Mailbox

This week in Mailbox: response to last week’s Letter from Prague (or rather from Brno), reception in Spain and New Zealand, DRM broadcasts, Radio Prague’s QSL cards. Listeners quoted: Joe Atkinson, Axel López-Martínez, Gary Roper, Bob Boundy, David Eldridge.

Welcome to Mailbox, Radio Prague’s weekly programme for your comments and questions.

Joe Atkinson, originally from England and now based in Brno, responds to last week’s Letter from Prague by Jan Richter:

“Thank you for the interesting perspective on Brno in your ‘Bored in Brno’ story. I think you capture the atmosphere of the city very well. (It’s funny but I always want to write ‘town’ rather than ‘city’ in relation to Brno!). I think stopping in the street to chat and the café/pub culture among all age groups are both quintessential ‘Brno’. I was talking about Brno with a visitor a few weeks ago and I said that in the centre of Brno everybody is going somewhere (students, office workers, shoppers) but they are not rushing to get there! I lived in Prague for eight years before moving back to Brno last year so I think I am in a good position to compare and contrast. Prague is a great tourist destination but for everyday living give me Brno every time I’m afraid.”

Axel López-Martínez follows our broadcasts in Spain:

“My favorite way of listening is through shortwave radio. Radio Prague is really easy to receive here in Spain, and I use several receivers, depending on my location. For example, if I go to a park, I take a very small Eton E100 along.”

Gary Roper from North Carolina is interested in digital shortwave transmission:

“I've been hearing for several years about DRM shortwave broadcasting. And there are some international stations using it, and the number of broadcasts seem to be increasing, but very slowly. My question is: Who is listening, where are they listening, and most importantly, what are they listening with? I can only seem to find one receiver on the internet that will receive DRM shortwave transmissions. From what I've heard, it is very expensive and not generally available. I can't help but feel that this has about the same future as quadraphonic sound had back in the 1970s. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are as to when readily available and affordable receivers will exist.”

I’m afraid we do not keep detailed statistics on DRM reception, and I’m told that the yearly number of reception reports for both English and German has been in the dozens since Radio Prague launched DRM broadcasts in 2006. Radio Prague broadcasts on digital shortwave twice a week, on Fridays and Saturdays, in English and German. If any of you listening today happen to listen also on DRM, please let us know where you listen and what kind of equipment you use – even if you normally don’t send reception reports. We’d be interested to know.

Bob Boundy is our regular listener in New Zealand:

“Hi there, just letting you know that reception has not been very good since our time change however I’m not giving up. I am very impressed with the two steam train QSL cards that I have got so far, I’m very determined to get all eight of them. I have the last 3 years of complete Radio Prague QSL cards.”

And on the topic of QSL cards, this is an e-mail from David Eldridge from the United Kingdom:

The 534.0301 steam freight locomotive was produced at Škoda in Plzeň; it was Czechoslovakia’s first locomotive of the post-war period.|Photo: T. Kučera, National Technical Museum

“Thank you for the QSL card of the 534.0301 steam freight locomotive. It was uncannily appropriate that I should receive that particular QSL card this evening as I arrived home. The reason is that I had just been out roaming about with my senior’s travel pass and on my travels came across another unexpected connection of the Czech Republic, or rather Czechoslovakia and England – an extraordinary model of a Czechoslovak railway engine. I was rummaging around in the items of the ‘warehouse’ of our National Railway Museum where items that are not a part of any exhibition are kept and I came across a beautiful model of a Czechoslovak locomotive 556.0.510. It is very similar to the one on the QSL card but I think it may have some minor technical differences.”

By the way, the National Technical Museum in Prague is now closed for renovation, to be re-opened in the autumn of 2010, exactly a hundred years after the first collections of a Czech technical museum in Prague opened to the public.

And staying with things technical, here’s our quiz question for May:

This month we would like to know the name of the world-renowned physicist who was born in Brno in 1905 and died in 1955 in Zurich and apparently was the only Czech-born person involved in the US WWII Manhattan Project.

As usual, your answers need to reach us by the end of the month at [email protected] or Radio Prague, 12099 Prague. There will be small gifts for four of you who sent us the correct answer. Until next week, happy listening.