KRLC, Lewiston, Idaho's "Hometown Radio" station, a station whose plug was pulled about a year ago and recently had its license deleted, has been burned to the ground in a Fire Training exercise. The Fire training exercise took place in late November.
Over the past several years since the Pandemic ended I have written about several AM (and FM) stations in my region of the US going off the airwaves, and in those articles I have included the fact that many of those stations had FM translators, FM sister stations, and several had radio streams on the internet -- a factor that is supposedly necessary to 'save AM'.
KRLC, Lewiston, Idaho was one of those stations. KRLC 1350 was usually heard nightly here in the Seattle area up until it went off the air about midway through last year. Even though we have a strong local (KKMO 1360) here in the metro, KRLC could still be heard right next to it, playing Classic Country music.
In the 1960's and 70's, KRLC was a Top 40 station, but they switched to Country some time in the late 1970's, and then Classic Country about a decade or more later.
Lewiston is in Northern Idaho, and it's right across the Snake River from Clarkston, Washington -- the two are 'twin cities', and they both serve an area of dry wheatfield farmland, as well as some orchard farming. Lewiston is known as Idaho's 'seaport', being that it is on a section of the Snake River that is navigable all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
Even though the Lewiston-Clarkston metro region is around 50,000 or more, there just wasn't enough revenue to keep KRLC on the air. And the Pandemic economy finished the station off, just as it finished off KNPT Newport OR, KBCH Lincoln City OR, KUTI Yakima WA, KMED Medford OR, KKPZ Portland OR, KDUN Reedsport OR, and even big city KDWN Las Vegas, NV -- all stations which I've written about here when they were taken off the air.
In KRLC's case, one night I tuned in to 1350 to hear nothing, and then I looked KRLC up and found out they went off the air. They recently had their license deleted at the FCC.
I used to listen to Sunny 1550 at night while writing fiction. Their mix of Standards and easy listening Oldies was well presented and fun to listen to. Then they went Vietnamese, and then they went silent during the Pandemic.
A couple other stations, like KKOV 1550 Vancouver WA, the former "Sunny 1550", are silent and their futures are uncertain. Even an Asian language format couldn't save KKOV. It's been silent since the Pandemic. KZIZ 1560, a small station in Sumner, WA, just 20 miles south of me has been off the air for more than a year. A Punjabi / South Asian format apparently couldn't save it. They went off the air around the time the Pandemic happened.
It's tough for Radio all over -- and especially AM Radio, although FM is not exempt.
You can also add a bunch of Canadian AM'ers whose plugs have been pulled -- also done in by the Pandemic economy, as well as the changing economics of Radio -- CKMX 1060 Calgary, CFTE Vancouver, CKGO Vancouver, CKST Vancouver, CFRN Edmonton, and several others.
Of the American stations I mention here, all of them, except possibly KKPZ in Portland, had streams. The streams did not save the stations. Most of them also had FM translators, and KNPT Newport was part of a group of stations on the Oregon Coast. All had their plugs pulled.
An inglorious end to an 80 year-old Radio station. KRLC gets burned down in a Fire Dept. training exercise. The station was burned in November, 2025.
Photo courtesy RadioWorld dot com & Big Country News
Now KRLC is gone -- and even more, the station's building was burned down in a Fire Department training exercise, in November(I didn't find out about the building being burned down until recently). It was an inglorious fate for a station that served the city and region of Lewiston for 80 years. The once proud server of Classic Country to the wheatland region of the Palouse is now nothing more than ashes.
It all went up in flames. One wonders if that is the ultimate future of the industry I worked in for 20 years -- for it all to end up going up in flames.
Here is a news article on the burning down of KRLC.:
It's sad, in a way, but it's also indicative of the ultimate fate of probably every on-air Radio station in the United States. Eventually, when everything goes online, there won't be any Radio stations left, and the majority of remaining, online-only stations will disappear as well, because the internet is one vast content resource with endless competition for eyes and ears.
A pic of Lewiston, Idaho and Clarkston, Washington, from the old US Highway 95 switchbacks just north of the small metro. These switchbacks inspired the song "Hot Rod Lincoln". In this pic, Lewiston is to the left side, and Clarkston is to the right. These two cities are located in the sunnier and drier part of Washington state, and a dry region in Northern Idaho.
Online Radio is promising, but the promise just won't hold out for most who believe that going online-only will save Radio stations. Online radio stations have to find advertising or funding, just like On-Air stations do. And then you have the issue of Digital Royalties for the music played.
An example of this hit the radio press recently. There is an online station in San Francisco -- one of the most concentrated populations in the United States -- called HydeFM that is struggling to stay alive, even though it reportedly has a 'loyal local following'.
Even online, it's tough for a content operation like a streaming radio station to make enough money to survive.
We live in interesting times.
IN OTHER LIFE...
In other life, everything is plodding along. My internet went wonky last Saturday. Then it went good for 5 days. My cat Bear is getting used to me. She likes the bagpipes -- only if I play them downstairs, though. But she knows that when I play the bagpipes, soon enough I'll be feeding her. She is a very skittish cat, so I wanted to ensure that she associated bagpipes with a good thing. That way she wouldn't be so scared of the noise.
THE SHORTWAVE BANDS ARE 'DEAD, JIM'
DXing has been spotty lately. The SW bands are mostly dead, compared to where they should be -- being that we are still technically in a Solar peak period. I heard T88SM, a ham station out of Palau, on CW (Morse Code) two afternoons ago on 21025 kHz in the 15 Meter ham band. The rest of the band was basically dead, though. I heard 8P5AA out of Barbados on 10 Meters the same afternoon (28470 kHz, around 2058 UTC -- about 1 p.m. here), and a few faint whispers of East Coast US hams trying to talk to him.
Earlier that day I heard Brazil, PV8AL (?) on 28350, but I couldn't hear the US guys trying to reach him. The rest of the 10 Meter band was dead.
It seems that sometimes there is ionospheric propagation to various regions of the world, but no one is on. Then again, last night the SW and HF ham bands were basically nothing but static with a few faint carriers and just whispers of audio on WRMI and WWCR.
Even the Desert Whooper, a low-power, unlicensed, 'whooping' beacon on 4096 kHz, hasn't been heard here in weeks. Last year I was hearing them now and then, and in 2024 I was hearing them nightly, unless there was a whopper of a solar storm. The Desert Whooper is located probably somewhere in the deserts of California, and if you tune into it you'll hear 'whoop whoop whoop' and then a CW identifier ('DW'). If you tune in with LSB, the 'whoops' sound sad, if you tune into the Whooper with USB, it's upbeat whoops.
