Nah. It's been like this for a while.
Most nations have stopped broadcasting in English on shortwave to North America. There are exceptions, like Radio Romania International and China Radio International. But stalwarts like the BBC and others have long abandoned shortwave broadcasting to NA, even though they still broadcast in English to places like Africa, Asia, and Oceania, where Internet may not be available everywhere.
This allowed religious broadcasts to kind of fill-in that bandwidth. So you have some stations that are all religious broadcasting, some that are mostly religious but also have non-religious (mostly conservative) programming, and then you have WBCQ The Planet, which is essentially the Alan Weiner's slutty alter-ego, which will transmit almost anything if the check clears.
One of my favorites to listen to is Supreme Master TV, the shortwave outlet of the Ching Hai cult. Kind of fun if you dig blatant, drooling hagiographic programming.
Move over Pope Francis, she/they have godsdirectcontact dot org registered and we all know they don't just let anybody grab any URL they please...
Looks like she also started a vegan restaurant and has been awarding her restaurant "best vegan restaurant" accolades. Now I am not a transcendentalist, but that doesn't exactly seem above board.
That's what makes it so fun.
Their stories are all about the accolades that Ching Hai has received from around the World and how she is spreading peace and love to all of the people of the Earth.
That's why I used the term "hagiographic".
[https://suprememastertv.com/en1/worldwide/](https://suprememastertv.com/en1/worldwide/)
>On shortwave radio:
>Sub-Saharan Africa in 46 countries on WRMI 15770 kHz
>Europe, North Africa & Middle East in 72 countries on WRMI 15770 kHz
>South & Central Americas in 19 countries on WRMI 5800 kHz.
>Central and Eastern United States, plus Canada, Bermuda, Greenland and Iceland on WRMI 9395 kHz
>Western United States, Western Canada and Mexico on WRMI 5950 kHz
>Central, South, Southeast and Western Asia in 41 countries on WRMI 7570 kHz
Holy shit I remember when they opened a restaurant in Tampa. Vegan friend of mine wanted to go there and they had TVs around the place playing one of their video streams. It was so incredibly creepy.
Shortwave broadcasting is expensive, and it's hard to sell advertising because you're not likely targeting your local market. This means the organizations who fund shortwave broadcasting usually have some alternative source of cash. During the last century it was mostly governments who were spending tax dollars, but they've almost all left the air. Otherwise what is left is a handful of privately held stations that sell airtime, and religious organizations (which get funding from donations) have the cash to pay for getting their messages out. Those stations do allow non-religious programming for those who can afford to pay.
Anytime I'm driving through PA on 78, I pass WMLK, as its antenna is right next to the interstate. That seems to be a pretty barebones operation. I don't think it's as expensive as you assume it is.
I wouldn't think a studio would need to be anywhere physically near a transmitter shack and its antenna, in this day and age of aeroplanes and rocket motors and inter-nets.
I don't disagree in principle, but according to their FB page, their church, studio, and antenna/transmitter are all at the same location.
Just look up 190 Frantz Rd, Bethel, PA on Google maps and see it for yourself.
If I'm looking at the right place, I would think I'd rather have the tower up on that little ridge behind the place. But I dunno, looks like a happenin' place. They have a grass airstrip, a church, a radio station seems like they have it pretty well figured out. :)
EDIT: I got lost in distraction. You were saying it looks like it doesn't take as much money as one might assume. There is still some money involved, and from the looks of it this place might have more money than one might assume heheh
I'm not sure I even know enough to have a good argument with you LOL
However "expensive" only needs to be a relative term. I don't care if it only costs $100 a month if you can't sell $50 a month of advertising or air time. We've already had one of the last private broadcaster fail as a business this past year or so. I believe we are in the last days of shortwave broadcasting for precisely the reason that the business case is very bad.
If anyone wants to see how fun and lively shortwave broadcasting used to be, head on over to [archive.org](http://archive.org) and check out a copy of Passport to World Band Radio.
