Tag Archives: Harald Kuhl (DL1ABJ)

Special event stations celebrating anniversaries of famous European pirate stations

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Harald Kuhl (DL1AX), who writes:

At the beginning of August there will be two special event amateur radio stations active on shortwave, celebrating anniversaries of famous European pirate stations Radio North Sea International and Radio Caroline:

Radio Northsea International PA45RNI

from 01-08-2019 to 31-08-2019

http://www.radio-northsea.org

email: [email protected]

[source: https://www.qrz.com/db/pa45rni]

and

GB55RC will be active from the Ross Revenge:

Celebrating fifty five years of Radio Caroline

Thursday 1st – Monday 5th August 2019

2019 is the fifty fifth anniversary of Radio Caroline and the Martello Tower Group are pleased to be able to activate the world famous MV Ross Revenge again in August. This year we have been granted the ‘special’ special callsign of GB55RC. […]

[source: https://www.qrz.com/db/gb55rc]

Special QSLs will be available.

[The QSLs above are] from previous GB5RC activities.

Thank you for the tip, Harald! I’d love to grab one of those QSLs!

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LZ1AQ Evaluates Impact of the Height Above the Ground on Mag Loop Performance

Source: LZ1AQ

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Harald Kuhl (DL1AX), who shares the following article on LZ1AQ’s website:

Published on: 2018/11/20, Rev. 1.0 July 2018, Rev. 1.1 Nov 2018

Author: Chavdar Levkov LZ1AQ

Setup

Two identical small loops were placed one above the other according to Fig.1. One of the loops is very low – almost on the ground. The other one is placed at height which usually is used by the loop users. Two AAA-1C wideband active antenna amplifiers were used. Their gain difference was not more than 0.3 dB. The feeder was FTP cable each 20 m long. No cable baluns were used. The outputs were connected through two way antenna switch to a SD RX (Perseus). I used a measurement technique described in – A Periodic Switching Technique to Compare Receiving Antenna Performance in the Presence of Strong Fading. This is a precise method to compare two receiving antennas with real sky wave signals and the resolution can be less than a decibel. The idea is to switch periodically between two antennas and to estimate their difference on a calibrated graphic strength meter of a SD radio.[…]

Click here to read the full article.

I’ve often assumed height had little effect on the performance of an HF loop antenna–this evaluation seems to support that theory. Thanks for sharing this, Harald!

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Radio Bremen: Another option for news in Latin

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Harald Kuhl, who shares the following in response to our previous post about the closure of the Latin service from Finnish Radio. Harald notes:

Here in Germany, Radio Bremen still has a monthly news bulletin in Latin:

https://www.radiobremen.de/bremenzwei/rubriken/latein/latein114.htm

If you’d like to hear a sample Latin podcast from Radio Bremen, listen via the player/link below:

Click here to download audio.

Thank you–or gratias tibi–Harald!

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Armed Forces Day Annual Cross-Band Test – May 11, 2019

(Source: USAmyMARS.org via Harald Kuhl)

(11 May 2019)

The Army Military Auxiliary Radio System will host this year’s Armed Forces Day (AFD) Crossband Test on Saturday May 11, 2019. This annual event is open to all licensed amateur radio operators, and will not impact any public or private communications. For more than 50 years, military and amateur stations have taken part in this event, which is only an exercise scenario, designed to include hobbyist and government radio operators alike.

The AFD Cross-band Test is a unique opportunity to test two-way communications between military communicators and radio stations in the Amateur Radio Service (ARS), as authorized in 47 CFR 97.111. These tests provide opportunities and challenges for radio operators to demonstrate individual technical skills in a tightly-controlled exercise scenario that does not impact any public or private communications.

Military stations will transmit on selected military frequencies and will announce the specific ARS frequencies monitored. All times are ZULU (Z), and all frequencies are Upper Side Band (USB) unless otherwise noted. The frequencies used for the test will not impact any public or private communications, and will not stray outside the confines of the exercise.

Additional Information is provided on the 20190424-AFDCT-final.pdf file available for download [by clicking here].

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World Radio Day and special broadcast by Sveriges DX-Forbund

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Harald (DL1ABJ), who writes:

Just noted that SDXF (Sveriges DX-Forbund) on 13 February will have a program via Channel 292 on 7440 kHz from 0800 UTC and again from 1300 UTC.

Each year on February 13th UNESCO celebrates World Radio Day (WRD).

The WRD 2019 website will give more information about this years event in around two days from now:

https://www.diamundialradio.org/

Many thanks, Harald, for spreading the word! World Radio Day is a great reminder of how important radio still is in many parts of the world.