But it's been MIA for weeks.
Propagation lately could be summed up thusly.:
"It's dead, Jim." (a take on a famous Star Trek quote).
SEEMS LIKE THE SOLAR MINIMUM IS STARTING ALREADY
This Solar Cycle is playing out the way I sort of thought it would. It's depressing, in a way, but it's reality, and with reality, one must adapt and survive. One way I've attempted to 'adapt' is get a DSP SSB radio, and of the three of those I've got this year (Tecsun PL-330, Raddy RF760, and XHDATA D808), the D808 is the best for raw SSB and CW signal performance, and the Tecsun is the best for SSB readability.
I'm going to put up an outdoor wire to try to hear more when the REAL solar minimum hits -- and I think it's going to hit next year. In fact, I think it's starting to hit us already. I have the space for an outdoor wire. I just have to figure out a way to put one up again. I used to have a 100 foot wire, but it went down in a windstorm in 2005 or so. My next outdoor one will be shorter.
Here's hoping all of you are doing well and having an OK start to 2026.
Peace.
C.C., January 14th, 2026.
Jan. 15th, 2026: I forgot to add the bit about the Desert Whooper, so I added it today. The Desert Whooper is one of those fun things about Shortwave, but it's not the same when you can't hear it because propagation is so poor.
The 40-Year Anniversary Logo of KSKO-FM, McGrath, Alaska, a rural Public Radio station that will see drastic budget cuts thanks to the defunding of the US's Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
As many Radio hobbyists, Radio Industry employees, and others who follow the Radio business are aware, Public Radio in the US has come under fire -- by the present Administration, as well as conservatives in the US Congress.
In fact, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a governmental entity set up by Congress in 1967 to fund Public Radio and TV stations in the US, has been defunded.
The reasoning for the Defunding of CPB, of course, appears to be purely political. Detractors insist that CPB, and Public Radio in general, is 'biased' in news reporting, and shouldn't be funded by the US government.
As someone who listened to NPR 24/7 when my ill mother was staying with me for over a year, I can't say I heard a ton of bias on NPR, and I tend to be a slightly right-leaning centrist, politically. In fact, most of the programs weren't political or News oriented at all.
There are also a few in Radio who say that the "government shouldn't be funding stations that compete with commercial radio stations." That argument is almost laughable. The audiences for NPR and Public Radio are different from the commercial radio audience that wants to hear the latest country, AC, or pop/hip-hop hits. Also, in many areas, the Public Radio station may be the only non-music station in the market -- so the 'government-sponsored competition' argument doesn't really hold water.
And if you have a conservative talk station, trust me -- NPR isn't taking your audience away. It's a completely different audience from yours.
NPR has its issues, sure. There have been articles about them, including one written by a veteran journalist who worked at NPR for well over a decade.
But Public Radio is a LOT more than NPR. Public Radio is every state's own network (if they have one), and it is every Public Radio station in every small burg in the rural US which may be well served with Country and Religious radio stations, but underserved by News Radio stations. In many of these areas, the Public Radio station is the only Radio news that the people have access to.
This CPB Defunding action has put hundreds, if not thousands, of small public radio stations in rural areas of the US, including remote areas of Alaska -- and rural areas of states like Montana, Oregon, Minnesota, and other sparsely populated areas -- in jeopardy. Many small public radio stations in rural areas, along with smaller college stations, depend on the CPB funding for a significant amount of their operations.
Because of the CPB cuts, many smaller stations will go off the air. The people who run and operate KSKO-FM, McGrath, Alaska -- their logo is up top in this article -- think they may end up going off the air eventually because of the CPB budget cuts.
Here is a Guardian article on another small, rural Alaska public radio station, KSDP, located in Sand Point, Alaska -- a small town in the Aleutian Islands, not too far from the Alaska Peninsula, maybe 800 miles or more west of Anchorage.:
Now, you would think that Radio people would be concerned about this, wouldn't you? After all, the funding cuts are not just an attack on Public Radio-- they are an attack on Radio itself. Take, for example, the small rural Oregon city, Burns. Burns is a town of around 3000 people, located in the High Desert region in Eastern Oregon -- it's all sagebrush and cattle country.
The only radio station in Burns that has any news coverage is the Oregon Public Radio station there. The other 10 stations audible in Burns are Country (one of them a rimshot FM from John Day, 50 miles away), AC, and half of the Burns-area FM's are religious FM translators. OBP, which runs KOBN-FM, Burns' Public Radio outlet and its only news station, is going to see some budget cuts because of the CPB defunding.
CPB cuts will also affect JPR -- Jefferson Public Radio -- which has a network of stations in mostly rural, low population Southern Oregon and Northern California, with many of those stations serving isolated areas with no news or public information radio station outside of the Public Radio outlet.
Burns, Oregon, a small cow-town in the High Desert in Eastern Oregon. It's a small city that survives on the traffic from US 20, a few large ranches, a few nearby farms, and it used to have a lumber mill. There is also a nearby Paiute Indian Reservation. Burns is small, but it's the only town and commercial center within 100 square miles of sagebrush, greasewood, and cattle ranching country.
When I was a kid, we passed through there, driving US Highway 20. Several hundred miles to each side of Burns was miles and miles of nothing but broad vistas of dry dirt and sagebrush, with red lightning occurring sometimes during the late afternoons. Burns has only one radio station that has extensive news coverage -- KOBN-FM, 90.1 on the FM dial. That station is part of the Oregon Public Radio network. CPB cuts could adversely affect small town OPB outlets like KOBN.
It's almost as if the powers that be think that people in small cities like Burns don't count.
So you would think that when you go onto a Radio forum, or any of a number of "Radio" based social media subreddits and Facebook groups, that the vast majority of posters on those sites and threads would be angry at the cuts to Public Radio funding, right?
After all, they KNOW that such cuts may cause Radio stations in some regions to disappear, which is bad for Radio. You would think that Radio people would dislike that idea, right?
Not necessarily. With a considerable number of radio people, t's actually the opposite. It turns out that A LOT of Radio people do NOT support Public Radio, if the relative orgy of joy, from many sectors, over the shutting down of CPB is any indication.
Some may allow speech to be stifled if you speak out in favor of Public Radio. Show too much support for CPB and Public Radio online, and you could get temporarily banned on radio forums.