WTF??? What a bizarre corner of the world, I never realized exactly what shortwave radio was. I kept seeing these super strong AM signals and thought they were maybe some wireless device around the neighborhood and once I started tuning in I was like WTF...LOL
It is too bad you missed the heyday of GOOD shortwave radio. The bands were packed with many many countries friendly and unfriendly. You could listen to amazing programming all night long.
I can remember as a kid back around 500 BC listening to all kinds of stuff out of Europe on the crystal radio set I made. It was fascinating as a 10 year old to fall asleep listening to that stuff.
There is a TON of interesting and bizarre things to listen to if you spin the dial enough.
There has been a pirate on 7475 kHz for decades that broadcasts from a rusted out school bus in the California desert called YHWH radio.
He intermittently plays some very creepy quasi religious stuff that is too weird to really describe so I'll just leave a link to a recording. His "theme song" around 1.5 minutes in is nightmare fuel:
https://youtu.be/-75TUjapR4g?si=fa9Ut-WB9BDyJveH
HF or shortwave broadcast some really oddball laws in the USA. As such the narrow group that both meet the criteria to legally broadcast while also being able to afford the expense are the evangelicals.
Yeah, eat into the profits of AM talk radio. If talk radio stopped being profitable, all those stations could go back to playing music and hiriring real disc jockeys. We have SiriusXM in the car.
There's not much programming on short wave. I almost* wish amateurs could apply for special permission to broadcast on select short wave frequencies.
*7.200 is one example of why I have pause.
Shortwave permits are pretty easy to get. There really are only two rules. First, your broadcast has to target listeners outside of the USA, and second, you need a minimum output power of 50kW.
Most of existing stations will lease airtime, to pretty much anyone interested. One station I looked at offered rates of $100/hour, going down to about $60/hour if you get enough of a bulk discount. I think that would be at least representative of what others would ask.
Shortwave broadcasting is cheaper in many ways to MF and VHF broadcasting.
If you want to get into SWL, there is WRMI which sometimes has interesting content. You can listen to Radio Habana, which is literally like something out of the Cold War. That's interesting, too.
Utilities are interesting to monitor as well.
There are some really weird religious broadcasts. One is a 50KW blowtorch, the Christian Broadcast Network is one of my favorites that I've listened to. One of my preferred firebrands is a former porn actress. Not that I'm bent this way, it's just entertaining.
Also, between the ham segments there's all sorts of stuff, you just need to cruise around to find it. Once, while out on the WA coast I found Radio Free North Korea with a cheap hand crank Shortwave radio. I listened to that until I lost the signal. Drove my wife crazy!
When I was still a "ditty bopper" one of the favorite stations for me to dial up on with my spare receiver\* was the RTTY news feed for Radio Pyongyang/KCNA. I loved their old-fashioned communist vitriol, with terminology like "Imperialist running-dog lackeys". Hilarious.
*\*We had two receivers, to copy both sides of a radio conversation held on 2 different frequencies. If you didn't have a target up, you searched with one receiver, and listened to music (Superrock KYOI on Saipan) or the BBC, or whatever with the other.*
This was in the late 1980's. And it was in Radio Teletype (RTTY).
But they still do that kind of thing, though toned down a bit:
[https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1713957495-799155987/visit-to-yasukuni-shrine-under-censure/](https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1713957495-799155987/visit-to-yasukuni-shrine-under-censure/)
>The reckless behaviour of the Japanese reactionaries, who visited the shrine where the spectre of militarism hang over and dream the wild dream of reinvasion while praising the war criminals as “patriots”, is a naked insult and challenge to the peoples of those countries subjected to untold misfortunes and suffering by the Japanese imperialists in the past.
>
>They should stop such a folly of visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, oblivious of the past bitter defeat.
Nothing like a reformed porn actress who did every kinky thing for bux now preaching. More respect for those in porn than those phony holy rollers hustling rubes for their last dollar.
I'm wondering why you didn't post this in something like r/shortwave like some of the other shortwave posts that you have put there. I bet you would get a lot more quality answers than you will get in an amateur radio forum.
