SWRadiogram: What it is and how I receive it

Hei,

A commenter asked me to make a post on what SWRadiogram is and how I receive it among other things and I thought that was a really good idea so here I am writing a post about it!

SWRadiogram is an experimental broadcast that is digital modes over a normal AM shortwave signal. They, Kim Andrew Elliott who runs SWRadiogram, usually use MSFK modes and occasionally use Olivia modes (although I have seen Throb being used before)! He takes articles from other international news sources (I’ve seen articles from VoA, DW and Radio Canada International in his broadcasts to name just a few). There is a primary focus on science and technology articles and pictures. Pictures are very susceptible to fading, unlike text, so it is a really good gauge of how good the signal is (Which is why I usually post just pictures if I am in a hurry!).
The SWRadiogram show tends to have between 1 and 3 articles and usually about 4 to 8 pictures in the longest and most technologically interesting segment; the picture segment.

With that out of the way I can now talk about how to listen to it and decode it!

There are many ways you can decode SWRadiogram; you can use any SDR application that can listen to AM radio and then use something like VBAudiocable to feed that audio into Fldigi, You could use a radio and put the output into a computers input jack and then use Fldigi from there and another much easier option, which I use, is to use a radio and an Android mobile phone with the app Tivar which uses the phones microphone to hear the sound coming out of the radio!

The radio doesn’t need to be too loud if you put the phones microphone right next to the speaker which can reduce the strain on your ears since hearing beeps for 30 minutes can be quite fatiguing, using headphones around you phones’ microphone will also work!

I have encoded this little demo for you to experiment with!

Hopefully this gives an explanation of SWRadiogram and how to listen / read / decode it!

I hope you have a great day, 73s!