Mystery 21 Radio

This morning, while casually exploring the shortwave bands from home using Twente WebSDR, I stumbled across an AM transmission on 4860 kHz. The station was playing some great Euro Pop so I immediately hit "record" and switched over to my local shortwave monitoring set-up (AirSpy HF+ Discovery / YouLoop antenna mounted on the balcony). It turned out that I could pick up their signal quite nicely over here too, albeit with somewhat greater noise levels compared to the WebSDR copy, owing to local QRM:

Mystery 21 Radio just now. #YouLoop on the balcony. pic.twitter.com/0rqZstxXic

— London Shortwave (@LondonShortwave) November 30, 2020

The station ID was "Mystery 21" and their Facebook page suggests that they are located in Germany. Below is the full WebSDR recording for your listening pleasure:

Greece and Turkey's shortwave broadcasts recorded one early July evening

Some traditional Greek and Turkish music for your listening pleasure.

Both recordings were extracted from a spectrum capture of the 31 meter band made outdoors in London, UK on July 2, 2019. The recording equipment comprised of GPDWin, AirSpy HF+, Bonito GI300 and Bonito MA305 portable active antenna.

Shortwave gems: July – August 2018

All India Radio, recorded outdoors on 11560 kHz in London, UK on 31/07/18 at 1658 UTC with GPDWin, AirSpy R2, SpyVerter 2 and Bonito GI300 and Bonito MA305 portable active antenna. Audio only:

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Radio Japan, recorded outdoors on 15445 kHz in London, UK on 06/08/18 at 1833 UTC with GPDWin, AirSpy R2, SpyVerter 2 and Bonito GI300 and Bonito MA305 portable active antenna. Audio only:

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Radio Oromiya (Ethiopia), recorded outdoors on 6030 kHz in London, UK on 11/08/18 at 1856 UTC with Gole1, AirSpy HF+ and Sony AN-LP1 portable active loop antenna. Audio only:

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The Ghoul (UK pirate station), recorded outdoors on 6316 kHz in London, UK on 11/08/18 at 1902 UTC with Gole1, AirSpy HF+ and Sony AN-LP1 portable active loop antenna. Audio only:

Radio Kuwait's DRM transmission in English

Kuwait City

Below is a 30 minute recording of a Digital Radio Mondiale transmission from Radio Kuwait. Roughly speaking, DRM broadcasts are the shortwave (long distance) equivalent of DAB radio, where the audio is encoded digitally to save bandwidth, and — in the case of DRM — improve audio quality. This DRM stream was decoded from an outdoor spectrum recording made on 20/07/18 at 1830 UTC using my ultra-portable spectrum capture set-up. The program starts with the news, followed by western pop music. The video contains diagnostic information in the form of the DRM signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and dropped audio frames. Although DRM broadcasts are usually more challenging to pick up than their analogue counterparts, I would classify this reception as excellent.

Shortwave gems: June 2018

Three very interesting tracks I found in my spectrum recordings this month:

Music on the Kazakh service of China National Radio

Below is a 50 minute recording of a music programme broadcast on China National Radio's Kazakh service (a.k.a. CNR channel 17), consisting entirely of Kazakh songs.

I extracted the above from an outdoor spectrum recording I made with my portable spectrum capture set-up.

Shortwave gems: April 2018

Some interesting music I found in the spectrum recordings I made this month with my ultra-portable spectrum capture set-up:

Somali music on the Voice of America

The other day, while recording portions of the shortwave spectrum out in the park, I stumbled across a faint Voice of America broadcast in Somali with lots of music, which I rather liked.

Zoning out to Somali radio in a cold and windy London park. #SDR #shortwave #SWL #PortableSpectrumCapture pic.twitter.com/i3tN3Brjjs

— London Shortwave (@LondonShortwave) 30 December 2017

Below is the full recording for your listening pleasure. Voice of America (Somali), recorded outdoors on 15620 kHz, on 30/12/17 at 1325 UTC using AirSpy R2, SpyVerter 2.0 and a 2x6m dipole.

Shortwave gems: September 2017

Some interesting music I found in the spectrum recordings I made this month with my portable spectrum capture set-up:

Shortwave gems: March 2017

This month's episode of the shortwave gems series, extracted from my indoor spectrum recordings:

Carnatic instrumental music from All India Radio that at times sounds like a mixture of Trance and Drum & Bass!

A very interesting performance from Radio Thailand that is strangely reminiscent of a certain famous band form the west (which one is it?).