More on that later.
SHUTTING DOWN CPB + A NEW, TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT BILL = SAVINGS.
YEAH. RIGHT.
The fact is that we have a government in the US right now that doesn't want to spend a couple hundred million dollars on Public Radio, but at the same time has passed a large spending bill that could jack up the national deficit by a Trillion.
The consequences of this defunding of CPB is that small Public Radio stations like Alaska's KSKO, a small FM out of McGrath, in rural western Alaska, may end up going off the air because without the CPB funding the station will run out of money. Undoubtedly the small Public Radio FM in Burns, Oregon (KOBN) will have funding troubles as well. Burns' small community of townspeople, small business owners, Native Americans, and ranchers will be hard pressed to come up with the funds to keep KOBN on the air.
And many in Radio think that's fine. They don't care about Radio listeners in rural areas and Indian Reservations, or Native Americans in rural Alaska.
This is an example of one reason that Radio is in decline. Radio people are shooting their own industry -- and their own hobby -- in the foot. Too many Radio people do not believe in Radio anymore.
BAN ME? DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH
Now onto another media in decline: Radio forums. I was recently 'Banned', for a week, from a Radio forum -- one that I used to go to regularly -- basically because I was showing a lot of support for Public Radio, and it looks like someone I may have been arguing with didn't like it, and they may have reported me to the moderators for something I did NOT do -- 'personal attacks'. There also may have been a complaint that the discussion was too 'political'.
I never attack people personally when discussing stuff on the internet. I may attack the position, but I never attack the person. First off -- attacking the person is pointless. Secondly, I'm just not wired that way. Meanwhile, another guy on the thread -- who did actually attack me -- did not get banned. That didn't make sense.
As for the discussion being 'political' -- News Flash: when the Government Defunds Public Radio merely because of government and party politics, that's Political.You can't discuss it without it getting Political.
It's an example of the sort of 'moderation' that just drives people away from a website.
And being that traffic to that site (and others) has declined over the 12 years I was an active member there, driving people away is just not a great idea. I've seen declines in other radio and hobby forum activity as well. It seems that forums in general are in decline.
Some of this decline in radio forum (and other hobby forum) traffic is undoubtedly due to social media taking the attention of Radio people. But when a moderator 'Bans' you for 'Personal Attacks' that you didn't make, that ultimately becomes a problem.
Not for me -- but for the radio forum. Because other users can see how things turned out. If you are a site owner, and your moderation is not even-handed, you're just telling long-term participants to go elsewhere. And that is not a good thing if forums in general are declining in activity.
Forum site operators: When you treat your regular posters poorly, they're going to go elsewhere. I don't mean to sound like a dick about it, but it's just fact.
Reddit and FB have tons of alternative options. The internet is a vast place with infinite competition.
Bye Bye.
SOME GOOD RADIO FORUMS I GO TO
I want to make clear that the vast majority of the Radio forums and sites I have mentioned on this blog since 2015 are very good ones.
These forums and sites are ones like RadioReference,HFUnderground, and the Antique Radio Forum are very good sites, with a lot of good people, and they seem to be very fairly run. I recommend those sites to any Radio fan or DXer. There are subreddits like the ShortwavePlus subreddit that are also very good.
A few older sites, like the BCBLogger / Shortwave Logbook site, and the old AM-DX site, got shut down because the owners either lost interest or didn't want to spend the money on the sites anymore. Any time a forum or radio site disappears, the DX Radio hobby is less for it..... One less place to go to share DX loggings with other DXers.
However, forums need to pay attention to how they run their sites, if what I just experienced is any indication. There are plenty of alternatives if someone jacks you around -- you just go elsewhere. Which is what I have done.
WEEK LONG BAN? NOPE.
Like I said, the 'ban' I received was for a week. Or so that website thinks. But they are in error.
I've banned that site from my computer forever.
The Fourth Of July this year was better than the Fourth Of July last year -- when I took this picture. A neighbor shot off some safe-and-sane fireworks for his young son, and we had fund talking and I enjoyed seeing the small street display. Some other neighbors further down the street were also shooting off fountains and safe and sane fireworks on the pavement as well. Every single firework is banned in my city, no matter how safe it truly is. It's what happens when the 'Karens' of the world seem to be running it. But sometimes, just sometimes, common sense prevails for a few hours, so small kids can have good memories, of times spent with Dad, that they'll keep with them forever.
IN OTHER LIFE....
I've been trying to enjoy the better weather here in Seattleland, and I'm missing my cats. All of them died, at the beginning of June. Racofrats got sick and died within 2 days, and my outdoor kitty, Tigger, disappeared and I never found him. He always stayed right on the porch. Something happened, and I don't know what. Tigger was 18 years old.
I still have been SWLing, DXing, etc. Mostly checking out the HF ham radio bands, and sometimes the SWBC bands. I haven't been MW DXing at all the past several months. The ionospheric conditions have been more or less mediocre since December or January (see my previous blog article "Solar Cycle 25 Is A Dud" for an explanation of why that probably is), but there have been some bright spots here and there where European and Latin American ham stations are audible on either 20 Meters SSB or 20 Meters CW.
The bands up above 20 Meters have been invariably DEAD. 40 Meters still has a variety of activity, depending on the evening.
THE MYSTERIOUS 'A' BEACON
One of the more interesting new signals on 40 Meters is a new, apparently unlicensed experimental CW beacon on 7259 kHz, which I call the 'A' Beacon. It's a continuous 'A' sent in marginally executed Morse Code, and it starts coming in when darkness hits, and sometimes gets very strong during the night -- sometimes slamming my Yaesu FRG-7 at S4 (out of 5) signal strengths.
It fades out as last as mid to late morning. I've talked to a couple guys on the ShortwavePlus subreddit, and so far we aren't sure where this mysterious 'A' Beacon could be located.
A couple DXers out of California (on HFUnderground) have been reporting the 'A' Beacon since early June, and their signal reports seem to be really good -- so the 'A' Beacon was probably set up, somewhere in the Western US, at the beginning of June, and it probably has a decent dipole antenna at least.
So, if you are anywhere in the Western US and Canada -- or even elsewhere -- set the controls of your SW spaceship for 7259, put on the headphones, and listen. During the early morning hours sometimes a Broadcast station out of China on 7260 interferes with the 'A' Beacon -- that's when you get creative -- use a narrower bandwidth (my new Tecsun PL-330 will go down to 500 Hz bandwidth), or tune to USB and tune upwards towards the CW beacon's 'lower sideband'.