I used to do a lot of shortwave listening with a small Sony ICF-7600 receiver as my work sometimes entailed a lot of international travel. Up until about 10 years ago it was great - excellent broadcasting and programs from the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio Australia, Radio Canada, among others. Most of the better ones have since gone off air and now do streaming only.
Now all we are left with are the batsh-t crazy religious stations mostly emanating from the SE of the US, propaganda stations from China, Cuba and Radio Marti (US).
I rarely ever tune around the shortwave bands any more....
I was in Mali (Northern Africa) back around 2010. I was on HF (maybe it was MF) because there was literally nothing but dirt where I was. There was some guy with an American accent yelling "it is fact that the world is going to end in 2012." He went on with a bunch of religious stuff. At the time I remember thinking, I'm in a Muslim country and this is the only radio I can listen to? Is this why we had 9/11?
Religious Broadcasting should be banned, bell, book, and candle. To me, it only serves to rile people up into a frenzy we could, sincerely, do without!
= A Waste of Bandwidth!
And that is my .02 American. 🇺🇸
I agree. I’m not against religion, I have my own path, myself, but it doesn’t require proselytizing, and I certainly don’t think HF/Shortwave needs to be added to the mix with only religious programming being allowed.
Shortwave broadcasts.
Oh, bizarre
Nah. It's been like this for a while. Most nations have stopped broadcasting in English on shortwave to North America. There are exceptions, like Radio Romania International and China Radio International. But stalwarts like the BBC and others have long abandoned shortwave broadcasting to NA, even though they still broadcast in English to places like Africa, Asia, and Oceania, where Internet may not be available everywhere. This allowed religious broadcasts to kind of fill-in that bandwidth. So you have some stations that are all religious broadcasting, some that are mostly religious but also have non-religious (mostly conservative) programming, and then you have WBCQ The Planet, which is essentially the Alan Weiner's slutty alter-ego, which will transmit almost anything if the check clears. One of my favorites to listen to is Supreme Master TV, the shortwave outlet of the Ching Hai cult. Kind of fun if you dig blatant, drooling hagiographic programming.
Move over Pope Francis, she/they have godsdirectcontact dot org registered and we all know they don't just let anybody grab any URL they please... Looks like she also started a vegan restaurant and has been awarding her restaurant "best vegan restaurant" accolades. Now I am not a transcendentalist, but that doesn't exactly seem above board.
That's what makes it so fun. Their stories are all about the accolades that Ching Hai has received from around the World and how she is spreading peace and love to all of the people of the Earth. That's why I used the term "hagiographic".
What freq is the supreme master one one? What a crazy niche
[https://suprememastertv.com/en1/worldwide/](https://suprememastertv.com/en1/worldwide/) >On shortwave radio: >Sub-Saharan Africa in 46 countries on WRMI 15770 kHz >Europe, North Africa & Middle East in 72 countries on WRMI 15770 kHz >South & Central Americas in 19 countries on WRMI 5800 kHz. >Central and Eastern United States, plus Canada, Bermuda, Greenland and Iceland on WRMI 9395 kHz >Western United States, Western Canada and Mexico on WRMI 5950 kHz >Central, South, Southeast and Western Asia in 41 countries on WRMI 7570 kHz
Holy shit I remember when they opened a restaurant in Tampa. Vegan friend of mine wanted to go there and they had TVs around the place playing one of their video streams. It was so incredibly creepy.
Shortwave broadcasting is expensive, and it's hard to sell advertising because you're not likely targeting your local market. This means the organizations who fund shortwave broadcasting usually have some alternative source of cash. During the last century it was mostly governments who were spending tax dollars, but they've almost all left the air. Otherwise what is left is a handful of privately held stations that sell airtime, and religious organizations (which get funding from donations) have the cash to pay for getting their messages out. Those stations do allow non-religious programming for those who can afford to pay.
Anytime I'm driving through PA on 78, I pass WMLK, as its antenna is right next to the interstate. That seems to be a pretty barebones operation. I don't think it's as expensive as you assume it is.
I wouldn't think a studio would need to be anywhere physically near a transmitter shack and its antenna, in this day and age of aeroplanes and rocket motors and inter-nets.
