Radio Dechovka

Extracts from my Broadcast Matters, long, medium & shortwave  column, in Radio User, August 2013

Howard Barnett has asked for the address of a station he has been trying to tune into and hopefully wishes to send a reception reports to. 

This is Radio Dechovka on 1233kHz medium wave from the Czech Republic. Radio Dechovka translates as Radio Brass or Radio Brass Band and the postal address is Radio Brass, U prutník 232, 250 72 Předboj, Czech Republic.  Emails can be sent to studio@radiodechovka.cz 

Interestingly their main broadcast studio is in a train station in Prague Kojetice. Radio Brass has a medium wave license for nationwide trials. It advertises itself as  the first brass-band radio you can listen around the clock.  It plays the best of Czech and Moravian brass bands and sometimes non-Czech bands as well. 

A typical summer evening's programming consists of Camp fire; Cultural Service - where Jiri Sykora provides an overview of cultural tips; a programme of the best brass band music of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia; and Pub fun which plays "bawdy songs".

Radio now and then

Photo CB

Extracts from my Radio Websites column, Radio User, August 2013

Have you seen the American Forces and Television Service’s Archive website? Thomas Whetson runs this a blog which features archive audio and historical material. It includes an interview with Elvis Presley in 1960 and a 1973 Air force recruiting clip. All rather bizarre to my mind but the 285,000 visitors to the blog can't all be wrong! http://afrtsarchive.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Onto another Thomas, Thomas Witherspoon at the SWLing Post, who continues to keep us all informed with daily digestible chunks of fascinating shortwave and international radio news at http://swling.com/blog/ He is also now behind the shortwave radio archive at http://shortwavearchive.com/ The Shortwave Radio Audio Archive (SRAA) is a collection of shortwave radio recordings that you can download or listen to as a podcast. The collection grows every day and includes both historic recordings and current recordings from the shortwave radio spectrum. The goal of this site is for shortwave radio enthusiast to have a place to store, archive and share their radio recordings with the world. So visit the site, enjoy the cornucopia of wonderment and think about adding your own recordings to it.

An entertaining radio show I have started listening to is The Seckerson Tapes and The Arts Desk Radio Show at the Arts Desk website. Regular podcasts of a range of intelligent arts and culture programmes. Let me know what you think when you have been to www.theartsdesk.com/radio-show

Café del Mar collective & DX Adventures

Photo: CB

Extracts from my Radio Websites column, Radio User, August 2013

The sunny sounds of the wonderful Café del Mar collective are never far from my mind at this time of year- I cannot believe they have been going since 1980. 

You are only a click away from the sounds of a Mediterranean blissed out summer at the Mixcloud channel of young Slovakian Adam Kvasnica 
www.mixcloud.com/adamkvasnica3 and www.mixcloud.com/adamkvasnica3/café-del-mar/ 

The official Café del Mar site is at www.cafedelmarmusic.com/ and is about be relaunched.


A new blog up and running this summer has the promising title of DX Adventures. It’s the work of Roland and will contain stories about DXing over the past fifty-plus years. It starts with how he got hooked on the hobby and will build up to the current time. The posts will not necessarily be in a historical order but share the good times and things he has learned. 

Comments are welcome and will be moderated daily. 
It is at http://dxadventures.blogspot.co.uk/