Sometimes, it’s just a sparkle that flies. I was waiting for a ham friend (IW0HK) to visit me, after years of e-mail/Internet contacts. Initial plan was to reach a downtown’s eatery, and have a nice chat. Then, looking out of the window, and realizing the wx you can see in the featured image (and no, these aren’t chemist trails, but the evidence of a mild temperature, despite winter), I Read more →

Friends are working hard to convince me Aosta Valley, despite my believings, is not Pluto, and HF signals can get here too. I can understand -and deeply enjoy- their efforts, but trust me they never tried attenuation given by Europe’s highest roofs. In the last five years, talking about MW DX, all I got are dominant stations (the ones that, received, say, on the Adriatic shore make you tell Read more →

Good things come for those who wait. So, being patient day after day, today postmaster delivered a brown envelope from South Africa. It contained a QSL letter from 1Africa, the CVC Media station broadcasting from Lusaka, sometimes referred as “The Voice Zambia”. The sheet confirms my 2nd February 2011 reception on 4965 kHz, at 22.31 UTC. The letter, coming on paper Read more →

Everyone of us, despite the age, has weak points. One of mines, if we talk about radio, is low VHF manpacks. So, it didn’t surprise me, this morning, when we got downstairs to check if Santa had been here, and found – among other presents – a huge dark green pack. It revealed a Tesla RF-10 trasnsceiver. Santa well know kids all around the world, and what they have a crush on! Read more →

Twenty-four hours after the massive outgoing of reception reports, first results are starting to come. Today, Guy Kalenda Mutelwa, “coordinateur d’antenne” in Paris for Radio Africa n° 1 (broadcasting from Gabon on 9580 kHz), verified my reception report with the e-mail shown above. In a first message, he also stated he forwarded my report to his colleagues in Libreville, in order to have them provide me some Read more →

Since 2006, when I restarted BCL activities, I obtained 147 confirmations of reception. It’s a good figure, considering – on one hand – the slow fading of stations on shortwaves, and – on the other – the totally different meaning that nowadays a reception report has. It’s no longer a technical thing. International broadcasters today can count on automated monitoring networks to check how their Read more →