Peter's DX Corner

"It's not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on" - Marilyn Monroe

Category: Info (Page 1 of 7)

QSL Voice of Indonesia 4755 kHz

October 22, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Since 2018 the Voice of Indonesia is back on shortwave. They are using frequencies in the 90 meter band (3325 kHz) from Palangkaraya on the island of Borneo and 60 meter band (4755 kHz) from Jakarta on this island of Java. A remarkable change of strategy as most broadcasters have left shortwave, and tropical band frequencies in particular.

According to Voice of Indonesia the reason is to promote Indonesian culture and government views, at relatively low costs and with the ability to reach areas where digital infrastructure is not as easily available as in other parts of the world.

eQSL from RRI Voice of Indonesia on 4755 kHz

Via voilisteners@gmail.com I received a personal email and a beaticul eQSL card for my reception of their program on 4755 kHz. I listened to their Spanish and German program which could be received in reasonable quality at 17:30 and 18:00 h UTC respectively. They even have a Dutch program which I will try to receive on 3325 kHz in the coming months.

My first QSL from the Voice of Indonesia is from February1989. See below.

1989 QSL from the Voice of Indonesia

In those days they were still broadcasting in the 25 and 19 meter band, and despite their 100 kW of power I don’t recall it being an easy catch. Funny thing is that in those days they didn’t have a broadcast in Dutch.

PA25NATO a special call sign in use during the NATO Summit The Hague

June 15, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I noticed this special call sign PA25NATO a couple of time on SSTV 14230 kHz. Apparently it is in use to celebrate the upcoming NATO Summit in The Hague, The Netherlands.


It’s going to be quite the event security wise, right in one of the most densely populated areas of Europe, to the point that you think whether it wouldn’t have been wise to select a more convenient location. Good thing that I’m retired and don’t have to deal with all the road closures and resulting traffic jams in the coming weeks.

Award for reception of International Space Station ISS

April 22, 2025 / / 0 Comments

A few times per year the International Space Station (ISS) has an event in which they transmit SSTV messages in the amateur band. Between April 11th and 16th there was such an event, dedicated to “Humans in Space”. Note that April 12th, 1961 was the date of the first human space flight with Yuri Gagarin.

The frequency used was 145.800 MHz in the 2 meter amateur band, which is covered by my ICOM R8600 so I decided to give it a try. I used the AMSAT site to get information when the ISS was flying over. Each morning there were 5 passes, about 1.5 hr apart. During a pass the ISS would “theoretically” be in visible range for 6 to 10 minutes. As I didn’t have a 2 meter band antenna I just pointed my 5 elements 100 MHz Yagi (6 m elevation) westward to see what would happen.

The Amsat site provides a tool to predict ISS pass times.

On the first try I was lucky. The SSTV broadcasts were in FM and PD120 mode, which took me some time to sort out. Good thing that I made an SDR recording so I could leisurely experiment with fine tuning the decoding. Now each picture takes 2 minutes to send, followed by a pause of 2 minutes. And while the ISS is “theoretically” in sight for 6 to 10 minutes, the reality is that at my location I don’t have a free view from west to east. On the west there are houses and somewhat further away a 9 story apartment tower. But east is worse with a nearby 5 story apartment blocking my view. Combined with the directional properties of the antenna it meant that I never managed to have more than 2 minutes of good quality reception each pass. As you can see in the pictures below:

But good enough to upload my pictures to the ARISS website and apply for an award which was almost immediately returned (Tip: do check you spam email box, as that’s where my copy landed!).

Award for my reception of ISS during the “Humans in Space” event.

Now the problem is that I don’t have a reliable source for upcoming ISS events. The ARISS website doesn’t always seem to mention them. I got my information form the AMSAT-UK website, which had links to various relevant pages. So suggest you follow them if you are interested to try for yourself.

Curacao DX adventure 2025

April 10, 2025 / / 0 Comments
My Tecsun PL 368 receiver on Curacao

This year I had again the privilege of spending some time on Curacao. Like last year I brought a radio with me: the Tecsun PL-368 I won in the SWL 2024 contest. I focused a little bit more on the upper side of the MW band this time. Below a list of the stations I received. Quite a few from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, more than a year ago. The most distant stations I heard were ZSN1 Nassau and Radio Monumental from Quito (both 1700 km), WFED with a WTOP program from Washington (3100 km) and LS6 Radio Buenos Aires (5300 km). I was pleased to receive ZBVI from the British Virgin Islands as well as the Voice of St. Maarten, two new DX countries for me. I am still waiting for a reply from the latter station.