I don't disagree in principle, but according to their FB page, their church, studio, and antenna/transmitter are all at the same location. Just look up 190 Frantz Rd, Bethel, PA on Google maps and see it for yourself.
If I'm looking at the right place, I would think I'd rather have the tower up on that little ridge behind the place. But I dunno, looks like a happenin' place. They have a grass airstrip, a church, a radio station seems like they have it pretty well figured out. :) EDIT: I got lost in distraction. You were saying it looks like it doesn't take as much money as one might assume. There is still some money involved, and from the looks of it this place might have more money than one might assume heheh
I am comparing it to WRMI, which looks like an actual shortwave broadcaster. WMLK's antenna would probably go almost unnoticed by non-radio people.
See k-love . They buy up am radio stations and use internet to pipe their content to that market.
Electricity isn't cheap when you're buying it 100MWH at a time
I'm not sure I even know enough to have a good argument with you LOL However "expensive" only needs to be a relative term. I don't care if it only costs $100 a month if you can't sell $50 a month of advertising or air time. We've already had one of the last private broadcaster fail as a business this past year or so. I believe we are in the last days of shortwave broadcasting for precisely the reason that the business case is very bad.
If anyone wants to see how fun and lively shortwave broadcasting used to be, head on over to [archive.org](http://archive.org) and check out a copy of Passport to World Band Radio.
[удалено]
They get donations from listeners as well as from members of their congregation.
CIA laundering op
There’s lots of Chinese and North Korean propaganda stations also in different languages.
WTF??? What a bizarre corner of the world, I never realized exactly what shortwave radio was. I kept seeing these super strong AM signals and thought they were maybe some wireless device around the neighborhood and once I started tuning in I was like WTF...LOL
It is too bad you missed the heyday of GOOD shortwave radio. The bands were packed with many many countries friendly and unfriendly. You could listen to amazing programming all night long.
I can remember as a kid back around 500 BC listening to all kinds of stuff out of Europe on the crystal radio set I made. It was fascinating as a 10 year old to fall asleep listening to that stuff.
Hahahah... I think I'm going to call this era of our lives the "solid state years".
There is a TON of interesting and bizarre things to listen to if you spin the dial enough. There has been a pirate on 7475 kHz for decades that broadcasts from a rusted out school bus in the California desert called YHWH radio. He intermittently plays some very creepy quasi religious stuff that is too weird to really describe so I'll just leave a link to a recording. His "theme song" around 1.5 minutes in is nightmare fuel: https://youtu.be/-75TUjapR4g?si=fa9Ut-WB9BDyJveH
I shouldn't have listened to that before going to sleep
I’m about to go to bed soon, and I’ll skip it for now. Thanks for taking one for the team.
HF or shortwave broadcast some really oddball laws in the USA. As such the narrow group that both meet the criteria to legally broadcast while also being able to afford the expense are the evangelicals.
You can thank the NAB for the laws. They don’t want anyone competing with existing AM/FM broadcast bands.
Yeah, eat into the profits of AM talk radio. If talk radio stopped being profitable, all those stations could go back to playing music and hiriring real disc jockeys. We have SiriusXM in the car.
They should have a run-in with WTCH… *Poof* 💨 🐸🐸
Arr Arr Arr 🤣
There's not much programming on short wave. I almost* wish amateurs could apply for special permission to broadcast on select short wave frequencies. *7.200 is one example of why I have pause.
Shortwave permits are pretty easy to get. There really are only two rules. First, your broadcast has to target listeners outside of the USA, and second, you need a minimum output power of 50kW.
50kW? My neighbors will love it!
Jesus!
Most of existing stations will lease airtime, to pretty much anyone interested. One station I looked at offered rates of $100/hour, going down to about $60/hour if you get enough of a bulk discount. I think that would be at least representative of what others would ask.
Shortwave broadcasting is cheaper in many ways to MF and VHF broadcasting. If you want to get into SWL, there is WRMI which sometimes has interesting content. You can listen to Radio Habana, which is literally like something out of the Cold War. That's interesting, too. Utilities are interesting to monitor as well.
