AUSTRALIAN AM STATION 6WF to Leave the AM band for FM

The transmitting tower for sunny Perth, Australia's ABC radio station 6WF, which is moving from the AM band to the FM band after decades of serving Perth and a large part of SW Western Australia.

If you look closely, you can see the Perth skyline in the far background. The tower is in the Perth suburb of Hamerslsy, in the northern part of the city. 

photo from ABC.net.au

A radio station I used to listen to -- at least when they had a shortwave relay -- is leaving the AM band for FM in late February this year, after 94 years on the AM band.

6WF, Perth, Australia's main ABC Radio outlet, is being moved to FM as the ABC determines that with more and more cars being FM only, taking 6WF off the AM band is the best way to serve listeners. The switchover from AM to FM will occur on February 23rd.

6WF-AM has been on the air in the Perth region for 94 years, as the transmitter installation and tower date from 1934.

For those who don't know it, Perth is a large city of two million people on the Indian Ocean, and it's the capital of Western Australia, Australia's largest state by area. Perth is also known as the 'most isolated capital city in the world', being that it is farther from other metros than nearly every other national or state capital on the planet.

A CITY WITH AN EXTENSIVE MUSICAL HISTORY

Perth is the city where late AC/DC singer Bon Scott lived as a kid, after his family moved there from Kirriemuir in Scotland. He got his musical start there as a singer for the Valentines. The Australian rock band INXS also got their careers kickstarted in Perth (they were in Perth for 10 months, as the 'Vegetables'). The lead guitarist for the Divinyls, Mark McEntee, was from Perth, and the excellent Aussie glam rock band Supernaut were also from Perth.

I used to listen to 6WF back when I got my first good Shortwave radio, my Realistic DX-160, which was a Christmas gift. With that radio I listened to a lot of different stations, including Radio Australia, various Indonesian stations at night, 'tropical band' radio stations out of Venezuela and Columbia, and 6WF.

SHORTWAVE RELAY STATIONS FOR THE OUTBACK

How could I receive 6WF? Well, back in the day the ABC had several Shortwave outlets to serve the Outback and desert regions of the Australian interior, and being that more than half of Western Australia is desert, with a lot of isolated mining towns, other small towns and farming and other 'stations' in the interior, SW was the best way to reach those people. 

Queensland also had a Shortwave relay station, VLW4, which I think I heard once. It was used to beam ABC radio to the Outback from Brisbane. The Western Australian shortwave relay came in better here, I think because they beamed their signal more in my direction.

The 6WF shortwave relay was officially called VLW6, and their frequency was in the 31 Meter Band. One night (early a.m., actually), I heard a DJ on 6WF play a bunch of music by the La De Da's (including their cool song 'The Place'), and another night he played almost half an album by the band called Flowers, which changed their name to Icehouse.

The transmitter cable for 50KW AM station 6WF in Perth.

photo from ABC.net.au

The shortwave relay station always identified as '6WF/6WN'. The relationship between the two ABC stations I never clearly understood, but 6WF was the main one.

During the early 2000's when I discovered online radio I 'tuned in' to 6WF a few times, as by then they'd switched off the Shortwave relay.

Of course, today Australia has no Shortwave presence at all, aside from the Reach Out Australia religious station in Kununurra, in the Kimberley district of NW Australia. They broadcast religious programs to ethnic minorities in Southern and SE Asia. I posted a short article on Reach Out Australia and my hearing them a couple years ago, which you can read here.:

https://interrocknation.blogspot.com/2024/05/dxing-reach-beyond-australia-hearing.html

The ABC, thanks to the Australian government, pulled the plug on Radio Australia about 6 or 7 years ago, in a move that not only saddened SWL's all over the world, but maddened rural people in the Australian Outback who depended on Radio Australia for news and information.

It's another case of governments not caring about serving people in rural areas. The US took a similar move with pulling the plug on VOA, which took America's message to rural people in Africa and Asia.

You can read the ABC.net.au article on 6WF here.:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-15/perth-am-to-fm-switch-goes-ahead/106343336

IN OTHER LIFE....

The weather here has taken a turn for the cold again, after a two week respite. The barometer has fallen below 30 inches of mercury, which usually means a low pressure system, which usually means more rain, which usually means higher temperatures in Winter. But that's clearly not the case.

I recently rediscovered my Dad's old barometer -- it's a Stellar brand barometer made in what was then called Western Germany. It seems to be reasonably accurate, despite its age. It's been through a bit over the years. An uncle who was staying with us in the 1980's put it in the trash in a drunken rage, and my former GF shoved it in a box of junk because she didn't know that a) it had been in my family for years, and b) I don't think she really knew what a barometer was.

