RSIDs: During the weekend of 21-22 March 2015, the RSIDs for MFSK32 and BPSK63 will be followed by five seconds of silence to give you time to change the audio frequency if it is not correct on your waterfall.

Punctuation marks: Last weekend, some listeners noted anomalies with the printout of various punctuation marks and accented letters, including “Mart” instead of the intended “Martí”. This weekend’s program will begin with some examples of punctuation marks in both typographic and typewriter forms. The former requires UTF-8, but the latter does not. There will also be two items in Spanish, a good test of the display of diacritics, and some Cyrillic characters in the story about Ekho Moskvy. In Fldigi, select the UTF-8 character set via Configure > Colors & Fonts.    NB: Fldigi 3.22.05 does not display UTF-8 characters, even if it’s set for UTF-8. Use Fldigi 3.22.04.           

BPSK63: Yes, we do mode requests on VOA Radiogram. Oscar in Italy asked for content in BPSK63 (also known as PSK63) so that he can test his DroidPSK Android app. This app is available from http://www.wolphi.com/ham-radio-apps/droidpsk/ and costs $5.49. It is possible that some characters will not decode correctly in BPSK63, because it does not have the error correction capabilities of MFSK32.

Flmsg: This weekend’s program includes another item in Flmsg (plaintext form). For Flmsg to work with Fldigi, in Fldigi: Configure > Misc > NBEMS: Under Reception of flmsg files, check Open in flmsg. Under that, indicate where your flmsg.exe file is located. If you also check Open in browser, Flmsg with open your default web browser and display the message as a web page.

AndFlmsg: If you have an Android device, VOA Radiogram can be decoded using the beta AndFlmsg app available from http://www.w1hkj.com/vk2eta/ . While AndFlmsg is designed to be used with Flmsg forms, it also displays content in plain text, i.e. not in Flmsg format, on its modem screen (the one with “W.Fall On/Off” bottom right). Please let me know your results with AndFlmsg.

MT63-500L is the bonus mode of the week. Because of its latency, you probably will not see the text until after the tone (more like a “buzz”) has ended.

Here is the lineup for VOA Radiogram, program 103, 21-22 March 2015, all in MFSK32 except where noted:

  1:22  Program preview
  2:43  A note about punctuation marks
  4:13  Greetings to the Antena DX radio program*
  6:21  Iron rain once fell on earth*
11:56  BPSK63: Analysis of earth’s ionosphere
13:50  MFSK32 resumes: Young scientists (in Spanish)*
18:07  Change of directors as Ekho Moskvy radio*
21:59  Reuters website inaccessible in China*
25:29  Decode VOA Radiogram on Android device (Flmsg plaintext
      form)
27:02  Closing announcements
28:05  MT63-500L: Bonus mode of the week

*with image

Please send reception reports to radiogram@voanews.com.

VOA Radiogram transmission schedule
(all days and times UTC):
Sat 0930-1000 5910 kHz
Sat 1600-1630 17860 kHz
Sun 0230-0300 5745 kHz
Sun 1930-2000 15670 kHz
All via the Edward R. Murrow transmitting station in North Carolina.

The Mighty KBC will transmit a minute of MFSK64 Saturday at about 1230 UTC on 6095 kHz, and Sunday at about 0130 UTC (Saturday 9:30 pm EDT) on 7375 kHz. Both frequencies are via Germany. Reports to themightykbc (at) gmail.com.

An image from 15 March 2015, during the 1930 UTC broadcast, 15670 kHz, as decoded by Chris in New Zealand, 14000 km from the transmitter: