DX'ing Reach Beyond Australia: Hearing a Rare Language; + Oz rock band Died Pretty

The laughing, cackling call of the Kookaburra used to be an identifier for Radio Australia, which has been off the airwaves for several years. The Kookaburra can again be heard, however, on religious SW broadcaster Reach Beyond Australia.

Photo from Wiki, taken by Diliff.

One of the coolest things about long distance radio listening in general, and Shortwave radio listening in particular, is that it is like travelling all over the PNW, all over the US, and all over the World -- without ever leaving your chair. You hear the signals bouncing to your radio from hundreds, and even thousands of miles away, coming from stations that may very well be on other continents -- even on the opposite side of the world.

For example, I have often heard China Radio International broadcasting to Europe from Kashgar, Xinjiang, China -- a city and region that is in the far western part of that country, and is on the near opposite side of the world from me --11 time zones away. By the time the Kashgar signals have reached my radio -- whether the signals are coming off the front OR the back of their beam -- they've literally crossed half the world.

Early in the morning on May 26th, I was up early (I was still recuperating from my week long illness), so I switched on my Radio Shack 200629, and clipped the indoor wire antenna to the whip, plugged in my headphones, and tuned around. I tuned into the 20 Meter ham band, which was amazingly in working condition at that hour of the morning (3 a.m.+), and heard some stations calling CQ, as it was a CW (Morse Code) radio contest, where ham stations try to get as many contacts as possible.

I heard DA3DR (a German ham) trying to contact Statesiders on 14055 kHz, and his Morse Code signal had a "Polar warble" or slight "Polar flutter", caused by the Auroral Radio Zone. On 14049 I heard K3LR (located in the NE US) calling CQ, and on 14034 I heard Japanese station 7K1MAN, which was cool to hear, as Japan, like Germany, is pretty far away.

Then I tuned to the 25 Meter SW Broadcast band. I heard North Korea (the Voice of Korea) on 11710, with distortion in their signal (they've been having issues with their transmitters over the past few months... it comes and goes). North Korea is always interesting to hear because their music is well produced, but it's also fairly unique to North Korea -- they'll have lots of chick singers with operatic style vocals, and all sorts of backing, from full orchestras to rock bands with horns and strings. North Korean music -- at least that North Korean music on the Voice Of Korea -- sounds like Mitch Miller or the Ray Conniff singers with a Motown bassist, fronted by female opera singers trying to sound like ABBA.

You get the idea. 

On 11780 at around 1050 UTC, it sounded like a religious service in Portuguese, including some folk hymns. The only station that fit was Radio Nacional da Amazonia, and being that it was Sunday morning, I suppose the programming would fit.

The banner / logo for The Voice Of China (known by US SWL's as CNR-1) from the top of their website.

I tuned up the band and heard China's national radio network station CNR-1 and VOA's Chinese program battling it out on 11785, and CNR-1 battling it out with Radio Taiwan International on 11730. China often uses CNR-1 to drown out the Voice Of America, Ratio Taiwan and Radio Free Asia, and during mornings it's usually audible here in the NW US, sometimes with snippets of the other station behind it. On 11795 I heard KBS World Radio's (South Korea) broadcast to South America in slightly accented Spanish (1148 UTC)... You get the idea, the bands were lively that morning.

A CHINESE RADIO PROGRAM FOR KIDS

On 11885 at around 1158 UTC (458 a.m. my time) I heard CNR-1 and PBS Xinjiang and a third station all occupying the channel at the same time, with one of them playing some decent music -- and at the top of the hour I heard three separate sets of time 'pips', and all three stations switched off instantaneously, and there was nothing but static. On 11785 there was a Chinese program (CNR-1, I think) with a woman talking in a kid's voice ("Mama! Mama!"), with happy sounding, light music behind her talking -- it was obviously a kid's story. 

I've heard this a lot on CNR-1. I've often wondered what the kids' stories are about.

Here in the US, anything on radio for kids is consigned to a few religious programs that might run inspirational kids' shows and radio plays, very early Sunday morning. Otherwise, kids' radio programming left the air when Radio Disney yanked the plug on all of their stations in 2015. Children are just another demographic that Radio finds useless, because there is no money to be made from broadcasting to them.

A lot of SWL's seem to tune past CNR-1, viewing it as just a jamming station to note in the logbook and then ignore. However, I've found some of CNR-1's programming interesting, even if I don't know more than seven words of Chinese (Wuh = me, Ni = you, Wuh-men = us, Ni-men = you all, Zhongguo = China, Dien-tai = Broadcasting, and Ni-hao = "hello"). In the early 2010's, every early morning there was a low voiced dude who always spoke softly and closely to the mic, talking over a music bed of romantic piano. I think it was CNR-1's overnight program. I haven't heard that guy -- or that sort of program -- in eight or nine years. CNR-1 is at least two things: well-produced, and it's got a great signal.

Reach Beyond Australia's former, but colorful logo.

From SWLing Post

ANOTHER TONGUE FROM THE POLYGLOT

After I tired of the kid's show, I tuned my Radio Shack 200629 down a few kilohertz, to11875 kHz, around 5:10 a.m. my time (1210 UTC), and I heard a man talking in a very strange language that I'd never heard before.

Now, having listened to Shortwave for several decades, I've heard a LOT of languages, and learned to ID many of them, and at least ID the region if I can't ID the language. I've heard Spanish, Russian, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hausa, Amharic, Somali, Tigrinya, Swahili, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Viet, Burmese, Inuit (back when the CBC Northern Service was still on the air a long time ago), Hindi, Urdu, Pashto and Dari. I've heard Punjabi, especially on US AM radio stations that program in Punjabi, and I've probably heard that language on SW as well. I've heard Sindhi on SW. I've heard Tamil (on SBC Singapore, which no longer is on SW). I've heard Tagalog and Malay and Bahasa Indonesia. I've heard Pidgin English (on the Solomon Islands BC and the SW station that used to serve Papua New Guinea). I've heard Fulani and one of the languages spoken in Mali, Bambara. I've heard Arabic.

More than half of those languages I can ID. With the others, I generally can at least ID the continent or region where the language is spoken. Sometimes, though, I am clueless about the language. Burmese always throws me off, as does Mongolian. I never can seem to ID those two languages well. I always have problems ID'ing the Afghan languages Pashto and Dari. They're like a puzzle to my ears. It was the same with this language I heard on 11875. I looked up the frequency on my trusty EiBi SW schedule (a very handy tool to keep on your smartphone or tablet computer). 

It turned out that the station I was hearing was Reach Beyond Australia, a religious broadcaster I've heard maybe twice before, beaming a program in a language I had never heard of before: Nga La.

