Tag Archives: DARC

Radio Waves: Radio Afghanistan, Postal Delays, KPH Video, and the Software Defined Radio Academy

Radio Waves:  Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Because I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers.  To that end: Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Heath Hall, Tom Daly, and Alexander (DL4NO) for the following tips:


For Decades, This Radio Station Named the Dead. Few Still Listen. (NY Times)

[Note: this article may require login to read at the NY Times]

Afghans once tuned into Radio Afghanistan twice a day to hear the reading of death notices. But in an age of social media, the voice of the nation has lost much of its sway.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Through decades of coups, invasions and endless war, Afghans tuned their radios to Radio Afghanistan every morning at 7 and every afternoon at 4:05 to hear the names of the newly dead.

One of the voices they often heard reading those death notices belongs to Mohamad Agha Zaki, at the mic for the state broadcaster for more than 42 years now. For much of that stretch, his counterpart at the station has been Ziauddin Aziz, the clerk who rushes to Mr. Zaki with the messages the public brings to the station’s small “Death Advertisements” window.

“Ads today?” Mr. Zaki, half asleep, asked on a recent dawn after opening the door to Mr. Aziz’s knock. Outside, birds chirped and the new day’s soft light covered the peaks of the tall pine trees in the station’s compound in Kabul, the capital.

No, said Mr. Aziz, who had waited behind the door in the kind of deference saved for masters of a different era. They had gone weeks without anyone arriving at the little window — just four ads in 40 days, though certainly many more had died.[]

International Postal Service Disrupted (ARRL News)

The US Postal Service (USPS) has temporarily suspended international mail acceptance for items addressed to certain destinations due to service impacts related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation could result in the return or loss of mail, such as QSL cards, addressed to affected parts of the world. The USPS has posted a list of affected countries, which is updated regularly. The Postal Service will, upon request, refund postage and fees on mail bearing a customs stamp that’s returned due to the suspension of service, or the sender may re-mail returned items with existing postage once service has been restored. When re-mailing under this option, customers should cross out the markings “Mail Service Suspended — Return to Sender.”[]

KPH Coastal Radio Station (Southgate ARC)

In this video Shannon Morse KM6FPP visits coastal radio station KPH which provided ship to shore communications using Morse code. Volunteers have preserved it and operate weekends

Watch The Last Active Morse Code Station in the US – KPH Radio Station

KPH http://www.radiomarine.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KPH_(radio_station)

More information about the Software Defined Radio Academy (Upper-Bavarian Bulletin)

Hamradio online

The Hamradio normally is the largest ham radio exhibition in Europe. But this year it cannot be held.

At the beginning of April, a team around the project manager Markus Heller, DL8RDS, started the project “Hamradio online”. This was only possible as DARC, the German hamradio society, started to introduce electronic collaboration tools long before Corona.

Within this virtual working environment a concept was developed of presentations, distinctions, and more. The program is being prerecorded and will partly be produced as live as possible. Especially the SDR Academy heavily depends on viewer feedback. There will also be videos from the Hamradio Convention that was held last March im Munich. These videos have not been published before.

The infrastructure is being maintained by the teams of the SDR Academy and “Facination Hamradio”. They produce the videos and streamline the installation so all action on the last weekend of June will happen smoothly. These transmissions will be transmitted through several Youtube cannels.

Obviously, personal meetings would be preferable. The advantage of this new solution are the possibly much more participants on both sides: audience and lecturers. The advantage is especially valid for the SDR Academy as most of it is done in English.

Nothing has been finalized. There is a preliminary program in German at https://www.darc.de/fileadmin/filemounts/gs/oeffentlichskeitsarbeit/Veranstaltungen/HAM_RADIO/HAMOnline_Sendeplan.pdf. Lectures held in English are announced in English. I hope an English version of the program will be created.


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The 2020 Software Defined Radio Academy will be held online

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alexander (DL4NO), who shares the following announcement from Markus (DL8RDS):

This year’s Software Defined Radio Academy is taking place as an online conference. Because of the great number of contributions, we are spanning the conference over two days: Saturday June 27 and Sunday June 28 2020.

We also decided to start the stream in the afternoon in order to give our overseas audience a fair chance to participate.

We have pre-recorded the talks, so there is no back-channel or interruption during the talks, but the speakers will be available in our video conferencing system and we will closely observe all the comments that will be submitted into the channel. At the end of the according slots, there is always a little time left for the speakers to respond. So there is a certain degree of interaction and we do encourage you to make use of it.

