Listening to lehlew

Long time no blog, that is for sure. On the positive side, this is a result of me practising The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I am setting the right priority, I am allocating enough time to work on things that belong to Quadrant II. Seriously, I procrastinated many times too. Sometimes, the idea came but by the time you login to Blogger, the idea just went away. Maybe I am prioritising wrongly today but anyway, I think this blog deserves an update. I think I should post more entries spontaneously in the near future.

As hams, we can't help not monitoring the band, especially the 2m band while mobiling. It is kind of fun to have friends keeping you accompanied while you are driving. While idiots on the road are swearing and exchanging sign languages, we hams rag chew on the band, be it simplex or on the repeater. It is always good to hear the voices of your friends.

On the other hand, the on-going QSO topic on the repeater is not always to your liking. You might just prefer to be on monitoring mode. Some might be bored hearing people exchanging the same greetings over and over again, asking about lunches and dinners, and then 73. Some could be bored to death with some not-so-techinical-details, you know, some people trying to show off a little. At certain times, when you hear people talking in codes, you are sure that you are not welcomed to join the QSO. Nevertheless, going on air is fun most of the time!

So, during those periods when you don't feel like monitoring the 2m band but you want to listen to something, you can always turn on the FM lehlew. I know some people also hate listening to Ah Lians and Ah Bengs talking Benglish, Manglish, or Singlish on the local FM lehlew. Fear no more. Here are the alternatives. Don't you remember that you have AM lehlew as well? Use it, don't let it go to waste.

I have no idea about East Malaysia, but here in West Malaysia, I don't think there is any station broadcasting on the AM band. Well, I have been listening to the Voice of America on 1575 kHz recently. They have got pretty good programming from 7:30 pm to 8:00 pm local time (1130 UTC ~ 1200 UTC) and of course, this coincide with my travel back home from the salt mine. From 11:30 pm to 12:00 am (1530 UTC ~ 1600 UTC), Voice of America is broadcasting on Special English.

Other than that 2 slots, it would be hard for me to stay on 1575 kHz unless I start to learn Pasa Thai, Tieng Viet, Bangla, etc. Again, fear no more. We can get Zhong Yang Ren Min Guang Bo Dian Tai (中央人民广播电台) with programs all the way from Beijing on 1134 kHz. I am not sure where the transmitter is located at. It will be great to find out someday. Enough being said, start listening to AM lehlew today!

73.