A pop song from the Voice of Turkey that seems to have borrowed a bar or two from "Don't You Worry Child" by The Swedish House Mafia.

Folk music from Radio Romania International.

Shortwave gems: February 2017

Some great music this month, extracted from my spectrum recordings:

A fast-paced, intense musical composition recorded from the Voice of Greece.

A vocal piece in Arabic, performed in a surprising style, recorded from Radio San'aa.

A song recorded from the Laotian service of FEBC Radio (broadcasting out of the Philippines).

Dreamy Carnatic instrumental music recorded from All India Radio.

Shortwave gems: January 2017

Below are some of my favourite pieces of music that I managed to extract out of the shortwave static earlier this month, using my portable spectrum capture set-up:

Two in one! Catchy Dubstep and R&B tunes recorded from Medi1.

A melodic tune captured from China Radio International Cantonese broadcast.

An Indian song recorded from Radio Afghanistan, Kabul.

Another song from All India Radio's Baluchi service.

Shortwave gems part 6

In this post I upload more music from my shortwave recording archives. Clips no. 2 and 3 are a bit noisy but I'm posting them as they are, since Shazam can't recognise them (otherwise I would have included them in my shortwave playlist series).

A song taken from an outdoor recording of Denge Kurstistane, which, to my ear, sounds like it could be a fusion of Kurdish and Irish musical traditions.

Below is another song that reminded me of Irish music, taken from an outdoor recording of Radio Oromiya (Ethiopia).

A slow, mellow tune from the Voice of Nigeria, recorded outdoors.

Orchestral music by Pannalal Ghosh from All India Radio, recorded indoors.

Shortwave gems part 5

Below are a few more interesting shortwave clips from my archives. Many thanks to Gordon VK2UB for the tune identifications, which you can find in the comments section.

A tune recorded outdoors from Radio Joey, a pirate radio station supposedly run by a 14 year old DJ from the Netherlands.

Persian Jazz fusion from Radio Farda, recorded outdoors.

A Japanese war-time song from NHK Radio, recorded outdoors.

Hypnotic carnatic classical vocal music from All India Radio, recorded indoors.

Shortwave gems part 4

In this post I upload a few melodic audio clips extracted from an outdoor shortwave spectrum grab made on April 15th, 2015. The nice surprise about these recordings is that I managed to recover the spectrum file containing them, which I thought was corrupted and not playable beyond the short snippets I included in my original post. I used Audacity to repair the file, and now the remainder of it — some two extra hours — play flawlessly. Being able to hear this capture in its entirety for the first time in 18 months feels like time travel. I'm especially pleased about this recovery as the recording contains a station that is no longer on shortwave: Zimbabwe's Radio Dialogue.

A song recorded from Radio Dialogue.

A song heard on Voice of America's Somali service.

An interesting fusion of Persian and Spanish music from Radio Farda.

Light music broadcast on DPRK's Voice of Korea.

Shortwave gems part 3

In this post I upload a few interesting shortwave clips from my archives, made using my indoor recording set-up.

A Romanian folk song recorded from Antena Satelor's long wave transmission.

An interesting fusion of western classical music with Arabic vocals recorded from Morocco's Medi1.

A song by Wadih El Safi recorded from Radio Damascus's medium wave transmission.

A qawwali by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan recorded from All India Radio.

A slow, dreamy song recorded from The Voice of Turkey.

Shortwave gems part 2

In this post I continue uploading some of the more interesting things I have recently heard on shortwave using both my outdoor and indoor recording setups. Some of these recordings were made using standalone shortwave radios while the others were extracted from my SDR spectrum captures.

A mellow atmospheric tune from Medi1 radio, Morocco. Recorded indoors.

Sudanese light pop music from Radio Tamazuj. Recorded outdoors.

A song recorded from North Korea's domestic radio service, KCBS Pyongyang. The performer makes the surprising move of copying Whitney Houston's vocal style towards the end of the track, something that would probably have been considered too western and decadent in North Korea only a short while ago. Recorded outdoors.

Funky Indian film music from All India Radio, recorded indoors.

Traditional Greek music from the Voice of Greece, recorded indoors.

Shortwave gems part 1

In this post I include some of the more interesting things I have recently heard on shortwave using both my outdoor and indoor recording setups. Some of these recordings were made using standalone shortwave radios while the others were extracted from my SDR spectrum captures.

Very interesting vocal style heard on Ethiopia's Radio Fana. Recorded outdoors.

