Mail Roundup – July 29, 2023

A roundup of messages we've received in the last two weeks

Vlad Palcu, 29.07.2023, 13:48

Hello everyone!

Hope you are all
enjoying this summer and staying safe! You too have probably heard reports of
heatwaves hitting various parts of Europe, North America and Asia. We urge all
our listeners to take all the precautions in order to hydrate, stay cool and
avoid prolonged exposure to heat. Please follow the specific recommendations in
your area.

Just for the
sake of an example – I’ve just returned from a holiday in Greece with several
code red alerts in place against extreme heat. Wildfires affected the islands
of Rhodes and Corfu, with thousands of tourists evacuated from these areas. One
of our listeners, Mikio Kohara (Japan) wrote to us describing the situation in his
area: In Osaka, the rainy season is over and summer is in full swing, and the
temperature reaches 35 degrees every day. Some people get heatstroke because of
the heat. Because the sun is shining, many people use parasols when walking
outside, even though it is not raining. There you have it – the heat is
causing trouble pretty much everywhere. So once again, stay safe and whenever
you’re indoors, listen to RRI J

***

As usual, we got
plenty of messages at our office addresses in the last two weeks. This week we
got a message from Riaz Ahmad (Pakistan), which reads as follows: You will be
very happy to know that I am attached with Radio Romania since 1992. I also
have some postcards and program guides of Radio Romania international. Now I am
also a regular listener of Radio Romania but now not on SW while on Radio
Romania website. That is a great and best source of knowledge and information
for me. Thanks for sticking with us for so long, Riaz. We’re happy you’re
enjoying our broadcasts.

***

One of our regular listeners from Japan, Teruhiko Kachi
wrote to us last week saying One
of my favourite programmes is People and Places. The
programme is somewhat similar to The History Show, but I enjoy it
differently because the latter focuses on historical events, whereas the former
introduces the people and places themselves.

Last week’s People and
Places, featuring Doina Cornea and Alba Iulia, was particularly
impressive. I knew some of Alba Iulia’s historical position, but this was
the first time I had heard about Doina Cornea’s courageous actions
under the Ceauşescu dictatorship,
and I was impressed. I was also interested in her involvement with Radio
Free Europe. We, the listeners of RRI, can get to know her through your
station, but how many Romanians, especially young people, know about her? Do
they learn about her in their school lessons?

We’re not sure about school
curricula, but local authorities are actually doing their best to spread the
word about Doina Cornea’s stand against the communist authorities. She was one
of the most acclaimed dissidents in the communist era and her actions inspired
a whole generation. Thanks for your interest, Teru. I’ll let Mihaela know you
enjoyed her segment.

***

From Canada,
Richard B. Langley wrote to us this week to say:

Just checking
in to say that from time to time I am still listening to Radio Romania
International. It is nice to get news and the other programming directly from
Europe especially from a country so close to the war in Ukraine especially now
that Russian attacks come very close to Romania’s borders.

I recently acquired a KiwiSDR software-defined
shortwave radio and it does an excellent job of receiving RRI’s DRM broadcasts
(along with an indoor magnetic loop antenna) directed to Western Europe in
French at 20:00 UTC on 11975 kHz and English at 20:30 UTC on the same frequency
such as today, 25 July 2023 (see attached screen shots). These DRM broadcasts
are frequently received with very few if any dropouts especially for the
English broadcast, which is aimed almost directly at New Brunswick although
intended for the U.K. and western Europe. It’s nice especially to hear the
Romanian music selections in near studio quality. I also get good
reception for the DRM Spanish programming broadcast at 21:00 UTC on 13650 kHz
directed towards South America.

You can check
below the two snapshots Richard enclosed for further details about his
feedback.

Like many others in the last month, Richard too inquired about the arrival time of
QSLs for 2023. Unfortunately, we’re still having an administrative conundrum,
which prevents us for the time being from printing any QSLs for 2023 (with no
plans to prepare digital ones as of yet). So once again, we ask all of you to
be patient, and just like previous years, we assure you that every report you
send will be rewarded with the corresponding QSL as verification, as per your
entries stored in our database.

We are sorry
about it and hope you remain our loyal listeners!

***

To end, a shout
to other listeners who sent messages and feedback this fortnight, including:
Andrew Kuznetsov (Latvia), Atsuhiko Takezawa (Japan), Saleem Akhtar Chadhar
(Pakistan), Muhammad Aqeel Bashir (Pakistan), Antonio Aspan (Brazil), Najim
Uddin (India), Reginaldo Naldy (Brazil), Tarun Sethi (India), Timofeyev Uhra

Alexandrovich
(Kazakhstan), Azhar Ain Naqvi (Pakistan), Akiyoshi Teraoka (Japan), Chris
Malboeuf (Canada), Ratan Kumar Paul (India), Norihiko Ide (Japan), Siddhartha
Bhattacharjee (India), Igor Belevich (Belarus), Malik Allah Bachaya (Pakistan),
Jaouad Saber (Morocco), Sardar
Munir Akhter (Pakistan), Joandric Ávila Fernández (Costa Rica), Masahiro
Kobayashi (Japan), Tomasz Kotas (Poland), Alex. Choroba (Germany),

Debakamal Hazarika (India).