540Radio ABC, Santo DomingoDOM
550YVKE Mundial, CaracasVEN
570HIMS Radio Cristal, Santo DomingoDOM
580WKAQ 580, San JuanPTR
780ZBVI, TortolaVRG
1070 HJCG Radio Santa Fe, BogotáCLM
1090Union Radio, CaracasVEN
1100BBN Radio, BogotáCLM
1110HJJP RCN Radio, VillavicencioCLM
1130Fuego AM, BogotáCLM
1140Radio Panamericana, GirardotCLM
1160Carribean R. Lighthouse, St. MaryATG
1160Su Presencia Radio, BogotáCLM
1200Radio VEN AM, Santo DomingoDOM
1210HJE65 RCN, CúcutaCLM
1230Radio Calidad, CaliCLM
1250HJCA Toca en La Capital, BogotáCLM
1260BBN, CaracasVEN
1270HJAR RCN, CartagenaCLM
1280HJKN Aviva2, BogotáCLM
1290La Voz de las Estrellas, MedellinCLM
1300Voice of St. Maarten, PhilipsburgSXM
1310Voz de la Patria Celestial, BarranquillaCLM
1320Radio Apolo, TurmeroVEN
1330Radio Vision Cristiana, Santo DomingoDOM
1340YVNE Radio Uno, CaracasVEN
1350LS6 Radio Buenos Aires, MalvinasARG
1370Radio Mundial, BogotáCLM
1380Radio Nacional, SantiagoDOM
1420Radio Sintonia, CaracasVEN
1440HIAK Radio Impactante, Santo DomingoDOM
1450Radio Maria Venezuela, Catia La MarVEN
1460WLRP Radio Raices, San SebastianPTR
1470WKUM Cumbre 1470 AM, OrocovisPTR
1490Radio Dinámica, CaracasVEN
1500WFED WTOP, WashingtonUSA
1500Radio Maria Colombia, ManizalesCLM
1510Radio Monumental, QuitoEQA
1520TIVA Radio 1520, San JuanPTR
1530HJDN La Voz de Nostalgia, MedellínCLM
1540National Voice, NassauBAH
1560Pura Palabra R., BayamonPTR
1560Voces Rovirenses, MálagaCLM
1570Radio Felicidad, PenuelasPTR
1580Uniminuto Radio, BogotáCLM
1590WXRF WAPA Radio, GuayamaPTR
1620Radio RebeldeCUB
1660WGIT Faro de Santidad, CanovanasPTR
1680Radio Senda, S. Pedro de MacorisDOM

QSL ZBVI Tortola, British Virgin Islands 780 kHz

April 5, 2025 / / 0 Comments

During my holiday on Curacao I was able to receive ZBVI from Tortola, the largest island of the British Virgin Islands. A distance of about 840 km. Sandra Potter, Operations Manager at ZBVI was so kind to confirm my reception report. This QSL ZBVI Tortola, British Virgin Islands on 780 kHz is my 198th country confirmed!

The official call sign of the station in the FCC data base is ZBV, but the station identifies as ZBVI after the Virgin Islands. It is also not clear why this station has a FCC license in the USA and seems to have to adhere to US law (no tobacco commercials allowed). Anyone?

The end of Radio Free Asia?

March 28, 2025 / / 7 Comments

Is this the end of Radio Free Asia?
Following the announcement of the Trump administration to cut funding of the USAGM department VoA, Radio Marti, RFE/RL, RFA and possibly other USAGM sponsored stations will discontinue broadcasting.

Last week I received this email from RFA:

Dear friends,

Last weekend Radio Free Asia lost its grant and funding.
Unfortunately, we are unable to confirm any more reception reports.  

If this situation changes, we will let you know.  

As our relay sites stop transmitting our broadcasts, currently, we’re still airing evergreen programming on limited frequencies but it’s unclear how long this will continue.

