By Tim, WK4U
Article 5 in a series of 5
While it's midnight here in Atlanta, it's only 9pm on the West coast. Many folks are still awake in North America. Some stations are still broadcasting our way. Maybe favoring the “left” side if possible. It's an interesting time. Not too many people to broadcast in their evening hours right now. Use any gray line program to see for yourself. Many broadcasts are either domestic, North American, or mostly towards Eastern Africa and the Middle East right now. So Tim, if I'm up this late, what are some of the interesting stations I can hear on my HF radio at home? <yaaawwwn> glad you asked...
Of course you can always hear stronger stations broadcasting from the USA. Signals are still quite strong at this hour. But for more of a challenge, or something different that hasn't been mentioned yet... 9635 hosts Radio Farda broadcasting from Germany towards the Middle East (Iran mostly) in Farsi. It's already day light there in Iran. Enjoy listening to your U.S. tax dollars at work. Use the USB mode if Radio Exterior de Espana on 9630 is too strong. Realize listeners in the Middle East receive this signal quite well. Hear Radio France International in English (rare for them) on 9805 beaming towards East Africa (also in their morning hours now). Our own Armed Forces Radio & Television Services (AFRTS) can be heard on 5446.5 USB & 7811.0 USB from South Florida. 10.320.0 USB from Hawaii. The Voice Of America (VOA) broadcasting to Africa on 9885 from the island of Madagascar in English. Radio & TV Tunisia is pretty strong on 9725 even though they're beaming towards the Middle East. XEQM broadcasts from Mexico with a mighty 250 watts on 6105. Can you hear this station well? Radio Bulgaria is pretty strong on 6100. Consider using the USB mode instead.
Realize that I am only concentrating on a very small section of stations. Not all of them broadcasting towards North America either. There are so many other stations on the air all around the clock. In many languages other than English. If you tune the bands and hear a station in Hebrew for example, it very well could be from Iran! Russian isn't always from Russia. Maybe it's from Israel.
In this series, I've concentrated mostly on short wave broadcast stations. A little bit of pirates, but not much else. Of course there is plenty of ham radio throughout the HF spectrum. But there's so so much more out there! Have you ever wondered what the numbers stations are all about? How about the blurps of digital data heard all up and down the spectrum? Where are they from? Who are the trying to communicate with? This is known as utility DXing. There are plenty of utility stations on the air, all around the clock. Military, clandestine, commercial fishing, business, illegal pirate, aircraft (military and civil), weather stations, time stations etc... Enjoy your HF radios outside the ham bands every now and then, and find some of the other stuff that's always out there! Do you know where your radios are?
Hmmm, maybe it's time for a fresh hot bowl of buttered pop corn! Had any lately? Enjoy hearing all the interesting signals out there on HF. Be careful, you may really enjoy it!
Tim, WK4U
tim_lemmon@yahoo.com