Yearly Archives: 2016

eBay find: Rack of classic receivers

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who shared a link to this rack of classic cold war era receivers. The starting bid is $943.75 and there is no shipping cost as it’s local pickup only (no surprise there).

Here’s the description from eBay:

LOCAL PICK UP ONLY Paso Robles Ca. 93446. Good condition, rack of Communications and Amateur Radio receivers. Includes Hallicrafters R-46B loudspeaker, two each Hammarlund SP-600 JX-26 receivers with one frequency readout as shown above the top receiver, a National NC-300 receiver with calibrator accessory, and a Hallcrafters SX-101A receiver with calibrator accessory. The rack cabinet is included. All have normal wear for vintage electronics, worn with faded, chipped and rust spots. The SP-600 receivers (both) dial slips and may need repair. All units may need further repair, alignment, or refurbishing. Local pick up only, I can help loading into your vehicle. 70hi 22wide 20deep weights about 600 pounds

Click here to view on eBay.

I think this would be a great deal if all of the equipment was in working order. I suspect this seller hasn’t tested anything and is, most likely, not a radio enthusiast. I bet the reason the SP-600 dials are spinning freely is because the tuning lock is engaged on each unit–possibly a good sign that the previous owner took care of the equipment. All of it looks good (cosmetically) for its age.

If I were interested, I’d go by and check this out in person prior to bidding.

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RCI programming returns to shortwave via Shortwaveservice.com

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, who writes:

Here is the response from Christian Milling, the director of Radio 700 and Shortwaveservice. Note that he is stressing the difference between Radio 700 (as a program and separate broadcasting station) and Shortwaveservice (as the provider of technical services for the shortwave transmitters at the Kall-Krekkel). The transmitters are actually maintained by Burkhard Baumgartner, DF5XV, under the name “Classic Broadcast”.

All three operations are closely linked so it’s understandable that there is confusion about who does what. Furthermore, in the WRTH, we have “Radio 700 Kurzwellendienst” (Radio 700 Shortwave Service). No reply directly from RCI yet.

Dear Richard Langley,

thank you very much for your e-Mail. Indeed we (not Radio700 but Shortwaveservice.com as technical provider) has set up an official cooperation with Radio Canada International which allows us to transmit the english, french and spanish programming. So this will be a long-term relay on a legal basis. As we prepare a spanish language outlet, the spanish broadcast of RCI will follow later on on SW.

The propagation conditions are a bit lousy at the moment, resulting in a bigger skipzone since a few days on 7310 kHz. Normally we boom into on that frequency also in Twente (which is approx. 200km away from our tranmitter [sic] site). We got some reception reports from the UK, which one from Manchester I’d like to quote: “Good clear signal, just some slight fading from solar disturbance that was taking place. How wonderful to hear Radio Canada International back on shortwave again, I really hope they continue broadcasting from Kall, I couldn’t believe it when I saw they would be broadcasting here this week.”

As the brodcasts [sic] are intended for the reception in europe and most speak either french or english and our weekend-schedule is very crowded, we only managed to find a slot for both languages at a time. But we will think about a re-run of the shows on a different day.

Thanks for tuning in!

If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Best regards,
Christian Milling

Thanks so much for the update, Richard!

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Update: German communications regulator to allow AM digital modes

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As a follow-up to a previous post, many thanks to several SWLing Post readers who noted this news on the VOA Radiogram website:

The German communications regulator Bundesnetzagentur has changed its mind about allowing digital modes on shortwave broadcast transmitters in Germany. Apparently BNetzA thought that Channel 292 was transmitting the text and images in single sideband (SSB), which is how amateurs, military, etc, transmit the digital modes. Now that they know that the MFSK32 and other modes are sent as program audio on an analogue amplitude-modulation shortwave transmitter, their objections were withdrawn. (It’s similar to A2A modulated CW.)

BNetzA prefers that the term MFSK32 not be used to describe these broadcasts, but we have to specify the mode so that you can set Fldigi or other decoding software to the correct mode. In any case, the weekly MFSK32 transmission will resume on The Mighty KBC, and DigiDX will return to Channel 292.

