Bible Voice in Russian on 9380 kHz: a Sunday half hour from Tashkent

What you hear

Sunday evening, 18:00 UTC: a Christian programme in Russian, half an hour long. Bible Voice's programmes are usually straightforward: a reading from Scripture, a teaching or a sermon, prayer, a hymn or two, and an address at the end for listeners who want to write. At 18:30 UTC the language switches to Udmurt, the Finno-Ugric language of the Udmurt Republic on the Kama, for the next programme. Hearing Udmurt on the radio outside Udmurtia is unusual enough that the second half hour deserves a listen even if you do not understand a word of it.

Who transmits and why

Bible Voice Broadcasting is an evangelical broadcaster with roots in Canada and the United Kingdom. It owns no transmitters; it produces or collects programmes in many languages, most of them for Asia, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union, and buys airtime on relay stations wherever the signal will reach the intended audience. Its schedule is a mosaic of short programmes, many of them weekly, and this Russian and Udmurt pair is one tile of it.

The transmitter for this pair is at Tashkent, in Uzbekistan. The Tashkent site, built in the Soviet era, is today one of the busiest relay stations for broadcasters who want to reach Russia, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran and the Indian subcontinent, and 100 kW from there puts a comfortable signal over the Volga, the Urals and western Siberia, which is where Udmurt listeners live.

When and where to listen

9380 kHz is at the lower end of the 31 metre band, and 18:00 UTC on the path from Tashkent to the Volga region is early evening: the band is open and not yet fading. Receivers in Russia, Kazakhstan and the other Central Asian countries hear the broadcast well. From Europe the signal is a secondary one, aimed elsewhere; receivers in Finland, the Baltics, Poland and Turkey usually give a readable signal in autumn and winter, and western Europe gets a weaker version. 9380 kHz lies close to the edge of the band, near frequencies used by other services, so a touch of noise is normal, and a narrower filter helps.

In ShackDeck

Station catalogue → Shortwave broadcast → Bible Voice in Russian 9380. The program picks a public receiver that covers 9380 kHz, tunes it and sets AM; you need no receiver, antenna or account of your own. Check the day and the hour: Sundays only, and the whole slot, Russian and Udmurt together, is over by 19:00 UTC.