UPDATE: August, 2025: At least one poster at the HFU forum says the 'A' beacon may be a ham radio operator who put up the beacon to drive away some other hams from the 7259 frequency -- apparently there is a dispute of some sort. The 'A' beacon does seem to come and go a bit sporadically.
Unlicensed Morse Code Beacons are a fun aspect to the Shortwave hobby. There is one CW Beacon I tune into regularly, to see if it's there -- the Desert Whooper on 4096 kHz. I tune into it using LSB and the 'Whoops' sound really cool that way. The Desert Whooper usually is in the static, but when the ionosphere is cooperating it can hit my radios with S2 or S2+ signals.
Here is a listing of these unlicensed, low power CW Beacons on the HFUnderground site.:
Not only are there strange, unlicensed Morse Code 'beacons' on the SW bands, there also are other oddities, mysterious signals sent for minutes at a time, in Morse Code, and usually these are long series of numbers, or alphanumeric characters.
Some of these CW/Morse Code numbers stations have been IDed as Russian and other military stations. Others? No one really knows for sure.
Now the Morse Code used in these signals isn't super fast. I can read Morse Code between 5 and 7 words per minute, which is very slow. But it's fast enough to ID a station or to at least ID the nature of the station.
And Wednesday evening, July 23rd (July 24th, 0347 UTC), I was tuning my trusty Tecsun PL-330 up the bands and I stumbled upon a weak, but readable, Morse Code station on 13202 kHz, sending a long series of numbers, with a couple letters (mainly T and E) thrown in here and there. I copied a few strings of numbers: .5582498866....T U 7195...777... There were some periods of fading where I couldn't read the numbers. Finally, around.353 UTC / 8:53 p.m. Local time, the station ended with a "T E T".
Then there was nothing but static. It was just a random, chance reception of a Shortwave mystery.
It's just another case of 'you never know what you'll hear' on Shortwave.
And with that, my friends, stay cool, and
Peace.
C.C., draft finished Friday night, July 26th, 2025.
Posted Monday night, August 25th, 2025.
I sat on this post for over three weeks, because of the section about my debacle with the radio forum I no longer go to anymore. I wanted to take time and cool off, and then edit it down. I also had to find and remove some links on a few of my blog articles.
The debacle was an education, for me, in what can go wrong with an internet website. There are numerous alternatives out there, all competing for screen and device time. Just like in the Radio industry in general. All that competition for your audience.
No website or forum has a monopoly. The internet is the definition of infinite competition.
The antenna farm in Madagascar for MWV New Life Station, whose Russian broadcasts to Eastern Europe make it all the way to my location near Seattle -- even when the rest of the SW bands are dead, or mostly dead.
(photo courtesy Russian MWV website)
DEAR READERS: I'd forgotten I had this article written up. Here 'tis, over two months late. That said, DX conditions have still been poor over the past two months, so much of what I say here still applies. Plus, the new battery issue I encountered is probably informative -- batteries can be bad out of the box! Ya learn something new every day.
Peace, C.C.
I am still in a funk over losing my cat, and dealing with a bunch of different stuff here at home, but I have managed to tune the Shortwave bands -- usually in the morning hours, when Asia comes in -- and the MW band at night when I'm in my writing Den, or later at night when I am ready to hit the hay.
I am also working on finishing an article on the latest Solar Cycle, and how mediocre it is -- something I've held off on publishing for several months, in the event that the Solar Cycle somehow begins delivering the DX that it's supposed to be delivering (hint: so far, it really hasn't). There have been a few bright spots where there have been mornings and afternoons with some DX on the SW, and MW at night has picked up slightly, but it's also had swaths of 3-4 days where there are mediocre conditions, too.
That article will be posted by mid-October.
That said, the past few days here in mid-September SW and MW have been mediocre at best, abysmal at worst. I tune my DX-394 + wire antenna during the mornings and often during the evenings, and I use my Superadios, Sangean PR-D5, or Sangean PR-D4W for MW DXing at night (and -- on rare occasions, my trusty Panasonic RF-B45), all with a milk crate loop.
The last couple weeks have been pretty mediocre on both the SW bands and the MW band. Sometimes the most interesting catch I've had is the Desert Whooper on 4096 kHz, a small, low power beacon transmitting 'whoop' noises and some CW out of an undisclosed location in Desert California.
This particular morning (the 17th of September) was an example. As I was sipping my coffee, waking up, and tuning my DX-394, I heard mostly static. The 30 Meter Ham Band was dead, no Pinneberg military RTTY on 10100 kHz, no NAU USN RTTY at 10153, no CW and not even any FT8. WWVH on 10000 kHz was in the mud, and WWV was non-existent. The 20 Meter Ham band was dead except for very weak FT8 noises around 14075-14075, and the 40 Meter Ham band was nothing but static, except for a local (WA-OR-BC) net high up in the band, and even then I could only hear the two strongest stations.
The 31 Meter Band, which is a good SW broadcast band for Asia during the mornings, was nothing but static.
Except for Madagascar.
Lo and behold, 9885 kHz had not just a carrier, but audio! Pop music! The signal was weak, but quite audible in the static, and fairly readable. Then I heard some talk by a woman in Russian, and then a man talking in Russian, ID'ing the station as 'KNLS', which is a Christian station that operates out of Anchor Point, Alaska, usually beaming programs in Russian to Siberia and Chinese and English to Asia.
But KNLS also has a station in the Southern Hemisphere, that broadcasts to Russia and other regions of Western Eurasia from Madagascar.
This is the station I was listening to: the MWV New Life Station being transmitted from Mahajanga, a small city in NW Madagascar, not too far from the Indian Ocean coast!
MWV New Life Station seems to be the KNLS service to Western Russia, while KNLS proper serves Siberia. Both stations play a lot of pop music that ranges from 80's pop to 2010's pop. This morning I heard a pop-R&B track sung by a young woman I had never heard before, and then Harry Styles' 2017 hit Sign Of The Times.
After some more talk in Russian, they played some choral music, which was quite good.
I was able to record some of the Harry Styles' track and the choral music on my phone.
It was very odd hearing Madagascar on my DX-394 -- a very capable radio -- and not hearing anything else except very weak carriers with no audio, or static. But it is what it is: that station in Madagascar truly gets out!
What is really cool, at least for me, is that Madagascar is the closest large, populated land mass to the Antipodes of my home region -- it's on the opposite side of the world from here.
