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Online radio listening posts..

First session of the 2017-18 MW DX season...and another new one for the Northern Ireland log! Just heard CHRB/1140 High River AB, no ID but the music is matching my radio here in Yakima, airing country and religious music. This is 46KW at 4,026 miles! CHRB was mixing with CBI Nova Scotia, running BBC News.
Also heard an unid 580 Spanish station - recorded it and will send to the WTFDA forums for confirmation later. 680 WRKO is very loud tonight, ID and everything. WJR/760, CJMR/1320, New York regulars all doing well. Also heard KNR Greenland on 570 and 650. Alas trans-Atlantic DX season has begun!
KOMO and KGA were noted in Great Britain last night (but not on the Oldtimer receiver as I recall).
 
Crainbebo,

If you know of any other European receivers besides oldtimers that get good reception from North America, please pass them along. Last year oldtimers receiver was quite crowded much of the time.
 
First time in MONTHS that I've touched the Oldtimer receiver. So far at 0600z...
780 WBBM huge signal with local news
670 WSCR well over Cuba
600 Radio Rebelde on top of CBNA
580 no doubt CFRA with local talk show
Just started, so will likely update.
 
The Kiwi SDRs take 4 people at a time. I used Bob Hawkins Central Indiana SDR most often. It's optimized for medium wave, and I've even received TAs and European/African LW stations on it. Direct link is 38.86.67.206:8073. There is an associated Facebook group. They can all be browsed at sdr.hu.

The University of Twente reciever in Eschendle, the Netherlands is a beast. It takes over 200 simultaneous users. http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/
 
crainbebo said:
First time in MONTHS that I've touched the Oldtimer receiver. So far at 0600z...
780 WBBM huge signal with local news
670 WSCR well over Cuba
600 Radio Rebelde on top of CBNA
580 no doubt CFRA with local talk show
Just started, so will likely update.
Click to expand...

Mw Conditions have been excellent this season.
 
MW Conditions have been OK this season, but they were better here (at my location) in 2011-2014 than they are now. Even late mornings and daytime DX is worse. The MW conditions seem to peak here during the solar cycle upswing. The exact opposite of what I would have expected....
 
Catching up with this thread yesterday motivated me to get off my (carcass) and check out the sdr.hu link

First was mid-afternoon with the Edinburgh, Indiana site. No real surprises there, but I thought hearing a very listenable WMT on 600 was impressive. I also thought I was hearing WAUK on 540 fighting it out with something else that I couldn't identify. If indeed it was WAUK, that would be even more impressive than WMT.

Later, in the evening, I went to several British (and one Irish) site to see if I could snag some TA action. No luck. Maybe I picked the wrong receivers. No shortage of interesting stuff that I'd like to check out later. I'd also like to check out some of the mainland Europe sites. Especially, Italy, where the MW band is all but empty.

Next stop was the Edmonton, Alberta receiver, and that one was fun. Me being me, I checked for the Chicago blowtorches first, and all of them were there to one degree or another. WSCR was buried under KBOI, WGN was the strongest, WBBM was weak, and WLS was even weaker...and getting creamed by splatter from KRVN. One of the highlights....in light of crainbebo's recent post...was hearing WTAM on 1100. Mostly under country music, but it managed to break through once with a positive ID. 680 was a bit of a surprise, CJOB with a good signal. I expected KNBR...which may have been what I was hearing underneath, but couldn't ID.

Then I moved on to the receiver located near Sydney, Australia. About 30 miles northwest of Sydney if I was reading the map correctly. It was mid-day there. I listen online sometimes to a station I stumbled upon once and discovered that I really like it ("easy classics" - mostly 60s, 70s, and a little later). Anyway, I wanted to see what it sounded like at that location. 5kw non-directional, and it sounded just fine. Good audio...as is also the case with their stream.

Finally, my last stop was the SDR at Kaneohe, Oahu, Hawaii. Just around sunset there, and the west coast was just beginning to materialize. KFAX on 1100 first and strongest. Then, as expected, KTNQ (1020). Then, as also expected a couple of others came through as the upper end of the band opened up. Most interesting to me was 1700 where I was hearing sports. XEPE? I couldn't hang out long enough to get an ID.

Overdue fun. Safe to assume I'll be back to make up for lost time. And one thing I have to say about the kiwi SDRs is that they produce very nice audio.
 
