It’s October 25 and the Winter 2026 shortwave schedules went into effect today. EiBiSpace.de has not updated yet (it’s just one guy and a lot of work). The new schedules are available from the High Frequency Coordination Conference. They have a convenient lookup tool.
More to come.
I’ve been fascinated with Music 4 Joy since 2023 when its techno music AM signals directed towards Africa, the Middle East and the Far East were hard to hear where I lived in Virginia. I finally heard it, only to lose the privilege when they switched to DRM modulation.
When version 16 of the MLite-880 firmware arrived with support for DRM decoding, I was on the warpath again and tried for two weeks to snag one of their broadcasts. Finally I succeeded today.
I had been going outdoors using a 7m reel antenna in various locations and angles. Receiving a signal was not difficult, but receiving one clean enough to decode the music escaped me. Finally this norming at 23:56 UTC on 17.670 MHz, I threw the antenna over the side of the porch, about 7m to the ground, and there was a burst of sound. Music 4 Joy was there.
The Raddy ATS200 was first released in May of 2024. I ordered one from Raddy today because it was on sale for $69.99 (plus about $10 shipping). That’s $50 off.
It’s an attractive package at that price, with LW, MW, FM, SW, AIR, featuring both RDS, CW and SSB. It has touch screen operation plus lots of settings for AGC, bandwidth, attenuator and LNA. The chip is an Si4732 DSP plus an EPS32 microprocessor. Plus it sports a flashlight. Operation is almost all touch screen.
Saw this on Facebook on the MLite-880 groups with “Elecevolve’s new product, the RT-880X, gets an early reveal — pre-sale is coming soon. Stay tuned for more details!” plus these photos:
Here’s that feature list in text form:
I’m scratching my head over this. The first thing that jumps out is how much this looks like the Sparkelec DP-666 that I own and that has been talked about on this blog:
The rather unique dual power switch on the DP-666 is also on the RT-880X, albeit on the opposite side, and one notes a third knob (or something) on the RT-880X top.
The teaser image tells us up front that it uses the TEF6686 DSP chip, and hence the prominent support for FM RDS. But it also says the receiver has AIR band and that is something the TEF6686 does not support. Perhaps they downconvert AIR band signals.
Here’s a video I found:
I’ve been doing some FM DXing lately and one of the radios I’m using is the the DP-666. I really like the radio for this purpose because direct frequency is convenient, the display is bright, colorful and easy to read, and all the RDS information is on the screen at the same time. The tuning knob is right up top. The disadvantages are that it sometimes makes up spurious PI codes, and overall it’s less sensitive than the Qodosen DX-286.
My first attempt at DRM on the MLite-880 was Radio Romania, and there I got a wonderful sound experience. Today at 9:45am local time in central Virginia (13:45 UTC), I tried my old favorite from 2023, Music 4 Joy from Nauen, Germany.
Today on 17670 kHz with the 20′ WUT antenna out on the patio with the MLite-880 and its newly-installed V1.6.1 firmware I received Music for Joy’s DRM broadcast, but there was no sound. Here’s what showed on the radio’s display:
Over the years, radio manufacturers have sometimes included antennas with radios, including ones ones like the following comprised of a longwire, a connector and a reel.
The photo below shows the basic structure. There is some kind of a clip to attach the reel on one end to some fixed object, for me often a tree branch. Then there is a 3.5mm plug connected to one end of a coil of wire inside the reel. One pulls the plug out and the wire extends. This model, as do most, adds an adapter to allow a clip-on to the antenna for radios that lack a suitable antenna jack.
DRM is a digital encoding method available to radio broadcasters. It can be decoded by some of the SDR software on a computer and now by a beta firmware release on the MLite-880 receiver. I see the question in Facebook groups, asking where one can find DRM broadcasts and this is my reply.
I’ve suggested Radio Romania that I’ve received successfully, but the list at EiBiSpace.de is one great source. It’s really the end of the schedule season now, but I downloaded the time-sorted bc-a26.txt file from EiBiSpace and searched for the keyword “DIGITAL”. This Windows Powershell “script” will filter out just the entries with that keyword.
Select-String -Path "bc-a26.txt" -Pattern "DIGITAL" | ForEach-Object { $_.Line } > bc-a26-DIGITAL.txt