogram and Digi_DX. However, this device seems unable to demodulate signals in the Olivia 64-2000 mode when using the
TIVAR app.
To investigate this problem a comparative "shoot-out" test was conducted with three different Android 4.x.x. devices (one of them being the Wiki Sunset2) all running the same release of TIVAR, and an MP4 recording of a fragment of VOA Radiogram broadcast nr. 147
(from my archive).”
View the video and see the results of his testing here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_kYz241H6o&feature=youtu.be


Upcoming relays and special broadcasts:
 

Hobart Radio International has a new broadcast to Europe via WRMI on 11580kHz. Its full schedule is as follows:

WRMI on 11580 from 2330-0000 Saturday ( Europe, Middle East, North Africa, N.America)
WRMI 9955 0330-0400UTC Sundays (N.Am/S.Am/India)
WBCQ 5130 0330-0400UTC Mondays (N.Am)
Unique Radio 3210 0800-0900UTC Fridays & Saturdays (N.Aust/PNG)
World FM 88.2MHz 0430UTC-0500UTC Thursdays & 1030UTC-1100UTC Sundays (Tawa, New Zealand)
Soundwave FM 107.7 and 87.8MHz 0200UTC Sundays (Napier, New Zealand)
 

Radio Northern Ireland will broadcast live on Channel 292 and WRMI every week in April at the following times / frequencies:

Monday 9955kHz : 0130-0200 via WRMI
Saturday 15770kHz: 2100-2130 via WRMI
Monday 6070kHz : 1700-1800 via Channel 292
 

VOA Radiogram will be on air this weekend on the following frequencies, for more information on the modes to be used visit http://voaradiogram.net/

Sat 0930-1000 5745 kHz
Sat 1600-1630 17580 kHz
Sun 0230-0300 5745 kHz
Sun 1930-2000 15670 kHz

Gilles Létourneau who runs the excellent OfficialSWLchannel channel on Youtube has another radio related Hangout this week - To watch the hangouts or any of his videos go to https://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialSWLchannel

 

Now we have an article from LatvianHistory.com about Shortwave radio monitoring by the KGB in Latvia written by Maris Goldmanis.

Soon after the end of the World War 2 the tensions between Soviet Union and United States of America engulfed into Cold War. A full-scale war of propaganda was used by both side including shortwave radio broadcasts. Shortwave radio broadcasts could reach listeners to
faraway locations including the Soviet occupied Latvia. Soviet security services were unable to control the foreign broadcasters so they tried to jam the broadcasts or to punish the listeners. But in either way it was never-ending carousel as Soviet radio industry
made shortwave radio receivers in masses and neither the technical jamming or KGB monitoring could not fully block the western propaganda.

Shortwave radio broadcasts were popular among Latvians because many of them were critical of the soviet mass media content and therefore they seek alternative news sources. In first post war years radio was still a rare household item, as may pre-war Latvian and
German-made radios were lost and Soviets attempted to register the radio owners. The average shortwave listener needed to know English, German and Russian although some of their news were transcribed in the national partisan underground newspapers and leaflets.
However, the circulation of these newspapers were quite low. So radio owners tried to listen to “Radio London”, “Voice of America”, “Radio Luxembourg” and “Radio in American Sector”, that transmitted from Western Germany. After the Winston Churchill “Iron Curtain”
speech in May 24 1946 in Fulton the BBC World Service started broadcasts in Russian. From September 2 1948 “Radio Vaticana” started broadcasts in Latvian.
Soviet authorities listened and discussed these broadcasts themselves. Since the content of these broadcasts were beyond their control they started to build powerful jammers. Their technical operation is discussed in separate post. War in Korea triggered the
full-scale “campaign of truth” against the communists and decided to boost nationalism within Soviet occupied Baltic republics. On June 3 1951 the “Voice of America” begun to broadcast in Latvian. Latvians at first paid large attention to it, radio played the Anthem
of Latvia and called for resistance making many people to believe that US will send its support. However, it took place after the deportation of March 25 1949 and Soviet power had fully established itself in Latvia. Later people got enough of repetitive information
and lack innovation.

Soviet Ministry of Security gathered reports about people listening to “Voice of America”. Mostly they were discovered when they unknowingly talking about the broadcasts to a KGB agent or their conversations were overheard. They were added to KGB list as persons as
spreaders of the “anti-soviet propaganda”. Soviet bureaucrats were even suggested to stop the production of the shortwave receivers, however it was turned down by the producers. At the start of the sixties Latvian industrial companies like VEF and Radiotehnika were
one of the first to produce portable affordable transistor radios in USSR. Radio was no more a large cabinet like standing in room corner it could be battery-powered and taken to picnics.

