For someone who has been into the shortwave listening hobby for many years, I have embarrassingly few QSL cards. So I was very pleased when I rediscovered what I thought was a long lost photo of an e-QSL card from Radio New Zealand International (now RNZ Pacific) from 2013. Here it is, alongside the recording that the card is confirming and the equipment I used to capture the former. Seeing this card makes me appreciate how lucky we are that RNZ Pacific are still with us on shortwave today.
Sant Pere Màrtir summit, Barcelona, Spain. © 2023 London Shortwave |
Radio listening and spectrum capture QTH on 01/07/2023 |
© 2023 London Shortwave |
Antenna span and orientation marked in red |
Torre de Collserola television and radio tower, as seen from Sant Pere Màrtir. © 2023 London Shortwave |
Torre de Collserola and Sant Pere Màrtir, as seen from Tibidabo. © 2023 London Shortwave |
Sant Pere Màrtir site information panel. © 2023 London Shortwave |
The recording was made outdoors in Sant Pere Martir, Barcelona, Spain on July 1, 2023, at 1628 UTC using a GPD MicroPC, AirSpy Mini, SpyVerter 2, Wellbrook UMB130 balun and a 2x6m dipole.
Zanzibar Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) is currently one of those stations that occasionally pop up on air despite no longer being listed any of the major shortwave broadcasting schedules. However, the station was very active in 2010s and was transmitting regularly on 11735 kHz in high fidelity, offering a mix of beautiful Tanzanian music, current affairs and religious programming, in English and Swahili. While reviewing some of my earliest spectrum captures I came across the following recording of this station:
The recording was made outdoors on July 28, 2015, at 1748 UTC using a Toshiba Encore Windows tablet, FunCube Dongle Pro+, Wellbrook UMB130 balun and a 2x6m dipole.
Concept Diagram of Maritime Communications. Image source: soumu.go.jp |
The shortwave frequency range is commonly used for two-way radio communications between ships at sea, as well as between ships and nearby coastal stations across the world. Usually, these are low-power, non-directional transmissions of around 1 kW and can only be heard well locally. For example, in London it is often possible to hear sailors in the territorial waters of France, Spain, Portugal and, occasionally, Greece. I was therefore very surprised when I discovered what appeared to be maritime communications in Japanese on 8261 kHz in a spectrum recording I made on October 10, 2022:
The nature of this transmission was kindly confirmed to me by the user @shinyaradio on Twitter:
Hello. This is a communication between a coast station and a ship station.
— 長谷川 眞也 (@shinyaradio) October 18, 2022
The content is numbers and ciphers and I don't understand it.https://t.co/DRWyHnsJ7O
The link in the tweet states that this frequency is indeed allocated for maritime communications in Japan and the power of these transmissions should not exceed 1.2 kW. If this transmission did in fact originate in Japan, the propagation conditions must have been truly excellent that evening!
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