From Lorenzo, near Rome, 13 July 2013, 1600-1630 UTC, 17860 kHz:

youtu.be/qYdcKhuyVCc

Robert in Texas produced this YouTube from the same broadcast, same time, same frequency:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=heIeRjI4PAA

And Robert’s YouTube of reception UTC 14 July 2013, 0230-0300, on 5745 kHz:

youtu.be/tjKWvjno1nc

A segment of the 5745 kHz broadcast was recorded by Williams in Venezuela:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Z1Kk0m2IU

The weekend’s EasyPal image as received and decoded by Lorenzo on 17860 kHz:

VOA Radiogram during the weekend on 13-14 July 2013 included this sequence:

(1) Greetings to the Mexico City meeting of shortwave listeners in MFSK32 plain-text Spanish

(2) Same greetings to the Mexico City meeting in MFSK32 formatted for Flmsg (a message handling program that works with Fldigi).

(3) MFSK32 image publicizing the Mexico City meeting

(4) VOA News story about Pluto’s moons in MFSK32 plain-text MFSK32 Spanish

When I decoded from recordings and from the actual broadcasts, the Spanish accents displayed correctly from (1) but never from (4), even though the character set was still UTF-8. The only way to restore the accents was to close Fldigi and and turn it back on during (4). Why was this happening?

Using audio editing software, I deleted (2) and (3) and decoded from what remained. The accents displayed correctly on both (1) and (4).

Then I played (1), (2) and (4). The accents were no longer visible on (4).

Finally I played (1), (3) and (4). The accents were visible on (4).

The culprit is Flmsg. Something in the Flmsg code alters the character set. Whatever that may be, I’ll just avoid text containing diacritics after using Flmsg on the program.      

Looking at reception reports from the past weekend, some listeners had this problem with the accents, and some did not. I have no idea what caused the difference.

Later in the program, during the story about the O3B broadband system in Africa, some of you saw — where there should have been apostrophes. This is because I forgot to change each print-style ’ to the typewriter-style
’ before encoding the story. The print-style ’ requires UTF-8, which had been lost, for some of us, after the Flmsg item.

See also this item about the VOA Radiogram message to the Encuentro Nacional Diexista 2013 en Ciudad de México.

And this is what the Flmsg greeting to the Mexico City meeting looked like:

Lorenzo near Rome prepared this YouTube video from his reception of VOA Radiogram on 6 July 2013, 1600-1630 UTC, on 17860 kHz:

youtu.be/WyWdI8t5Vmk

And his reception 7 July, 1930-2000 UTC, on 15670 kHz:

youtu.be/vtRRGG8JH6g

On 7 July 2013, 1930 UTC, 15670 kHz, Oscar in Milan 
introduced noise interference by plugging in an AC adapter:

youtu.be/qUHWsIfbYAE 

Ted in Texas prepared this YouTube video from his reception on 7 July at 0230-0300 UTC on 5745 kHz. There is some co-channel interference, but it has no effect on the decoding of the MFSK text.:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq3bYEdM08w

VOA Radiogram has been experimenting with the EasyPal digital image software, which can be obtained from vk4aes.com .

Because EasyPal requires a certain threshold of signal quality (good signal strength plus not too much interference or fading), decoding the images can be difficult. Three VOA Radiogram listeners have devised interesting solutions.  

Roger in Germany:

This time I had problems with the Easypal image of the first run on USB. The second run then I made with the audio of LSB. In the decoding program [EasyPal] all correct pieces of USB-passage were obtained / used. Only the missing or incorrect parts had to be supplemented from the LSB-area What a great error correction!

Roger uses an ICOM IC-R75 receiver with Studio1 SDR software. His decoding results on 22 June at 1600-1630 UTC on 17860 kHz are summarized in this document.

Michael in Germany:

For EasyPal I had to repeat the decoding 5 times, before all necessary segments were obtained. This is  easy with Perseus, as you can mark a part of the recording, and this will be played in an endless loop, until you stop it manually. So each loop resulted in some new decoded segments, until the picture was complete.

