Friday, September 18, 2015

Successful VOA Radiogram for September 19-20

The U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors thinks enough of VOA Radiogram to solicit quotations for a decoder program aimed at non-technical users.  Trust me, this is big.  It's also a good opportunity for a digital mode programmer to make a little extra money at it.
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From Kim Andrew Elliott:

Hello friends,

The Broadcasting Board of Governors has issued a Request for Quotations for the development of software application to simply the process of decoding text and images from radio broadcasts. The deadline is 26 September. Details are here …


This weekend on VOA Radiogram, our non-Latin alphabet of the week will be Persian. Persian is interesting because it is a “right-to-left” language. You will need the UTF-8 character set in Fldigi (Configure > Colors & Fonts). The Persian should also correctly display using the AndFlmsg Android app, version 1.2, available from http://www.w1hkj.com/vk2eta/ .

And if we are fortunate enough to experience poor reception this weekend, there will be about ten minutes of content in Olivia 32-2000.

Here is the lineup for VOA Radiogram, program 129, 19-20 September 2015, all in MFSK32 except where noted …  

 1:36  Program preview
 3:06  First manned Orion flight in 2023*
 9:58  Saturn moon covered by water*
14:48  Sample of Persian text**
17:19  Olivia 32-2000: VOA Science World Blog***
27:04  MFSK32: Closing announcements
28:06  MFSK32: Logo image under the music

* with image

** requires UTF-8 character set

*** If RSID does not change mode to Olivia 32-2000, in Fldigi:
Op Mode > Olivia > Custom > set Bandwidth to 2000 and Tones to
32

Please send reception reports to radiogram@voanews.com .

VOA Radiogram transmission schedule
(all days and times UTC):
Sat 0930-1000 5745 kHz
Sat 1600-1630 17870 kHz
Sun 0230-0300 5745 kHz
Sun 1930-2000 15670 kHz
All via the Edward R. Murrow transmitting station in North Carolina.

The Mighty KBC will transmit a minute of MFSK32 Sunday at 0230 UTC (Saturday 10:30 pm EDT) on 7375 kHz. Yes, the mode is changed from the usual MFSK64 to MFSK32 because of difficult reception in North America in recent weeks. Reports to Eric: themightykbc@gmail.com .

Thank you for your reception reports from last weekend. I saw many successful decodes of the Chinese text on both PCs and Android devices. I will compile come screenshots and post them to the website. Today, I will finish answering reports from program 122. The gallery for program 122 compares decoded images in MFSK16, 32, 64, and SSTV Scottie DX.

I hope you can tune in and write in this weekend.

Kim

Kim Andrew Elliott
Producer and Presenter
VOA Radiogram
voaradiogram.net