A pic of Chin State, Burma (Myanmar), a mountainous region near the Indian border. People who speak the Nga La language -- or Nga La related dialects -- live in both Chin State and India's Mizoram State just across the border.
Pic from Wikipedia, photographer: Corto Maltese 1999

EiBi has a "ReadMe.txt" file you can download alongside your Frequency Schedule text file. Both are handy to keep on a tablet or phone. The "ReadMe.txt" has a listing of languages, country codes, and transmitter locations for most of the SWBC stations in the world. You can get the EiBi text files at eibispace.de.

I looked up Nga La in the EiBi readme.txt and it said that Nga La -- also known as Matu-Chin, apparently -- is a language spoken by hill tribes in the Chin Hills region bordering western Burma and India's Mizoram State -- a small area maybe the size of the state of New Jersey, south of India's Assam tea region, and maybe a couple hundred miles east of the Bangladesh coastal city of Chittagong.

And -- get this. Nga La has maybe 40,000 speakers, total, in the World. Some estimates are more like 70,000, if related dialects are included. But you get the idea. Nga La is not a massively spoken language.

Think about it. The people running Reach Beyond Australia are programming half an hour of radio, every day, to a tribal language group that is less than half the size, population wise, than my suburb of 100K people!

I personally wouldn't have know about the Nga La language, Mizoram (although I've seen it on a map before), and Chin State in Myanmar / Burma if it weren't for Shortwave radio. With all the stuff on the internet, I don't think I would have found any info on the language or the region where its people live.

A lot of people, especially  SW DX'ers, are really down on religious broadcasters. One SW DX journalist, who has a weekly radio show and web presence, habitually has referred to all religious broadcasters as "hucksters". On the Shortwave subreddit there are fairly frequent references to the religious broadcasters, and the comments usually weigh negative, although surprisingly there are a few guys on there who say they listen now and then out of curiosity -- and they realise that the religious programming on stations like WRMI, WWCR, and WBCQ helps keep the signals -- and the other, non-religious programs -- on the air.

A pic of Aizawl, the capital of India's Mizoram state, where a lot of Nga La speakers apparently live (or at least speakers of Nga La related, mutually intelligible languages live there). Although Mizoram and Chin states are tropical, because most of the terrain is fairly high up in altitude, temperatures range between 60F-80F, year 'round (15-20C). 
Pic from Wikipedia, Photographer: Nggcha

I personally have no issue with the religious preachers, even if there are some that I do not agree with. I don't always tune into the preaching shows, however. Sometimes they're a little toooooo out there for me. In my view, if one doesn't like the programming, every SW radio has a dial....

But still, these religious broadcasters are important, despite what many may think, because they keep the SW stations on the air, and -- face it: THEY ACTUALLY BELIEVE IN THE SHORTWAVE RADIO MEDIUM. I've even heard some of the religious preachers -- radio veteran Bob Bierman among them -- state that they believe in the medium of Shortwave radio to reach people.

They may not be your cup of tea to listen to, and maybe you disagree with religion, but the religious broadcasters actually believe that the Shortwave Radio medium is valid and useful to reach people with their message. They believe in the SW band as much as we SWL's do. After all, they're paying money to actually use the medium.

And they're doing it even to reach listeners in just one small language group, whose total number of speakers are less than that of an average American city.

And this comes at a time that, right now in the US, there are many who no longer believe in the relevance of Radio, period -- be it FM, AM, or SW. In fact, depending on how one views the data, increasing numbers of listeners in the US also apparently think that Radio is no longer relevant as a medium. The US Radio audience has declined by 10% since 2012, and it may still be declining a certain percentage each year. The big Radio companies that are on the stock market have seen their stock prices plummet, because investors do not see Radio as a terrific investment anymore. Values of the radio stations themselves have dropped -- even many big city FM's are worth less money, when accounted for inflation, than they were worth 20 years ago. Furthermore, advertisers sometimes treat Radio like a redheaded stepchild. 

Meanwhile, the religious broadcasters still think that Radio, including Shortwave Radio, is a valid means to reach people with your message.

Some of you may not like the message, but before you knock the religious firebreathers too much, remember -- they actually believe in the medium that you like to listen to.

Anyway, because of the fading on Reach Beyond Australia's signal (after all, it was coming from about 12,000 miles away), I switched my antenna from the Radio Shack 200629 to my Tecsun PL-398, and tuned in 11875 on the Tecsun to see if the Tecsun's DSP would make Reach Beyond Australia's program more readable. It did help. It was one of those cases when the DSP really works wonders in resolving the signal.

I listened closely to the language, which seemed to be a mix of SE Asian language sounds (think Viet or Thai), with a little bit of Hindustani language sounds mixed in. Most of what I heard was a guy talking -- probably preaching. The signal level was SIO 2-352 with fading. The guy stopped talking and there was a folk song -- presumably a hymn -- sung by some girls backed by a small pop band.

Then a guy gave what sounded like a web address.

The clock on my Tecsun hit 5:29 a.m., local time, and 1229 UTC. An older woman started speaking, and she mentioned "kilohertz", so she was probably giving the station's Nga La broadcast schedule.

Then I heard a full sign-off from Reach Beyond Australia: "...Thank you for tuning into Reach Beyond Australia.... on the 25 Meter Band." Right after that, there was the sound of a Kookaburra, and then the signal cut off promptly at 1230 UTC.

The Kookaburra's cackly call was used by Radio Australia before the Australian government pulled the plug on them. It's cool that this religious broadcaster is using the same sound as an identifier.

Reach Beyond Australia's current logo. 

SO EXACTLY WHO ARE REACH BEYOND AUSTRALIA?

Reach Beyond Australia is apparently an offshoot, or continuation of the old HCJB radio station that was famous for running out of Ecuador in the 1960s-90s. The Australian operation broadcasts in 20 different languages, including some -- like Nga La / Matu-Chin (or just "Matu") -- that I never even heard of. Obviously, they are intent on reaching people in Asia for Jesus Christ. 

On their website they say that they are especially interested in reaching out to people in Burma, like the Matu / Nga La speakers, the Rohinga people, and the Burmese people, with daily services in those languages and others like them.

They must think that the Shortwave medium is worth it, or they wouldn't be doing it. On their website are pictures of the antenna farm, near Kunanurra in the Kimberly region of far NW Australia. Looks like a sunny place, and there are more trees there than I had envisioned. Here is a link to their main website.:

Reach Beyond in Australia - Reach Beyond Australia

The location of Reach Beyond Australia's SW transmitters is just 6 kilometers west of Kununurra, and it's easy to see on a satellite map. Just follow the main road (the Victoria Highway) west, over the Ord River (located right next to the city), and then aim your browser map a bit SW of the bridge that crosses the river. The transmitter site shows up fairly well on a computer mapping app -- a semi-circle of tall towers, which you can spot by their shadows on the ground.

