Long time, no talk. Not that I missed news to talk about, but hey writing is a creative activity. You’ve to be inspired to put your pen on paper. Today it feels just fine, and I’ll tell you about the main changes in the IX1CKN world (even if they’re mostly concerning my SWL/BCL side of the hobby). Read more →

The new broadcasting season that begun in 2009 in Myanmar (check here the story by “Myanmar Times & Business Reviews”), with government starting to grant licenses to private companies, resulted in a “broad array of private FM channels” becoming available to listeners in various areas of the Union (namely, Rakhine State and Ayeyarwady Division, Shan State, Kachin State and Read more →

Let’s be frank. Aside a few noticeable exceptions, the FM west-European scene is a general failure. Spectrum is crowded with lots of private stations, running the same playlists, and being different to each other only for sponsors and advertisers they carry. Be practical: tune your radio on the coolest station in Milan, in Berlin and in London, and what will make you realize the City you’re in 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 →

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 →