Really good reception there, Andre. You have inspired me to take my DX-286 up to a cabin in the remote woods north of me and just listen for a weekend to see what I can pick up. I can't hear too much past static and super-strong stations from my RF-saturated place in the middle of a huge metropolitan area. Have fun!
Thanks Jackie! If I must say, I was quite impressed myself by the good listening conditions in Bloemfontein. I think if you were to take your Qodosen to a quiet are in the woods you will have a terrific time. You should also try MW on the whip, it works wonderfully for MW on the whip if you are far away from RFI.
Great job with the catches! I've also got WRN in Russian on 13650 KHz (A24 Frequency), with its power very low. Also, Radio Liberty on 11965 KHz is a very great catch, since RFE / RL mostly relays on Medium Wave broadcasting.
Thanks Andre for another “Little Q” radio, as I have not bought the DX model yet, but my SR model still picks up DX signals fine, but the DX model would be easier to use for several functions without having to look at the manual every time..😅! I was the thinking as your sunset in South Africa, it’s late morning or early afternoon in Tucson, Arizona, which kills the lower frequencies for DXING at my QTH. By the time it is dark allot of the interesting stations have already signed off.😢 or as the French people say in English…”That’s life…😂” 73! Have a great day!
Thanks! I really think you don't need the DX-286. The only two functions that are easier to use on the DX-286 are the amp on/off and the MW antenna on/off. With regular use you will remember the button presses for that :-) Otherwise they really are exactly the same. I find that sunset here is always a great time to listen, it has become one of my favourite listening times. Perhaps a good time for you to listen might be around 6am your time, that is 3pm my time and I find that there are many stations signing on then. I can start hearing stations in the 31 metre and 25 metre band at that time, and the 19 metre band is usually quite active and easy to catch at that time.
Thanks David. China has a really impressive list of shortwave stations, in many languages. I should count them one day, I think there are probably between 50 and 100, including their local SW stations that target domestic audiences.
Good luck in Yorkshire, God's Own Country🥲. I was born there in the old West Riding, now South Yorkshire for my area. I;m still a Tyke at heart. Still have my beef and Yorkshire puddings , even here in Indonesia.🥲.
China, China everywhere 🙂. I am in the doldrums DX wise at the moment and all I am getting is mainly China. CRI broadcast in 53 languages and repeat these simultaneously through the bands. CNR has 17 stations transmitting. They use CNR1 extensively to jam broadcasts from outside of China and it is really annoying here as I get a "double station" regularly. Well after my moan Andre a really good scan from Bloemfontain, thanks for sharing. 🙂
Interesting information about the number of languages and number of stations from China, I never actually counted them. I was wondering how many there were. There are times when I do feel a bit overwhelmed by all the Chinese signals, but then I think that we should probably be thankful that they still use SW so much. At least we know that China will be there for a while, unlike some of the other broadcasters :-)
@@swlistening Yes, I agree we should be grateful they are still in business big time unlike other slowly running down and departing. I miss Kranji being in operation and ABC Australia etc. It is just being fairly close to China in relative terms they can be overpowering. I know one of your viewers from Malaysia said they were "booming in" .They are not short on power either, some transmitters are running at 500 kW. On the languages, yes it s a quite a lot, they even broadcast in Esperanto !
@@sentul5558 I can understand that feeling of China being very overpowering. I think at my location I am more or less in the exact direction of their signals to South and South-East Asia, plus the very many signals to Africa, plus many of the European ones... It can be very overpowering indeed.
I couldn't sleep three nights ago, saw the sun starting to rise and pulled out my radio, found WWV and WWVH for the first time. And lot's of South America which I normally do not stay up late enough to catch.
Hi Basil, that's good to hear. I have been waking up very early because of my new puppy, and I received Radio Brasil Central quite nicely early in the morning (around 4am our time). Not a station that I usually hear before midnight. It helps to DX in the darkest hours of the night and early morning :-) WWVH is a great catch for you!