And if you're interested in tuning in this station -- even if it's just to hear the languages, here is their current schedule.:

Microsoft Word - 3. Language Edition (reachbeyond.org.au)

Although the religous programming coming out of US domestic broadcasters is of marginal interest to most DX'ers, the foreign language broadcasters are a different matter entirely. I've heard Trans World Radio and Adventist World Radio, and their foreign language broadcasts usually have interesting sounding music -- and the fact that a lot of the broadcasts are out of MADAGASCAR is pretty cool, as it's nearly on the opposite pole of the World from me. US religious broadcaster KNLS / New Life Station broadcasts out of Alaska in Russian to Siberia, and they play a lot of cool pop music from the 2010's and the 1980's. And they also broadcast to European Russia from Madagascar, too, and I've heard a few of those broadcasts -- basically coming to my radios from 12K miles away.

Reach Beyond Australia seems similar in scope. They broadcast in interesting sounding languages, and they play interesting music -- usually they seem to be simple church hymns sung by regular folks. Where the station got the girl group singing a hymn in the Nga La language I have no idea. If there are only 40K to 70K Nga La speakers in the world, that's a small population to put together a singing group. But somebody did. Perhaps it was a local congregation in the area.

SHORTWAVE LEADS TO AN INTEREST IN LANGUAGES AND GEOGRAPHY

To bring this back to the first subject breached in this article: Radio has always been a discovery medium for me. When I was a little kid, and when I first heard radio stations from Oregon (which, to a 4 or 5 year old, seemed like a foreign country), I instantly wanted a map to see where Grants Pass was; where was Albany and Lebanon, Oregon? Where was Corvallis? Where was Eureka, California? 

MW DXing made me interested in geography, and other places. And then, a few years later, when I discovered the Shortwave band, I was digging through the National Geographic maps that my folks stored on the bookshelf, and then using my big World Atlas. I wanted to see where the Netherlands Antilles were, and where the Netherlands was (after all, Radio Nederland's shows were produced in Hilversum. So I looked it up on the map). I wanted to know the geography of South Africa -- Johannesburg, Germiston, Springs, Boksburg -- I saw them on the map when I heard Radio RSA. When I heard Radio Australia, I pulled up the map of Oz to find Melbourne and Shepparton.

Whenever commentators on Radio Moscow talked about the Soviet republics, I'd pull up a map and see where those places were.

I also developed an interest in languages from hearing them on the Shortwave bands. Like I said, on Shortwave you hear a LOT of different languages, even today.

Although there is a ton of information technically available on the internet, I wouldn't have learned about a language -- Nga La -- that's only spoken by 40,000 people if it weren't for Shortwave radio. And I use the internet daily, like many people do.

I'm not certain how much the truly worldwide reach of the internet really helps people get an understanding of other countries -- be it their geography or languages and culture. I say this in the light of the fact that search engines -- the most basic of research tools -- simply aren't what they were just 15 years ago. The WorldWideWeb has turned slowly into the WorldWide-AI-Boosted-Shopping Mall. Social media connects people, but how much connecting does it really do?

I realize that a lot of the old SW broadcasters have gone online. I wonder if their audience has grown since it's gone web-only. I've never seen the data for it, but I have my doubts that audiences for the online version of Radio Canada Int'l or Radio Nederland are any bigger than they were when they were using the Shortwaves.

Going online didn't help Radio Disney, and they hyped up their stream quite a bit before pulling the plug on Over-The-Air Radio. Their stream barely lasted 5 years. Apparently the listeners didn't follow them over to the streaming site.

The internet is a terrific place, and a great tool for learning and exposure to other peoples and cultures. However I sometimes wonder if it's as effective at world discovery today, as turning on a Shortwave radio can be.

IN OTHER LIFE.....

I'm feeling better than I did a week ago. I'm pretty much recuperated from whatever bug I had. I went out for a bike ride this morning -- the first one in three plus weeks -- and that's progress. My trusty car, however, is simply not so trusty anymore. It appears to be turning into a money suck. The fuel system is fine, but it looks like the temperature sensor is faulty, and the computer that runs the car won't run anything correctly if it doesn't see the right temperature. 

This is what happens when you let a computer run your car.

Otherwise, there are a few positives. The weather is improving. As I finish the first draft of this article, it is a sunny morning and it's supposed to be 70F later today.

Weather is OK, and I'm still alive and kicking. Can't beat that, can you?

ONE OF OZ'S BEST EXPORTS, THE BAND DIED PRETTY

I'll close this with a track by an Oz band that I really got into in the 1990's. They're a lesser well-known band, but were one of the best rock bands to come out of Australia. In fact, I first heard of them on Radio Australia: Died Pretty.

Their singer, Ronald S. Peno, had a unique way with words. The words didn't need to be 100% coherent -- the sounds of the words mattered almost as much. I guess Mr. Peno was into poetry, which adopts much the same attitude towards the use of language.

This is their liveliest official video, with a song off Lost, their 1988 album, which was also released in the US. It's called Winterland. Mr. Peno's singing is sort of like Bob Dylan meets Iggy Pop meets Bon Scott meets Jim Morrison:

This is the first song I heard by them, on Radio Australia's Soundabout program, Towers Of Strength.:

This next vid is of the second track on Died Pretty's Lost album, which I played quite a bit in the early 1990's. It's sung by the guitar player and co-songwriter, Brett Myers. It's called Out Of My Hands.:

This track has no active video, but the song is probably one of their best. It's called As Must Have. The music actually was an influence on my own songwriting.... plaintive chords, with a lot of E Minor 7ths. Welcome to the Ronald S. Peno method of lyric writing. Mr. Peno unfortunately left us all in August of last year. Mr. Peno, you had a way with words.

This is the best track off Every Brilliant Eye, the Died Pretty album that came out in 1990. The album didn't get much, if any airplay on alternative radio in the US unfortunately, but it should have. One enterprising fan managed to decipher the lyrics to this one -- they're in the comments.

Here's to all this madness, this breeze is blowing cold

The Bible has its new brew, our world has lost its soul....

Well, that's it for now, folks.

Until next time,

Peace.

C.C., June 1st, 2024.

May Showers, Solar Flares, et. al.

My flag flies again on Memorial Day. Grey skies, moderate temperatures, hey -- it must be the end of May!

As I start this article, it is around 65F out, and it's lightly raining outside. It's mid-morning here. The neighborhood's rhododendron farmers (folks who have a few rhodie plants out in their yards) have done well -- there are less of them than in previous years, but their bushes are blooming, finally. And yes, you heard that correctly -- there are less of them than before.

There used to be a street in my neighborhood where maybe half of the homes had awesome rhodies, and I have posted pics of those as recently as 2018 or 2019 here on my blog.

