Shortwave. HF Radio. High Frequency

I tuned in on a KIWI SDR to get better reception and it was playing some old Kenny Everitt, pretty boring stuff. I used to listen to 4KZ whilst working in Southern Highlands province of PNG, just great reception

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For folks that are interested in the HF and amateur bands, I have my own KiwiSDR set up out of town at the same place where I have my second (NNODE Radio 2) TEF FM receiver located, over on http://22973.proxy.kiwisdr.com:8073/

For an antenna, I just use a cheap Aliexpress 9:1 ā€˜balun’ and approximately 71 foot of cattle fencing wire strung up between two non conductive posts.

The Kiwi is mainly configured to do well for MW, but SW/HF along with amateur bands (160m up to 10m) are also clear during the night. I have gotten FT8 and WSPR decodes all around the world on it reliably to 80m. As I don’t have a callsign, FT4/8 and WSPR decodes have been set up with the recommended callsign of ā€˜SWLQF15’ - the SWL denoting ā€œShortwave Listenerā€ and the QF15 mapping to the area it is located.

On this setup, I managed to get the 2310khz transmitter of Shortwave Australia when conditions allow, as well as receiving pure groundwave reception from the 4835khz transmitter, and 4970 XRN / Radio 5-6-7 from Wee-Waa NSW. All of the WWV/WWVH atomic clock time signals from 2.5mhz up to 15mhz have been reliably heard, with 20 and 25mhz coming in as conditions are suitable. 27mhz CB radio I have been told has gotten as far away as the United States.

Just a small sample of whats available, this can also decode the various Weatherfax reports from around the world, including the BoM’s own on 5100khz.

Have a play and see what you can pick up - up to 3 people can tune at once on the current configuration, with the last Kiwi channel reserved for the built-in tasks.

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Thanks for the mention - 4970 khz is coming from the same site as 4835 khz at present. Dave is helping me out with a temporary service from his spare TX and aerial. I’m moving house and it’s not going to plan.

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Thanks for making the SDR available - it works great on an iMac with Safari. Your antenna is good even down to 19.8KHz NWC VLF station from Northwest Cape -S7. 20 meter Ham Band worked great as well.

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I’m very impressed with how little RF noise there is. Even on LW NDB beacons such as 407 kHz from Swan Hill.

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I’m surprised it works at all on VLF as I’m not using a linear power supply. I do see a lot of interference down there so wrote it off. While the current switch-mode power supply works well enough, it should get even quieter in terms of common-mode noise with a linear 5V brick.

20m is really quite magical, I’ve often got FT8/4 decodes from all over the world on that band and reported them onto the PSK Reporter site.

In suburban areas 20 meters is unusable and the Hams have given up - remote SDR’s are the only option in most locations

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Sadly its the case, there’s hardly any activity on anything beyond 40m during the day even in a quiet location, 80m does come alive at night, but 160m is largely empty nowadays. 160m is very hard for most in urban areas to get anywhere near a usable SWR due to the sheer wavelength alone, without the noise creeping into the feedline.

I hope things work out for you soon, I quite like both yours and Dave’s transmissions both from a propagation benchmark factor and listening in. Both provide a good target for an aspiring SWL (shortwave listener), if you can get both during the day at a fairly good level, chances are the setup should be very good at night to DX on.

All thanks to the rural location I put it into. Now that being said I can reduce the noise further with replacing the feedline from RG-58 to something more shielded plus replacing the Aliexpress balun and putting a more densely wound common-mode choke in the feedline, but for what it is it seems to land in the top 10 receivers in Australia on the KiwiSDR SNR score list, a good effort if you ask me for what it is :slight_smile:

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One to try for tomorrow morning our time will be the BBC Antarctic broadcast:

Thanks to SWLing Post the BBC Antarctic midwinter broadcast (2130-2200 UTC Sunday 21st June 2026) the frequencies are:

    9460 kHz from Woofferton.

    9510 kHz from Ascension

    12070 kHz from Woofferton
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It’s a wonder HF has not been killed off completely by the BBC?

HF in Antarctica nowadays is just 100w SSB (some places have 1Kw)so they can talk to field huts and camps. State of the art down there is a 5G base with Starlink backhauls to a telco back home for comms with the real world. Radio Techs would be an endangered species.

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I think it’s just done for show these days:

  • As a target for SW DXers. Britain has a tradition of indulging its ā€˜anoraks’, for example by running special steam trains. This is the radio equivalent of that.
  • To ensure that the BBC is present on every continent on Earth.
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It’s also Mid-Winters Day today and on the Antarctic Bases they have a special formal dinner and festivities to celebrate.

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I had a crack at these. Managed to pick up the 9460khz and 12070khz services, 9510 was blocked by China but the other two were received at S9 strength on my longwire setup, with 9460 being the clearer of the two.

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I managed to tick off one of my shortwave bucket list items this morning. Received the UZB-76 Buzzer on 4625khz at S4 levels, and took a screen capture of it from my phone.

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There appears to be a new licenced Australian shortwave station on the air on 5055kHz from Johnstone, Queensland.

On air times are a bit sporadic but I have caught it reliably in the early evening (6PM onwards). Signal strength tends to vary a bit, but I’ve seen it as high as S9, most of the time sitting anywhere between S5 and S7, and only on the Kiwi and longwire, no sign of it on my portable radios. This makes sense as its only a 1kW station.

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That would be 4DX, owned by Al Kirkton (formerly of, and was broadcasting 4KZ)

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Thanks, that would explain it. I did see Al’s name on the RRL database, worth mentioning there is also another service on 2485khz that while is licensed, appears to be not on air.