Well, I am slowly but surely making progress with my antenna. I have been having a lot of trouble with RF interference from my random wire antenna. I ran a shielded COAX feed to it, which I grounded, but reception was horrible. Well, this weekend, I went back up the hill, and made some modifications to try and get a better ground. I also grounded the end of the COAX going into the radio.

Well, I have been pretty frustrated for the past week or so, as I have realized that there is just too much RF and electrical interference in my house. It is making shortwave listening difficult. Some of the interference is from my house (electrical system is really noisy), and some is from the neighbors. As I posted earlier, I put up a long wire antenna, and this drastically improved my signal strength.

I have had really good reception tonight, and scanning around I came across a Radio Marti broadcast being jammed by Cuba (I am assuming it is Cuban). First, the details: Radio Marti :0738 UTC - 0745 UTC, 6030 Khz. SIO 312. Male and Female have a conversation in Spanish. Jamming being broadcast over program (sounds like running water / brook). Checking Passport to World Band Radio, it confirms Radio Marti at that time and frequency, and that the broadcast is jammed.

As I mentioned the other day, I have been receiving what I believe to be a grayline propagation broadcast of Radio Free Asia (RFA) programming to the Uyghur region of China from Tajikistan every evening around dusk. However, I had not been able to positively ID it, as the programming was just music. Well, I spent quite a bit of time researching this to try to confirm the original. I download Uyghur music to see if it sounded similar to the music programming I was getting (it did), I searched for and listened to the RFA Uyghur broadcasts to see if they matched (they didn’t), and I contacted Radio Free Asia to ask them about their Uyghur programming.

I picked up some International Airmail Reply coupons the other day to include with QSL requests. Since these are the new versions, I figured I would post the images here in case anyone was interested. Click images for larger versions. You can read up on International Reply Coupons here and here.

Well, I finally got around to putting up a new antenna. I had been using about a 40 foot wire that ran out my window and up the hill along the group. I had been picking up a lot of interference, and not really able to pull in that many stations. Well, today, I ran about 60 feet of wire, but elevated it from a pole on the hill to the side of my house.

I checked out voiceofkorea.org tonight (the website for the Voice of Korea shortwave broadcast from North Korea), and found the following on their website: COUP D’ETAT CONSCIENCE AGAINST REASONS OF STATE VOICE OF KOREA IS TEMPORALLY NOT IN OPERATION Further information will be given on Tuesday 02/01/07 info@voiceofkorea.org 0044.(0)79.0880.8552 Jean-Baptiste Kim Anyone know what is going on? Updated January 1, 2007 : The website has been updated with a repudiation of the North Korean regime:

Shortwave reception has been very poor lately, mostly due to a broken streetlight that is causing massive interference with my receiver, so I have really only been able to listen to major stations, and haven’t been able to try to find any far off stations or other stuff. However, last night when I was doing a scan of the frequencies, I came across a very strong numbers station broadcast. This is my first numbers station since I have gotten back into Shortwave.

Well, after receiving my new receiver Eton E5, I finally decided that this morning would be my first attempt to pick up the Voice of Korea (a broadcast from North Korea). Unfortunately, that meant getting up at 5 AM (1300 UTC), but I didn’t mind too much, as I really want to hear some heavy duty, old school communist propaganda. Anyways, the only signal I could pick up here in San Francisco was at 9335.

Since I started back with my Shortwave my amount of sleep has gone decidedly down. Thus, last night, after a quick nap, I didn’t have too much time to listen to the radio, but did have a chance to pick up a pair of Cuban stations. Radio Habana Cuba (English)- 0605 UTC - 0700 UTC. 6000 Mhz. SIO 434 (US / Cuban / Latin American News, and then Music Radio Rebelde Cuba (Spanish)- 0740 UTC - 0801 UTC.