Bulgaria: Radio Bulgaria - DX programme August 13, 2010

In this program: Abbreviations of radio countries worldwide and 
Broadcast Tips. 

In international relations and in the information activities they involve, it is often necessary to say or write the names of the countries and territories. Some of them are short, such as Chad, but others are rather long, such as the Central African Republic. That is why for the sake of simplicity the country names are abbreviated or coded by letters or a combination of letters and figures. Usually the number of letters is 1-3 and there are different codes for different purposes. Sometimes one and the same country is indicated by different codes, for example BG is the code for Bulgaria in the postal service, the vehicle license plates, etc, and LZ also means Bulgaria, but in aeronavigation, amateur radio communications etc.

 
In the world of radio, there are two types of coding of countries and territories: 
- Code of the radio amateur organization IARU (International Amateur Radio Union), where each country, island, or any piece of land, inhabited or not, has its own code made up of letters and figures, for example Bhutan and Bulgaria are respectively A5 and LZ; 

- Code of the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) for radio stations transmitting speech and music, or the so called broadcasting stations. 

Here the codes are made up of one or three Latin letters. The one-letter codes are for the following countries: "B" stands for Brazil; "D" for Germany; "E" for Spain; "F"  for France; "G" for Great Britain; "I" for Italy; "J" for Japan and "S" for Sweden. It is not clear why these countries are coded by a single letter and all other countries are coded by three letters. The three-letter combinations usually correspond to the first three letters of the country's name, which helps to remember the codes more easily. 

The codes are based on the country names in different languages, for instance JOR = Jordan, comes from the English name of this country, not its Arabian name Urdunia. 

Switzerland is denoted by its French name, SUI = Suisse, probably because the ITU is based in Geneva. Most countries are coded according to their most common names in the various languages, for example ARM stands for Armenia, BUL stands for Bulgaria, etc. There are countries with similar or the same initial letter combinations, that is why they are modified for example KRE and KOR stand respectively DPR of Korea and Republic of Korea or North and South Korea, and NGR and NIG – for Niger and Nigeria. Some countries have changed their names a long time ago, but their old codes have remained the same: Myanmar (formerly called Burma) and Sri Lanka (formerly called Ceylon) are coded in the ITU registers as BRM and CLN. 

The authors of the codes found it difficult to create the codes because there are a lot of country names starting with the same letters, for example there are 25 countries starting with the letter "M", 23 countries with the letter "S", etc. There are temporary codes for some countries, such as Taiwan with TWN, Palestine with two codes for Gaza and the West Bank, respectively XGZ and XWB. Experienced radio listeners have three lists of country codes: one alphabetical list of codes; an alphabetical list of countries by their international names, and if necessary an alphabetical list in the language spoken by the listener. These lists are necessary because the country codes are found in all radio listening publications.

Broadcast Tips:

SRI LANKA: During the final sounds of radio Voice of America broadcasting in Hausa on 11905 KHz, at 15.30 hours can be heard the beginning of a transmission from Sri Lanka with retro identification " This is radio Ceylon calling India " and a program in Hindi and some English. This one–hour broadcast from 15.30 to 16.30 hours on 11905 KHz on weekends is covered by the stronger signal of Radio Portugal.

AUSTRALIA: Good signals were observed from radio Australia in our early morning time after the latest C-class flare on the Sun. On August the 6th one program in English was heard on 15415 KHz from 04.30 hours and another program also in English at the same time on 13690, 15515 KHz and in the 13th meter band on 21725 KHz. From 05.00 hours radio Australia in English was heard together with Voice of America also in English on 12080 KHz.

VATICAN: Vatican Radio was noted with two different programmes in English at 05.00 hours. One of them was on 4005, 5965 and 7250 KHz beamed to Europe and another one on 9660, 11625 KHz and from the transmitter located on Madagascar on 13765 KHz 
UNITED KINGDOM: Three different programmes of the BBC World Service in English were observed at 04.45 hours on short waves as follows: one on 9410, 12095, 13675 and 15360 KHz; another one on 6005, 7255 and 7310 KHz and the third on 6190 and 17790 KHz. 

YEMEN: Radio Sanaa was heard on August the 3rd with a program in Arabic until 14. 56 hours on 6135 KHz and from 14.58 hours until 18.10 hours on 9780 KHz. On 9780 KHz it was under the signals of other stations, for example the Voice of America. 
INDONESIA: Radio Voice of Indonesia was observed with a broadcast in German until 19.02 hours followed by a programme in English on 9526 KHz; from 19.00 hours with splashes from China Radio International broadcasting on 9525 KHz. 

Compiled by:  Rumen Pankov 

Source: DX programme August 13, 2010 http://bit.ly/bBVKa2

(Yimber Gaviria, Colombia)