I'm still not sure if you can forecast the weather by reading the changes in a barometer, but it's still cool to track it.

ON SHORTWAVE, THERE IS NOTHING ON BUT HF STOCK TRADERS

OK, I may be exaggerating here a bit, but not really. High Frequency Stock traders -- a.k.a. 'HFT' stations -- get a lot of criticism from hams and SWL's, but they really aren't taking over the SW spectrum. How can they, especially when the SW spectrum is increasingly nothing but static?

And if you look at the actual number of these HFT stations, there really aren't that many of them. Those stations do put out a pretty solid signal, though, and even when the ionosphere is DOWN, their signals still seem to be UP. At least one of them I've heard recently blasts out a massive signal.

HFT aside, radio here has been a bit dull lately. The Shortwave radio conditions have been absolutely abysmal. Last night I tuned around and there was nothing but static, a couple weak ham radio operators out of Oregon, Nevada and California that I couldn't read through the static, and a digital HFT transmission on 6838 kHz, which was around S3 out of 5, signal-wise. I have no idea where this HFT station is located. Most of the known HFT transmitters are in Illinois, but this signal is too strong for Illinois. I only know it as an HFT (High Frequency Trading) station because signals experts on HFU and elsewhere have said the 6838 Digital hash is HFT. 

One of them said that the HFT Digital signal I'm hearing on 6838 kHz, which slams all my radios with S3-S5 signals (even my little XHDATA D-221 picks that signal up -- just off the whip!), may be located in Ritzville, WA -- a small town in Eastern Washington, about 250 miles east of me, in the middle of desert and wheat country.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

EDIT to ADD: About a week after posting this article, I did some research, and I do not think the Digital hash station I'm hearing on 6838 kHz is in Ritzville, as I've looked at the maps online and the FCC address for the Ritzville experimental station shows nothing but sagebrush, and a few curious looking spots that look like boreholes. No towers, no shadows that would indicate towers -- no powerlines, no access roads, really. 

So I don't know what it is I'm hearing on 6838 kHz. It is, so far, a mystery. It also might not even be HFT.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This begs the question: if that station is indeed in Ritzville, why is a High Frequency Trading station located in WA state, and slamming the airwaves with a signal that is estimated to be 400 KW PEP? Are they sending trading data to Japan? South Korea? Taiwan?

Who knows.

When the station on 6838 is not transmitting Digital hash, it often just puts out a carrier. There is another carrier, on 6938, that I often hear. I've not yet heard a digital signal on that frequency.

Down below the 40 Meter ham band is a lot of interesting stuff -- pirates, Indonesian chanters, Latin American fishermen, mystery carriers and military signals, Chinese OTHR, and now, apparently, High Frequency Trading stations. Of course, you'll only hear most of this when the ionosphere is UP. When the ionosphere is DOWN, you don't hear anything except the strongest signals.

And most of Shortwave is basically dead right now. And we're supposedly still in a peak solar cycle period. I'm not buying it, of course. I've said before that this Solar cycle sucks, and I think the relatively dead SW conditions back that assertion up.

EUV is down, and eUV is what makes the ionosphere ionized, and according to NASA, the ionosphere is less ionized than it was in 1995 -- eUV ionization has been consequently dropping since then, and who knows when it will come back?

I've got no idea about that.... Solutions to that problem are far above my pay grade. :-)

BACK TO MEDIUM WAVE

Consequently, I'm getting back into my first radio 'love', MW DXing. Now, the ionosphere sucking also affects the AM band, but there still is plenty to hear on the AM band, especially if you have a good radio and a loop antenna. After a night of hearing nothing but static and unreadable signals (and HFT digital hash) on Shortwave, I grabbed my trusty Sangean PR-D4W and tuned the AM band. It was like night and day. 

I didn't hear any super DX, but I listened to KOAC out of Corvallis, Oregon (550 kHz), with a BBC special on the Indian economy, and then heard some music on KSWB, Seaside OR (840 kHz) and some cool classic hits on CKOR Penticton BC (800 kHz). And it was all in high fidelity, as the PR-D4W has the best sound and performance of any MW radio I own.

You don't even really need an external loop with the PR-D4W, but a loop like the AN-200 will add a db or so, which helps with the weaker stations.

DSP SSB Radios -- they work really well

I'm working on an article about 3 DSP/SSB radios I bought last year -- the Tecsun PL-330, XHDATA D808 and Raddy RF760. My PL-330 has gotten heavy use over the past year, but I've noticed that it does overload, especially on the CB band, and when there is strong, pulse-type RFI. 