Our mother organisation, the German Amateur Radio Club DARC also decided to provide a decent online substitute to the HAMRADIO hamvention that was called off by the authorities and I’m proud to say that our team was giving the ideas and helped this really large event to take place. Alltogether our video team, the other video team from Faszination Amateurfunk and the DARC permanent staff managed to provide more than 60 hours of talks, discussions and fantastic content, which will be streamed at this weekend. For those of you who understand German, here is the streaming plan:

https://www.darc.de/fileadmin/filemounts/gs/oeffentlichskeitsarbeit/Veranstaltungen/HAM_RADIO/HAMOnline_Sendeplan.pdf

Back to the Software Defined Radio Academy:

I wrote that the programme is ready. Please check it out here:

https://2020.sdra.io/pages/programme.html

We’re looking forward to welcome all of you on our YouTube stream.
Please enjoy!

And please feel free to redistribute this information.

BR / VY73
Markus
DL8RDS

Thank you for the tip, Alexander!  Looks like an amazing lineup!

Click here to view the SDR Academy YouTube channel.

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DARC’s initiative to track the state of radio interference

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alexender (DL4NO), who shares the following comment in response to our recent post about LED bulb QRM:

The DARC does even more: It is planning a long-term project with some 50 automatic monitoring stations with standardized, calibrated antennas and according to standardized methods to document the changes.

Every monitoring station will scan the bands for free frequencies and measure the background noise there. Every 15 min it will send its findings to a central database where the data will be collected and evaluated.

This way the DARC wants to document the ever increasing interferences in a way that is valid according to the relevant standards. Most monitoring stations are planned to be placed at fixed locations all over Germany. But a few are planned to be placed for a limited time in especially interesting locations.

Presently relevant findings are collected. If you live in Germany see https://www.darc.de/der-club/referate/emv/emv-abhilfemassnahmen/. Also see the DARC magazine cqDL 12-2017, p. 15.

To emphasize it again: Informal reports to your radio club are good. But if you wish to communicate with the legislative bodies you must do your measurements according to the standardized rules using calibrated equipment. Otherwise the authorities will not accept your findings.

See:
https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/p/R-REC-P.372-13-201609-I!!PDF-E.pdf
https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/bs/R-REC-BS.560-4-199710-I!!PDF-E.pdf

Most impressive, Alexander! I love the fact that DARC is using objective observations to support their initiative. The concept is a fascinating one that I should hope other national radio clubs could copy. I will certainly send this to the ARRL.

Thanks again, Alexander!

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DARC asks that you send RF polluting LED bulbs to Elektor Magazine

Photo By Trung Pham Quoc

(Source: Southgate ARC via Mike Hansgen)

LED Bulb RF Pollution – Elektor Magazine investigates

DARC, the German national amateur radio society, are requesting amateurs to send LED bulbs which pollute the RF spectrum to the magazine Elektor for investigation

A Google English translation reads:

Elektor-Verlag GmbH calls all readers and especially all radio amateurs to send non-compliant LED bulbs including power supplies. Elektor wants to investigate this EMC-technical and then forward it to the competent market surveillance of the BNetzA.

The reason for the action: As a result of a press release of the DARC in September 2017 on the significantly increasing interference of radio communications, other radio services and the DAB reception by non-EMC compliant LED bulbs Elektor had investigated such lamps (as well as LED strips). The result showed a progressive electromagnetic pollution.

The Federal Network Agency as competent authority for market surveillance in accordance with the EMVG has welcomed the call for the submission of suspicious copies. In addition, the Federal Agency would like to be informed if disturbing lamps attract attention. She then wants to investigate this situation and take the products out of the market, if they are still offered.

Please send suspicious copies

Elektor-Verlag GmbH
Kackertstr. 10
52072 Aachen

Please enclose a note with the words “EMC LED lamp” so that everything runs correctly in the inbox. You can also announce your submission via e-mail to [email protected] with the subject “EMC-LED-Lamp”. Elektor Verlag GmbH then checks the lamp, publishes an update if necessary and informs the Federal Network Agency.

Here the link to the Elektor article from 23.04.2018
https://www.elektormagazine.de/news/bundesnetzagentur-zu-schicken-sie-uns-verdachtige-led-lampen

Source DARC http://darc.de/

2017 RF pollution from LED bulbs in Elektor Magazine
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2017/september/rf-pollution-from-led-bulbs-in-elektor-magazine.htm

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Cambridge 105 goes pirate for Good Friday

Cambridge-105(Source: Southgate ARC via Thomas Ally)

Cambridge 105 goes pirate – including on 6,070 kHz – for Good Friday

Community broadcast radio station Cambridge 105 is throwing away the modern technology and returning to the era of pirate radio for Good Friday.

Setting up turntables and cart machines on the Riverboat Georgina on the River Cam, we’ll be broadcasting from 10am to 10pm, covering everything from the early days of offshore radio in the 1960s to the end of the era in the early ’90s.

We’ve also teamed up with the DARC-run Channel 292 shortwave transmitter on 6070kHz for the day, so SWLs should be able to hear us there across much of Europe.

Dom M0BLF will be handling QSL cards for anyone who does hear us on HF.

Cambridge 105 is run entirely by volunteers, including a good number of licensed amateurs, both on the engineering and presentation side of the station.

73,

Rob, M0VFC

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