The real Antipodes of Seattle, of course, is near Kerguelen Island in the Southern Indian Ocean, but there are no radio stations on Kerguelen (aside from possibly a local, low power FM for the French scientific and military station there). Madagascar, maybe 1800 miles to the north of Kerguelen, shall suffice. :-)
Like I've said before, both here and elsewhere, when concerning the somewhat disappointing Solar Cycle, there are always some surprises, and this was one of them. To not hear much of anything slamming my radio out of Asia, and no Morse Code or sideband on an early Fall morning when the SW bands should be hopping with signals, only to hear Madagascar beaming a broadcast to European Russia, is just proof that even when conditions are down sometimes you get surprises.
FIRING UP MY REALISTIC DX-398 -- and a new BATTERY ISSUE
With a SIMPLE, EASY Fix!
Just this week -- Monday, to be exact -- I decided to fire up my trusty DX-398, which is probably the best radio I have for SSB and Morse Code reception. My DX-394 comes close, as does my Panasonic RF-B45, but the DX-398 pulls in Sideband signals just a hair better than both of them.
That is, when the signal levels across the band aren't cutting down a couple decibels, only to come back up 10-15 seconds later, as happened to me recently....
I had this happen Monday morning. It was odd -- nothing I'd heard before. Strange dipping and increasing of all noises -- both signals and static. It was like someone was messing around with an RF Gain or Volume control.
At first I thought it was the radio. My antenna is pretty solid -- being indoor, there is no corrosion. And I'd never heard signal levels, across an entire ham band, dip 2-3 db and then go back up maybe 2-3 db just 10-15 seconds later.
For a second I thought it might be the battery connection -- I'd just put in new batteries (Walgreen Alkalines I probably got in the 2010's some time, so they were 'new old-stock' batteries), and maybe I'd not put them in right. I double checked the way the batteries were inserted. They were firmly in place, with no corrosion to be seen anywhere.
Now, I'd had two separate issues with my DX-398 dealing with batteries in the past. One was in 2012 or so when the negative terminal spring weakened where it was soldered to the main PCB board. A good dollop of new solder fixed that. Then last year or so there was a time when the DX-398 would turn itself off after a minute of working, on brand new batteries. That was a bit of corrosion on the positive battery terminal plate -- something that was hard to see, but definitely there. Once I cleaned it, the 398 worked like a charm until the batteries were spent maybe a month or two later.
So this time, when the signal levels on the 10 Meter and 20 Meter bands were wigging like someone was messing with my RF Gain or Volume, I at first thought it was the radio.
At the same time, I realised that it COULD have been propagation -- although that sort of band-wide dipping and increasing of all signals (and static) levels was something I'd never before encountered in all my years of DXing. I'd seen dips and returns in signals, but not the entire band -- static and all.
This was something new. Something was awry.
I rechecked the antenna clip and connector. All was fine.
I took the new, old-stock batteries out of my DX-398 and put them in my trusty Radio Shack 200629 (the batteries in that radio were next to dead). I fired it up. It worked great, until the same thing started happening. Dips in both signals and static. It was almost like what I experienced when my antenna terminal was wonky, though I knew it was 100% secure -- and the DX-398's antenna terminal has always been 100%. And instead of cutting volume and then cutting it back up, like someone hit a switch, in this case it was like someone quickly turning an RF Gain or Volume control.
Same problem, both radios. That meant the problem was external to the radios. Meaning it was the antenna -- or the batteries.
I switched off the 200629 and DX'ed with my DX-394 (which works on AC power), deciding to let the problem sit for a while.
Later that day, the thought occurred to me that maybe the problem was indeed the actual batteries. Maybe they had gone bad in the package, even though they looked clean and normal. I'd heard of such things happening before.
After all, if a battery lowers in juice, all the circuits of a radio will decrease in volume and gain. Usually you don't notice this when your batteries weaken because it's gradual. But if batteries dive for some reason, you'll hear it. And when batteries are old or bad, they might put out 6 Volts for a while and then dip to 4 or 5 Volts, before surging back up to 6 Volts again. And your radio's circuits will be affected. A voltage regulator (in most radios) can only do so much -- it can't create power that isn't there.
Of course, this sort of issue hadn't happened to me before. But it was worth investigating.
So I went to my battery box and pulled out another set of new AA's, this time they were Energizers I probably bought before the Pandemic hit. Maybe they were 5-6 years old, but they were alkaline, so they should still be good.
I popped them into my Radio Shack 200629, Tuesday morning. I DX'ed the bands for over an hour with no glitching, no bizarre dipping of signals whatsoever.
The problem was the batteries. They were old, yes, but they were still in their case. But obviously, they were weak enough to where they were varying in output, and it was messing with the gain and the RF, IF and AF circuits of the radios.
You learn something new every day.
So remember kids, sometimes the issue you may be having with your radio just might be the batteries.
The Esperanto flag -- representing the Esperanto language, and the people all over the World who speak it. Esperanto is an international language that was constructed in what is now Poland, in the 1880's. It was intended as an easy-to-learn, second language to unite people all over the world.
Flag courtesy of Wikipedia, flag illustrated by Richard H. Geoghegan
Last weekend -- Saturday a.m. to be precise -- I awoke early., around 7:30 a.m. I couldn't get back to sleep, so I did the next best thing -- I switched on my Radio Shack 200629 AM-FM-SW-LW radio, clipped my indoor wire antenna to the whip, and tuned around the Shortwave bands to see if there was anything on, while I sipped some tea.
I started by checking out the 20 Meter ham band, and heard a few contacts, both on Sideband and CW (Morse Code), including a couple hams from California (N6PF calling CQ CW, and K6MRC talking to some guy in New Zealand I couldn't hear).
Then I tuned to the 25 Meter SW Broadcast band, and heard North Korea in English on 11710 kHz, and NHK Japan broadcasting to South Asia in Hindi on 11655 -- NHK was a weak, semi-readable signal. The language was muddled up by the fading that I wasn't sure what it was, and I had to look it up.
My trusty Radio Shack 200629, which I use nearly every morning or evening to DX the Shortwaves, and often the MW/AM band as well. It has great sound on headphones, with the tone control being very useful in either enhancing the audio or reducing interference. I recently fixed the connection between the whip antenna and the radio's main PCB board, and the radio has worked like a gem ever since.
