If shortwave radio and RealAudio aren't enough, CNN has put together a list of webcams marking the arrival of Y2K. (Found on turlyming.com.)

Posted 02:24 UTC

If you're looking for stations netcasting into the new millenium, the shareware software programs MacTuner (Macintosh) and EarthTuner (Win 95/98/NT) provide decent interfaces to databases of stations, searchable by country. No UNIXTuner for the Linux and BSD people out there yet, but the MacTuner site is looking to gauge interest. MacTuner costs $22.95; EarthTuner used to cost money, but is now free.

Posted 00:20 UTC

If you need help in identifying what kind of music you're hearing on that flea-powered Peruvian, check out The Latin American Music Styles, put together by radio and music enthusiasts Henrik Klemetz and Jay Novello. From bachata to cha cha cha, son to danzon, it's all there, with samples to help you identify the style.

Posted 00:05 UTC

Reminder: today is the last day to catch VOA via Ekala, Sri Lanka. There will be special announcements at transmitter signoff. Broadcasts are at 0100-0300 on 7115, 11705, and 15250 (the latter has the best chance to be heard on the east coast of North America) and 1400-1800 on 7215 and 15395.

Posted 00:04 UTC

The Radio Nederlands Wereldomroep web site is in festive spirit for the new year. All the headings are wearing party hats.

Posted 23:50 UTC

Ludo Maes of the Transmitter Documentation Project surveyed a number of DX clubs recently. Ludo, being the thorough person that he is, has also updated his listing with extensive information about transmitters in Albania, Bulgaria, and Japan. (From the TDP Newsletter by Ludo Maes, posted on HCDX.)

Posted 23:28 UTC

The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation is going to start measuring radio audience listenership using "a Swiss high-tech watch that measures radio consumption electronically". The watches will record the audio from whatever radio station the wearer is listening to, then send the audio to a control center, where the center compares it to its database of audio from about 90 radio signals, thereby overcoming diarists' faulty memories. No word on whether or not the watch will also send the SBC every conversation you take part in.

Posted 20:09 UTC

Radio Netherlands Media Network correspondent Lou Josephs has put together an hour-by-hour list of stations broadcasting over the web and the times when they enter the new year. The original version of the list is also available at Lou's own site. (Thanks Sheldon Harvey and William Westenhaver of CIDX for this tip.)

Radio Netherlands also has a feature from September covering various media-related millenium stories, including that of the couple on the Chatham Islands, New Zealand (GMT +13:45) who sold the television rights to sunrise from their property, the first inhabited location on earth to see the new millenium, for US$106,500. The Chatham Islands have their own web site, of course.

Tonga, of course, declared that they would go on Daylight Savings Time GMT +14:00 (this year only), meaning that the Chatham Islands may not be the first place to see the new millenium after all....

Posted 23:43 UTC

Earth & Sun by David W. Bray is a grayline clock for the PalmPilot. It takes only 34K of RAM (plus 54K for the required MathLib library) to display the areas of the Earth currently illuminated or in darkness. (Can you guess what new toy I got for Christmas? :-)

Posted 18:24 UTC

Frank Ahrens describes A Century's Strongest Signals, his review of the top moments in the history of (commercial, domestic broadcast) radio, for the Washington Post. (Thanks Chet Copeland on the swprograms mailing list.)

Posted 17:51 UTC

Since SWLs and DXers keep time in UTC/GMT, I've changed the default time-stamp for items posted here to read in UTC time rather than EST as before. Unfortunately, the tool I'm using doesn't seem to offer the ability to set the time to display in 24-hour format instead of 12-hour format....

Posted 17:42 UTC

Sheldon Harvey of the Canadian International DX Club has put together a special feature about New Year's Eve & Y2K Radio Monitoring to help you listen to the new millenium (and monitor reports of those pesky Y2K bugs) as its arrival speeds around the world. (Note that 6105 kHz is actually the correct frequency for his first recommendation, Radio New Zealand International at 1100 UTC.) The times given are the actual arrival of the new year, so you'll probably want to tune in a little early. In addition to shortwave broadcasts, the article also covers a variety of utilities and other emergency services frequencies you might want to check throughout the day.

