Radio Afghanistan

Photo from CERF website http://ochaonline.un.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1719
Radio and telecommunications equipment in Afghanistan  Photo: IRIN 

Taken from my column Long Medium and Short, Broadcast Matters, Radio User Oct 2011 http://www.radiouser.co.uk/

Radio Afghanistan returned to shortwave as an international broadcaster in August, with transmissions in Urdu and English. Other languages will follow, namely Arabic and Russian and then French and German. Programmes are aimed to Asia, Africa and Europe.

It has been logged in Europe on 6100kHz from 1525. One of the first loggings was made by Mikhail Timofeyev in St Petersburg using a Drake R8A and 30m long wire. (source Hard Core DX). He reported the following: Radio Afghanistan from Kabul with local singing then English with news at 1530, Afghan traditional song, a talk about Ramadan, and one western pop song.

There was a tentative identification at 1556 UTC of "The International service of National Radio of Afghanistan." It was also logged in Austria, Bulgaria, India, The Netherlands and the UK in the first days of its return to the airwaves.





Radio Free Libya with news in English was also being logged on 1449kHz at 2030 UTC from Misurata by Guido Schotmans in Belgium and Max van Arnhem in The Netherlands (source Medium Wave Circle). At the time of writing the so-called rebels are surrounding Tripoli. As a consequence it looks likely that there will soon be changes afoot at the Libyan state broadcaster Voice of Africa. Currently you can hear their daily English transmissions at 1400 to 1500 UTC on 17725kHz.