 

Here is a couple of those photographs. All the bushes in the next two pictures no longer exist, sadly.:

 

One pic I took in May, 2015, and which I posted on a blog article here back then. All of these beautiful rhodie bushes are now gone. They were torn out some time last year. :-(

I took this picture in April, 2015, and posted it in my blog that month. In fact, it was April 15th. The rhododendrons started flowering a month earlier than they did this year. All of these beautiful rhododendron bushes were torn out maybe two years ago. 

This is a rhododendron that was full of awesome blooms this year. I took this pic in May, and this bush is in one of the few yards where the owners kept all their rhodies intact. :-)

Here is a mixed rhododendron, on a moderately warm, grey morning in May. There were a lot of bumblebees checking out the flowers, but unfortunately none of the pics I took of them came out well. The little guys would either hide inside a bloom, or fly away just before I could get them in focus. This is the one yard left in my neighborhood that has all of its rhododendrons intact.

But over the past two years or so, a lot of those beautiful, tall rhododendron bushes were torn out by more than one neighbor, for unknown reasons. I don't know why anyone would tear out a rhododendron bush, but they apparently do. There used to be about four or five yards in my neighborhood that had 4-6 rhododendrons, and they were always a beautiful thing to see every mid-April. Now there is just one neighbor who has about four or five bushes -- the other neighbors who had multiple rhodies had them removed.

On a personal level, I'm still dealing with the aftermath of tax season, and I'm still recuperating from an illness I got a week and a half ago. And no sooner than I got my car back from the shop after a serious repair to the leaky gas line / dying gas pumps / clogged gas filter, etc., a tire went completely flat. As they say -- when it rains, it pours. My fiction writing has halted, due to the recent illness and a serious case of writer's block. Maybe I need to drink more coffee? I still play my guitars -- both 12 string and electric, but it's mainly to keep the ability going, and relearn a few acoustic songs I wrote in 2011-2013. 

My cat is doing O.K., although she still demands that I watch her eat. 

What was left of the Great Aurora by the time I photographed it. I missed seeing the colors, but I did see these haunting looking rays projecting upwards and outwards from the North, at the time I took this picture on my Nikon L32, around 3:30 a.m.. I wish the rays of light would have shown up in the photo. Oh well.

SOLAR FLARES & THE GREAT AURORA

On the radio side of things, the night-time, long distance radio conditions have been mediocre, with a few notable exceptions. As always, even when overall SW conditions are mediocre, there are some surprises. 

As most MW and SW DXers know, we had a massive Solar Flare about two weeks ago, on May 10th -- the biggest one in 20 years -- and it wiped out all of the SW bands, turning them to quiet hiss. The night of the biggest Flare (and the Aurora, which I could just see early in the a.m.) produced just one SW station out of Mexico, that I could barely hear on two of my radios (my XHDATA D-328 + wire, and Panasonic RF-B45 + wire), so I know it wasn't some sort of overload image. Besides, the MW band was mediocre, so no MW stations would be strong enough to overload SW -- and they don't play Mexicano folk music, which I did hear on 6185 kHz, fading in an out in the grainy, Auroral static. 

So here's to Mexico's Radio Educacion: you were the only station on SW heard in my part of the world during the 'killer' Solar Flare. PS, your music and programming is cool.

Since the Solar Flare of May 10th subsided it's still mostly poor to fair DX conditions on the MW and SW bands, so even though I tune them to see what's out there, it's not like I'm hearing a ton of new and interesting stuff.

The MW band in general has been sounding like poor summer evening conditions since the flare, although I did hear a Las Vegas station really well a couple nights ago, KMZQ, on 670. It was the loudest and most consistent signal I'd ever heard from that station. Other nights? It's nothing but staticky hiss in KBOI Boise's extremely tight 'null' spot on 670. And for those not acquainted with 'nulling' a station, it's what one does on the AM band to reduce one station's signal to nothing, so you can hear a second or third station in its place. It's a trick I discovered on my Sanyo M9926 Boombox in 1983 or so. I had read about it previously, but hadn't actually tried it.

Even a simple AM-FM-SW radio like this XHDATA is probably capable of FM DXing, as this radio pulls in FM almost better than most of my other FM portables, thanks to an excellent DSP chip inside.

This XHDATA D-328 pulls in a few fringe region FM stations really well at my location, just off the whip antenna. No real FM DX on any radio, yet, though. A lot of FM DX depends on location, location, location.

On the FM side of things, I haven't really done any attempts at FM DXing, although in other parts of the US there are guys who have started doing it. Spring and Summer are apparently the best times to hear Ionospheric E-Layer skip on the FM band, which is a bit more sporadic than the D- and F-layer skip that we MW and SW DXer's experience. Some of the catches FM DXer's get in other parts of the country are fairly spectacular, considering.... One WA state FM DXer has heard most of the Western US states on FM. Any time I've tuned around it's locals, fringe stations, or nothing. Sometimes Tropospheric 'ducting' will bring in Canadian stations from Victoria fairly well -- well, two of them. One time I heard a station out of The Dalles, Oregon -- I can't remember which one. It had to be either really good Tropospheric ducting, or perhaps some E-skip, as The Dalles is over 200 miles away and there are a lot of mountains in the way. That station is my best catch on FM, on my GE Superadio 1, a long long time ago.

I suppose I should try a lot more at the FM DX hobby. Some day, maybe....

 

I've also entertained the notion of eventually becoming a ham radio operator, although I don't presently have the finances to get a decent rig. If I do eventually take that step, it will be some years away, when finances permit. I already know that it would be a simple, bare-bones operation. One simple rig, a code key, and one simple antenna. Make the best out of whatever you've got.

But I have other, more pressing tasks to deal with before I even consider something like that.

My mystery bush -- some sort of Wild Rose, I think -- that blooms around this time every year. A friend of my father's planted it next to our birch tree one year a long time ago, and it's bloomed every year, ever since.

Despite the mediocre SW and MW conditions, things did improve over the past week or so, and there always are a few gems that appear even when SW and MW conditions are mediocre. The DSP in the DSP radios can help, but I've also done a lot of listening to two of my analog portables, my Panasonic RF-B45 and Radio Shack 200629, and the readability of the weak SW stations is still pretty good -- usually more than enough to ID the station. 

The ham bands have been a wash, before, and after the Solar Flares. 160M, 80M and the bands above 20M have been mostly dead with few exceptions. 20 meters has had a few DX stations present on different afternoons and evenings, but it hasn't exactly been slammed with signals.

30M sometimes has a CW QSO, but the past few nights the 'beacon' to the EU, the RTTY station at Pinneberg, Germany (10100 kHz), has been MIA. The other beacon, NAU, RTTY in Puerto Rico (10155 kHz), has been in at varying strengths.