The North Korean broadcast was fairly loud, with no distortion at the transmitter. They must have fixed it, as it was a good clean signal. Once again, the North Korean music was unique. Every time I hear North Korea I listen to the bass guitar player, because he's really good. I have no idea what bass he's playing -- it sounds like a Fender Precision, but I don't know if they have those in North Korea. I also am not sure if it's one particular bass player I hear in the music played on the Voice Of Korea, or if it's several.
And, of course, there isn't any info available on North Korean musicians on the internet, aside from the Wiki article, which does name some of them, but one is never sure if the list is current or not. And there definitely is no information on the type of equipment the players use.
The bass guitar is pretty prominent in the mix on nearly every pop-style track that is played on the Voice of Korea. I think it's mainly one particular bassist, because there apparently are only one or two official radio music ensembles in the country.
I call the guy the James Jamerson of North Korea.
After listening to that a while, I tuned my Radio Shack 200629 further up the band, and heard NHK Japan broadcasting to SE Asia in Japanese on 11815, and some Korean language on 11985, which was probably Radio Free Asia being transmitted from the island of Tinian, in the Marianas.
I switched radios to my XHDATA D-328 (+wire antenna) for a bit and heard China Radio International broadcasting to Europe in Turkish, from Kashgar, on 13710 kHz in the 21 Meter Band (around 1605 UTC). I heard Russian language (including the Russian words "radist'" and "pobachiti") on 13650 (around 1555 UTC), which apparently was NHK World Radio Japan broadcasting to European Russia from a transmitter in the United Arab Emirates.
STRANGE SPEECH IN THE 21 METER BAND
I switched back to my 200629 radio and then tuned in to a fairly strong signal on 13670 kHz. I couldn't tell what language woman announcer was speaking. By now it was just after 1700 UTC. The signal was S4-S5 overall, but the fades were deep enough to make the unidentified language appear murky sounding and mysterious. In the background, some Chinese sounding, easy listening instrumental music was playing, so I figured it had to be China Radio International -- but what was this unusual language I was hearing?
It sounded a lot like some sort of accented Spanish.... And sometimes it sounded almost like Lithuanian, too, because of the word endings on many of the words.
For a while I thought it was indeed heavily accented Spanish. But if it was CRI, the language probably wouldn't be accented, as most of CRI's announcers are very close to native speakers in accent.
Some of the words seemed to fit Spanish.... But there were other words and pronunciations that were nothing like Spanish, and nothing like Italian or Romanian, either. There were some odd sounds, and bizarre sounding word endings (many with the endings "-yi" and "-oyi", along with words that didn't seem to fit any language I either was acquainted with or had heard much. Some of the consonants sounded Portuguese or Italian.
I finally had to look up the information on the broadcast on my EiBi text file, which lists SW broadcasts by frequency, station, time in UTC, target area, and language.
It was China Radio International, all right. Broadcasting to Europe, from Beijing.... In Esperanto!
Now, I've heard of Esperanto before. It's a language that was put together by an enterprising guy who wanted to create an easy-to-learn secondary language that he hoped would be a language of international commerce, and also bring people together around Europe -- and the greater world.
I knew very little about Esperanto, although I was introduced to the concept when I was a kid. I had gotten a science fiction pulp magazine that always featured stories by different authors, and this edition of the magazine had international writers in it -- Soviet, German, French, and even Esperanto writers. I don't remember much about the Esperanto author's story, but there was a little bit of dialogue in Esperanto -- the space people in the tale apparently spoke the language. Cu vi Esperanton? said one character to another in the story ("do you speak Esperanto?"). Apparently, the space people (or time travellers?) in the story were able to speak it.
It's all I remember of the story, and until recently it was all I knew about Esperanto.
But I'd never actually heard Esperanto -- until last weekend. It's an interesting language.
SO, WHAT EXACTLY IS ESPERANTO, ANYWAY?
It turns out that the man who developed Esperanto -- a Jewish opthamologist named L.L. Zamenhof -- knew several languages, as he lived in Poland -- when it was still a part of Czarist Russia. The city he lived in -- Bialystok -- had four main ethnic and language groups -- Poles, Jews, Germans and Russians -- and the four groups apparently didn't get along. Mr. Zamenhof thought that a common, neutral language would help groups like the four peoples in his region get along.
So he created Esperanto out of Spanish, French, Italian, German, Yiddish, Greek, Polish and Russian, and bits and pieces of other languages, trying to make one that would have at least some commonality with the languages that most groups in Europe would be acquainted with. The language gained interest, although it apparently had a connection with leftist politics, so some countries frowned on Esperanto's use in the early 20th Century. Most Esperanto speakers are in the northern and central EU, parts of Brazil and Uruguay, the Far East, and the Eastern US. The number of Esperanto speakers seems to vary according to studied estimate, ranging somewhere in the tens of thousands worldwide.
Here is the Wiki on the Esperanto language. The story is fascinating, really.:
As mentioned, there is a lot of information on Esperanto in the Wiki on Wikipedia. But if you want to actually hear it, and you have a Shortwave radio, you may be able to hear it on China Radio International on 13670 kHz between 1700-1800 UTC, when they beam the program to the EU. If I can hear it here in the PNW US on my limited radio equipment (it came in well on my XHDATA D-328 and 25 ft. indoor antenna), radio listeners in the EU, the Eastern US and Canada, and other parts of the world should be able to pick it up.
CRI also has other broadcasts in Esperanto, on 7265 (1930 UTC), 7300 (2200 UTC), 9440 (1300 UTC), 9745 (1930 UTC), 9880 (2200 UTC), 11635 (1100 UTC), 11650 (1300 & 1700 UTC), and 15110 (1100 UTC) along with the broadcast I heard on 13670 at 1700 UTC.
Of course, many of these broadcasts may be aimed at different parts of the world. Most seem to be aimed in the direction of the EU, with one broadcast possibly aimed at Siberia or North America. Radio Habana Cuba also has Esperanto broadcasts on 6000 kHz (0700 UTC), 11760 (1500 UTC) and 15140 kHz at 1500 UTC. I have not heard any of those broadcasts yet, though.
You can see the schedules by using the drop downs on the handy Shortwave schedule website, Short-wave.info.:
I've been able to pick up the CRI broadcasts in Esperanto on 13670 on my Tecsun PL-398just off the whip, so the signal definitely gets out from Kashgar. If you're in the EU or North America it's definitely worth trying.
