Free Republic

On Sunday, a strong shortwave radio blackout occurred over southeast Asia and Australia due to a solar flare hurled from the sun. Seems like Solar activity is again picking up pace after a geomagnetic storm hit earth. It is interrupted that the sun is likely to erupt with more flares this week. The X1 class flare was accompanied by a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) from a cluster of active sunspots that have produced significant flaring prior to appearing on the eastern limb of the sun. CMEs are huge bubbles of radiation and particles from the sun. They explode into space...

The BBC's shortwave radio broadcasts are back in parts of Russia and Ukraine, as Russia moves to block the British media outlet's websites within its borders. The two new shortwave frequencies are broadcasting four hours of news in English each day and can be picked up clearly in Kyiv and parts of Russia. "It's often said truth is the first casualty of war," BBC Director-General Tim Davie said in a statement. "In a conflict where disinformation and propaganda is rife, there is a clear need for factual and independent news people can trust -- and in a significant development, millions...

As Russia is trying to cut off the flow of information in Ukraine by attacking its communications infrastructure, the British news outlet BBC is revisiting a broadcasting tactic popularized during World War II: shortwave radio. The BBC said this week that it would use radio frequencies that can travel for long distances and be accessible on portable radios to broadcast its World Service news in English for four hours a day in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and in parts of Russia. “It’s often said truth is the first casualty of war,” Tim Davie, director-general of the BBC, said in a...

Need to find some amateur radio experts for FReeper, Magnum44. We used to have a Ham Radio Ping List run bet Denver DitDat, but he hasn't been on since 2006...................

Could Samsung be on the cusp of a fully wireless TV? A recent patent hints that a Samsung TV without any pesky cables could be around the corner. Spotted by LetsGoDigital, the patent was filed in March 2018 but only released publicly in late February of this year. The patent revolves around a wireless power transceiver, which would make the prospective television the first of its kind to transmit power across the room rather than relying on a power cable - increasingly seen as an eyesore next to Samsung's premium design sets. The transceiver takes the form of a magnetic...

Colleton County Sheriff’s Office personnel arrived at the Overcomer Ministry at 12680 Augusta Highway early Monday morning to take Ralph G. Stair, the leader of the religious compound, into custody on eight criminal charges. Lt. Tyger Benton, public information officer of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office said a large contingent of law enforcement officers arrived at the church compound Monday at approximately 7:30 a.m. to take Stair, 84, into custody. The charges, all filed by the sheriff’s office investigators, include three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and single counts of assault with the intent to commit criminal sexual conduct,...

Authorities on Monday said the founder of a rural Christian compound in Walterboro was arrested on sexual assault charges after several women came forward with allegations. Preacher Ralph Gordon Stair, 84, was arrested by Colleton County sheriff's deputies Monday morning, and S.C. Law Enforcement Division agents were serving a search warrant at the Overcomer Ministry, which is located on a rural property tucked off S.C. Highway 61, said Lt. Tyger Benton. Authorities said Stair is charged with three counts of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree, one count of assault with intent to commit criminal sexual conduct in the...

In light of today's widespread Internet outages, we should discuss contingency plans for FR availability, news updates and emergency communications. Please share what ham amateur radio shortwave frequencies to monitor for emergencies and news updates, as well as practical ham email on the HF and VHF bands.

It has been confirmed by Supreme Council of radio and television of Turkey (RTUK) the news that Mr. Erdogan – the president of Turkey has revoked 3213 national ham radio licenses. The HF radio in Turkey is now silent. No transmissions are allowed. Following the coup d’etat – of July 5th – many things are changing in Turkey. TV , Radio licenses have been cancelled and this involved also our colleagues : ham radio amateurs. The number of amateur radio operators in Turkey is not too much, but according to the site TRAC.org it looks like that around 3000 licenses...

Way back in the early 70s, my mother's youngest brother (who was a seasonal worker for the US Army Corps of Engineers), as was his habit, brought his car over to our house while he was away on "the boat" (as we all called it). But this time he left something else . . . an very plain-looking, ordinary radio. Back in those days FM was still fairly exotic. AM was still king, and that's where most of the music and regular radio programming was. This little radio happened to have both AM and FM. But it had a third...

