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Richard E. Wood may have been the best-known DXer ever.
I first met him briefly at a radio convention in the mid-1970s; it may have been Columbus or Atlanta. A friend, Robert Kramer, had met him earlier and hadn’t enjoyed his first encounter. Rob had asked Richard to autograph his copy of the book “How to Listen to the World,” and apparently Richard, the closest thing to a celebrity in the hobby, had for some reason refused.
A few years later, Richard was teaching languages at Southeast Missouri State University. With fellow DXers Rob Kramer (who had forgiven the earlier snub) and Jeff Roberts, we traveled from our college, Southern Illinois University, to visit Richard.
We were recruited to erect a television antenna on the roof of his house in Cape Girardeau so he could TV DX. There was moderate, persistent rain, and the roof was a bit slippery. Richard supervised our efforts but didn’t join us on the roof. Our own 1970s interest in television DX led us to understand the urgency of the antenna raising. (We also bought Coors beer that was then unavailable east of the Mississippi River.)
That day, I asked Dr. Wood which languages he was studying, and he said he was brushing up on his Albanian, producing a German-Albanian dictionary to support this claim.
Richard, originally from Newcastle, England, was a regular contributor to all of the DX clubs, providing important updates and useful information. He had taught in Indiana, Baton Rouge, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Hawaii, and other locations. Hawaii was his favorite location, and he showed that you could receive most of the world on mediumwave from those islands.
He was very intelligent and rubbed some people the wrong way.
He was also a prolific writer, authoring Shortwave Voices of the World (the Finnish version outsold the English), How to Listen to the World, and the Communications Handbook magazine in the 1970s.
Richard also developed a language recognition course, and studied and wrote about propagation and other subjects.
My last visit with Richard was in early 2007, when my wife and I were vacationing on the Big Island, and we rented a house for a week not far from Richard’s base in the Hawaiian Paradise Park development, southeast of Hilo. We visited Richard several times in Hilo, where he sold local coffee at a space in the market, and we went to his source of Kona coffee farther south on Hawaii Island. For the rest of the trip, the rental car had the rich aroma of the Kona coffee cargo. Richard and I talked about DXing, especially mediumwave DXing from Hawaii, which was his current focus. With my portable radio on that trip I had received two California local channel stations at a distance of 2300 miles. My wife observed that our conversation about DXing was like listening to two people speak another language.
Richard died of a heart attack in Hawaii at the age of 67 in September 2007.
Karl D. Forth has been interested in radio and DXing for more than 50 years. This story was included in the book Radio Nights and Distant Signals.
Please note: all Amazon links are affiliate links that support the SWLing Post at no cost to you.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Patrizio (IN3032SWL), who writes:
Dear SWLing Post Readers,
Before presenting the projects, I would like to share a brief personal reflection. I am 59 years old, not a professional programmer, I still use an old PC running Windows 7, and I am studying to take the amateur radio license exam next November 26th. All the software you see below was developed entirely and for free with the valuable help of Gemini. This proves that at any age you can challenge yourself and create useful tools: Artificial Intelligence is not a demon to fight, but the natural evolution of technology that we can all access today to cultivate our passions.
As shortwave enthusiasts, we know how fascinating the visual and operational aspect of radio frequency is: having clear instruments, a nice analog dial, and essential data right at hand makes listening much more engaging. Often, modern SDR software is powerful but cold, lacking that classic warmth of traditional tabletop receivers.
To bridge this gap and optimize the listening station, I created two lightweight open-source projects designed to integrate seamlessly with SDRAngel.
1. What is it?
These are two modules designed to accompany SDRAngel by bringing dedicated tools to the desktop:
SDRangel Shack Dashboard: A compact, always-on-top panel combining an analog S-meter (with selectable aesthetic skins such as the classic amber yellow, white, blue, black, or green), a digital frequency meter of the active VFO, and a UTC clock with a permanent time reference.
SDRangel VFO Faceplate: A true virtual front control panel equipped with an interactive rotary tuning knob (a virtual knob that can be rotated with the mouse or scroll wheel), a numeric keypad, and quick step selectors (from 1 Hz to 10 kHz) for fine frequency tuning.