I was especially impressed with the signal quality from Oman and the BBC site at Wolverton here in the Western United States those signals are Out Of Reach
TIP: press the tuning knob until the screen says AUTO. Now you'll have the same effect of zapping quickly to the nearest station as long-pressing the buttons, just quicker 😜
Thank you for taking me on a virtual tour of Bloemfontein! I take it that you aren't there for the annual festival of roses? Did you drive all the way there or take a flight from Jo'burg?🌹😎 I'm impressed that you managed to get Myanmar Radio National Service, considering its distance and the power of its transmitters on shortwave! What was it that I'm hearing on 15135 kHz in your video? That doesn't sound like a jamming signal and if it's some kind of droning musical instrument, that is a rather long, sustained rest. Fun fact: Bloemfontein is only 358 meters lower than Johannesburg, but at an elevation of 1,753 meters ASL it is quite an impressive QTH to catch shortwave broadcasts around the world! 🌍📻👍
@StratmanII My pleasure! I drove to Bloemfontein, it is 400 km from Johannesburg along a very good highway, the N1 (national highway 1). It is an easy four-hour drive, with farmland as scenery almost all the way after leaving Gauteng province, which is very industrialised. It is possible to fly there also, and there are buses. That sound on 15135 kHz is a bit strange, it should be Iran, but maybe my catch is just too weak to actually make out what is going on there.
@@FamtechVideosIt's also quite likely that he had driven to the bus station, left his car there, took a bus to the train station, hopped on the train to the O. R. Tambo International Airport and then took a local flight to Bloemfontein, Deniz. You never know, right? 🤭 🛩️... 🚌... 🚉... 🚗... 🏠
@@swlistening Thanks Andre for sharing. I love long distance drives especially if the scenery along the route is beautiful. Don't you wish your car stereo had a shortwave band? You could DX while driving! 😀
Thanks André for a nice bandscan from Bloom... Bloem... what was it? Bloemendaal? 😂 It must be some kind of Dutch Lourdes/Santiago de Compostela/Niepokalanów; there used to be Radio Bloemendaal, a Church radio station that broadcast only for a few hours on Sundays. It was on 1116 kHz and offered a very weak signal into UTwente WebSDR, but now I think they're streaming only - if the radio station still exists at all. 6180 at that time is quite a mess, and I don't think you heard CRI russian in your scan. It might be there, perhaps better in Europe, but apart from that, Radio Taiwan International uses this frequency in Mandarin, attracting heavy jamming by CNR1 and noise jammers. And still, the Chinese had crammed in CNR17 in Kazakh to broadcast at roughly the se time as RTI & all these jammers 😂 And a CRI in addition... Crazy! 😵 Nice one on HCJB russian, it's on Saturdays only! And followed by Chechen, a very rare language on the bands, from 16:00 UTC. Very interesting that this transmission actually still exists, well past the days of much bigger HCJB from Pifo + more relays via today,s Media Broadcaat 😮 And I'd like to reference CRI English on 9880 kHz. I noticed the existence of this 15-18 UTC service yesterday as it was completely eclipsed by *another* CRI English on 9875 in the 16:00 UTC hour only! 🤣 Again - crazy 😵 Hope you have a good time in Bloemendaal or whatever it is 😂
And wish it were on 5920... Well, there is Segenswelle, which is mostly in russian, on 7365 kHz, while 5920 is predominantly German. Still, only 3kW or so on all three. But 7365 seems to have a directional antenna to Eastern Europe; it's been pretty standing out from other European low-power stations on 6 & 7 MHz since naZi invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
My pleasure Arnie. Bloemfontein means "flower fountain". The city is known for its roses, it is also called the rose city. You are right about 6180, complete overload there! I do pick up CRI in Russian very often and usually very clearly on various frequencies, that was why my first thought was that this 6180 one was CRI. But maybe it's the Chinese jammers. China surprises me sometimes with how they use the same frequency at the same time for some transmissions. There is one, which I can't remember the exact frequency now, where they actually have two CRI signals in different languages and different directions on exactly the same frequency. I will try to find it again in my scans. I usually hear both :-)
I have done some side-by-side comparisons between the wire and the MAL30+ loop at home in Johannesburg. The MLA30+ works better in Johannesburg, I think because there is more RFI in general and the MLA30+ is good with noise reduction. I did not take the MLA30+ to Bloemfontein, but I think the difference would have been smaller, there was a lot less RFI in Bloemfontein. Both the wire and the MLA30+ seem to pick up the same signals, the only real difference is that the wire can be a bit noisier on some signals.
Now isn’t this nice? I hope you enjoyed Bloemfontein and what it has to offer, I haven’t been to The Free State Province yet, what is it like? Edit: Fixed a punctuation error, these exams seriously made my grammar become a mess.