In the past weekend (May 25-26), SW conditions did pick up. I heard several Japanese hams on the 41 and 20 Meter band during a ham CW contest, and I also heard a German ham and a few American guys talking about stuff. I also heard Reach Beyond Australia, broadcasting to a small population of people in the hills between India and Burma, in a language I'd never heard before (Nga La -- maybe 40,000 speakers total). That was cool. Reach Beyond Australia transmits from the old Radio Australia transmitters in Kunnunura, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Like Radio Australia, they use the cackle of the Kookaburra bird in their ID's. Pretty cool.

The DX-350A radio -- like a lot of smaller portables -- sometimes can overload on really strong SW signals. At the same time, just using the whip antenna sometimes just isn't enough to bring in a lot of stations on the SW bands. Clipping a wire to the whip antenna can help, but it can also overload the radio's front end amplifier transistors.

Placing resistors in between the wire antenna and whip antenna can help with this. The resistors lower the signal levels just enough to keep the radio from overloading.

I'm using two resistors here because I didn't have a small enough value one. 200-500 or 1000 ohms or so would probably be just right -- both of these resistors were over 33K ohms. Clipping them in parallel like this dropped the resistance to around 19K ohms. It got the job done -- it worked!

USING A WIRE ANTENNA WITH MY REALISTIC DX-350A

& NO OVERLOAD!

After a while of not using them, I fired up my Realistic DX-350 and DX-350A earlier this past week, trying my indoor, 25 ft. wire antenna by clipping it to the whip. Normally, the 350A would overload with a wire antenna, but this time I had my drop-down resistors that I rigged up to experiment with, and the results were pretty satisfactory. It's pretty easy to rig up an antenna drop down resistor -- all you need is an alligator clip. Being that most alligator clips have set screws, there is no soldering necessary. Run one resistor lead through the 'handle' of the alligator clip, loop the lead around the set screw, and screw it down, and make a small loop or hook with the other resistor lead to give your wire antenna's alligator clip something to clip onto.

It worked really well. My 350A, as I mentioned, will often overload on SW if you use an external wire antenna. Sometimes you'll get lots of extra hiss and FM transmitter hash (one of the two major FM transmitter locations is about 5 miles N of me, and it can slam the 31 and 25 Meter bands with hash in a couple places). 

With the drop-down resistor, the overload was eliminated. I had to use both of my resistors in parallel because the only ones I had in my parts box were pretty high value -- 47K ohm and 33K ohm. Ideal resistance would be 250 ohms to 1-2K ohms or so. But with both of my resistors in parallel, I got roughly 19K Ohms, which wasn't bad. It got the job done.

PANDORA: WHERE 2010's E.D.M. POP LIVES STILL

As I've stated here on this blog in the past, for some reason the pop music of the early 2010's really appealed to me, and -- to be honest -- it still does. I wrote a blog about this over a year ago, where I was commenting on the general state of music at the time -- and to be blunt, the general state of popular CHR and rock music hasn't really improved. There are a few bright spots here and there, but overall, it seems about as dull as the grey weather outside.

And the pop music of 2012 was so upbeat, so emotion-tinged, so technically concise, so well produced and put together, and often technically edgy -- but it was also so easy to listen to and enjoy. And, face it -- much of it was PARTY MUSIC. Nowadays, the pop music isn't really party music. Neither is the rock music. Country music has its party moments, but it's not really my cup of tea.

The autotune which was popular in the 2010's was overused, but it gave the singers a nearly super-human quality to their voice. They sounded more AI than AI, but in a good way. Every note perfect. It seemed to fit the high tech tenor and delivery of the computer-driven EDM music that backed the singers.

2010's pop is miles from Rose Tattoo, of course (and Rose Tattoo is my favorite artist anymore), but it's still good. The pop music today is nowhere near as fun.

Where is Pitbull when we need him around?

On local FM radio today the 2010's hits that were so cool to hear -- Katy Perry's Part Of Me, Cobra Starship's You Make Me Feel, Calvin Harris's Feel So Close, Taio Cruz's Dynamite, Ollie Murs' Heart Skips A Beat, and the like -- get rare airplay, and some of them get NO airplay because they didn't pass the radio company's beloved "research". 2010's pop hits also are too new for Classic Hits and too old for Recurrents. It may take ten more years for a 2010's heavy pop format to show up on FM. And some songs that were so cool back then -- anyone remember the Gym Class Heroes? Or Andy Grammer? -- would never make it to a 2010's Radio format because everything on radio is researched to a crisp.

Well, rest assured, yours truly has discovered the appeal of streaming. My Android phone came with Pandora installed. I never used it until this weekend, when I decided to give the service a spin. I mean -- it's on my phone, so why not try it? So I did. Instantly, I was taken back to 2011-2012, when I discovered Pop Music again.

Within minutes I heard the Chainsmokers w/ Daya in Don't Let Me Down, Nick Jonas's Jealous, Taio Cruz's Break Your Heart, Nico & Vinz's Am I Wrong, and Ke$ha's Tik Tok, Nicky Minaj's Starships, One Republic's Counting Stars -- you get the idea. A lot of them I hadn't really heard before, like Flo Rida's Wild Ones. I'd heard a couple of his other hits but not that one. And I heard Pitbull within the first half hour -- on an Usher song. And Adele's classic, well-written hit Set Fire To The Rain played -- all within the first 45 minutes.

Here's a link to the 2010's Pop Channel on Pandora, for those interested.:

2010s Pop - Pandora

I can see clearly now, how Radio is being replaced, and redefined. 

Do I like it? Not necessarily. After all, I'm still a radio guy. I've always listened to radio, DX'ed radio, and I worked in the business for 20 years. You don't work in a business for 20 years and not have some feelings for its future.

But when I can tap an icon on my phone and hear my favorite, 2010's hits, one after another, do I like it? Well, yeah, I do like it. I see the appeal.

On the airwaves, an all-2010's pop channel probably wouldn't get good enough ratings to get a radio station agency buys. That's why there are no 2010's pop-heavy FM radio stations. But on a streaming platform, ratings isn't so much a concern that all music is researched to death. Online streaming platforms are a totally different animal.

Even the 'curated' music channels, like Pandora's 2010's Pop channel has a feature where you can give a song a thumbs up or thumbs down, so the algorithm will alter the music it sends to you. So it's like listening to a 2010's Pop radio station, where you can send in requests and they actually alter their playlist for you. 

I realise that for a lot of you this is already second nature -- as millions use Pandora, Spotify, and other streaming platforms. But I see now why people are into this.

Streaming platforms like Pandora have sizeable -- and growing -- chunks of the listening public for a reason.

I have heard the future, and the future is now.