Despite the relative liberalization after the death of Stalin and limitation of repressions the ideological war with west was far from over. Broadcasts from the west continued and it was forbidden to publicly spoke about the content heard in them. Doing so might
result an arrest in “Corner house” of KGB main headquarters in Riga. It was also no secret that shortwave radio broadcasts inspired many dissidents and no wonder why many workers in VEF and Radiotehnika became dissidents. Most known of them were Gunārs Astra. On
September 3 1953 in town of Auce locals streamed the Voice of America within local radio broadcasting net. They were later arrested.

During the crisis in Hungary on 1956 people were tuned to BBC World Service and Voice of America. Some young students told they only first learned about Stalin’s cult of personality from the Voice of America. In Preiļi region people gathered in groups to listen to
Voice of America. While USSR was reluctant to speak about negative news within the country the US spent an enormous recourses for anti-communist propaganda. President of US Richard Nixon told that its much more useful to spent one dollar on radio propaganda rather
than spend 10 dollars on another new rocket. Another massive radio propaganda network also broadcasting in Latvian was “Radio Free Europe” that in its r0ots was a funded by US CIA. It was kept secret until on late seventies KGB funded leftist magazine uncovered it.
After that Radio Free Europe was funded by US State Congress. Soviet Union also had shortwave propaganda station “Radio Moscow” that transmitted in various western languages. Shortwave radio jamming in USSR was halted during diplomatic warm-ups on 1963-1968 and
1973-1979 both times restarted because of the Soviet invasions in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. Because of relative low numbers of English speakers the broadcasts in English were not jammed. This is also one of the reasons why in schools the English studies were
limited.

Radio Free Europe begun its Latvian broadcasts on 1975. KGB foreign branch was tasked to gather information about the Latvian broadcasting staff and their editors and tried to infiltrate their agents in them. KGB succeeded to find information but failed to send
agents to subvert the Latvian editions of VoA and RFE. As the soviet power weakened on seventies people were less afraid to speak about the things heard on the radios. KGB still tried to punish some people who were too open, often it was included into official
accusation that the crime was influenced by the western radio broadcasts. Last such case was for Rolands Silaraups on 1986 the member of the nationalist Helsinki-86 movement.

On 1987 in the spirit of perestroika the shortwave jamming was fully halted. People now closely followed the VoA and RFE. Some of them heard about the first pro-independence protests on 1987 in the foreign radios and took action on following ones. On political level
most influential were the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. On cultural level the foreign pop and rock music heard by youngsters on their Spīdola radio receivers also boosted the Latvian cultural life. The banned Latvian movie “Four White Shirts” included old
conservative party functionary in the censorship meeting talking about the bad influence on the young generations caused by Spīdola radio receivers.

Today the World Wide Web has replaced shortwave radio as propaganda weapon. Voice of America no longer broadcasts in Russian or Latvia. Radio Free Europe however continues to broadcast in Russian and Belarussian over shortwave, because their local coverage within
medium waves were closed by Russian authorities on 2012. Russia itself has stripped their Voice of Russia the oldest international radio station from 1920ies when it was called Radio Comintern. But, now the neo-soviet Vladimir Putin regime has begun a crackdown on
Internet calling it a project of the CIA. In such manner it could be possible that if Russia will isolate itself from rest of the world, the shortwave broadcasting to Russia can again became active. There is present example of China and even more extreme of North
Korea where controlled Internet has caused extensive shortwave broadcast targeting towards these countries. In return China and North Korea use extensive shortwave jammers to limit these broadcasts from US and Europe. Will Russia will return to an old days of
shortwave jamming and arresting their listeners we shall see.

Thank you to Maris Goldmanis from https://latvianhistory.com/ for allowing us to use that article.
 

Now follows the e-QSL card for reception reports received for episode 11. This image will be in the MFSK32 mode.


Sending Pic:332x190;
 

Thank you for all the reception reports sent to reports@digidx.uk. Many of you have correctly identified the MIDI file sent last week as “O Canada” the national anthem of Canada, part of which was used as the interval signal for Radio Canada International. The MIDI file
sent the previous week was the interval signal of Voice of Korea.
 