Alan in the UK:

I’ve been doing some more tests with EasyPal and looking at ways to reduce errors and improve reception, and I’d noticed that of the three signal traces, the lowest frequency one suffered the least from the effects of fading, but the middle and higher trace at around 1.5 and 1.8 kHz did look much lower and would vanish at times during some, and these seemed to produce the most errors. I run the line output from the receiver to the PC via a graphic equaliser, and I tried boosting this by a few decibels at around 1.5 and 1.8 kHz and you can see the difference on the two screen shots I have attached. Setting these so they are all about equal in amplitude and not overloading does seem to give the best decodes and the least errors.

Generally speaking, I have had more success decoding EasyPal using SSB rather than AM mode.

Any other EasyPal tips and tricks?  Please let me know.

The June 22-23 VOA Radiogram EasyPal image as decoded by Lorenzo in Italy on 17860 kHz:

K5TED in San Antonio listened to VOA Radiogram on 16 June 2013, 1930-200 UTC, on 15670 kHz, using his “vintage 1964 Royal 3000-1 Zenith Transoceanic and built-in whip antenna.’ He decoded the text modes from that fine old radio, with the results in this YouTube video:

http://youtu.be/xg8Pqdw4d_4

So we have a 1964 vintage radio receiving digital text and images from a 1962 vintage transmitter in North Carolina.

More YouTube videos from the weekend of 15-16 June in this previous post.

Lorenzo, IZ0KBA, near Rome, produced this YouTube video of his reception of VOA Radiogram on 15 June 2013, 1600-1630 UTC, on 17860 kHz:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0jSpQiBKJM&feature=youtu.be

This video of the same 17860 transmission is made by Andy, N9VT, near Fredericksburg, Virginia – in the skip zone:

http://youtu.be/sS26v1M6loQ

Andy had better reception UTC Sunday at 0230-0300 on 5745 kHz:

http://youtu.be/p2RnZJgwExY

Form VOA Radiogram on 15 June 2013, 1600-1630 UTC, on 17860 kHz, Franco in northern Italy has this successful decode of this week’s EasyPal image:

And the MFSK32 image of the VOA logo:

Guy in northern Texas decoded the EasyPal image from the same transmission on 17860 from North Carolina:

And the MFSK32 VOA logo:

Giuliano, near Livorno, Italy, recorded his reception of VOA Radiogram on 9 June 2013, 1930-2000 UTC, on 15670. He used a Sangean ATS-909 portable shortwave radio.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzLm1uNDFmM&feature=youtu.be

Giuliano’s reception conditions included a fair signal, adjacent-channel interference, static and fading. His decode of the MFSK modes was nevertheless very successful.

Listen (and decode) especially from 7:00 to 23:15 into the video, noting the  pop-up of the Flmsg web page, the 100% copy of MFSK16 despite Slim Whitman, and near-100% copy of MFSK32 minus 9 dB also with Slim Whitman on the channel.

Alas, EasyPal could not decode under such conditions.

The YouTube video was produced from Giuliano’s .wma file by Andy, N9VT.

Lorenzo, IZ0KBA, near Rome, produced this YouTube video of his reception of VOA Radiogram on 8 June 2013 at 1600 UTC on 17860 kHz.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VmXm2E01B4

In Lorenzo’s video, the Flmsg content did not pop up as a new browser window, but it did for me decoding from his YouTube audio. Try it at home with Fldigi and Flmsg. Lorenzo did successfully decode the EasyPal image.

Andy, N9VT near Fredericksburg, Virginia, produced this YouTube video of his reception on 9 June 2013 at 0230 UTC on 5745 kHz:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxQXxu2x51g

Ted, K5TED, in San Antonio, Texas, produced this video of his reception on 9 June 2013 at 1930 UTC on 15670 kHz:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RDec3-PsxU

See also Andy’s YouTube video of the Radio Australia digital text test, 8 June 2013, 2150 UTC, on 21740 kHz (16400 km!):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpaH4VFDZek

VOA Radiogram listener Finn, who, despite his name, lives in Norway, sent interesting audio of his reception on 9 June 2013 at 0230 UTC on 5745 kHz. In this excerpt, because of the low signal level and a variety of local noises, Kim’s voice introduction is basically unintelligible. The MFSK16 program preview that follows, however, achieves 100% copy:

This is followed by a VOA Radiogram logo as an MFSK32 image that is very fuzzy but readable: