Tag: AM broadcast band

Greek Pirates on the AM Band

When I travel to other countries, I try to take out a few minutes to scan the AM broadcast band. I have observed that over the past few years I am hearing less and less. Sometimes there is nothing to hear but static and local noise. Many counties are completely abandoning AM broadcasting in favor of FM and digital (DAB). The urban environmental interferance levels don’t help things either.

A recent bandscan in Athens provided a nice surprise. The standard AM broadcast band was full of strong signals, most playing music. I settled on a strong station on 828 kHz playing a program of American standards and light fare. There were a few short announcements in Greek but I was listening as I fell asleep, so didn’t catch anything I could remember.

A bit of research the next morning showed that 828 kHz, and most other stations heard on the AM band in Athens, are unlicensed hobby stations. The Greek government does not seem to care much and these stations are providing a service.

If your travels include Athens, don’t forget to bring along an AM radio. You won’t be disappointed.

Solar Eclipse Data Collection Project

Between 1600 – 2015 UTC on August 21, 2017, as the solar eclipse swept across the nation, I captured much of the lower 2 MHz of the radio frequency spectrum.  I used a Microtelecom Perseus SDR, a 130′ inverted L with four radials, and lots of disk space.  In doing so, I have created a permanent record of this portion of the RF spectrum during the solar eclipse.

I am making the spectrum capture files available for your analysis and research.  Each file contains a 5 minute segment.  If you download a group of files, they will play in succession.

You can use the demo version of the Perseus software or any other software that can read the Perseus data, such as Linrad or HDSDR.  You cannot use just an audio player to play the files, even though they have .wav extensions.

Should you perform any analysis or otherwise make use of the files, I’d like to hear from you in the comments below.

Special thanks to Jav, K4JH, for donating the original hosting site and bandwidth for this effort and to the Internet Archive for their work in preserving content.