Meanwhile, VOA Radiogram this weekend will be all MFSK32 except for the transmission schedule in Olivia 64-2000 under the closing music.

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RIP: Frans Vossen

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Photo from Frans’ Facebook page.

Many thanks to Jonathan Marks who notes the passing this week of Frans Vossen, former journalist at Radio Vlaandern Internationaal:

Belgium has lost a great communicator who had a deep understanding of international affairs, especially those connected with Belgium and the African continent. I’ll always remember his great stories and infectious laugh. I posted a programme I made with him in 1995 where he explains the fascinating history of Belgian international broadcasting. http://jonathanmarks.libsyn.com/radio-vlaanderen-internationaal-profile RIP Frans. It was an honour to know you.

Many SWLing Post readers probably recognize Frans’ name as he was the head of the English Language Service at Radio Vlaandern Internationaal for about four decades and was a prominent (and well-loved) personality on the air. Frans’ memorial service will happen today. RIP, OM.

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Mike’s overview and review of the $40 Soft66RTL3 SDR by Kazunori Miura (JA7TDO)

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike Ladd, for the following guest post and overview of setting up and using the Soft66RTL3 SDR:

Soft66RTL3 SDR: A low cost…Good performer direct from Japan

by Mike Ladd

Much has changed in the last 8 years in the world of SDR radios. Fast forward to 2016 and just about everyone in the hobby has heard the buzz word “SDR radio”. When SDRs first came out to the market they were all aimed at HF listening and you had two types to pick from. The first being soundcard based and the second being direct sampling. The price gap between the two were several hundred dollars. The more expensive being direct sampling. As the hobby progressed, so did the technology and the prices started to shift dramatically.

You can now purchase a TV dongle for $10.00 and turn it into a SDR. The Soft66RTL3 is basically a TV dongle but with a lot more features.

The Soft66RTL3 comes from an engineer who is no stranger to the world of SDRS. Kazunori Miura (JA7TDO) has been designing and selling many models of SDRS over the internet and shipping them direct from Japan for about 7 years. The Soft66RTL3 is his latest of model hot off his bench. This SDR is a dual input RTL-SDR with a built in 50 MHz upconverter along with 4 user selectable band pass filters that greatly increase your signal to noise ratio in the HF bands.

The frequency range of the RTL3 is from DC to Daylight (0.4 kHz to 1.7 GHz). Miura also addressed a heat issue with the previous version (RTL2) by adding a thermal pad and heatsink. RTL dongles are notoriously unstable due to overheating. In theory, the thermal pad should add frequency stability and keep drift to a minimal.

The last feature of the RTL3 is the input gain trimmer pot (see image above). The trimmer pot is for the HF side of the SDR and is already set before it’s shipped from Japan. If you would like to reduce or increase it the trimmer pot is easily accessible. I would suggest leaving it as is.

The RTL3 is broken down into two sections: the HF input side and the VHF/UHF input side.

The HF side of the SDR (above) has a red rotary encoder and trimmer pot port. The VHF/UHF side (below) has the USB Mini-B connection.

Both sides of the RTL3 terminate to a SMA-Male connection and Power comes from a single USB Mini-B cable.

Band pass filter selection

If you look at the rotary encoder (red cap cover) you will see a small notch window. The 12 o’clock position is #5 on the encoder dial. One click clockwise will take you to switch position #6 and one click counterclockwise will take you to #4. You should pull the red cap cover off to have a look and get your bearings.

The band pass filter selection is as follows:

#4 enables BPF 0.4 to 1.2MHz
#5 enables BPF 1.2MHz to 5MHz
#6 enables BPF 5MHz to 15MHz
#7 enables BPF 15MHz to 30MHz
#8 or #9 enables the VHF UHF side of the SDR

All other positions will bypass the filtering section on the HF side of the SDR.

Installation

If you already have a RTL-SDR on your system then all you need to do is swap it out with the RTL3 and change the offset of -50,000,000 in HDSDR or SDR# to listen to the HF side of the RTL3–but if this is your first SDR we will need to install 2 items: the front end app and the driver.

