VOA Radiogram, program 138, the weekend of 21-22 November 2015, experimented with the transmission of QR codes via shortwave. Can the QR codes be successfully scanned after enduring the rigors of shortwave propagation?

The answer is yes, to a point.

An example of success are these QR codes received and decoded by Chris in New Zealand, about 14000 km from the North Carolina transmitter, 22 November at 1930-2000 UTC, 15670 kHz.

The first QR code is a link to a VOA News story …

The second QR code is the VOA Radiogram transmission schedule …

Frank in the Netherlands had a fuzzy decode of the 15670 kHz transmission, but I am able to scan this one using my Asus tablet …

These images decoded by Alan in England, also from the 15670 kHz transmission, are sufficiently fuzzy that I usually cannot scan them successfully, but you might have better luck …

A YouTube video of the Saturday, 21 November, broadcast at 1600-1630 UTC on 17580 kHz, provided by Tim in Colorado, shows the QR codes as received and “painted” using the Fldigi software. The QR code images begin at 17:45 and 25:45 into the video: https://youtu.be/QFYCq3-mmhU

Is there any advantage to transmitting QR codes? In terms and speed and efficiency, perhaps not. The URLs and small text messages are more likely to survive shortwave as plain text, which in MFSK enjoys the benefit of forward error correction. MFSK images are more vulnerable.

It is, however, possible to transmit a QR code as UTF-8 characters, thus taking the advantage of the error correction in text transmission. Such experiments will take place in future editions of VOA Radiogram.