A 150 ohm resister clipped between the wire antenna and the Tecsun's whip antenna seems to have cured most of that. I'm hoping the issue (bleedover, blocking, AGC over-reacting to changes in signals, unexpected whistles here and there) is just overloading. We'll see.

I'm also working on an article about a music scene that rose and sort of fell -- the Norway pop music scene, which seemed to really put out a lot of great music ni 2014. That article will come along in 3-4 weeks.

I'll close this article with a great track by the NZ/Oz band The La De Da's, who -- when they made this track -- were headed by guitarist Kevin Borich, who then went on to have a lengthy solo career in Australia.

This is the track I heard on 6WF one warm summer night. "The Place".:

And this track by FLOWERS, the band that became ICEHOUSE, was played a few years later on, some time before 6WF's Shortwave relay went off the air. The song is 'Skin".:

This track, one of my favorites by ICEHOUSE, was not played on 6WF, but it's one of Icehouse's better tracks, from 1984, 'Sidewalk". It's got a kickass bass line and guitar chords, and really cool use of the Fairlight Computer.:

Until next time, stay warm, friends (for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere). 

Peace.

C.C., Feb. 19th, 2026.

ADDENDUM, February 25th, 2026:

As I added -- in blue -- in this article, I am not sure the Digital hash station I'm hearing on 6838 kHz is High Frequency Trading, and I'm certain it's NOT in Ritzville, WA, because I looked at the online maps -- both Google and Bing maps -- and see nothing but a flat plot of land with sagebrush at the location where the FCC license address says the Ritzville experimental station is. So I do not know what I'm hearing. But it's digital, and it's noisy, and it runs at various hours during the day, for hours at a time. The typical transmission is around 20-30 seconds of digital hash, with the beginning of it having quick 'pulses', and the ending of it having even quicker 'pulses', and there are one second stops, roughly, between the transmissions.

There are no CW / Morse Code ID's whatsoever -- something that apparently is required by the FCC for HFT stations. So this station may not be HFT at all, because in over an hour of listening to this digital racket on my DX-440 this evening, I have not heard one Morse Code ID.

So where, and what, is this station? Who does it transmit to? Japan? Asia? The Pacific in general, if it happens to be military? Who knows?

Another CANADIAN AM Radio Station Bites the Dust: RIP CJVB 1470; & Hello Qodosen DX-286

CJVB 1470, a long time Chinese language broadcaster out of Vancouver, BC Canada, is going off the air. Its owner, Fairchild Radio (Vancouver FM) Ltd, which also runs an FM station out of Vancouver (CHKG-FM), is pulling the plug on CJVB and they're going to be FM only. The switching off of CJVB appears slated for March.

The CRTC (Canada's communications arm, which regulates Radio there) has approved the shutting down of CJVB.

The reasons for the shut down are decreased revenue, and increased costs -- an issue that is hitting most Radio stations in the US and Canada -- whether FM or AM.

Fairchild, in a request sent to the CRTC in June, stated that "both the stations have experienced decreased advertising and airtime brokerage sales," and that "the operating costs for the two stations [CJVB and CHKG-FM] continue to increase and that the stations have sustained significant losses for several years."

Furthermore, Fairchild said that the two stations, AM and FM, had "incurred significant economic losses for the past five years, and that it expects this trend to continue in the foreseeable future."

It looks like the Pandemic economy hurt CJVB and it's FM sister station, just as it's slammed a lot of radio stations since 2020.

Fairchild said they would transfer a block of Chinese programming to CHKG after CJVB is pulled off the air, and that the block of Chinese language programming would be from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.

It's a sad case but increasingly common in Radio, and not just AM. As I've posted in several articles over the past two to three years, it's not just AM stations going off the air, but also some FM's are seeing their plugs pulled also. It's because of the reasons that Fairchild told the CRTC -- decreased revenues, and increasing costs.

Even highly rated, local NPR station KUOW-FM had to cut some staff last year because of increased costs. They had record donations, and increased revenues, but the increasing costs outweighed the increase in revenues.

CJVB has always been a barn burner signal here in Seattle. Vancouver is just 130 or so air miles north of us, and CJVB has had a really good signal, with their transmitters not too far from the water in Richmond, BC.

Now it appears that KELA, Centralia, WA -- just 100 miles south of me -- will dominate the 1470 frequency in the NW US and SW Canada, once CJVB is switched off. CJVB is due to have its license revoked on March 6th, 2026.

The first time I noticed CJVB was when I got my Sanyo Boombox for Christmas, in 1982.It was my first FM Stereo radio, and the AM side was a good performer. Not only did I discover New Wave music (on the former 'The Wave' KYYX 96 FM) I rediscovered AM Band DXing, and CJVB was hard to 'null' to hear other stations on 1470. They were easy to ID because of the Chinese language programming, and Chinese (or any other Asian language) programming was rare to hear on the radio -- AM or FM -- in the 1980's.

So CJVB really stuck out on the AM band at night.

Now, obviously, after CJVB goes off the air early next year, nulling that signal won't be an issue. 

It's too bad, because recently they've been playing a lot of cool Asian rock and pop music at night. I recently heard a song sung by a guy in Chinese, which sounded like a pop-rock song from 2000 or 2001, complete with a lead guitar that sounded like it was right from that era (an Alice In Chains style wah-wah). 

Looks like there's just 2-3 more months to hear it before it's off the airwaves.

And so it goes. So long, CJVB. You had a good run.

That's about it for now. Life has gone normally. I've been having some internet issues, and the repair people never seem to really fix them 100%. It's frustrating. The internet cuts out, even though the connection is good. I think it might be my router, but the repair people said they think it's still good. I'm beginning to doubt their expertise or credibility anymore.

Other than that, my new cat, now named 'Bear', is finally getting used to me. She waits by the door to her room for me to go in and feed her and pet her. I'm still leaving her in my upstairs bathroom so she has her own space. With cats, change = bad. So I give her her own space, and in a month or so I'll see if she comes out and checks out the rest of the house.

GETTING A QODOSEN DX-286

I also got a new radio, a Qodosen DX-286, which a lot of people rave about. I got it on my late father's 100th birthday, December 10th. Dad was the one who got me into radio, and into listening to SW radio and long distance MW radio. He taught me that the key to hearing distant stations was to 'tune slowly, and listen carefully', something I'm sure he learned from his father, my grandfather, who built radios, including a tube shortwave radio.

The DX-286 has an NXP, TEF chip in it, that is the same type of chip used in the Sony XDR's that were popular with FM DXers in the 2000's and 2010's. The TEF chips are also used in car dash radio systems, and the chips are known for excellent reception, both on FM, AM, and SW.

My first impression with the DX-286 is that it's very good on MW and SW. It picks up MW as good as my Sony XDR does -- very clear reception, and the AGC is tight, without pumping. I'm still putting the DX-286 through its paces. So far, I think it's a good radio, well worth the money.

ONE WATT AUDIO CHIP, GOOD RECEPTION OVERALL

It has a rep for eating batteries -- but the audio chip puts out ONE WATT. That's a lot of audio power, and it takes a lot of juice to drive a ONE WATT AF chip. So if you want to increase time between charges when using a DX-286, use headphones, or keep that volume down. :-)

Good clear audio on this radio, though. I'm impressed.

SOME 'TIC' NOISES, that disappear when you use a LOOP

There is only one minor glitch I've found with the DX-286. The radio puts out two 'ticks' per second, which are audible on 810, 820 and some lower channels on the AM band. I think it has something to do with the clock function for the microprocessor. My Grundig G2 has the same issue, except it receives the 'ticks' on a lot more channels.

The DX-286 only get these 'tick' noises on headphones. Not on the speaker. Which leads me to believe that the radio's headphone amp is near a clock function of some sort (the DX-286 has two audio amp chips -- the one watt chip for the speaker and a lower wattage chip that drives the headphones).

The happy part of this is that when I use an external loop on MW, the tick noises disappear from 810, 820, etc. So the issue really doesn't bother me.

....IN OTHER LIFE

Aside from all that -- all is about as well as it can be. If I don't post another article before then, Merry Christmas to all my readers, wherever you are.

My family won't be having a get-together for this Christmas, so I will celebrate alone, just me and my cat. I'll probably play Silent Night and The First Noel on my bagpipes, outside, for the neighbors, and maybe write a Christmas-themed fiction tale.

Talk to you soon, internet connection willing....

Peace.

C.C. Friday, December 19th, 2025

DX'ing China Radio Int'l: HEARING ESPERANTO!

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.:

Esperanto - Wikipedia

Here is the Esperanto Wikipedia, should you want to read some Esperanto.:

Vikipedio (wikipedia.org)

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.:

Short-Wave Radio Frequency Schedule for ANY STATION in ESPERANTO

I've been able to pick up the CRI broadcasts in Esperanto on 13670 on my Tecsun PL-398 just 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.:

www.eibispace.de

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.:

High Frequency Beacon - HFUnderground

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.

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.