Direct From Asia In am (Boston area) ?

[BOBRR]

Hi,

Embarrassed to ask, but-

Live outside of Boston, Mass.
Do most of my sw listening very early, around 6 AM, or so.

Have a simple 150 ft long wire ant., balun, and coax to house. Do listening only.
Using SDRConsole with a WinRadio G-31 Excalibur. Nice combination.

I can pick up a fair amount of stations, "apparently" foreign, but correlating them via eibi, etc. is always a bit problematic.

Never really sure if what I am listening to is a direct "foreign" broadcast, a U.S. station but in a foreign language, a true foreign station but relayed from, e.g. Cuba, etc.

For around 6 am in Boston, can anyone recommend for me a few stations/frequencies "truly" being broadcast directly from Asia ?

Would love to show the wife that I am actually receiving from "there".

Much thanks,
Bob

 

[trentbob]

Sometimes, what you hear that sounds foreign is foreigners transmitting from within the United States. You of course also get your religious shows also.

Do a simple search on your favorite search engine for swl activity and you'll get plenty of information about English-speaking broadcast from foreign countries day and night.

 

[Boombox]

Hearing actual Asian stations on the MW band in Boston is going to be a tough challenge. Asian MW stations are going to be broadcasting on what we here in the US and Canada call "split" frequencies, i.e. 9 khz channels that often lie in between the 10 khz channels we have here in the US. And you'll have to hear them coming over the Polar region, and the auroral zone sometimes reduces reception.

Here is a website with a fairly good listing of Asia-Pacific MW stations, which I suppose you could try for. Being in Boston you'd probably have better luck trying to Europe, though.

Radio and Television Broadcasting in Asia (asiawaves.net)

There are MW tables (listings for each 9 Khz channel) shown on the lower right hand of the page.

And don't forget, if you hear Asian programming here in the US, that could also be DX. I heard South Asian (Punjabi and Hindi) music on 1700 Khz one night and it was a station in New York state, and I'm in WA. Another station in the Toronto area is famous for broadcasting all sorts of ethnic music on 1610 Khz, and that helps DXers in the Western US ID it properly.

 

[BOBRR]

Hi,

Thanks all for info.

BTW: That Asia link is excellent.

Bob

 

[wscranston]

Try 7275 at 1100 UTC. Some mornings KBS from Korea is there. I am in Chelmsford.

 

[majoco]

6AM in Boston means it's still dark westerly to halfway across India so there should be plenty of Asians at that time - what frequency bands are you listening on? At that time of night you should be on the lower bands such as 60, 49 and 41metre bands. "EiBi View" is an excellent programme which sorts out the EiBi table in an easy to use format. If you are putting the correct time into EiBi it will tell you which stations are actually broadcasting and if you do find one that you think should be Asian then all you do is enter the frequency and it will tell you all the stations on the air at that time. Make sure you have the current EiBi tables - they've just switched from Summer to Winter schedules. Your G31 should display the HF spectrum so you can spot which bands are active, I have a G33DDC which is a great spotter of signals.

I use a program called 'JB's Stationlist' into which you put the EiBi csv list - it runs in parallel with the G33 (and all other Winradios) at the side of the screen - it reads the frequency the radio is tuned to and displays what's broadcasting on that frequency. You can also pick out a country by it's three-letter code and it will show all the HF frequencies used by that country - right click on that frequency and it is transferred to the radio! Magic!

 

[BOBRR]

Hi Guys,

Thanks again for really good info.

Re JB's Station List: If you use SDRConsole, there is a built in Frequency List you can populate with
eibi, et al, and you can call up, and works the same way as JB's. Console is really a nifty program, and
anyone not familiar with it should probably take a look at it.

It also recently incorporated support for the WinRadio G-31, and I think the G-33.
A lot more user friendly, in my opinion, than the WinRadio software.

Win Radio has just announced a new G69 (I think), Will undoubtedly be real big $$.
Will have to live with just the G-31, I'm afraid.

It certainly seems "a bit" better than the Airspy HF+Discovery or RSPdx I have.
Hard to compare them exactly, though.

Any thoughts or opinions ?

Best regards, stay well,
Bob (outside of Boston)

 

[jwt873]

I often use the short-wave.info site: Short-Wave Radio Frequency Schedule for BBC in ENGLISH It has just about everything you need to know about what's going on. (It seems to default to BBC but you can set it to 'Any Station' in the menu).

So, if you're listening to the 31 meter band, select that band on the web page menu.. everything 'on the air' on that band will be displayed in a list. It tells you who is broadcasting, what language they're using and where the broadcast originates. There are other handy search options in the menu as well.

 

[Boombox]

Here in the PNW, 41 m and 49 m are full of China and Japan -- but that depends on SW conditions, which are spotty, and have been spotty since around 2017-2018. I'm sure some of the Chinese stations (many are CNR1, or CNR1 used as jammers, so they are powerful stations) would make it over the auroral zone to Boston.

During the late mornings and sometimes into the afternoons here I can often here the Chinese jammer station called "Firedrake" -- it is a powerful SW station that plays non-stop Chinese opera music / Chinese classical music, which sounds unique. There never is any speech or talk, just non-stop Chinese ethnic musical instruments.

I also use Short-wave.info. It's an easy to use frequency source.

Good luck..

 

[ka3jjz]

And as I have mentioned on numerous occasions, the spreadsheet and file that comes out of the SWSkeds reflector on groups.io is updated quite frequently, and a few apps such as SDR Console and SDR Uno can import these files - see this section of the wiki for a list of apps...

SWL Broadcast - The RadioReference Wiki

wiki.radioreference.com

Mike