2. Who is it for?
For all SWLs, SDR users, and radio amateurs who use SDRAngel and want a clean, independent, and customizable interface for signal monitoring, without having to dig through the complex menus of the main software.
3. What problem does it solve?
It allows you to monitor signal strength at a glance (via the needle instrument) and tune or verify the exact frequency with an ergonomics similar to a traditional hardware receiver, keeping the windows freely positionable on the screen.
4. What does it require and how does it work?
Cross-Platform Soul: These applications are designed to run smoothly on different platforms. In my shack, for example, I run them without any issues on an old PC with Windows 7.
Maximum Simplicity: No complex installation procedures are needed; once you download the code, launching it takes literally a double-click.
It requires Python installed on your computer and SDRAngel running locally (the program connects automatically via the software’s local REST APIs).
5. Where can you see it in action and download it?
BBC Local Radio Medium Wave transmission services in Cumbria, Derby, Gloucestershire, Norfolk and Somerset will close by the end of November 2026. This is the final phase of a switch off process which was announced in 2011 with phased closures in 2018 and 2020.
This means if you currently listen on MW radio, you will need to switch to another way of listening. The good news is that your local BBC radio station, programmes and schedules are not changing.
You can continue listening to the same local BBC radio service through:
FM radio
DAB Digital Radio
BBC Sounds
Online via the BBC website
Smart speakers
This change reflects how listening habits have changed over time, with more audiences choosing FM, DAB and digital services. Whichever platform you choose, you’ll continue to receive the same local BBC radio programmes and content.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Perry Lusk, who writes:
Thanks to Dan Greenall for the article on SDR waterfalls. There is a lot of activity lately that I have found on the Kiwi SDR KF8KK located in Michigan.
So far, Stern Radio has the most creative examples:
As you can see, they broadcast in Motorola C-QUAM Stereo AM. The SDR will decode it by selecting QAM next to the AM mode button. It is quite the experience.
I have also attached an audio recording in stereo:
Hi to all our SWLing Post friends. Here’s this week’s Imaginary Stations schedule for your shortwave radio/SDR listening pleasure.
On Wednesday 30th September 2026, at 0200 hrs UTC on 9395 kHz we bring you WHFM Herman’s Radio & Record Room via WRMI. The show returns to the airwaves with new episodes featuring mid-century music from all genres from the 1930s right through to the 1960s.
Later that day at 1800 hrs UTC on 3975 kHz/6160 kHz via Shortwave Gold, tune in for more Skybird Jams. Imaginary Stations brings you an encore presentation of the show featuring music to challenge your attention span!
And at the weekend, on Saturday 3rd October at 1100 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then again on Sunday 4th October at 1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and 2000 hrs UTC on 3975 kHz/6160 kHz via Shortwave Gold, for CLSC 2. We present the second program of classical(ish) tunes via CLSC. Be forewarned – it might not appeal to classical music purists, but we will continue experimenting with CLSC until we get it right! Or wrong.
For more information on all our shows, please write to us at [email protected] and check out our old shows at our Mixcloud page here.
Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer[SWLing Post affiliate link]. If you’ve already read his book and enjoyed it, do Don a favor and leave a review on Amazon.
Fair warning … This article comes with a quiz at the end!
If asked to make a list of major maritime nations, I never would have put Vietnam on the list. It’s not particularly big, and while it does have a long coastline, there are a couple dozen countries with longer ones. But I recently found out that in terms of tonnage, Vietnam has the fourth-largest fishing industry in the world – after China, Indonesia, and India. And that explains something else: why Vietnam has an extensive network of coastal radio stations far greater than would be expected for the country’s modest coastline.
Vietnam’s marine radio network, however, is not easy to hear in Eastern North America. So when I planned my trip to Southeast Asia last winter, my top DX goal was to log all the stations in the network. From November to February, I made SDR spectrum recordings at seven different locations. I did a little DXing of the files while traveling, but it wasn’t until this summer that I had the time to seriously go through them. The spectrum analyzer tool in SDR-Console allowed me to easily find what I was looking for in my many hours of recorded files. Google Translate gave me the means to understand what I was finding. The combination made it possible to DX this network in a way I never would have imagined a few years ago. It’s not just that I made loggings of all the stations. I also gained a deeper understanding of everything the network is doing. It turns out there’s a lot to it, so let’s take a look.
The Duyen Hai Network
The parent organization of this radio network is Vishipel, a Vietnamese government-owned company that provides various services to the fishing and maritime industry. One of Vishipel’s most important responsibilities is the coastal radio station network, known in Vietnamese as the Duyen Hai system. The name is the Vietnamese word for coastal.
Duyen Hai operates twenty-nine coastal radio stations strung along Vietnam’s coast from north to south. Some sources give the number of stations as thirty or thirty-three, but those figures include locations used for satellite monitoring and other support activities. Via California DXer Ron Howard, we have this map showing the network stations.
Ron also found this three-page Vietnamese-language PDF file listing the various services and schedules. In the rest of this article I’ll be combining information from the Duyen Hai website, the PDF, the DX Info Centre website https://www.dxinfocentre.com, and my own extensive monitoring.
But first … about spelling. Vietnamese is written using the Latin alphabet but with an extensive system of diacritic marks. It’s far beyond what languages like French and German use and doesn’t always play well with English language websites. For that reason, I’ve omitted the diacritic marks from all the place names and Vietnamese phrases here. But a complete list of everything with the proper Vietnamese spelling can be found in this text file and/or PDF. If you want to put any of these words and phrases into a text-to-speech engine or a translation application, you will have to copy from the text file to get the correct result.
All twenty-nine Duyen Hai stations broadcast scheduled marine weather forecasts twice a day on VHF. Seventeen of those also broadcast the forecasts on 7906 kHz shortwave. Here is a list of those along with the UTC times of the reports on 7906 kHz. Note that three stations also use 8294 kHz. The coordinates are to their antenna sites, per the DX Info Centre website. I’ve reformatted them so they can be pasted directly into Google Maps.
2220 & 1020 Kien Giang 9°59’36.0″N 105°05’50.0″E
2235 & 1035 Quy Nhon 13°46’40.0″N 109°14’21.0″E
2250 & 1050 Hue 16°33’02.0″N 107°38’28.0″E
2305 & 1105 Hong Gai 20°57’21.0″N 107°04’07.0″E
2320 & 1120 Phu Yen 13°06’22.0″N 109°18’41.0″E
2335 & 1135 Ca Mau 9°11’23.0″N 105°08’01.0″E
2350 & 1150 Nha Trang 12°13’19.0″N 109°10’50.0″E
0005 & 1205 Hai Phong * 20°51’01.0″N 106°44’01.0″E
0020 & 1220 Vung Tau 10°23’41.0″N 107°08’44.0″E
0035 & 1235 Da Nang * 16°03’17.0″N 108°09’28.0″E
0050 & 1250 Ben Thuy 18°48’50.0″N 105°43’07.0″E
0105 & 1305 Ho Chi Minh * 10°23’41.0″N 107°08’42.0″E
0120 & 1320 Mong Cai 21°31’33.0″N 107°57’59.0″E
0135 & 1335 Phan Rang 11°33’51.0″N 109°00’42.0″E
0150 & 1350 Phan Thiet 10°55’04.0″N 108°06’22.0″E
0205 & 1405 Can Tho 10°04’18.0″N 105°45’32.0″E
0405 & 1605 Thanh Hoa 19°20’58.0″N 105°47’36.0″E
* Daily weather also on 8294 kHz
Using Google satellite view and Google Street View, I was able to spot all the antennas except for Hong Gai, where there is no sign of any radio activity. There is a high-voltage power line there, so it doesn’t seem like the best place for an antenna tower. Perhaps the coordinates are wrong, or maybe Hong Gai shares the antenna farm at nearby Hai Phong.
The antenna farms vary greatly in size, from large fields with multiple towers to sites with just a single tower in the back of the building or even on the roof. In terms of how the stations are used and the size of their antenna farms, five are clearly more important than the others: Hai Phong, Da Nang, Nha Trang, Ho Chi Minh, and Vung Tau. The latter two share the same antenna farm in Vung Tau, which is located on the coast at the mouth of the Sai Gon River. The port of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s largest, is forty kilometers upriver.
On a day-to-day basis, the marine weather forecasts are the primary job of the Duyen Hai stations. As noted above, seventeen stations broadcast twice-daily forecasts on 7906 kHz, with three also using 8294 kHz. Sixteen stations are scheduled every fifteen minutes over a four-hour block in the local morning (starting at 2220 UTC) and the local evening (starting at 1020 UTC). The broadcasts begin at five, twenty, thirty-five, and fifty minutes after the hour. A seventeenth station, Thanh Hoa, is outside the regular pattern.
During inclement weather, stations may broadcast additional forecasts, but always at the same time slot in the four-hour cycle. For example, Vung Tau might also broadcast at 0420, 0820, 1620, and 2020 in addition to the regular broadcasts at 0020 and 1220 UTC.
Weather reports usually take around five minutes and never more than ten. And they are always read live by a woman announcer, never a man. The voices on the different stations sound similar, so I suspect they look for a particular type of voice when hiring. Usually, when a station comes on the air, the announcer starts immediately, but sometimes a long audio tone is played first. I haven’t figured out if there is a reason for that.
The announcer starts by repeating a short phrase about the state of the weather three times and then gives a station identification announcement three times before continuing with the detailed forecast. Knowing the pattern, it’s easy to pick out the station name if the signal is clear enough. Here’s an example from Ca Mau Radio, recorded at 1135 UTC on 15 February 2026 near Butterworth, Malaysia.
The announcer starts by saying “Canh bao khong khi lanh” three times.
This means “cold air warning.” Next, she says the identification, “Dai thong tin tren hai Ca Mau goi cac dai tau.” That translates as “Ca Mau Maritime Radio calling all ship stations.” The Duyen Hai stations all use the same wording for the identification, but the initial statement about the weather varies. Under normal conditions, the broadcasts start with the phrase “Du bao thoi tiet bien,” which simply means “marine weather forecast.” The word bien means sea. Other initial phrases describe various hazardous conditions.
Canh bao thoi tiet nguy hiem tren bien – Warning of dangerous marine weather.
Canh bao bao. – Storm warning. (I heard this one a lot.)
Canh bao ve cac nguy hiem. – Hazard warning.
Canh bao gio mua. – Monsoon warning.
Khoang vao ap suat khi. Changing air pressure.
Du bao thoi tiet buon. – A gloomy weather forecast.
That last one is a good example of how Google Translate self-corrects as it works. The translation first said, “The weather forecast is sad,” before correcting to the more idiomatic “A gloomy weather forecast.”
Urgent Information
The frequency of 7903 kHz is reserved for announcements about incidents that require assistance from other nearby vessels. Examples include looking for a man who fell overboard, looking for an overdue vessel that hadn’t been heard from for a few days, and helping a stranded vessel that had broken down.
These transmissions usually last under two minutes. They always start with the phrase “khan cap”, meaning “Urgent!” repeated three times, followed by three station identification announcements, and then the emergency message. Here is a recording of an announcement from Phan Rang Radio on 7903 kHz at 1320 UTC on 14 February 2026, as recorded near Butterworth, Malaysia. The message is about a missing fishing vessel and gives the coordinates where it was last seen.
Any station in the system can broadcast an urgent message. I logged ten different stations on 7903 kHz, and most of them on multiple occasions. Urgent messages air as needed but they do stick to the same 15-minute spacing of broadcasting at five, twenty, thirty-five, and fifty minutes after the hour. When there is an urgent message, the station airing it will usually repeat the message hourly for several hours. As with the weather forecasts, the announcers are always women.