Lately I've been doing a lot of SW listening to my XHDATA D-328, clipping my 25 ft / 8 meter indoor wire to the whip, and hearing the world with it. Through headphones the radio has a good, clear, and rich sound, and it performs as well as my other radios on SW and FM (no stereo on FM, though). It seems to roughly match my Tecsun PL-398 in performance, with what sounds like 2.5 kHz bandwidth in selectivity (as opposed to the 2 and 3 kHz bandwidth on the Tecsun).
For just $15 USD, the XHDATA D-328 is a little marvel. And lately, because I'm short on AA batteries, the rechargeable BL-5C battery in the XHDATA has become a very handy feature. :-) The BL-5C lasts maybe a month with daily use. When it gets weak, the D-328's reception weakens, the tuning may not 'latch onto' very weak signals adequately, and the volume also noticeably decreases. It recharges in maybe 2.5 hours, using the radio's charging system.
As for the analog dial, I've been able to ID most SW stations just using this radio and my EiBi text file, being that the SW bands are not super crowded, and a lot of the stronger stations are fairly easy to ID as I've heard them previously. The past few mornings I've heard a lot of stations beaming to and from Asia on this radio. I'm quite impressed.
....AND ESPERANTO MUSIC
While I was listening to their Esperanto program, and taking in the language, CRI played two pop songs -- one of them sounding like a Brazilian jazz-pop piece, and the other one sounding like a 1970's or 1980's pop track, and I think at least one of them was sung in Esperanto.
I'm certain there can't be a ton of Esperanto singing musicians in the world, so hearing those songs is probably a rarity.
It's just another one of those fascinating Shortwave adventures. Like I've said before on this blog -- you never know exactly what you will hear when you tune the SW radio bands.
Since that first reception of CRI in Esperanto on 13670, I've heard the program two more times, and the last time -- Tuesday a.m., June 4th -- it came in SIO445, with just a little fading. This time the woman was talking in Esperanto about Chinese languages and dialects (or at least it seemed she was talking about that, from the few words I understood, including "Chiniyo" and "lingvo" -- 'China' and 'language' in Esperanto), and she was talking over a soft piano solo piece. Then CRI played three pop and folk/pop songs, presumably sung in Esperanto, followed by a couple announcements in Esperanto by a man and a woman. The man finished the broadcast by saying "Dankon", which is apparently "thank you" in Esperanto.
It was cool to hear.
THE 21 METER BAND AND 19 METER BAND WERE DELIVERING
Nearby, on 13760 kHz were two separate broadcasts to the EU in English after 1800 UTC -- North Korea and China Radio International were both battling it out. It's surprising that both of these stations would choose the same frequency, target area, and time slot for their English broadcasts. On 13810 CRI was broadcasting a lot of soft music towards the EU, especially Germany, after 1800 UTC. I've only heard music broadcast by CRI in this time slot, never any talk in German. The music is generally easy listening instrumentals, sometimes with vocals, too.
The 21 Meter Band has been fairly hopping the past couple weeks during the mornings here, after a few years where I didn't hear much on it. Most of what I heard is Asia, along with a very weak Radio Marti low in the band.
The 19 Meter band has been delivering broadcasts to and from Asia during the mornings lately also. although Tuesday a.m. I also heard three religious stations broadcasting to India from Madagascar and the Philippines, and from China to the EU and Mideast.
MIZORAM STATE, ONCE AGAIN!
Around 1523 UTC, on 15605 kHz, I heard Adventist World Radio broadcasting (from Madagascar) to Mizoram State, India, in the Mizo language, which has around 700,000 speakers. I wrote an article previously about Reach Beyond Australia broadcasting to Mizoram State's 40K~ speakers of Nga La. Here was another case of a religious broadcaster reaching out to a small language group -- in this case, a language spoken by just 700K people in a fairly remote area of India. For the first few minutes I heard a man talking in a language I definitely didn't understand, and then there was a pop-like hymn performed by a few singers and a small band, followed by a woman talking, and then another music piece.
I obviously had to look up the schedule to see which station and language I was actually listening to. I used EiBi, which I keep as a text file on my tablet computer.
EiBi's Shortwave schedules can be found here. I use the frequency listing text file.:
Earlier, around 1440 UTC, I heard Trans World Radio broadcasting to Northern India and Pakistan in the Urdu language on 15440 kHz. They played a couple different musical pieces sung by a man and a woman, in South Asian music scales, and the music included tablas and accordions, along with a sitar and some unison string ensembles. TWR's transmitters were in Madagascar. The signals were fairly readable, SIO 252 on both my Radio Shack 200629 and XHDATA D-328 (I switched between the two to save the AA batteries on my 200629 -- the XHDATA has a rechargeable BL-5C battery). The XHDATA, with its DSP, also sometimes brought in the signal a little more readably.
In the same hour, Radio Vaticana broadcast to India on 15490 kHz in Hindustani, Tamil, and Malayam (and possibly the Kannada language also), the signal making its way to my radios from the transmitter in the Philippines, signal strength SIO 353. They also played some South Asian music that sounded similar to 'movie music'. The Tamil language was interesting to hear, as the broadcast was fairly clear in reception. Tamil sounds slightly like the other South Asian languages to the American ear, although you don't hear the word "hai" (= "be" or "is" in English). The vowel sounds are similar to Hindustani languages, though. During some of the talks, I heard the announcers mention "Francis" a lot (Pope Francis, most probably).
On 15250, around 1550 UTC, I heard a strong broadcast in English, with two men speaking in US accents discussing China's economy, and issues that China has with the US, as well as what the commentators called the gradual "de-dollarization" of the World economy. This was China Radio International's broadcast to the EU in English, from Kashgar. The program cut off abruptly, mid-sentence, at 1557 UTC. Then it immediately continued on CRI's English service to the Middle East, that transmission originating in Urumchi. I heard all this on my Tecsun PL-398 and XHDATA D-328 with my indoor wire antenna.
On 15550 kHz, from 1505 UTC onwards, I heard Radio Tamazuj broadcasting in Sudanese Arabic to the Sudan, from Madagascar. The signal strength was SIO 252. It sounded like a newscast by two people. Later on, there was a lot of talk mentioning "Sudan" and "Khartoum." I heard this mostly on my XHDATA D-328 with the indoor wire antenna.
These were just a few of the stations I heard in just a couple hours drinking some tea and coffee and tuning around on three of my radios. I used the XHDATA a lot because it's fun to see what it will pull in -- and also, I am short on AA's, so I don't want to use the ones up in my Radio Shack 200629,Tecsun, and Panasonic more quickly than necessary.