A British Airways flight bound for Antalya communicating with a ground control station over Stockholm Radio about a disturbance onboard. Recorded outdoors.

More of the traditional Korean clarinet music that is rather unusual for North Korea's shortwave service. Recorded outdoors.

Tajikistan's shortwave service, usually a difficult catch in Western Europe. Recorded outdoors.

Some incredible vocal dexterity from the Moldovan singer, Laura Lavric, heard on Romania's longwave service, Antena Satelor, recorded indoors.

Raï and Hip-Hop fusion on Algeria's Jil FM, received on mediumwave indoors.

A few catches from the indoor spectrum grabs

I am enjoying using my indoor spectrum capture set-up for recording endangered shortwave stations. The set-up relies on my earlier work on mitigating urban radio interference, caused by being in a busy apartment building in London:

My interference situation: what my reception would look like without @DXEngineering NCC1 & 2 ALA1530s @SWLingDotCom pic.twitter.com/7w2kx6AvCU

— London Shortwave (@LondonShortwave) 28 April 2016

I thought I'd share a few of the catches I have made so far. First up, some good music. Here's an atmospheric set from the Voice of Greece on April 21st, 2016 at 2340 UTC:

A beautiful set of qawwalis and ragas from All India Radio Urdu service, recorded on May 23rd, 2016 at 0055 UTC. I especially like the song at 5 minutes 30 seconds into the recording:

I have also been fortunate to catch some more distant transmissions, such as Radio Thailand on 13/06/2016 at 1900 UTC:

A nice bonus that I didn't expect to show up in the spectrum recordings was the Voice of Turkey's English language broadcast on 04/06/2016 at 0300 UTC:

Finally, propagation from Cuba hasn't been great lately and I certainly have much clearer recordings of it from indoors than the one below, but the SDR# software did a fine job of pulling it out from the noise:

Overall, this has been a fun little project and given that I can make these recordings regularly (unlike the trips to my local park), there is a steady stream of gems to be extracted from the radio static and explored.

Archiving a small spectrum window on 31m indoors (Greece,India,Turkey,Romania,S.Arabia,Morocco). Good reception pic.twitter.com/l57h9prKda

— London Shortwave (@LondonShortwave) 1 June 2016

Shortwave playlist part 5

The shortwave music expedition continues with the fifth instalment of the playlist.

1. Palyrria - Ikariotikos(Dry Mix)
Voice of Greece, May 2016

Born out of the need for experimentation PALYRRIA is a band that has devised and perfected its own, unique musical style. Created in 1999 Palyrria indulged in a mixture of western electronica and traditional music from around the Mediterranean. They call it world-electro and indeed this music is neither electronic nor ethnic. PALYRRIA has always been fascinated by traditional music and some of the bands members have worked with renowned traditional musicians, but living in Greece one realizes that traditional music goes way beyond the last millennium, back in times when people chose to express themselves in much more ecstatic and pagan ways. Ancient ceremonies around the Mediterranean have always been filled with music and musical expression. In a way, it wouldn't be too far from the truth if one was to draw a parallel between those events and the rave parties the world witnessed in the beginning of the nineties. The similarities are striking and have been the source of inspiration for the dynamic musical context of PALYRRIA. Aeolian scales, pentatonic music, instruments that come out of the depths of history, are presented alongside pumping bass lines, techno grooves, vocoders, clicks and cuts, in an attempt to create music that transcends the centuries and is both ancient and futuristic at the same time. Let the strangeness ware off and enjoy music that comes straight from the source. (Discogs)

2. Berbang - Ezim Kurdistan
Denge Kurdistane, September 2015

3. Adnane Chaouachi - Ya Ward Mfatah
RTV Tunisia, December 2013

Adnène Chaouachi (عدنان الشواشي), born in Beja, is a musician, composer and Tunisian singer. (Wikipedia)

4. Mohammed Abdu - يالله إني في رجاك
Medi 1, January 2016

Mohammed Abdu Othman Al-Aseeri, (Arabic: محمد عبده عثمان العسيري ‎) (born June 12, 1949) is well-known Saudi singer all across the Middle East. He had been described as "The Artist of Arabs". (Wikipedia)

5. Karan Khan - Inkar Kawi Na Sam Kawi Iqrar Sta Baanrha
Radio Azadi, December 2015

Karan Khan is a renowned Pashto singer, broadcaster, music developer and PhD in Pashto. (Facebook)