An e-QSL with lots of details from Moonair Radio, a Free Radio station from Central Europe. DJ Mike is from Holland, and the show I listened to was mainly in Dutch, but from the announcements made it was clear the the location is not in The Netherlands, but somewhere in “Central Europe”. I will not disclose the location, but given the distance I am surprised about the signal strength given an output power of only 250 W. Must be a decent antenna! And I understand why there was a bit of fading.
Mike also shared a nice video of the studio and transmitter equipment. Apparently he is also the operator of Radio Magdalena, a station that broadcasts in AM-stereo.
My reception of Mustang Radio on 6280 kHz, a Free Radio station from the east part of the Netherlands was confirmed with a kind email reply by station owner Herman.
About a week after the email bij Herman he sent me the beautiful QSL card!
e-QSL from Radio WDR “Radio from the Bottom of the Sea”
An e-QSL from Radio WDR. No not the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, but Radio WDR on 5800 kHz, a Free Radio station from the Netherlands. One of their slogans is “Radio from the Bottom of the Sea”, which might imply that their QTH is what used to be the former Zuiderzee.
A program I hadn’t heard before on Channel 292, Germany is SoundBox Radio. On Friday night they broadcast a nice mix of Disco music on 6070 kHz. My reception report was awarded with an e-QSL and a friendly email in a day.
Last weekend Key Channel Radio, broadcasting from Emilia Romagna, Italy, was on air on 6270 kHz. Massimo, who operates the station was so kind to give me a heads up warning. Reception wasn’t easy as propagation conditions were poor and there was quite a bit of noise/interference which required them to change frequency a few times.
Massimo sent me the beautiful e QSL, a friendly email and some photo’s of the stunning scenery in Emilia Romagna:
Dear Peter, thanks for your valuable listening report. In the end you listened to us too. Tough evening, stanag, CW all active. Yes we changed the frequency 4 times. KCR has been broadcasting since January 2016 from a location on the hills of the Emilian Apennines. We use a commercial transmitter with a maximum power of 400 W (in use 250 W) and a self-built Morgain 48/88 Antenna. There are three of us who manage it, I take care of the technical part, programs. My girlfriend takes care of important statistics on listeners and small studies on propagation. A dear friend of ours takes care of the graphics, the promos and QSLs are her creations. We are an open radio, we have collaborated with several German Pirate Radios, Doctor Tim, Radio BZN and more. Now we collaborate with Radio Monique, Bart even made a broadcast and several Jingles for us. (Pirate for Peace Member).
Last weekend I received Radio60! in good quality on 5840 kHz. Most likely via the transmitter of the Dutch free radio station Contikenzo. The program was presented by Jürgen who is known as Erden Man in the Free Radio world. He sent me this beautifully designed e-QSL via erdeman(at)gmx.de . Thank you Jürgen!
I’m not so much into HAM radio. Not that I have anything against HAMs – on the contrary – but there is already so much to listen to that I decided not to go there yet. If I’m going to do HAM I want to be able to transmit myself.
That said, I’ve found SSTV always attractive. And particularly when MF conditions aren’t great I don’t mind “sacrificing” one of my DSC receivers scanning 14230 kHz (or another HF SSTV channel). This way I picked up WA1QZK from Boston.
Intercontinental DX is always nice. Problem is that as an SWL (even when registered with VERON) you don’t always have access to email address information in a database like QRZ.com. But Ron, operator of WA1QKZ was so kind to share his email with SWLs as well, so I sent a report… and received the QSL card below. Thank you Ron!
Pheww.. this one was a little bit tense… Already 5 days ago I got an email prompt (a scan of the card) indicating that my QSL from NHK had arrived in the Netherlands. That’s how the Dutch Postal Service works which is great, but apparently it still took them 5 days to deliver my card. In the mean time I was wondering if they delivered it to the wrong address.
QSL from NHK Japan… might be their final QSL on paper…
Normally I wouldn’t have mind so such, but this was the last chance to get a traditional NHK QSL… Fortunately, today I found it in my mailbox.
I feel a little bit sad about this one, and I’m angry as well. Running a shortwave radio station requires a million dollar budget, but it also requires qualified technical personnel. So sending out a few QSLs per year to people that have a true technical interestest in your station doesn’t seem a bad idea… The “Finance Dudes” seem to have different perspective. Anyway, it is what it is… and this one goes on file. Thank you NHK for all the years that you did grant dedicated listeners a QSL!
I received Comodoro Rivadavia Radio with a DSC test acknowledgement to a vessel with MMSI 311000867 (SYLVIA EARLE, Bahamas). It’s the second time I sent them a report. I heard them earlier in December 2024. They confirmed they were sending a message at the time but my decode of the MMSI of the ship they contacted was incorrect. Despite the ERR check being OK. These things can happen sometimes. This time there was one other DX-er that picked up the same message using YADD decoder, so I was confident I really heard them!
The distance between my QTH and Comodoro Rivadavia is 12890 kilometers… and this is definitely not a DSC station that I hear as often as the ones from Brazil. My other confirmation from Argentina was Buenos Aires Radio.
A nice paper QSL from Radio Slovakia International. I received them on 6005 kHz via the Kall-Krekel transmitter in Germany. Unfortunately that detail is missing on the card. I sent my report to englishsection@rtvs.sk and got a reply in 6 weeks. Their latest schedule can be found here: https://enrsi.stvr.sk/how-to-listen
BDXC : SWL 2262 PRe VERON : NL 14228 If you want to get in touch, just leave a message on one of my posts. Please note that I don't publish email addresses of verifiers which are not part of the public domain. So if you don't see the QSL address, just leave a message and I'll get back to you.
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