The Marine Operators
Marine operators are radio stations that serve as intermediaries for ships at sea to make radio-telephone calls to land-based phone numbers. The ship contacts the station via radio. Then the radio station dials the phone number provided to connect the two parties. Sometimes the land-based party calls the station first, and then the station tries to reach the ship on the radio. Before satellite communications came along, these were the primary method for making phone calls to/from ships at sea. And they weren’t just for ships in the middle of the ocean. The United States had an extensive network of marine operators on the Great Lakes and the inland rivers. I have old QSLs from marine operators in places like Cincinnati and Memphis.
It turns out that Vietnam’s fishing vessels are not equipped for satellite communications, as the Duyen Hai stations also serve as marine operators. Below is a list of frequencies used, according to the PDF file mentioned above. Note that this includes two additional stations that do not broadcast the marine weather on shortwave: Cam Ranh and Cua Ong. Broadcasts typically begin with the ship calling the land-based station and giving the operator (always a woman) the phone number to be called. Sometimes the station broadcasts the dialing noises and then the initial connection as the operator tells the land-based party who is calling. Other times they play instrumental hold music until the connection is ready.
Most of the marine operator traffic goes through just a few main frequencies. I frequently logged 8104 Ho Chi Minh, 8125 Da Nang, and 8146 Nha Trang and had a couple of logs of 7960 Thanh Hoa and 7948 Cam Ranh. Vietnamese marine operator traffic was also heard on the unlisted frequencies of 7918, 7993, and 8687 kHz. Normally, there is no identification at the beginning of these transmissions, as the calling vessels would know which station they are calling based on the frequency. They just come on and say, “Hey, operator!” and wait for the operator to answer. However, in one instance, I heard a vessel specifically call Cam Ranh Radio on their frequency of 7948 kHz. The two stations connected and went on to make a phone call. Here’s a recording of the initial contact, made on 18 November 2025 at 1248 UTC in Taal, Philippines.
Vietnam Marine Operator Frequencies
6224 Kien Giang
6227 Can Tho
6230 Vung Tau
7912 Phan Rang
7915 Ben Thuy
7927 Quy Nhon
7948 Cam Ranh
7960 Thanh Hoa
7966 Phu Yen
7969 Ca Mau
7975 Nha Trang
7981 Can Tho
7987 Ca Mau
7990 Phan Thiet
8101 Hai Phong
8104 Ho Chi Minh
8125 Da Nang
8143 Cua Ong
8146 Nha Trang
8149 Hue
8155 Mong Cai
8158 Kien Giang
8167 Nha Trang
8173 Hong Gai
12359 Hai Phong
12359 Ho Chi Minh
12365 Da Nang
Other Duyen Hai Services and Frequencies
Last winter, I wrote about finding the Duyen Hai Information Station broadcasts. As explained in my recent article on Google Translate, the language is Vietnamese, not Thai as initially reported. Originating at the Hai Phong station, these are regular twenty-minute daily programs of information of interest to the fishing industry. They are scheduled at 0005 and 1205 UTC on 8101 kHz and at 0505 UTC on 7996 kHz but typically begin about fifteen minutes late. Once again, the announcers are always women, but you might hear a man’s voice as they sometimes do interviews or play short, prerecorded reports. The programs start and end with a distinctive musical interlude.
Hai Phong isn’t the only station doing what I think is not so much a utility service as shortwave broadcasting.
Several times I heard Da Nang (with ID) at 1300 UTC on 8140 kHz with a short two-minute broadcast that was mostly an advertisement for the company’s new “fishing vessel journey monitoring service.” This is a safety service that fishermen would pay to have installed and then pay a monthly service fee to keep activated. According to the announcement, this same broadcast was repeated at 0100, 0500, and 1300 UTC. A couple times around 1245 and 0045 I heard Da Nang on 8140 kHz with a five-minute chatty advertisement-like discussion between a woman announcer and a male fisherman promoting various Duyen Hai products including a “sludge separator.” Another time the pair recommended that fishermen download the Duyen Hai app.
I found a similar advertisement-like 2 ½ minute broadcast once at 0100 UTC on 7915 kHz. Google Translate struggled with the noisy signal but got enough of it for me to determine that the man and woman were promoting Duyen Hai navigation services. There was no ID, but this is the marine operator frequency for Ben Thuy. Continue reading →
by Karl D. Forth
