Shortwave Schedules in UTC

Every shortwave schedule is printed in UTC; convert it to your local clock once, correctly, and the station will be there when you switch on.

Broadcasters publish one schedule for the whole world, and the only clock that works everywhere is Coordinated Universal Time. When a listing says 18:00-19:00, that is 18:00-19:00 UTC — not 18:00 in your city.

Conversion is a single addition or subtraction. London keeps UTC +0 in winter and +1 in summer; Kuwait keeps UTC +3 all year; New York keeps UTC -5 in winter and -4 in summer. Apply the offset to the printed time and you have the moment to switch the receiver on.

Worked example: a programme listed at 18:00 UTC airs at 21:00 in Kuwait, at 13:00 in wintertime New York and at 18:00 in wintertime London. In summer, London shifts to 19:00 and New York to 14:00 — the seasonal offset change is the classic one-hour miss.

A correct conversion still fails if the band is closed. Check the hour against the band chart: 49 m, 41 m and 31 m work from dusk to dawn, while 19 m and 13 m are roughly 08:00-17:00 local-time bands. A 13 m broadcast scheduled at 23:00 your time is unlikely to be audible whatever the listing says; the band-by-band hours are laid out in Shortwave Frequency Bands.

Finally, confirm the frequency itself before the broadcast starts. Tune a few minutes early, make sure the receiver is in AM mode with a 4-6 kHz audio passband for broadcasts, and use a selective filter between 500 Hz and 3 kHz if a neighbouring station overlaps.

• Step 1 — Read the printed time as UTC, never as local time.
• Step 2 — Add your offset: London +0 or +1, Kuwait +3, New York -5 or -4.
• Step 3 — Check the seasonal shift: summer moves London and New York by one hour.
• Step 4 — Confirm the band is open at that local hour: night means 49, 41 or 31 m; day means 19 or 13 m.
• Step 5 — Tune early, in AM mode, and log the frequency in kHz together with the UTC time.

Further reading

• Shortwave Frequency Bands
• Building a Half-Wave Dipole