Tag Archives: Radio Mi Amigo

Radio Waves: Quantum Sensors, Sinking Mi Amigo, Submarine Radio Network, and Video Games Over The Air

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’sRadio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Kim Elliott and Dennis Dura for the following tips:


Scientists create quantum sensor that covers entire radio frequency spectrum (Phys.org)

A quantum sensor could give Soldiers a way to detect communication signals over the entire radio frequency spectrum, from 0 to 100 GHz, said researchers from the Army.

Such wide spectral coverage by a single antenna is impossible with a traditional receiver system, and would require multiple systems of individual antennas, amplifiers and other components.

In 2018, Army scientists were the first in the world to create a quantum receiver that uses highly excited, super-sensitive atoms—known as Rydberg atoms—to detect communications signals, said David Meyer, a scientist at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory. The researchers calculated the receiver’s channel capacity, or rate of data transmission, based on fundamental principles, and then achieved that performance experimentally in their lab—improving on other groups’ results by orders of magnitude, Meyer said.

“These new sensors can be very small and virtually undetectable, giving Soldiers a disruptive advantage,” Meyer said. “Rydberg-atom based sensors have only recently been considered for general electric field sensing applications, including as a communications receiver. While Rydberg atoms are known to be broadly sensitive, a quantitative description of the sensitivity over the entire operational range has never been done.”[]

Forty years ago today Sheerness lifeboat crew rescued Radio Caroline DJs from the sinking Mi Amigo (Kent Online)

It was the original ‘ship that rocked.’ But 40 years ago today (Thursday)the Mi Amigo, home to original pop pirates Radio Caroline, finally disappeared beneath the waves in a violent force 10 storm.

In a daring rescue which lasted 12 hours in appalling weather, the crew of the Sheerness lifeboat saved the lives of everyone onboard – including the ship’s canary.

Leading the operation was colourful RNLI coxswain Charlie Bowry, who was later presented with the Institute’s coveted silver medal.

It was during the day that the radio station’s 60-year-old ship started dragging its anchor and drifted 10 nautical miles onto the Long Sand sandbank off Southend.

As the tide rose, the ship started to float free. But the bottom of the boat began being buffeted on the seabed with such a force the steel plates sprung a leak and water gushed into the engine room.

When the bilge pumps couldn’t cope, the three British DJs and a Dutch engineer called the Coastguard who dispatched Sheerness lifeboat the Helen Turnbull.[]

The Radio Network that Allowed Communication with Submarines (Interesting Engineering)

Communicating with covert fleets during WWII required some special equipment.

What do you do when you need to communicate with a crew of 50 sailors submerged in a submarine in an undisclosed location across the world’s oceans? That was a difficult question to answer for Navy leaders in WWII.

Radio waves don’t easily travel through saltwater, which meant that getting active communication with a submarine crew meant making the submarine surface an antenna. This was the obvious solution, but it made a previously covert submarine now a visible target.

[…]Engineers tasked with finding a more covert solution soon discovered that radio waves with low frequencies, around 10 kHz, could penetrate saltwater to depths up to around 20 meters. They realized that if the transponders on submarines were switched to these frequency ranges, then they communicate with leadership on land.

The problem with this idea was that creating and broadcasting these low-frequency radio waves required massive antennas. Essentially, the lower the frequency of a radio wave, the longer and larger the antenna is required to be.[]

You Could Download Video Games From the Radio in the 1980s (Interesting Engineering)

Certain radio programs broadcast the raw data to video games for viewers to download.

[…]In 1977, the world’s first microprocessor-driven PCs were released. These were the Apple II, the Commodore PET, and the TRS-80. All these machines had one thing in common – they used audio cassettes for storage.

Hard drives at the time were still quite expensive, and everyone at the time had access to cheap audio cassettes. Early computer designers actually flaunted cassette storage as it aided in the early adoption of personal computers. As PCs became more common, so to did the emergence of their use as video game machines.

