Last weekend’s EasyPal experiments resulted in the same high failure rate that we experienced several months ago during our first round of EasyPal transmissions. That is in addition to Mac and Linux users who were not able to use EasyPal because it is currently only available in Windows.

But there were some successes with EasyPal, resulted in a brilliant image of the VOA Radiogram test card. Most of these were from North American listeners, but the image was also successfully decoded in Poland, Greece, Italy, Germany, England, and Scotland. See examples.

We also experimented with MFSK32, MFSK64, and MFSK128 images at X1, X2, and X4 images. The X2 and X4 images were somewhat (X2) and very (X4) fuzzy. The X2 speed in MFSK64 might be useful when a larger image must be transmitted. See examples, provided by François in France, received 31 May during the 1600 UTC broadcast on 17860.

VOA Radiogram for the weekend of 7 and 8 June 2014 (program 62) returns to the usual VOA science news in MFSK32, plus an item about the International Radio for Disaster Relief (IRDR) exercise that is taking place 5-6 June. Here is the lineup:

  1:35  Program preview
  2:49  International Radio for Disaster Relief, with image
10:35  “Flying Saucer” for future Mars missions, with image
17:11  Large rocky exoplanet discovered, with image
23:59  Private space race heats up
27:47  Closing announcements

Please send reception reports to radiogram@voanews.com, this weekend with a cc: to info (at) hfcc.org. HFCC, the association that coordinates shortwave broadcast frequencies, is the organizer of the IRDR. You might include a comment about the use of text via shortwave during and after disasters.  

VOA Radiogram transmission schedule
(all days and times UTC)
Sat 0930-1000 5745 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.

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The Mighty KBC will transmit a minute of MFSK64 Saturday at about 1130 UTC on 6095 kHz, and Sunday at about 0130 UTC (Saturday 9:30 pm EDT) on 9925 kHz. Both frequencies are via Germany. Reports to themightykbc (at) gmail.com .