Here's the Gym Class Heroes, by the way. The Fighter. Excellent song, released in late 2011. I heard it on local pop station KBKS 106.1 FM in early 2012. Wish I could find my CD copy of it. Better yet: I wish there were more songs being released like this today.:

In 2011 Andy Grammer said "Keep Your Head Up". I first heard this track on Radio Disney in 2012. Keeping your head up -- it's still a good idea.:

Yep, with inflation the way it is nowadays, we definitely have to keep our heads up, don't we.

I used to sing that Keep Your Head Up in karaoke at Uncle Mo's Pub in Renton back in the mid to late 2010's, sometimes closing the karaoke show with it. It's a good feeling song to sing.

As I pointed out in my second-to-last posting here, I was sick for a week. I'm mostly recuperated. This last Monday was Memorial Day. At first I wasn't sure whether I wanted to put my flag(s) out, which generally was my custom. Partly because it was going to rain, and partly because I didn't know if I wanted to risk my flags getting messed with or stolen. I was certain that one of my flags was stolen last year. I even wrote a post about it. I had literally thought it was stolen. But it turned out that someone had shoved it into the hedge, and I found it a while after I had written up the blog post.

I finally decided to go halfway, this year: I put out one flag, my newest one. And I kept an eye on it.

Happy end of May. 

Peace,

C.C., May 26th & 29th, 2024.

'Lima Pirates': the Bizarre Mystery of the Chanting, Indonesian Pirate Ham Radio Operators in the 40 Meter Band

What's that strange, and haunting noise on the radio? It's the chanting, shortwave 'Lima Pirates'!

Shortwave radio has always been a medium that has had its strange mysteries. 

Being a worldwide medium, it has plenty of odd phenomena that one can hear on their radio... From strange transmissions like the Russian 'Buzzer' (which some believe is a 'dead man's switch' associated with Russian nuclear policy), to the mystery of the CB Sideband's "GI Joe" in the late 1980's; to Spy Numbers stations (where a woman with a robotic like voice counts out letters and numbers, in Spanish, monotonously, in between digital bursts), to strange, unlicensed and illegal, low powered 'beacon' transmitters that run off solar panels and put out varying dits and dahs... There are a lot of odd things that go on when one is tuning the bands.

Here is an article I wrote on the mysterious, late 1980's CB Sideband character "GI Joe", an American guy who was in Belize, and routinely talked to hundreds of US and Canadian CB'ers who all wanted to contact him. He was clearly audible all over the US, was heard by probably thousands of CB sidebanders, and just simply disappeared into the ether some time after 1990. Internet searches on the guy, including on radio forums, bring up absolutely nothing.:

Interrock Nation: The CB Mystery of "GI Joe" in Belize -- and 105F in the Shade

Well, this is another one of those mysteries. 

Early one morning in the Winter of 2002-2003, after I got home from work -- probably around 4 a.m., as I was working late night shift at that time -- I tuned my Realistic DX-440 around on the shortwave bands. At the time I had a 100 ft. / 30 meter wire antenna, that went from my bedroom window out to a poplar tree across my side yard. The antenna worked really well, and because 2002 was the peak of a Solar Cycle the Shortwave bands were also working really well.

I tuned to the 41 Meter SW broadcast band, and checked out what was on the airwaves there, looking to see if the RTM Malaysia SW stations were audible. Then I tuned down to the 40 Meter Ham band, which is just below the 41 Meter Broadcast band. The 40 Meter ham band is, and was, sort of a hodge podge at night -- you get some broadcasters in the band, a couple Russian Single Letter Beacons, and a smattering of hams talking, using sideband or Morse Code (CW), and there were some digital noises on the band, too.

At the time, the 6900-7300 kHz spectrum was my favorite prowling place for SWLing and DXing, as it was such a grab bag of various signals. In fact, the 6900-7300 kHz spectrum still is a lot that way.

Back in 2002 the 40 Meter ham band was a bit more active than it is now. I already knew that during the early mornings Asian stations -- both ham and broadcast -- would be coming in fairly well on SW, and it's always cool to hear signals from that part of the world because it's literally an ocean away -- SE Asia, for example, is around 12,000 miles from the NW US. This particular morning I heard some Japanese hams trying to talk to American hams, and I probably also listened to the CW / Morse Code sections of the band trying to see who was contacting who, some of them probably being Japanese as well. If I remember correctly, I probably heard the mysterious Russian Single Letter Beacons on 7039 kHz -- "M" and "K", the military 'marker' stations in Magadan and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which just send out a long, unending sequence consisting of one letter ('M' for Magadan, 'K' for Kamchatka) in Morse Code, over and over again. 

THEN, THE EERIE CHANTING.....

I tuned lower, hearing talk in SE Asian languages, in sideband (LSB) -- something I hadn't noticed before. The transmissions were apparently unlicensed, or otherwise illegal, as nowhere in the world can hams talk on sideband on or near 7000 kHz. The IARU states that only CW / Morse Code can be used between 7000-7030 kHz. So these transmissions were ham pirate transmissions. 

Then I tuned even lower -- and that's when I first heard the chanting, somewhere around 6999 kHz. It sounded very eerie -- like some sort of primeval religious rite, and the phasing and fading quality of shortwave made it seem even more weird and exotic. Then it stopped. Then it started again. Then it stopped. Then there was just some talking in some SE Asian language between 4 or 5 guys.

The language I was hearing sounded like Tagalog or Malay -- I didn't know what language it was, but it definitely sounded SE Asian.

The stations never gave out call signs, and their frequencies were illegal for people to be talking on, as the 40 Meter ham band stops at 7000 kHz, and anything lower is "no-go territory", at least legally -- and this rule is worldwide. 

That made these talkers and chanters "pirate hams", i.e., illegal ham stations.

I heard these 'pirate chanters' a few more times over the Winter of 2002-2003, but mostly I heard them talking instead of chanting. And the language intrigued me. I assumed they were fishermen, or possibly Malaysian, Philippine, or Indonesian mariners.

In 2002-2003 I didn't pay enough attention to the pirate hams because I was very busy tuning the Shortwave Broadcast bands -- hearing all sorts of cool stuff, from Vividh Bharati's Indian movie music, to RTM Malaysia's station in Kuching, Sarawak; to the BBC broadcasting out of Singapore; to Singapore's SBC station, broadcasting in English, Chinese and Tamil; to Bayern Rundfunk and all sorts of interesting broadcast stations. Unlike today, the 49, 41 and 31 meter bands were packed with signals to listen to and ID. 

So the SE Asian language pirate hams were put on the back burner for a few years.

And after 2004 I took a break from SW DXing, and frankly, I didn't give the chanting pirate hams a thought for several years.

BACK TO THE RADIOS IN 2011, AND THE CHANTERS ARE STILL THERE!

When I got back into the hobby in 2011, I started hearing these pirate chanters nearly every morning, and even though I was using slightly different equipment (a Realistic DX-390 and DX-398, primarily -- along with my 25 ft. / 8 meter indoor wire), the pirate hams were quite audible, and sometimes I could hear them talking, chanting, and doing more talking, sometimes as late as 9-10 a.m.

Most of all, I found the chanting to be very bizarre and intriguing.

Here's the best video I could find of this 'pirate chanter' phenomenon, which I found in 2012. The DXer recorded it in 2009, and it sounds just like I heard it on my radios. He calls them the "Lima Pirates", because a) they are technically pirate hams -- illegal hams, and b) one of the louder chanters says "leee-mah! leee-mah!" a lot. I also heard "Leee-mah!" being chanted a lot during the early 2010's when I heard these folks doing their thing. Have a listen.:

Pirate party 7000kHz: the "lima pirates" (youtube.com)

The video was posted to YT by an Australian DXer, who used a Sangean ATS-505 (similar to my Radio Shack 200629). I am pretty sure this is the recording I found in 2012, when I did searches and some research on the "Lima Pirate" phenomenon.

Another Australian posted this video -- also around 2012, of some 'Lima Pirate' chanting.:

Indonesian Horse Races 7000kHz 5 May 2012 1256z (youtube.com)

This DXer, who used a Kaito radio, also recorded a little bit of the banter in Indonesian in 2017, and a commenter gave some useful info on the way these Indonesian Pirate hams operate. He described it as a sort of radio based, bravado contest.:

Bizarre Chanting, Indonesian "Bandracers" aka 'Fish' Station (7020khz, 4/7/17, 1500utc ) (youtube.com)

This DXer, using a Philippine WebSDR, recorded some "Lima Pirate" chanters just a year ago.:

Indonesian "Bandracers" aka Lima Pirates aka Bizarre Chanting (7000kHz LSB, 1000+ UTC) (youtube.com)

So, obviously, this pirate ham phenomenon has been going on since at least the Winter of 2002-2003, when I first heard them. 

And it seems that one of the monikers for these unique, illegal ham operators is "Lima Pirates".

VERY LITTLE INFORMATION, EVEN ON HAM FORUMS & WEBSITES

Anyway, in 2012 I set my mind to find out just who, and what, these chanting "pirate hams" or "Lima Pirates" are. After all, they were taking up at least 40 kHz of one of the most popular amateur radio bands, so one would think there would be plenty of information available.

And by 2012, the WorldWideWeb had pretty much became standard issue media -- nearly everyone had used it at least a few times by then, especially ham radio people. So you'd think there would be plenty of information on this illegal transmission phenomenon, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong.

Mostly, I got dead ends. There was a ham radio operator in Australia who mentioned Indonesian ham pirates on the 40 meter band on his blog. I emailed him, asking what he knew about the phenomenon. I never got an answer.

I checked out the ham radio forums, and some websites for ham radio societies. I searched them for info on illegal, pirate ham activity on 7000 kHz and therabouts. I came up with nothing. 

That was odd -- think about it: your ham band has illegal operators talking and chanting between 7000-7040 kHz, and it's clearly audible 12,000 miles away, and you aren't talking about it at all? I found that strange.

I found web pages put up by Indonesian and Malaysian hams. Still, I found no mention anywhere of the high numbers of illegal ham pirates talking from 6900-7040 kHz in their region. It was the usual pictures of ham gear, club stations, towers, etc.

I finally found one website operated by the International Amateur Radio Union, with reports by hams who monitor the ham bands for intruders, and -- after all -- technically, these "Lima Pirates" were intruders. In the IARU's reports I did find some information on the chanters in the listings: they were called "Asian, Village Radio", with the source of the pirates being 'INS', i.e. Indonesia. You can read one of the reports here.:

Microsoft Word - R3 MS Report August 2012.doc (iaru-r3.org)

Most of these reports of the "Lima Pirate" activity were recorded by a couple Australian and NZ hams. There are other such reports here on the IARU site.:

IARU Region 3 Monitoring System Newsletter (iaru-r3.org)

The pages here are from 2012, because that's the page I found when I first did my research. 

So now I had the pirate hams located in Indonesia. Somehow these Australian and NZ hams knew that the chanters and talkers were in Indonesia, even if their reports gave no further information about the phenomenon. That would make the language they were speaking the Indonesian form of Malay -- Bahasa Indonesia.

They called it "Village Radio". That begged the question: what's Village Radio? 

I did searches on Village Radio. I came up with nothing, aside from just one mention on some missionary's blog, where he mentioned that some villages in the remote areas of Kalimantan (Borneo) had ham radio transceivers at one main building in the village, and those radios were used by villagers to talk to the outside world, because at the time, there was no internet there, little if any cell or phone service -- ham radio (illegal ham radio) was IT.

I wish I would have kept that missionary's website's address, because I can't find it now. It's ten years later, and a lot of blogs have disappeared. Searches today, using the three main search engines, of course, bring up nothing.

Meanwhile, I kept listening to these fascinating transmissions in 2012, and one morning the 40 Meter ham band was open late, until around 9-10 a.m., and I heard several guys on my DX-398 -- all talking in Bahasa Indonesian. They were chatting up a young sounding woman, who said she was in the Philippines. The propagation to SE Asia was crisp and clear that a.m., with the conversation sounding like CB radio did during its heyday. 

One of the guys said he was in Kalimantan, Indonesia -- Indonesian Borneo. The guy and the Filipina seemed to be having fun talking -- if I remember it was a combination of Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, and perhaps some English thrown in.

Eventually, I determined, through the little information that was available anywhere, that Kalimantan indeed has a lot of these ham pirates, because Kalimantan is sort of the Wild West of Indonesia. There is a lot of lumbering going on, and it's not quite as populated as the other parts of Indonesia. I also was able to determine, from the guy saying he was in Kalimantan, that the language was indeed Bahasa Indonesia. So that helped.

ENTER HF UNDERGROUND... A FORUM DEALING WITH SW MYSTERIES

Some time before August, 2012, I joined the SW website HF Underground, which covers nearly all subjects SW, MW, FM, and DXing, and even covers some ham radio, too. The site caters mainly to the aficionados of pirate radio activity, especially SW radio pirate stations.

But the forums on HFU have a lot of loggings and talk about nearly every unusual signal you'll come across on the Shortwave spectrum -- from unlicensed mini-beacons that put out dits and dahs in the 4 MHz spectrum, to strange military transmissions, to the illegal transmissions of the "Peskies" -- fishermen who use HF tranceivers illegally to talk, joke, laugh, swear, and whatever, often just below the 40 meter ham band. 

On the East Coast of the US most of these "Peskies" (short for Pescadores -- "fishermen") talk in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. But on the West Coast we hear them in Japanese, Korean, some Chinese, and -- yes -- Indonesian.