I never used to be a fan of rechargeable batteries. But I guess I'm slowly coming around. The BL-5C's are decent batteries. They seem to last a while in my XHDATA D-328 and Grundig G2.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST, RTTY ON 14001-14002 kHz -- an INTRUDER?
Over the past several weeks I've noticed a fairly strong RTTY (or other FSK / Frequency Shift Keying) station on 14001, or very close to that (two of the BFO/SSB/CW radios I use most often do not show frequencies less than 1 kHz increments -- my most accurate one has dead batteries right now).
From what I understand, RTTY isn't part of any country's 20 Meter Ham band plan in this part of the 20 Meter band. Yet this station seems to be there most mornings, sometimes at S4 or S5 signals, and the signal propagates, indicating that it is hundreds of miles away.
I heard it on the 26th of May at 0811 UTC; the 28th of May at 0914 UTC and afterwards; May 31st at 1113 UTC (14001 or 14002 kHz on my Radio Shack 200629; the station was very weak that a.m.); June 1st at 1506 UTC (14002~ kHz); June 2nd at 1858 UTC (signal was S2 that morning); on June 3rd it was MIA; and June 4th I heard it at 14002~ kHz at S3, at 1632 UTC. Earlier in the week the signals were more like S4 and S5. Earlier today it was MIA, as was most activity on the 20 Meter Band this a.m.
I'm guessing this station might be a military station somewhere in the Pacific region, or maybe Asia somewhere -- this is because of the propagation pattern, which seems to favor the Asia-Pacific region between 0800-1800 UTC at my location.
Internet searches on this mysterious transmission come up with nothing. Looking at some of the IARU intrusion reports I can't see an RTTY station reported being that low in the 20 Meter ham band. An Irish ham who monitors the 20 Meter band for intruders (for the IARU) noticed RTTY / FSK transmissions on 14005 kHz, at least once during the same time of the day I've heard them (1200 UTC on March 11th of this year, and "other days as well"; he called the signals "strong and persistent"), but he's in Ireland, and I'm in the NW US hearing something similar at least 3 kHz lower -- I'm certain I'm hearing it around 14001-14002 kHz.
It's just another one of those Shortwave mysteries, I guess.
The QSL card / information card on the mysterious, low power Beacon station the "Desert Whooper".
Courtesy the HFUnderground 'High Frequency Beacon" Wiki
A MYSTERIOUS, 'WHOOPING' SOUND ON SHORTWAVE --
possibly the 'DESERT WHOOPER'!
In one of my last articles -- the one on the Indonesian, chanting "Lima Pirates" -- I mentioned some of the mysteries on SW that can be heard -- one of them being unlicensed 'beacons'. These stations are small operations, usually placed in remote locations (like the SW US desert), and they are solar powered. At night they transmit various noises on the SW band -- some of these beacons transmit an Identifier in Morse Code, and some others can transmit strange, pitch shifting sounds. One of them transmits what can only be called "whoop" noises.
This "whooping", low-power beacon transmitter -- apparently located in the SW US desert somewhere -- is known as the Desert Whooper.
I heard this 'whooping' last night, on 4096 kHz, using the SSB/BFO on my Radio Shack 200629 (+ 25 ft. wire), just after midnight, local time (0740-0745 UTC). After a few minutes it seemed to put out a "W" and a few other letters or characters in Morse Code, but the fading made it impossible to read the other characters. The signal overall was very weak (less than S1 on a scale of S1-S5), but the whooping was quite audible. It sounded pretty cool. There may have been another beacon in there somewhere, but I only heard the 'whooping' noises and the "W".
Apparently there are a few similar, low power beacons located around 4096 kHz, most of them putting out Morse Code 'dits' or 'dashes'. The beacon chasers give them nicknames. The HF Underground website has an article on them here.:
Here is a YouTube vid posted in 2020 of the Desert Whooper. When I heard it, it sounded a bit similar, although my reception was much, much weaker. This was recorded from California, a lot closer to the location where this small, low power Beacon is located.:
Like I've said, the HF/SW spectrum has a lot of mysterious sounds. You never know what you will hear!
HEARING THE WORLD, JUST FROM YOUR CHAIR
For those of you readers who aren't into radio distance listening, I hope this article gives you an idea of what's out there, bouncing off the ionosphere, from places like Kashgar, Urumchi, Beijing, Shaanxi province, other provinces in China, Madagascar, the Philippines, North Korea, Botswana (VOA broadcasts to Africa from there), Japan, Taiwan, and other places in the world. It's like travelling all over the planet and not leaving your chair. And hearing the signals bounce off the ionosphere is really cool. You can literally hear the distance.
IN CLOSING, SOME ESPERANTO MUSIC...
I'll close this with three tracks I found in Esperanto, as examples of the language. I hadn't heard of any of these artists, nor had I heard them on CRI -- I just did a search for music in Esperanto and they came up. The first one seems to have an anti-war message, the second one sounds Brazilian -- the third one, maybe Brazilian also? As I mentioned, there are Esperanto speakers in Brazil and Uruguay, so a Brazilian sounding Esperanto artist would be plausible.
This track is more Brazilian sounding, a song that seems to be about peace? It's by a singer named Daniel Haddad.:
This track has flutes, acoustic guitars, and various percussion. No idea what it's about. The words are printed onscreen, though.... I think the singer and musicians are Brazilian.:
This next track is also Brazilian, associated with the Brazilian Esperanto league. The singer is Merlin. It's an electronic pop track. Lyrics are there to read -- although, if you're like me, you have little, if any idea, what they are saying.:
It seems that a lot of Esperanto enthusiasts are in the Southern states of Brazil.
I've always found languages fascinating. I can read English (obviously), Norwegian (maybe 80%), Swedish (maybe 70%?), some German, a lot of Spanish, a little bit of Russian, a few words and phrases in Ukrainian, little bit of Dutch and Afrikaans, some Danish, and bits and pieces of other languages here and there. So this Esperanto thing is fascinating to me. I probably won't be trying to learn Esperanto because right now I'm trying to get German down better....
Anyway, with this, I'm going to sign off for right now.
I have a couple other articles I'm still working on, which I will probably post later in the month.
Until next time, my friends, 'dankon' (Esperanto for 'thank you'), and
Peace.
C.C., June 5th, 2024
Edited the title & article on June 6th, as I had misread the schedule and thought the CRI Esperanto broadcast was from Kashgar -- it actually is from Beijing transmitters.