I will assume your system is Win-7 or better and we will be using SDR# as our program of choice to drive the RTL3. The RTL3 runs just fine in HDSDR and SDR-Console, but by choosing SDR# it will reduce our setup time considerably.

Plug in the RTL3
Make a folder on your desktop and name it SDR#
Download the latest version SDR# from www.airspy.com and copy the contents of the zip file to your newly created SDR# folder
Inside of your SDR# folder, double click on install-rtlsdr
After the batch completes, double click on the “zadig.exe” inside your SDR# folder

When you run the “zadig.exe” make sure you select “list all devices” as shown above.

The next 3 steps are:

Select “Bulk-In Interface” (Interface 0)
Make sure the proper USB device is selected (2838)
Click “install driver”

The RTL3 is now ready to be used and no further setup is required.

For a more detailed installation I would visit RTL-SDR.COM for a complete setup instructions: http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-quick-start-guide

I will assume you did not have any issues setting up the ZADIG driver and now move on to using the RTL3 inside of SDR#. I will show you real world conditions that are not from any scientific standpoint.

Antenna wise, for the HF side I will be using a G5RV mini and for the VHF/UHF side I will be using a Scanntenna ST-2.

You can now launch SDR# and check the following settings (see image below).

For the VHF/UHF side of the RTL3 you will want the rotary encoder on position #9. You want the cutout in the encoder cap showing the 5 o’clock position.

Summary

I have been using this SDR for a little over 3 months. Out of all the low cost SDR’S on the market, this one gives you the most bang-for-your-buck and it is a great entry level SDR with some “Pro” features.

Pros:

Low Price
HF VHF/UHF in one package
Works with any app that supports the RTL-SDR front end
4 user selectable band pass filters for HF
Highly sensitive user controlled input RF amp
Small & very compact metal case
Dual input SMA jacks
ESD protection diode

Cons

Some intermod in the 460-470 MHz range
Inputs are on opposite sides of the SDR body

The Soft66RTL3 price is $40.00 US shipped–click here to order.

Mike, thank you so much for this excellent overview of the Soft66RTL3! I’m especially appreciative of the time you’ve taken to explain the installation process–for many, this is one of the more difficult RTL-SDR learning curves.

I’m very tempted to check this out for myself–I love the fact that this little SDR has bandpass filters.

Post Readers: I suspect Mike will monitor the comments in this post, so feel free to ask questions. Make sure to check out Mike’s website, where you’ll find more articles about software defined radios.

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Real-time Flight Status And Radar For All US/Canada Flights

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For those who receive (and send) flight data from ADS-B capable devices such as the RTL-SDR dongles or have Apps for their tablets and phones, FlightAware announced on Wednesday this change to their service:

Hi from FlightAware,

After months of development, we released a large upgrade to our back-end flight tracking engine on Tuesday. Not only did the upgrade include dozens of bug fixes and flight tracking improvements, but we added a massive enhancement for US and Canadian flight tracking — the flight status and radar data is now live with no more five minute delay! Previously, the US/Canada data feed contained a five minute delay in addition to our ~30 second processing time, but now all data is less than a minute delayed from real time. In addition to the general improvement, this yields a lot of additional benefits:

More seamless transition between RADAR, ADS-B, and MLAT positions

Flights will no longer transition from “Arriving soon” to “Arrived 5 minutes ago”

Fewer estimated positions due to delayed RADAR data

Now that the radar data in the US and Canada is real-time, we’ll soon be enabling public MLAT data in the US, which is real-time just like our ADS-B data.

This is a major upgrade in data for folks in North America, and it will make using programs like PlanePlotter even more useful!

For those who might be interested in building their own dedicated ADS-B receiver, information may be found here. Of course FlightAware may be used as an online flight checking service just for tracking the progress of a given flight, which is in itself a lot of fun!

Robert Gulley, AK3Q, is the author of this post and a regular contributor to the SWLing Post. Robert also blogs at All Things Radio.