Are you still busy with exams? Bloemfontein is a nice city, I was born there and know it quite well. It is a small city, with some lovely old buildings in the city centre. It is famous for Naval Hill, quite a high hill in town where there is a planetarium and nice views of the surroundings. It is a quiet city, and I like that. But it has all the same modern conveniences like in Johannesburg or Cape Town. The Free State as a province is one of my favourite parts of South Africa, particularly the eastern Free State. It is very mountainous and there are amazing views towards the Maluti Mountains in Lesotho. Really incredible scenery.
@@swlistening Interesting. Also, thanks for asking about our exams, we did our last one on the 29th of November, the same day as one of my cousin's birthdays. Edit: Fixed some *MORE* grammatical errors.
@@ArnieDXer Interesting question Arnie! When the Cape province and the former Natal province were British colonies, some Afrikaner people moved into the interior of the country to flee from British rule, they wanted to rule themselves. One of the places where they settled was the area that is now called the Free State province. These Afrikaners named the area the Republic of the Orange Free State, it was an independent state. So the "Free" indicates freedom, and the Orange refers to the Orange River, which was the border between the Cape Colony and the Republic of the Free State. North of the Orange River was free 🙂 That was from about 1850 to 1899, when the South African war broke out and the British then invaded the Free State and took it over. There were several Afrikaner republics like this in various parts of South Africa in the 19th century.
@@FamtechVideos So now you have a nice long holiday, enjoy! I work until 20 December, then I will have a month's holiday until 19 January. I always use this quiet time of the year to plan my curricula and my classes for the next year.
Nice video again. I would like to invite your followers to enter the SWL Contest 2025 who will start the 01 January 2025. Thank you and 73 de frank SWL F14368 contest organizer
Great reception from that QTH, thank you. Future success and good health and good listening.
Thanks for the wishes Norman, I appreciate it!
Really good reception there, Andre. You have inspired me to take my DX-286 up to a cabin in the remote woods north of me and just listen for a weekend to see what I can pick up. I can't hear too much past static and super-strong stations from my RF-saturated place in the middle of a huge metropolitan area. Have fun!
Thanks Jackie! If I must say, I was quite impressed myself by the good listening conditions in Bloemfontein. I think if you were to take your Qodosen to a quiet are in the woods you will have a terrific time. You should also try MW on the whip, it works wonderfully for MW on the whip if you are far away from RFI.
Thank you Andre
You are very welcome Eduardo!
Wow. Great reception.
Thank you for watching!
Great job with the catches! I've also got WRN in Russian on 13650 KHz (A24 Frequency), with its power very low.
Also, Radio Liberty on 11965 KHz is a very great catch, since RFE / RL mostly relays on Medium Wave broadcasting.
Thanks Andrew! That WRN one is always an interesting one for me to catch.
Thanks Andre for another “Little Q” radio, as I have not bought the DX model yet, but my SR model still picks up DX signals fine, but the DX model would be easier to use for several functions without having to look at the manual every time..😅!
I was the thinking as your sunset in South Africa, it’s late morning or early afternoon in Tucson, Arizona, which kills the lower frequencies for DXING at my QTH. By the time it is dark allot of the interesting stations have already signed off.😢 or as the French people say in English…”That’s life…😂”
73! Have a great day!
Thanks! I really think you don't need the DX-286. The only two functions that are easier to use on the DX-286 are the amp on/off and the MW antenna on/off. With regular use you will remember the button presses for that :-) Otherwise they really are exactly the same.
I find that sunset here is always a great time to listen, it has become one of my favourite listening times. Perhaps a good time for you to listen might be around 6am your time, that is 3pm my time and I find that there are many stations signing on then. I can start hearing stations in the 31 metre and 25 metre band at that time, and the 19 metre band is usually quite active and easy to catch at that time.
Great scan. Didn't know China had so many stations.
Thanks David. China has a really impressive list of shortwave stations, in many languages. I should count them one day, I think there are probably between 50 and 100, including their local SW stations that target domestic audiences.
Great catches! I'm looking forward to what I find when I'm in Yorkshire at Christmas.
Thanks Caroline. I think you will have great fun there, also on MW! Winter is a great time for MW listening, especially in quiet areas.
Good luck in Yorkshire, God's Own Country🥲. I was born there in the old West Riding, now South Yorkshire for my area. I;m still a Tyke at heart. Still have my beef and Yorkshire puddings , even here in Indonesia.🥲.
