Shortwave Report for Central Asia, Part 2
posted by Susan Stark (part 1 is below)

COORDINATED UNIVERSAL TIME

For those who’ve listened to shortwave radio for a while, this is a fancy term for World Time, or Zulu Time, or Greenwich Mean Time. GMT is the standard by which all other time zones begin and are measured by; it is literally the World’s Time.

It’s also a pain in the ass, because it is written out in 24 hour notation, which is something Americans don’t use unless they’ve been in the military. More often than not, a shortwave broadcaster or program uses GMT when stating what time a program or transmission comes on. It’s easier to do that than to write out all the time zones the particular broadcast can be heard in. GMT time is constant, it has no daylight-savings adjustment.

As I write this blog, the Local Time is 5pm here in New York. That is 1700 hours in military time. New York is in the Eastern time zone, which is four hours behind GMT. So in order to figure out current GMT, I must add four hours to the military time, which is 2100 hours. This 2100 hours is the time *everywhere*.

Central Asia, or the “Stans” specifically, has three time zones in it. Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the western part of Kazakhstan is five hours (+5) ahead of GMT. Kyrgyzstan and eastern Kazakhstan is six hours (+6) ahead, with these two countries the only ones with Daylight Savings. Afghanistan has it’s own unique time zone–it’s four-and-a-half hours (+4:30) ahead. So when the BBC gives it’s program listing, it looks something like this:

FREQUENCIES: AFGHANISTAN, IRAN & CENTRAL ASIA All Times GMT

< From To Days Frequency (kHz) 01:00 03:00 Daily 7320 01:00 02:00 Daily 9410* 02:00 07:00 Daily 11760 02:00 02:30 Daily 1413 03:00 04:00 Daily 1413 03:00 06:00 Daily 15575 07:00 07:30 Daily 15575 07:30 09:00 Sat-Sun 15575 09:00 15:00 Daily 15575 15:00 17:00 Daily 11760 12:00 16:00 Daily 15310* 13:00 14:00 Daily 1314 18:00 20:00 Daily 5955 18:30 20:00 Daily 9485 18:00 18:30 Daily 1413 19:00 21:00 Daily 1413

* South Asia programmes

So to find out from here when the BBC will be broadcasting in Dushanbe on the 7320kHz frequency above, take it’s GMT time (1am) and add five hours. BBC broadcasts on this frequency at 6am Local Time. This 11760kHz frequency is trickier. The 1500 hours is harder to convert to standard notation, but in any case it is 3pm GMT. Add five hours to 3pm GMT, and it’s 8pm Local Time. To find out GMT from Local Time in Dushanbe, subtract the current time by five hours, and convert to military time notation.

Here is a military/standard notation conversion chart:

That’s it for now.