AM DX listening

I like figuring out what TV and radio stations I can get.

My new mini shortwave radio would be fun if I could get shortwave stations on it - however it's just as much fun figuring out which DX AM stations I can get. I was surprised at how far away I am getting stations from: the italic numbers are distance from Toronto in km.



Of course I can only listen between 11pm and 6am, but because it's Dr. Laura and/or all news stations, I'm not really missing out. I don't mind a kooky late night show about UFO sightings, but haven't found one yet. My fave 11pm-1am host on CFRB is moving to another time, so I will be free to listen to shortwave & DX AM as of next week.

Looking at the map, I want to try some listening at night for AM stations when I'm in Newfoundland next!

I think my shortwave station frequencies and times need to be looked up on the internet again... it's been about a year since i last figured out any shortwave listening stuff.

radio geekery

I bought a wee radio from this Radio Shack that is shutting down soon. For about half off, I got an Eton radio, it's made for Grundig, is about 2x3" and has 200 memories and gets shortwave bands. It's a great radio for travelling. So now I'm entering in the stations I got when I was in Newfoundland and Ireland (yes, I still know what they were - I figured them out before I went, or, I made note of them while I was there) and I'm going to figure out the Montreal CBC Radio 1 station, and some other Canadian cities just in case. For good measure, I'm going to try to put down talk radio AM stations from England too. Finding CBC Radio One in cities across Canada is not difficult because the music and talk is so distinctive, (and the audio can be shitty because some of them were wired with AM quality network feeds, but now air on FM) but the Ireland stations were a bit trickier - first, I have no way to recognize their programming, and second, because RTE (their version of CBC) will advertise its stations as "90 to 92, Two FM!" meaning that across the country, they might have transmitters here and there broadcasting on a range of frequencies between 90.0 and 92.0 MHz. For example, I could hear three or four different transmitters broadcasting what turned out to be the same thing. There's no way to really know what transmitter served my area best, it's better to tune around when I get there, and look it up when I get home again. However I'm going to bring a rough guide of the stations' coverage next time. Before I went to Newfoundland, I mapped out the CBC Radio One FM frequencies and the one AM station, and I got a grand total of zero of the FM stations in the area I was in. Still, my inner geek was pleased to know what kind of range the stations did (not) have.

Time to get some kind of padded case for this radio, because eventually, I WILL drop it.

Know what? BBC has an Asian Network, radio in Punjabi, Gujarati, Mirpuri and Bengali. How about that???? How cool is that?

the fun SCA event

Well I had a fun day yesterday - it was awesome because the past 2 weeks have been a bit hit-and-miss. I went to an SCA event in Mississauga, not too far from where I live. I don't go regularly, one of my NY resolutions has been to start getting out to these events just to stay connected. So because I arrived after work, it was a bit boring because everyone was eating dinner already, I said hi to my one friend that I speak to on MSN, and then found a random table to pass the time. Boring at first, but it paid off - I got caught up in the dancing activities afterwards. I have always enjoyed these, haha, I won't pass up the chance to hold the hand of a nice strange man. Most dance steps were simple, some familiar, ie one dance had a do-si-do, and another had what I termed "the hokey pokey" because we stepped to the left, then right, then turned ourselves around. One person was terribly enthusiastic, and dragged in both people who were somewhat experienced, and newbies, and called out steps as we danced... so I guess if it was line dancing on a boat cruise, I would still have fun... don't tell anyone though. My friend from college was also there, so we sat down and chitchatted first, then we both did dancing, so it was pretty fun.