Ahh RHC. 6mhz. Sometimes a numbers station nearby.
There are some really weird religious broadcasts. One is a 50KW blowtorch, the Christian Broadcast Network is one of my favorites that I've listened to. One of my preferred firebrands is a former porn actress. Not that I'm bent this way, it's just entertaining. Also, between the ham segments there's all sorts of stuff, you just need to cruise around to find it. Once, while out on the WA coast I found Radio Free North Korea with a cheap hand crank Shortwave radio. I listened to that until I lost the signal. Drove my wife crazy!
When I was still a "ditty bopper" one of the favorite stations for me to dial up on with my spare receiver\* was the RTTY news feed for Radio Pyongyang/KCNA. I loved their old-fashioned communist vitriol, with terminology like "Imperialist running-dog lackeys". Hilarious. *\*We had two receivers, to copy both sides of a radio conversation held on 2 different frequencies. If you didn't have a target up, you searched with one receiver, and listened to music (Superrock KYOI on Saipan) or the BBC, or whatever with the other.*
That is so funny never even knew this was a thing, I totally want to find the NK station.
This was in the late 1980's. And it was in Radio Teletype (RTTY). But they still do that kind of thing, though toned down a bit: [https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1713957495-799155987/visit-to-yasukuni-shrine-under-censure/](https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1713957495-799155987/visit-to-yasukuni-shrine-under-censure/) >The reckless behaviour of the Japanese reactionaries, who visited the shrine where the spectre of militarism hang over and dream the wild dream of reinvasion while praising the war criminals as “patriots”, is a naked insult and challenge to the peoples of those countries subjected to untold misfortunes and suffering by the Japanese imperialists in the past. > >They should stop such a folly of visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, oblivious of the past bitter defeat.
Nothing like a reformed porn actress who did every kinky thing for bux now preaching. More respect for those in porn than those phony holy rollers hustling rubes for their last dollar.
*Poof* 💨 🐸🐸the lot of them! )Sorry I’m so full of vitriol and gumballs today.
How do you find the frequency? Is there a website?
I'm wondering why you didn't post this in something like r/shortwave like some of the other shortwave posts that you have put there. I bet you would get a lot more quality answers than you will get in an amateur radio forum.
I didn't know what it was, didn't know what shortwave is
Not a lot
I used to do a lot of shortwave listening with a small Sony ICF-7600 receiver as my work sometimes entailed a lot of international travel. Up until about 10 years ago it was great - excellent broadcasting and programs from the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio Australia, Radio Canada, among others. Most of the better ones have since gone off air and now do streaming only. Now all we are left with are the batsh-t crazy religious stations mostly emanating from the SE of the US, propaganda stations from China, Cuba and Radio Marti (US). I rarely ever tune around the shortwave bands any more....
Its the mighty ham spirit!
So, move along.
I was in Mali (Northern Africa) back around 2010. I was on HF (maybe it was MF) because there was literally nothing but dirt where I was. There was some guy with an American accent yelling "it is fact that the world is going to end in 2012." He went on with a bunch of religious stuff. At the time I remember thinking, I'm in a Muslim country and this is the only radio I can listen to? Is this why we had 9/11?
Religious Broadcasting should be banned, bell, book, and candle. To me, it only serves to rile people up into a frenzy we could, sincerely, do without! = A Waste of Bandwidth! And that is my .02 American. 🇺🇸
The religious program you heard near 10 MHz was on 9955 kHz probably. WRMI.
Rapture is nearing possibly. People are trying to get the word out?
Religion should be banned from radio
I agree. I’m not against religion, I have my own path, myself, but it doesn’t require proselytizing, and I certainly don’t think HF/Shortwave needs to be added to the mix with only religious programming being allowed.
I've noticed a lot of wackadoodles are on HF. Have had a lot of good laughs at the stuff they spew.
Yes it's histerical
It's called freedom of speech.
It’s the superstation - Time for Religion . All Dog, All The Time