As the 1980s rolled around, engineers at the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting, NOS, a Dutch broadcasting organization, realized something incredible. Since computer programs and video games were stored on audio cassettes, it meant that their data could be transmitted with ease over the radio. They started taking programs and video games and setting up broadcasts where people could “download” games onto their own personal computers.

The audio that was transmitted would’ve sounded reminiscent of a dial-up modem booting up.

[…]NOS started a radio program specifically for transmitting gaming data called “Hobbyscoop,” and it became incredibly popular. The company even created a standard cassette format called BASICODE to ensure computer compatibility.

Eventually, transmitting games through computers became so popular that radio shows popped up all around the world. A Yugoslovik station called “Ventilator 202” broadcasted 150 programs between 1983 and 1986. As the practice evolved, it became less of a novelty and rather a practical way for people to share calculation programs, educational tools, encyclopedias, and even flight simulators.[]


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Radio Mi Amigo to go offshore May 30 – June 2, 2019

(Source: Southgate ARC via Mike Hansgen)

Radio Mi Amigo to go offshore 30 May to 2 June

Five years after their success with  Mi Amigo 40 in Ostend, the Mi Amigo team set their sails for the beautiful Belgian seaside resort of   Blankenberge, to organise a week of transmissions, “live from the ship CASTOR”.

This will happen from Thursday 30 May to Sunday 2 June during the Blankenberg Havenfeesten”MI AMIGO 45″.

The Mi Amigo40 ship being used in 2019 is the  Castor,  an identical sister ship of Radio Caroline’s Ross Revenge tender,  ‘Bellatrix’ and of the Greenpeace ship the ‘Sirius’.

Details here:  https://worldofradio.co.uk/MiAmigo.html

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Radio Mi Amigo QSL Card with special stamp

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Lennart Weirell, who writes:

Hi Thomas,

I have received a QSL-card from Radio Mi Amigo with a special individual stamp. Radio Mi Amigo announced this in the Newsletter in December:

“Unique Radio Mi Amigo stamps:

We are proud to announce our own official Radio Mi Amigo stamps. They are legal for use to send out our QSL Cards (printed by the ‘Deutsche Post’). You can get one of these (there are only 200 available and will never printed again from us) together with the QSL Card.”

I enclose a copy of the QSL-card:

Click to enlarge.

Excellent, Lennart! Many thanks for sharing your Radio Mi Amigo QSL card–a keeper for sure!

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Radio Mi Amigo International: Special live broadcast today

(Source: Radio Mi Amigo International via Mike Terry)

Radio Mi Amigo International presents a very special live broadcast remembering those days ‘the music almost died’. We remember Aug. 1967 (UK) and Aug. 1974 (Netherland) when the MOA (‘Anti-Pirate-Law’) became law in those countries and stopped most of the offshore stations. We remember with the songs from that time and some original recordings.

The show will be aired on August, 27 from 19 – 21 hr CET (17 – 19 hr UTC) on 11845 kHz in the 25m SW-band with 100 kw of power all over Europe and also online on our webstreams.

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Radio Mi Amigo special broadcast: Sunday, November 27

radio-miamigo

(Source: Radio Mi Amigo via Harald Kuhl)

Hello to all Radio Mi Amigo friends,

Special Broadcast Sunday, November 27: 6145 kHz – 20:00 – 22:00 hrs. [cet]

Sunday evening November 27 from 20:00 – 22:00 hrs CET we will do another special event show, this time to promote our new daily transmissions on 6085 kHz.
The show will air on 6145 kHz with 100 Kilowatts (!) from the Armeria transmitter, just like we did in October.

The 2 hour show will be hosted by Cpt. Kord from Alicante and will have have 4 segments presented live by 4 of our DJ’s: Johnny Lewis, Peter van Dam, Ron O’Quin and Keith Lewis from their studio’s in The UK, Holland and Ecuador.

We expect this broadcast to be received not only in Europe but also in other parts of the world and again we look forward to your reception reports. As always, we’ll reward you with our new printed QSL card and Mi Amigo car stickers.

All infos, onlinestream: http://radiomiamigointernational.com

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