Richard Langley from Canada but listening on holiday in Florida sent me the O Canada MIDI file originally and commented “ Both versions of the Base64-encoded interval signal were perfectly decoded and turned out to be the O Canada midi file I had sent you a few weeks
ago. ;-) Of course, O Canada is the Canadian national anthem and the first few notes of a piano rendition were used for the Radio Canada International IS. Thanks for including it.” Thanks for sending it to me, please send any MIDI files of interval signals to me at
reports@digidx.uk and I will try and include them in DigiDX.
 

Mark Hirst from Hampshire in the UK listened on 6070kHz via Channel 292 on Monday at 2000 and sent the following suggestion:
“VOA Radiogram transmitted data using QR codes, I wondered about sending the QSL card as a data QR code ? As long as it's not too small, the black and white shapes come through OK”
Good idea Mark, I will certainly look to give this a go next week to try and include the some of the details on the e-QSL card encoded as a QR code.
Mark also commented - “The QSL card image was detected but text legibility was difficult - I wonder if the subtle watermarking of the image is partly to blame”. This weeks E-QSL card will be transmitted with a solid background to see if that makes any different to
the text legibility.
 

Rafael Martínez from Spain also listened to 6070 and commented “Decoding of Olivia mode was very good despite the noise! Much better than MFSK32, I used the YB400 receiver tuned on AM mode and wide filter.”. Thanks for tuning in Rafael.



Now DigiDX finishes with the tune of another famous shortwave interval signal. This text is a Base64 encoded MIDI file (not a .ZIP file this week) which can be converted to to MP3 by going to http://midi.digidx.uk  (and select the Submit option) or go to

http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp  choosing to decode the data and export to file, the file can then be renamed a .MID file and then the MIDI file can be opened in Winamp or a similar software.

--START--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--END--

Repeat for error correction:

--START--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--END--

Thank you for listening, this is DigiDX signing off......
 

██╗  ██╗██████╗  ██████╗    ██████╗  █████╗ ██████╗ ██╗ ██████╗  ██████╗ ██████╗  █████╗ ███╗   ███╗
██║ ██╔╝██╔══██╗██╔════╝    ██╔══██╗██╔══██╗██╔══██╗██║██╔═══██╗██╔════╝ ██╔══██╗██╔══██╗████╗ ████║
█████╔╝ ██████╔╝██║         ██████╔╝███████║██║  ██║██║██║   ██║██║  ███╗██████╔╝███████║██╔████╔██║
██╔═██╗ ██╔══██╗██║         ██╔══██╗██╔══██║██║  ██║██║██║   ██║██║   ██║██╔══██╗██╔══██║██║╚██╔╝██║
██║  ██╗██████╔╝╚██████╗    ██║  ██║██║  ██║██████╔╝██║╚██████╔╝╚██████╔╝██║  ██║██║  ██║██║ ╚═╝ ██║
╚═╝  ╚═╝╚═════╝  ╚═════╝    ╚═╝  ╚═╝╚═╝  ╚═╝╚═════╝ ╚═╝ ╚═════╝  ╚═════╝ ╚═╝  ╚═╝╚═╝  ╚═╝╚═╝     ╚═╝

                                            http://www.kbcradio.eu/

██╗   ██╗ ██████╗  █████╗     ██████╗  █████╗ ██████╗ ██╗ ██████╗  ██████╗ ██████╗  █████╗ ███╗   ███╗
██║   ██║██╔═══██╗██╔══██╗    ██╔══██╗██╔══██╗██╔══██╗██║██╔═══██╗██╔════╝ ██╔══██╗██╔══██╗████╗ ████║
██║   ██║██║   ██║███████║    ██████╔╝███████║██║  ██║██║██║   ██║██║  ███╗██████╔╝███████║██╔████╔██║
╚██╗ ██╔╝██║   ██║██╔══██║    ██╔══██╗██╔══██║██║  ██║██║██║   ██║██║   ██║██╔══██╗██╔══██║██║╚██╔╝██║
 ╚████╔╝ ╚██████╔╝██║  ██║    ██║  ██║██║  ██║██████╔╝██║╚██████╔╝╚██████╔╝██║  ██║██║  ██║██║ ╚═╝ ██║
  ╚═══╝   ╚═════╝ ╚═╝  ╚═╝    ╚═╝  ╚═╝╚═╝  ╚═╝╚═════╝ ╚═╝ ╚═════╝  ╚═════╝ ╚═╝  ╚═╝╚═╝  ╚═╝╚═╝     ╚═╝

                                                                    http://voaradiogram.net/

www.rhci-online.net/radiogram/radiogram.htm