I found a thread on HFUnderground where a guy had been talking about these "chanting Peskies", and he wasn't sure of the language. He posted a sound clip. It sounded like the Bahasa Indonesia pirate hams I had been hearing. I told him about my experiences in hearing the Indonesians chanting in Bahasa Indonesian. Another forum poster mentioned that some of the words heard in one of the sound files posted was "ganti" -- Bahasa Indonesian for "over". That forum poster, a DXer in Norway, also may have led me to the IARU reports mentioned previously.

Then I started hearing these pirate ham guys using the word "ganti" when they were just talking to each other -- they'd use the word the same way we English speakers say "over".

THE CHANTING IS A SORT OF RADIO GAME

It was then that I also determined that the chanting is a game. I noticed a pattern: one guy would be talking with a few others. Then he'd say "Go!" Then a bunch of the others would all be chanting a single word or phrase, over and over again. Then they'd stop. Then the main guy would say a few words. Then I'd hear a click. Then I'd hear the same exact chanting I just heard previously, the same exact words. The tonal aspects of the sound, of course, was slightly different, but the chanting was an exact replica.

In other words, it was a recording.

After listening further, I noticed the same pattern, being repeated. One main guy would say a few words. Then he'd say "Go!". Then there would be a ton of chanting. Then they'd stop. Then the main guy would say a few words. Then the replica of the chanting would be played over the main guy's radio. A recording. They were recording the shouts and chants -- as if it was some sort of game, to determine who's radio gets out better.

On the HFU forum that August, some of the others agreed that it sounded like a call and response, recording and playback sort of thing.

You can read the entire HFU thread here.:

7000 LSB - possible Brazilian pescadore activity (hfunderground.com)

And while you're there, check out the rest of HFUnderground. It's fascinating reading. A lot of the posters there are quite knowledgeable about nearly ANYTHING you'll hear on the SW/HF spectrum, and a lot of them are knowledgeable about radios and antennas, too.

Here's the link to the basic forum. The HFU site also has a Wiki on all sorts of radio subjects. It's a great site for DX'ers.:

HFU HF Underground - Index

SO WHO AND WHAT IS 'LIMA', ANYWAY?

So, now that we've figured it's a game -- similar to the bravado one would hear on the CB band in the US, during the heyday of CB in the 70's-90's ("You don't get out, ha ha" / "I get out better than you!" / "you've got a 10-9 station, ha ha") -- there's one obvious question left: Who's "Lima"?

Although I don't have a concrete answer to that question, I do think the answer is fairly obvious: If you're running some sort of competition over the airwaves, to see which station gets out the most, there has GOT to be identifiers for the stations. Otherwise, the contest really is of no use.

My guess is that "Lima" is, or was, the name, or nickname of a guy who had one of the unlicensed ham stations in Kalimantan. If you listen closely you hear these various names, or words, repeated -- usually two or three syllables at most. They've got to be the names, or "handles", of the operators -- maybe the name of the guy who owns or runs the station, or, if the "Village Radio" concept actually is a thing -- maybe it's the name of a village or location.

I've heard "Lima!" and -- more recently --"Wa-Cha-Pi!", and a bunch of other words and short phrases repeated during these chants over the years. In 2012 I noted that I heard a guy repeating loudly "Da-Nam! Da-Nam! Da-Nam!". Another guy was shouting "Nga! Nga! Nga!" 

Some on the internet speculated it was chanting the Koran, or perhaps some other religious phrase or text, but this is nothing like the Koran chants one sometimes hears on Saudi Arabian and other official SW radio stations, where verses from the Surahs are sung. And these aren't really phrases they're shouting into the mic. This is nicknames or handles, obviously.

It would seem more probable that they're very similar to the CB "handles" used in the CB band.

There's no other viable conclusion to be made. 

A pic of my Radio Shack 200629 when I heard the 'Lima Pirate' chanters on the airwaves the morning before I wrote this article, early May 28th. They came in maybe S3-S4 around 1144 UTC, 4:44 a.m. here in the Pacific Time Zone.

THE 'LIMA PIRATES' ARE STILL ON THE AIR, DOING THEIR THING

Amazingly enough, it's 12 years later and these 'Lima Pirates' -- Indonesian ham pirate stations -- are still on the air, talking, chatting, and chanting. I heard some chanting a few mornings ago, and this previous a.m. (May 28th) I heard a lot of talking, and even some chanting on 6975 kHz (see the pic of my Radio Shack 200629 just above -- I took it when I was hearing the 'Lima Pirates' chanting). It still seems to be the fun thing for them to do, I guess.

On the 26th, I heard some chanting on 6925 kHz, with the loudest guy chanting "Wah-Cha-Pi! Wah-Cha-Pi!" on my Panasonic RF-B45 (+wire antenna). That was around 1250 UTC (5:50 a.m. Pacific Time). I also heard some talk in Malay or Bahasa Indonesia, where the guys were saying "ganti" (over) during their convo.

During that same morning, I heard what sounded like Malay or Bahasa Indonesia on 10145 kHz, 10155 kHz, and possibly some Bahasa Indonesian speech on 7040 kHz (all around 1230 UTC). So they may talk on other frequencies, but the chanting seems to remain around 7000 kHz or just below.

It's still odd that there is so very little info on these Indonesian ham pirates. Not that their activity being unlicensed or illegal is very shocking or off-putting, but one would think that their activity would be mentioned more often in ham radio and DX circles, especially when the Indonesian ham pirates often take up 40 kHz of prime, 40 Meter ham band territory. But it isn't.

So, for those of you who are in the Pacific or Indian Ocean regions -- anywhere from India to Australia and NZ, to the West Coast of North or South America, and probably eastern Asia as well -- tune your SW radio to the 6900-7040 kHz spectrum, switch on the SSB (LSB, mostly), and tune around. You may hear the chanting of the Indonesian "Lima Pirates". If I can hear them on my Radio Shack 200629 and 25 ft. / 8 meters of wire, you can, too.

And even if you're not in the areas I mentioned, you still may hear them. In 2012 a DXer in Texas seems to have heard them, and a DXer in Northeast Florida heard them back then. With the Solar Cycle picking up, it's worth a try, to be able to hear these fascinating SW transmissions.

Until next time, my friends,

Peace.

C.C. May 28th, 2024.

May 29th: I added a section "Who Is Lima?" and also changed the top pic, as the first one was a bit dark and drab. I moved that pic down to the bottom half of the article. The replacement pic, of course, is dark, because I DX in the dark (easier to concentrate on what I'm hearing); but the new pic of the Panasonic looks a bit better. And I was listening to these chanters and unlicensed operators when I took it. I also made a couple small edits here and there... typos, etc.