Posted 17:35 UTC

DX Fanzine Number 11 - December 1999 has logs from throughout the month, updated as of December 28, from various sources around the world.

Posted 17:31 UTC

Stupid web tricks department: Speaking of WRTH and their web site, does anyone else have problems finding an e-mail address on the site? The e-mail address, editor@wrth.demon.co.uk, is there, but with the link color set to black, and the text appearing over a black bar, the black-on-black color scheme makes the address disappear, at least in my browser.

Posted 04:20 UTC

John Figliozzi has posted the New Year's schedule for Radio New Zealand Int'l, one of the first shortwave stations to enter the new millenium (yes, I know, not until 2001, don't bother...) to the swprograms mailing list. (It's about two-thirds of the way down in the message.)

Posted 04:11 UTC

NordicDX.com has posted Australian DXer Bob Padula's review of the WRTH 2000, originally published in Electronic DX Press 151 on December 24. Bob sez:

WRTH can get better, but only with far greater formal involvement and input by expert hobby monitors for some parts of the world, who are familiar with broadcasting in their regions. Put simply, the honeymoon is over, and if WRTH is to survive in the new millennium, it needs to address the deficiencies I, and others have offered, and correct them, in order to remain competitive and to justify its promotional claims. If not, it will simply become a remnant of a bygone century.

NordicDX.com also posts a number of comments from the Hard Core DX mailing list, uniformly disappointed, including Guido Schotman's comments that originally sounded the alarm.

Note also that, as of 0350 UTC December 28, the promised WRTH National Shortwave Supplement is still not available from the WRTH web site, more than a week after editor David Bobbett posted about its impending availability. And WRTH's credibility sinks lower and lower the longer it takes to post the list.

Posted 03:58 UTC

The December 25 edition of Communications World is available online from the World Radio Network in RealAudio format. (Streaming format: 14.4 28.8 Downloadable via ftp: 14.4 28.8) The page at WRN lists the upcoming January 1, 2000 broadcast, but the files aren't available yet.

Posted 01:36 UTC

ABC News has been in touch with George Zeller concerning a story they are developing on "pirate radio". George passes along the information for anyone interested:

Mr. Zeller: I am developing a story for ABC News 20/20 on "pirate" radio. Please call me at 1-800-xxx-xxxx extension xxxx. Or e-mail me at eric.koli@abc.com. Thank you: Joanna Cieszkowska (From Free Radio Weekly 206 via Pete Costello.)

Posted 00:02 UTC

Listen To The News, a site run by swprograms mailing list member Jonathan Prince that focuses on linking to news stories from national and international broadcasters, has been shut down due to threats from National Public Radio over "deep linking", that is, bypassing the site's main page and linking directly to a story. Chet Copeland reposted Jonathan's message explaining this to the swprograms mailing list.

And to think that I thought it was only clueless large corporations like Ticketmaster that didn't "get" the web to this degree.... I actually thanked a lawyer who recommended against linking to other sites during a talk he gave at a conference at work for singlehandedly destroying the web, but it sounds like NPR has been listening to the same lawyers....

Posted 13:51 UTC

WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News for December 23, 1999, compiled by Wolfgang Büschel, has been posted.

Posted 19:52 UTC

Tonight at 2330 UTC, Radio Canada International and CBC present the annual Christmas Eve airing of the late great Alan Maitland reading Frederick Forsyth's short story The Shepherd. The combination of the story with Maitland's voice is unforgettable. Listen on 5960 or 9755 (RCI), 9625 (CBC Northern Quebec), or over the net from CBC or RCI's Real Audio feeds. (Thanks Joe Buch on the swprograms mailing list.)

Posted 17:16 UTC

itre.ncsu.edu-Hosted Web Sites Find New Home For many years, since the early days of the web (1993!), Jay Novello has graciously hosted a number of radio-related web sites on a host he ran at ncsu.edu. Unfortunately, with Jay's move to a new job, his access to itre has gone away. If you've ever looked at Jay's Cuban Music page, or listened to his audio samples of rare DX, or visited Pete Costello's Shortwave/Radio Catalog (probably the most popular shortwave radio web page I know of), then you'll want to update your bookmarks. For every occurrence of "itre.ncsu.edu", you'll want to substitute "havana.iwsp.com". The links above lead to the new server.