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Radio Caroline Special Event, August 3 – 7, 2017

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Harald Kuhl, who shares the following:

(Sources: QRZ.com and http://www.martellotowergroup.com/gb5rc.html)

Celebrating five decades of offshore radio broadcasting GB5RC

For the full report of GB5RC in 2016, click here

Thursday 3rd – Monday 7th August 2017

Following our successful activation of MV Ross Revenge in August 2016 we are very excited to be able to run the special event station again in 2017. The Ross Revenge has been the home of the world famous Radio Caroline since 1983. To find out more about our 2016 activation, please click here.

Our plan is similar to last year, however we will be on the Ross a day early, heading out and setting up on Thursday 3rd August with plans to start operating either on the evening of the 3rd or the morning of Friday the 4th. We will operate two stations throughout the weekend, closing down in the early hours of Monday morning, grabbing a few hours sleep and then dismantling everything after a leisurely breakfast before leaving around lunchtime.

We will have two stations operating for as much as possible and this year we will be concentrating on 80m, 40m and 20m with the option to retune the 20m vertical for 17m, 15m, 12m and 10m if conditions are favourable. These bands weren’t very successful in 2016 so we’d rather stick where there’s the most activity. We will have dipoles for 80m and 40m and verticals for 40m and 20m. We may have something for VHF/UHF but we struggled on there last year due to interference from the solar panels whenever the sun shone!

For more details on GB5RC in 2017, please click here ((http://www.martellotowergroup.com/gb5rc.html))

QSL Policy

The QSL card for our 2017 special event station will be a different design to that used in 2016.
Please read this carefully. Failure to follow the procedure will mean your QSL card will either be delayed or you won’t receive it.

Please send cards either direct to G6NHU or via the Bureau addressed to GB5RC.
If sending direct from within the UK, please include an SASE.

From anywhere outside the UK, please include an SAE and $2.

Do not send stamps or any currency other than US$. Direct cards received without envelopes or the correct postage will be returned via the bureau. No exceptions.

If you’d like to add a few extra dollars to go towards supporting Radio Caroline, they will be gratefully received and passed on to the Support Group.

Remember – If you don’t manage to work us but would still like a QSL card, you can send an SWL report as detailed below. These are best sent direct and not via the bureau.

Please do NOT send IRCs.

Direct QSLs to Keith Maton, 41 Bemerton Gardens, Kirby Cross, Essex. CO13 0LQ, United Kingdom.

SWL reports

We appreciate this will be a busy station and due to the nature of the event, we encourage SWL reports. If you send an SWL report, please make sure you list the exact frequency we were working on, the time you heard us and list the callsigns of two stations or more that we were talking to. It would also be nice to know what radio and aerial you’re using.

For more information about Radio Caroline, including how to join the support group and help keep the station on the air and Ross Revenge afloat, please see the website. Radio Caroline’s main running costs are covered by Support Group subscriptions and donations.

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Nova Spaceline shortwave broadcasts to Antarctica

The following information was first shared with me by SWLing Post contributor, Harald Kuhl. As I looked for more details, I discovered the following note in the excellent CIDX Messenger:

From Alan Roe of Teddington, UK, here is information on new transmissions targeting
Antarctica:

According to posting on “Shortwave Airtime” Facebook page:

“Spaceline Ltd and Radio Nova News are to start transmissions to Antarctica for campaign for access of information to the Bulgarian Antractic base. Shortwave is the only media that can reach directly Antarctida at the distance of 13.000 km. Transmissions will start on 1’st of January, 01.00 – 02.00 UTC daily on frequency 11600 kHz. For more information visit www.spaceline.bg”

I couldn’t find any more information at either the Spaceline website or the Radio Nova news
website at https://nova.bg/

However, I received today the following reply (below) from Spaceline:

Hello Alan,

The information on the Facebook page is correct, and Space Line will start the transmissions of Nova News to Antarctica very soon.It was been planned to start the project on January the 1’st, but due to some logistic problems with the base, is postponed for middle or the end of January this year, but there was a test transmission on January the 1st 2017 on 11600 kHz. After the test it appeared that here may be a frequency change from the announced one, due to some propagation anomalies.

The retransmission of Radio Nova News on shortwave is a common project between Nova, Spaceline Ltd. and Bulgarian Antarctic Institute, for reaching the scientists in Bulgarian Antarctic Base on South Shetland Island with fresh news information feed about the social life in Bulgaria.

Stay tuned to the shortwave.airtime FB page for more information about the project.
Best Regards,
Ventsislav Georgiev
Manager R&D
SpaceLine Ltd. | www.spaceline.bg
Mob : +359 888 554 297
E-mail: [email protected]
James Baucher blvd 71, Fl. 6, Office 5,
1407 Sofia , BULGARIA

Thank you Harald and Alan for the tip!

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