China, China everywhere 🙂. I am in the doldrums DX wise at the moment and all I am getting is mainly China. CRI broadcast in 53 languages and repeat these simultaneously through the bands. CNR has 17 stations transmitting. They use CNR1 extensively to jam broadcasts from outside of China and it is really annoying here as I get a "double station" regularly.
Well after my moan Andre a really good scan from Bloemfontain, thanks for sharing. 🙂
Interesting information about the number of languages and number of stations from China, I never actually counted them. I was wondering how many there were. There are times when I do feel a bit overwhelmed by all the Chinese signals, but then I think that we should probably be thankful that they still use SW so much. At least we know that China will be there for a while, unlike some of the other broadcasters :-)
@@swlistening Yes, I agree we should be grateful they are still in business big time unlike other slowly running down and departing. I miss Kranji being in operation and ABC Australia etc. It is just being fairly close to China in relative terms they can be overpowering. I know one of your viewers from Malaysia said they were "booming in" .They are not short on power either, some transmitters are running at 500 kW. On the languages, yes it s a quite a lot, they even broadcast in Esperanto !
@@sentul5558 I can understand that feeling of China being very overpowering. I think at my location I am more or less in the exact direction of their signals to South and South-East Asia, plus the very many signals to Africa, plus many of the European ones... It can be very overpowering indeed.
I couldn't sleep three nights ago, saw the sun starting to rise and pulled out my radio, found WWV and WWVH for the first time. And lot's of South America which I normally do not stay up late enough to catch.
Hi Basil, that's good to hear. I have been waking up very early because of my new puppy, and I received Radio Brasil Central quite nicely early in the morning (around 4am our time). Not a station that I usually hear before midnight. It helps to DX in the darkest hours of the night and early morning :-) WWVH is a great catch for you!
I was especially impressed with the signal quality from Oman and the BBC site at Wolverton here in the Western United States those signals are Out Of Reach
I think I am lucky, both those signals target northern or eastern parts of Africa, so I am kind of in the target area, even though I am in the south.
Great bandscan! I can't receive Vietnam on 11720 kHz here in Eastern Europe.
Thank you!
TIP: press the tuning knob until the screen says AUTO. Now you'll have the same effect of zapping quickly to the nearest station as long-pressing the buttons, just quicker 😜
I kind of forget about this function all the time... It could be useful.
Thank you for taking me on a virtual tour of Bloemfontein! I take it that you aren't there for the annual festival of roses? Did you drive all the way there or take a flight from Jo'burg?🌹😎
I'm impressed that you managed to get Myanmar Radio National Service, considering its distance and the power of its transmitters on shortwave! What was it that I'm hearing on 15135 kHz in your video? That doesn't sound like a jamming signal and if it's some kind of droning musical instrument, that is a rather long, sustained rest.
Fun fact: Bloemfontein is only 358 meters lower than Johannesburg, but at an elevation of 1,753 meters ASL it is quite an impressive QTH to catch shortwave broadcasts around the world! 🌍📻👍
He could have taken a bus or train too, you never know.
@StratmanII My pleasure! I drove to Bloemfontein, it is 400 km from Johannesburg along a very good highway, the N1 (national highway 1). It is an easy four-hour drive, with farmland as scenery almost all the way after leaving Gauteng province, which is very industrialised.
It is possible to fly there also, and there are buses.
That sound on 15135 kHz is a bit strange, it should be Iran, but maybe my catch is just too weak to actually make out what is going on there.
@@FamtechVideosIt's also quite likely that he had driven to the bus station, left his car there, took a bus to the train station, hopped on the train to the O. R. Tambo International Airport and then took a local flight to Bloemfontein, Deniz. You never know, right? 🤭
🛩️... 🚌... 🚉... 🚗... 🏠
@@StratmanII True.
@@swlistening Thanks Andre for sharing. I love long distance drives especially if the scenery along the route is beautiful. Don't you wish your car stereo had a shortwave band? You could DX while driving! 😀
Thanks André for a nice bandscan from Bloom... Bloem... what was it? Bloemendaal? 😂 It must be some kind of Dutch Lourdes/Santiago de Compostela/Niepokalanów; there used to be Radio Bloemendaal, a Church radio station that broadcast only for a few hours on Sundays. It was on 1116 kHz and offered a very weak signal into UTwente WebSDR, but now I think they're streaming only - if the radio station still exists at all.