The Edmonton receiver is AWESOME! Always getting some wonderful DX up there. One time I heard KRJW/1240 OR (close to 900 miles) around sunrise. Midwest is wide open as well.
I think the best SDR (IMO) is the KA7U receiver at Weiser, ID. I've used that receiver multiple times to DX the NDB band. So far I've 'logged' almost 300 NDBs, and Friday night I heard 10 new including YY/340 from Quebec (500w), new NDBs from MN and SD, and my first station (YUT-335) out of Nunavut! Last night was awful, many regulars were missing and a high noise level. If I can hear YBL/203 BC or RL/218 ON decently, I know the conditions are likely fine.
 
I've been listening to the SDR receivers quite a bit the past few weeks ever since gr8 pointed them out.
One oddity is I get much better reception on the Chicago 50K blasters on the Indiana receiver than the one stationed in Addison, Illinois. WSCR is the only Chicago 50K that comes in as it should on the Addison site. WGN, WBBM, WLS and WMVP all sound terrible on that receiver.
While I can stream several stations I hear via these receivers, there's something I prefer about listening to them in the AM quality I'm used to.
Definitely neat to hear them at night and see what's coming in at different locations around the world.
Another funny thing is there's almost no delay. For instance, my local WTVN is maybe only a second behind on the Pennsylvania receiver.
One nice work-around for a sports fan like me (and probably some of you) is you can hear live audio of games you probably would have to pay to hear online (I listen to Bulls games on WSCR, for instance).
 
crainbebo said:
The Edmonton receiver is AWESOME! Always getting some wonderful DX up there. One time I heard KRJW/1240 OR (close to 900 miles) around sunrise. Midwest is wide open as well.
Click to expand...

I really liked it. And I almost went for thee Weiser SDR as well. I'll make it a point to stop there next time based on your recommendation.

@Schave,,,, Interesting about the Addison receiver. Addison is practically in the shadow of all those Chicago sticks....although WSCR is the closest.

I had a similar experience yesterday with the Hawaii SDR. Kaneohe is a location where all of the Honolulu stations should be rock solid. Even the lower powered ones. Which is exactly the case except for 650, which was incredibly weak. The Maui signals were stronger. Strange, because as KORL 650 was, at least theoretically, the best signal in the islands. In 1994 (as KHNR) it sounded fine when I was in Maui. Adding to the mystery, 650 is diplexed with 940, which sounded just fine.
 
Not to be a party pooper, but what's the legality of these online receivers when it comes to streaming copyrighted music? Is the Copyright Board aware of them? Are they being billed for each relayed stream of a song they send out to any number of listeners? Or is this somehow not covered?
 
CTListener said:
Not to be a party pooper, but what's the legality of these online receivers when it comes to streaming copyrighted music? Is the Copyright Board aware of them? Are they being billed for each relayed stream of a song they send out to any number of listeners? Or is this somehow not covered?
Click to expand...

Well, for openers, almost all of the online SDRs max at 4 streams. Hardly seems like a worthwhile battle, but I'm the first to say "yet what do I know?"
 
Seeing as these receivers aren't relaying digital music in a tagable digital format, and no one is listening for extended lengths of time (many of them time out after 15 minutes of the ueser not changing frequency) I don't think there's much of anything there to bother with. Any music heard is incidental. Not everyone who listens is listening to MW, folks listen to the ham bands, the "buzzer" or thinking their going to hear the launch of World War III (especially some Eschende users). (I do wonder if that's why there aren't FM broadcast versions).

I've not heard an Addsion, IL receiver. One thing to note, not everyone who has a remote SDR has a good MW antenna or noise-free location. The Miami receiver has been up and down, sometimes it has good reception, sometimes it's deaf.
 
gr8oldies said:
Seeing as these receivers aren't relaying digital music in a tagable digital format, and no one is listening for extended lengths of time (many of them time out after 15 minutes of the ueser not changing frequency) I don't think there's much of anything there to bother with. Any music heard is incidental. Not everyone who listens is listening to MW, folks listen to the ham bands, the "buzzer" or thinking their going to hear the launch of World War III (especially some Eschende users). (I do wonder if that's why there aren't FM broadcast versions). .
Click to expand...

Globaltuners.com has several receivers that are FM-capable, at least at overseas locations. I've listened to American pop tunes I've recognized on several of them. That particular site has been around a long, long time without being hassled, so I guess nobody on this side of the pond either knows nor cares.
 
There aren't enough VHF/FM SDRs in the U.S., in my opinion. When the AM band is worse during the summer, the VHF bands are lighting up with sporadic-E skip and meteor scatter. Used to be great FM DX receivers in Nova Scotia and Quebec, but they haven't been on in years. It would be nice to have an FM SDR somewhere in the Midwest or anywhere on the 'other side' of a WA e-skip opening. See if I can hear my locals while I'm getting Kansas and Colorado, for example.
 
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