Thank you for listening and also for your years of support and friendship.

RFA’s QSL Team

Personally I have mixed views on all of this. I saw an interview with Cubans on the closure of Radio Marti. An eldery man was truly disappointed. But a younger man said “I’ve heard of it, my granddad listens to it, but I never do”. I don’t know how many people still use short wave radio for their news. The younger generation typically relies on the internet. So with that in mind maintaining a shortwave radiostation is expensive and outdated.

That said: internet can be filtered or even blocked. Which is much more difficult for radio waves. Nevertheless the demolition of LW, MW and SW transmitters and antenna facilities continues in Europe. At the same time the Israel army resumed MW broadcasts of Galei Zahal, their army radio,ahead of their operations is Gaza and Lebanon. It might be that we will regret that we didn’t use some of the 800 billion to “rearm Europe” to maintain some of the legacy radio facilities. Time will tell.

Radio Free Asia “Year of Rabbit” QSL

Diamond certificate for the SWL Contest 2025

March 18, 2025 / / 4 Comments

For the SWL contest 2025 that ran during the months of January and February 2025 there was the possibility to do MW only. After I had spent the summer months scanning the SW bands for the SWL Contest 2024 I decided to go for this MW only version. My goal was to log 250+ stations to obtain the Diamond Certificate.

There are 121 European frequencies (spaced 9 kHz) between 530 and 1610 kHz. So an average of two stations per frequency would bring me to 242. Now the problem is that some frequencies don’t carry a single European MW station. Who would have believed that 40 years ago. And there are some frequencies that are dominated by a strong local station.

So it was immediately obvious that I needed to catch at least 3 European stations on some frequencies. An whatever I fell short had to be compensated for by non European stations, particularly Transatlantic ones on a 10 kHz spacing.

In total I received 258 stations from 43 ITU countries. Listening on the right moment helped me to identify individual Spanish stations on the same frequency which run network programs (RNE, COPE, SER) most part of the day. To a certain extent this applied to local Romanian stations as well.

Conditions to Canada and the northern states of the US were quite poor given high solar activity. But to my big suprise I was able to receive quite a few stations from Central and South America. Radio Santa Rosa from Lima, Peru at 10525 kms from my QTH was the most distant station. But I also managed to receive TWR Benin, Akashvani from India, the Russian Service “Radio Kitaya” of China Radio International and the VOA from Thailand (which probably is no longer given cost cuttings by the Trump administration). The map below gives an idea of the stations I heard from outside Europe:

Stations I received in the first months of the year from outside Europe

Below you can download the full list (PDF) of all the logs I received. It might be a useful guide for those who are starting with Medium Wave DX, particularly if you live in or close to the Netherlands. And in a few years from now one might wonder what happened to all these medium wave stations.
All receptions made with ICOM R8600, SDR Console, and NTi Megaloop FX antenna. A big thank you to Frank F0DUW for organizing!

MW Contest 2025Download

Radio Twents Gejengel 675 kHz is back

February 7, 2025 / / 2 Comments

My radio friend Joé Leyder couldn’t match a station he heard on Twente WebSDR with any of the webstreams he was familiar with. I gave it a try and found out that LPAM Twents Gejengel was back in the air. I heard mainly non stop Dutch music, but at 16:05 LT there was this ID:

“Hit na hit na hit, zo hoort radio te klinken. Jij vraagt en wij draaien ze. U luistert naar station Twents Gejengel vanuit Westerhaar”

As in the clip below:

No idea when they resumed broadcasting, but they were still listed as “inactive” on the MW list. So I contacted the MW list and within an hour they changed it to “active”. Thank you Mauno! So nice that I can contribute to a community of fellow radio lovers!

The name of the station “Twents Gejengel” refers to Twente (the region in the east of the Netherlands from which they are broadcasting), while “Gejengel” would translate as “whining” when a little kid does it, but in this context the translation would be more like “loud irritating music”. Ah well….. it is definitely something different.

I’m not sure if I can receive this station at my own QTH, as LPAM Unique Gold from Wijchen seems to dominate the frequency at my location. And I’ve no clue whether they QSL as well… they seem to have a website Twents Gejengel, but the only thing it shows are a few reports.

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