6180 at that time is quite a mess, and I don't think you heard CRI russian in your scan. It might be there, perhaps better in Europe, but apart from that, Radio Taiwan International uses this frequency in Mandarin, attracting heavy jamming by CNR1 and noise jammers. And still, the Chinese had crammed in CNR17 in Kazakh to broadcast at roughly the se time as RTI & all these jammers 😂 And a CRI in addition... Crazy! 😵
Nice one on HCJB russian, it's on Saturdays only! And followed by Chechen, a very rare language on the bands, from 16:00 UTC. Very interesting that this transmission actually still exists, well past the days of much bigger HCJB from Pifo + more relays via today,s Media Broadcaat 😮
And I'd like to reference CRI English on 9880 kHz. I noticed the existence of this 15-18 UTC service yesterday as it was completely eclipsed by *another* CRI English on 9875 in the 16:00 UTC hour only! 🤣 Again - crazy 😵
Hope you have a good time in Bloemendaal or whatever it is 😂
Bloemfontein!
And wish it were on 5920... Well, there is Segenswelle, which is mostly in russian, on 7365 kHz, while 5920 is predominantly German. Still, only 3kW or so on all three. But 7365 seems to have a directional antenna to Eastern Europe; it's been pretty standing out from other European low-power stations on 6 & 7 MHz since naZi invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
My pleasure Arnie. Bloemfontein means "flower fountain". The city is known for its roses, it is also called the rose city.
You are right about 6180, complete overload there! I do pick up CRI in Russian very often and usually very clearly on various frequencies, that was why my first thought was that this 6180 one was CRI. But maybe it's the Chinese jammers. China surprises me sometimes with how they use the same frequency at the same time for some transmissions. There is one, which I can't remember the exact frequency now, where they actually have two CRI signals in different languages and different directions on exactly the same frequency. I will try to find it again in my scans. I usually hear both :-)
Cool video! Does the wire work better than your round antenna?
I have done some side-by-side comparisons between the wire and the MAL30+ loop at home in Johannesburg. The MLA30+ works better in Johannesburg, I think because there is more RFI in general and the MLA30+ is good with noise reduction. I did not take the MLA30+ to Bloemfontein, but I think the difference would have been smaller, there was a lot less RFI in Bloemfontein. Both the wire and the MLA30+ seem to pick up the same signals, the only real difference is that the wire can be a bit noisier on some signals.
You heard Radio Farda.
Thanks!
Now isn’t this nice? I hope you enjoyed Bloemfontein and what it has to offer, I haven’t been to The Free State Province yet, what is it like?
Edit: Fixed a punctuation error, these exams seriously made my grammar become a mess.
Are you still busy with exams?
Bloemfontein is a nice city, I was born there and know it quite well. It is a small city, with some lovely old buildings in the city centre. It is famous for Naval Hill, quite a high hill in town where there is a planetarium and nice views of the surroundings. It is a quiet city, and I like that. But it has all the same modern conveniences like in Johannesburg or Cape Town. The Free State as a province is one of my favourite parts of South Africa, particularly the eastern Free State. It is very mountainous and there are amazing views towards the Maluti Mountains in Lesotho. Really incredible scenery.
@@swlistening Interesting. Also, thanks for asking about our exams, we did our last one on the 29th of November, the same day as one of my cousin's birthdays.
Edit: Fixed some *MORE* grammatical errors.
@@swlistening why is it called Free State? O.o
@@ArnieDXer Interesting question Arnie! When the Cape province and the former Natal province were British colonies, some Afrikaner people moved into the interior of the country to flee from British rule, they wanted to rule themselves. One of the places where they settled was the area that is now called the Free State province. These Afrikaners named the area the Republic of the Orange Free State, it was an independent state. So the "Free" indicates freedom, and the Orange refers to the Orange River, which was the border between the Cape Colony and the Republic of the Free State. North of the Orange River was free 🙂 That was from about 1850 to 1899, when the South African war broke out and the British then invaded the Free State and took it over. There were several Afrikaner republics like this in various parts of South Africa in the 19th century.
@@FamtechVideos So now you have a nice long holiday, enjoy! I work until 20 December, then I will have a month's holiday until 19 January. I always use this quiet time of the year to plan my curricula and my classes for the next year.
Nice video again. I would like to invite your followers to enter the SWL Contest 2025 who will start the 01 January 2025. Thank you and 73 de frank SWL F14368 contest organizer
Thank you Frank. I will talk about the contest in one of my podcasts, soon.