Rick rips the silence of Barack Obama, the establishment news media, and the Democratic Party Far Left over the execution of Christian students yesterday in Roseburg, Oregon. He asks, “Do white Protestant Christian lives matter?” Rick also wants to know if the gunman was a frequent visitor to Rightwingwatch.com. Rick also reports that Chinese fighter jets will soon join the Russians in Syria. In Part 2, Sovereign Man Simon Black talks about how American citizens are being squeezed out of offshore investment opportunities because of FATCA, and ways Americans can obtain second passports. Read more at https://www.trunews.com/#uXxJY3SEbFV65eBz.99

This is one of the most exciting developments I’ve seen in international broadcasting in ages: an around-the-clock, fixed-frequency, commercial shortwave radio broadcaster, transmitting via WRMI. The new Global24 will begin broadcasting on Friday, October 31, 2014 at 19:00 EDT (0000 UTC November 1st) on 9395 kHz. Below, you’ll find Global24’s first press release: (Source: Global24Radio.com) (Hollywood, FL) Oct. 21, 2014 – Global 24 Radio LLC announced today that its inaugural broadcast will go live at 7:00 p.m., Friday, Oct. 31 (0000 UTC November 1), with a line-up of new and well-known programs and around-the-clock English language programming. The broadcast can...

I know it is a numbers station and this one is supposedly Russian. From the graphic, has it been busy the past 24 hours? http://uvb-76.net/p/last-24h.html Also here, http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ put in 4625 for the freq. It's deviated a couple times tonight...

Joint Subcommittee Hearing: Iran’s Support for Terrorism Worldwide Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa 2172 House Rayburn Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Mar 4, 2014 10:00am

Anyone who is or was a shortwave listener, like I was, knows there isn't much left on the bands these days. Nothing like the Cold War days of the 70s and 80s when it seemed every nation from the biggest superpowers to the most forlorn Iron Curtain client state, had a booming shortwave network that broadcast in English, among dozens of other languages. The Cold War's end, lack of money, and the Internet did away with all that. But there's still Internet radio, and it can do wonders. There are thousands of stations, foreign and domestic, that broadcast in Engish,...

Within hours of South Korean news sources breaking a story that several Sang-Ho class submarines had disappeared from their North Korean bases, a ham radio operator named Tim, picked up a “numbers station” broadcasting on the same frequency as “The Voice of Korea” propaganda station. What makes this even more interesting is that at the tail end of the numbers transmission there was a long duration digital transmission as well. So why is this important and alarming?There are several reasons why this new development is particularly alarming. The first being the existence of the numbers station coming online shortly after...

I had a great multi-band radio a few years ago and would love to get one again. It was great listening to it at night. Loved the 'numbers stations' (and would LOVE to hear theories about them!). They were sooooooo creepy. I like analog receivers. I know their outdated......but easier to tune. I'm looking in the $150 range and under. Don't want to spend much as we have a lot of expenses coming up.

"In 1967, Radio Shack introduced the DX-150 general coverage ...Over the next few years, this line underwent several improvements.. . In 1975 the DX-160 was introduced with the most noticeable change being the addition of a LW band (150-400 kHz). This family of radios was made for Radio Shack by General Research of Electronics, Inc. of Japan....My impressions? This is as solid a radio as I could ask for given its age and simplicity of design. It has reasonably good selectivity and you have to be careful to tune it slowly or you'll miss the station you're looking for. The...

This is a pretty neat little radio. The first thing I did was peel off the goofy ETM sticker in the lower left face of the thing, but this ETM is awesome. It scans the entire SW band and puts all active stations into memory. Then you just spin the tuning knob and it wheels through the memory. It needs CW and SSB but this thing is pretty neat, especially for folks that don't want to futz around searching the bands. Stereo speakers,SW LW MW FM, Recharges via USB, 2 alarms, thermometer, line input and 5 IF filter settings. The...

Background A little after 1600 UTC on February 21, 2010, in the #wunclub IRC channel, a user (LDO, a European region monitor) threw out the question "Vietnamese numbers? 10255" I had been paying fairly close attention to the Asian numbers stations for the past year or so, and immediately tuned to the indicated frequency of 10255 kHz. Sure enough, there was a previously unreported Vietnamese language numbers station on that frequency. S6 or stronger here in Southern California. What made this signal fairly interesting is that as far as I know no Vietnamese numbers station of any kind had been...