Jay's announcement includes more details of the move.

(This item moved here from the front page.)

Posted 16:19 UTC

The Christian Science Monitor for January 11, 1999, has an article about BayGen that links to Alan Johnson's review of the original BayGen radio and includes information about recent developments with BayGen radios.

(This item moved here from the front page.)

Posted 16:16 UTC

Cumbre DX 274 had an item from Hans Johnson asking if anyone had heard Lesotho recently, so when I came across a log of Lesotho on 891 kHz from the most recent Newfoundland DXpedition that used 4800 kHz as a parallel to ID the station, it rang a bell. The Newfoundland DXpedition VIII Report is focused on medium wave, but it's fascinating reading, and there are occasional tidbits of use on shortwave, too.

Posted 14:59 UTC

Nordic DX wrote last year about the Decline of the WRTH Empire.

Posted 06:13 UTC

Kim Andrew Elliott mentions that Communications World on December 25 will include an interview with Charlie Taylor at the VOA Greenville transmitting station about the sideband communications transmitters there, and the theory of reduced carrier transmission. And Glenn Hauser's traditional and popular review of the year in international broadcasting. Also, media news, including DW's coup (so to speak) in Pakistan.

On January 1, CW will be largely pre-empted on VOA, except for three special live broadcasts. Kim will be talking to shortwave listeners around the world about whether they've gotten through Y2K unscathed. If you want Kim to call you, contact him at cw@voa.gov. More details from Kim's post to the swprograms mailing list.

Posted 06:08 UTC

The Voice of America will no longer be broadcasting from Ekala, Sri Lanka, after December 31, according to Dan Ferguson, VOA frequency manager. The opening on the new relay at Iranawila makes Ekala redundant for VOA's needs. Other stations using Ekala, such as SLBC and Radio Japan, will continue. Dan confirms that there will be special closing announcements from Ekala on December 31st. Best bet in eastern North America for one of these announcements is 15250 kHz at 0300 UTC.

Posted 06:00 UTC

Radio Netherlands has published the 18th edition of their venerable Receiver Shopping List. This is one of the best resources on receivers available, and is done in part by long-time NASWA columnist Tom Sundstrom.

Posted 05:54 UTC

Lou Josephs has assembled a list for Radio Netherlands of webcasters, webcams and Internet only webcasters, to usher in the New Year 2000. The list is arranged by hour, so you can listen to the new year (century, millenium, etc.) arrive around the world.

This fits in very nicely with the contest that Radio Netherlands' Media Network program is running in conjunction with the New Zealand Radio DX League. You need to note the top three news stories on any radio or television station on January 1, 2000 and send them in. More details from Radio Netherlands or the NZRDXL web site.

Posted 05:48 UTC

Andy Sennitt, Radio Netherlands: "[I]t's not too early to start thinking about how we are going to differentiate between a true digital receiver, and an analogue receiver with digital frequency readout."

Posted 05:19 UTC

WRTH First Sighting Guido Schotmans posted a review on December 17 of the new World Radio TV Handbook 2000 to the HCDX mailing list. It included the following interesting tidbits that DXers will be most interested in:

The Frequency list 'Shortwave stations of the world' contains now only International broadcasters. All national stations are left out. That means that the complete tropical band is only covered on half a page. Positive is the Time signal stations are in bold.

WRTH Editor Responds In response, the WRTH editor posted the following note on Monday, December 20:

Dear DXers,

Due to last minute technical difficulties, it was not possible to publish the data regarding National Shortwave broadcasts this year.

However, following requests from our readers, I have decided to post the list on our web site.

Please go to www.wrth.com to download a copy of the 'WRTH National Shortwave Supplement'.

Seasons Greetings and 73,

David Bobbett Editor, WRTH

Note that as of 0447 UTC December 24, the supplement has still not appeared on the web site.

WRTH Fiasco Summary Mark Veldhuis has a nice summary of the whole fiasco on his web site.

Posted 04:53 UTC