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First DRM European Workshop

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Many thanks to SWLing Post readers, Cap and Bill, who both shared this press release from the DRM consortium:

(Source: DRM Consortium)

First DRM European Workshop “Flexible and Complete Digital Radio for Europe”
asks European Stakeholders to Support and Manufacture DRM and DAB+ Receivers

Following from a very successful General Assembly, the Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) Consortium, and the German DRM Platform held a most comprehensive European workshop hosted by Fraunhofer IIS in Erlangen, Germany from 6th to 7th April 2016.

This was a first such DRM event aimed at offering solutions to all broadcasters large or small. During their presentations and discussions participants stressed that DRM is the ITU endorsed and internationally adopted standard for the distribution of programmes internationally, nationally and up to local coverage level. DRM can also provide an economic and complementary solution to exactly those coverage scenarios that the established DAB/DAB+ networks in Band-III were never designed for.

Following their deliberations the participants urged all stakeholders of Digital Radio in Europe – including European organisations, regulators, broadcasters and the receiver and automotive industry – to embrace publicly the duality and complementarity of the open DRM and DAB standards as the complete Digital Radio solution for Europe (and worldwide). This means a digital future for all broadcasters, offering more programme choice to listeners, extra multimedia services with text and images, increased energy savings and spectrum efficiency. The participants ask ‘all European stakeholders to promote actively the manufacturing and distribution of multi-standard Digital Radio receivers, comprising at least the DRM and DAB standards.’

The first session, held in conjunction with the open part of the DRM General Assembly, took a brief look at the status of DRM adoption around the world, including the DRM roll-out in India, ready to become the largest digital radio market in the world with over 600 million people being reached by DRM broadcasts. Presentations given by experts from various European countries showed that the digitisation of radio progresses in Europe. At the end of the first day Fraunhofer IIS (Bernd Linz) demonstrated the latest development to provide traffic and travel services in DRM radios, soon to be installed in Asia. Afterwards Martin Speitel demonstrated the features of the Fraunhofer software package for car radios with DRM. With this solution, radio manufacturers can quickly build or enhance radio platforms on a proven modular system covering the full DRM and DAB standards including their full feature sets, thus shortening their development times and, in turn, reducing their costs.

On the 7th April benefits and opportunities of DRM were shown with practical applications. Ampegon (Matthias Stoll) showed how easy and cost-effective the transition from analogue AM to DRM can be. Marc Holthof of the German Navy gave an example of how to use DRM over shortwave for maritime broadcasting of information and entertainment to ship crews at sea. Csaba Szombathy, Technical University of Budapest, demonstrated his original monitoring programme of DRM transmissions. Then RFmondial (Jens Schroeder), demonstrated how to provide DRM services in the crowded FM band compatible with all the existing FM stations. Joachim Lehnert, German DRM Platform Chairman, showed that DRM is a suitable system for local/regional coverage in VHF Band III, fully compatible with DAB/DAB+ and DVB-T networks and in keeping with RRC-06. RFmondial (Detlef Pagel) also referred to the use of DRM in VHF Band III and stressed that DRM+ is the most suitable digital system for the local and regional single-station broadcasters, as a complement to multiplexes, while sharing all the listener related features with the DAB+ standard. Finally, Manfred Kühn, Mobile Broadcast Consult, demonstrated the flexible transmission of multiple DRM channels in a single DAB frequency block in VHF Band III.

This session was followed by a status report on the development of digital multi-standard radios, presented by Robert Bosch Car Multimedia, NXP, Fraunhofer IIS, PnP Networks and Panasonic. All the speakers finally emphasized the market and framework requirements for the production of multistandard radios for Europe.

Joachim Lehnert, Chairman of the German DRM Platform, concluded that the workshop was an important step to bringing national activities together and added; “With all the European DRM activities presented over the past two days and the encouraging messages from the receiver industry, I believe that the famous ‘chicken or egg’ problem can be solved from the receiver end by adding DRM as a complement to existing digital receivers. This will eventually help all radio broadcasters across Europe, whether national, local or community stations, and will ensure each has a digital home in the future.”

Click here to download the PDF of this press release.

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