Monthly Archives: January 2017

Radyo Pilipinas From 1973

One of the things I now regret is that I didn’t make more recordings of radio stations from my listening days in the 1970s and 80s. I have very few audio examples of stations operating at that time. So disappointing!

However….a few weeks ago, I stumbled across a recording I made in December 1973 of Radyo Pilipinas, The Voice of the Philippines (DZRP). After a bit of audio engineering on the deteriorating old cassette tape, I’ve managed to somewhat improve the tone quality. I also found an image of the QSL card from that exact transmission on December 11, 1973 on 9580 kHz. I’ve posted the recording on YouTube – click the embedded video below.

This is for those of you who can remember and for those who enjoy some radio history!

These days, Radyo Pilipinas still has a small presence on the shortwave bands with the following schedule:

To the Middle East in English and Tagalog from the Tinang relay site (250 kW)
0200-0330 on 15640, 17700 and 17820 kHz
1730-1930 on 9925, 12120 and 15190 kHz

73 and have a great weekend everyone!

Rob Wagner VK3BVW

Rob Wagner, VK3BVW, is the author of this post and a regular contributor to the SWLing Post. He also blogs at the Mount Evelyn DX Report.

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“Hello Finland, this is Vancouver calling”

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, William Lee, who shares the following story from the CBC:

Hello, Finland, this is Vancouver calling: radio fans listen to CBC from 6,700 km away

When people in other parts of the world tune in to CBC Radio in Vancouver, they usually do it through our app, or online or through Sirius XM.

But some people in Finland recently picked up Vancouver’s CBC broadcast — the broadcast heard locally at 690 AM and 88.1 FM — using an elaborate antenna system roughly 300 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle in Lapland, Finland.

“It’s a few [radio hobbyists] from around Finland who have a very nice place up in the north where there’s not much neighbours which means not much interference,” Patrik Willfor, one of the listeners, told On The Coast host Stephen Quinn. “It’s like a silent band there, so even the weakest signals come through.”

The practice is called DXing, and Willfor says he’s been at it for about 25 years since a friend told him that’s what their fathers used to do when they were young.[…]

Click here to read the full article on CBC British Columbia’s website.

Post readers: Is it just me? Or do you, too, get a kick out of it when the press gets a glimpse into the seemingly-anachronistic, but still-relevant-and-rocking world of radio–?

Note that you can also listen to the audio interview with Patrik via the embedded CBC player below:

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DRM tests from KTWR Guam through January 13

ARISS contact today: stream on the web or perhaps listen with your radio!

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NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson’s 7th Spacewalk (Image source: NASA)

Last night, my buddy Eric McFadden (WD8RIF) notified me that the International Space Station would be making a pass this morning and doing an ARISS contact with three schools in Belgium.

It appears this pass will create an opportunity for some of us at least in eastern North America (and elsewhere) to listen to the transmission live.

Eric notes:

The frequency of the downlink should be 145.800MHz. As the ISS climbs above your horizon, because of doppler-shift, listen on 145.805. Switch to 145.800 as the ISS approaches zenith. Switch to 145.795 as the ISS drops toward the other horizon. You’ll know when to switch frequency when the audio gets bad.

[…]The ISS runs real power so an HT with anything but the shortest rubber duck should be OK, particularly when the ISS is well above the horizon. A 1/2-wave whip on the HT is better.

The contact starts at 13:47 UTC (08:47 EST)–about one hour from time of this posting.

As Eric notes, pretty much any VHF handheld radio or scanner can easily receive this contact as long as you can tune to 145.80 MHz +/-.

Last time I was in a place to tune to the ISS, it was with my kids and we all got a kick out of hearing astronauts answer questions from children here on Terra Firma. I wrote a short post about this.

Don’t worry if you miss this ARISS contact–they happen all the time. Check the ARISS “Upcoming Contacts” (http://www.ariss.org/upcoming-contacts.html) page where future ARISS QSOs are listed. No doubt, it will pass over your part of the globe at some point!

Southgate ARC also posted the following announcement with a link to the live webcast:

ARISS contact webcast

On Thursday 12 January 2017, an ARISS contact is scheduled with three schools in Belgium.

Two schools will operate from the Euro Space Center.

The event will be web streamed live on:
https://www.facebook.com/eurospacecenter

The radio contact is scheduled at 13.47 UTC, which 14.37 CEWT.

The web streaming will start around 14.00 local time.

73,

Gaston Bertels, ON4WF
ARISS past chairman

Thanks again, Eric, for the tip!

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2017 Radio Prague QSL cards

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David Iurescia (LW4DAF), who writes:

Hi Thomas:

As every year, Radio Prague has a new collection of QSL cards for its listeners.
This year, this eight different QSL cards show Means of Public Transport in the Czech Republic.

You can see them at:

http://www.radio.cz/en//qsl/qsl-cards

Thanks for the tip, David! I love Radio Prague QSL cards.

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Guest Post: Richard builds a WiFi radio with the Raspberry Pi

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Schreiber (KE7KRF), who shares the following guest post:

Yet Another Internet Radio!

by Richard Schreiber (KE7KRF)

After deciding that an internet radio could be an important source of entertainment in our household, we formulated a few general guidelines:

We opted not to use an aggregator but would pick and choose stations we enjoyed and discover the URL’s ourselves. Also would be satisfied with a couple of dozen stations. Based on a recent decision to pare down the number of TV channels we were paying for, having access to hundreds of stations seemed impractical and unnecessary.
The price had to be affordable, thus eliminating many stand-alone, commercially available internet radios.
We already owned a quality portable speaker (Bose SoundLink Mini) so the internet radio didn’t need to duplicate that component.
Didn’t want to tie up nor be tethered to a laptop, tablet, or netbook. We predicted that would eventually lead to less and less use of the radio.

After some research, coupled with the fact I already had some experience with Raspberry Pi computers, that small device appeared to be our best choice. I had recently purchased the newer 2 B model, which has plenty of computing power, and had installed Ubuntu Linaro as the OS. (As an aside, this OS has not to my knowledge been upgraded for the latest Raspberry Pi 3). There are several other operating systems that will work just as well including the official Raspbian OS available through the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

I installed the MPD music player daemon and its client MPC, which is used to add to and delete station URL’s from the playlist, control volume, etc. An important find was the iPhone app called MPod which provides remote wireless access to the features of MPC. At the moment it is a free app for the iPhone (in my case the iPod Touch).

For portability, my Raspberry Pi is being used “headless”, meaning it is not connected to a monitor, keyboard or mouse. If maintenance is required you can use PuTTY, a SSH and telnet client, wirelessly from a Windows (or MAC?) PC, using a command-line interface. Mainly this is needed to shut down the Raspberry Pi properly before turning off the power, but it boots completely on its own when powered up. The MPod app will then load the playlist of stations and let you start playing the radio without direct access to the Raspberry Pi.

The sound output of my Raspberry Pi is connected to the auxiliary port of our Bose SoundLink Mini Bluetooth speaker. But instead of trying to implement Bluetooth on the Raspberry Pi, I took the easy way out and use a direct connection. The sound reproduction from this setup is very good, though audiophiles might be somewhat more critical.

The above represents a minimal investment if you already have a good speaker on hand. It does require some on-line research and learning at least enough to install the OS and software. The good news is that there are many websites and forums providing step-by-step instructions and helpful hobbyists willing to explain some of the more cryptic aspects. A few of the websites that I found to be helpful:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Raspberry-Pi-Internet

http://cagewebdev.com/raspberry-pi-playing-internet-radio

https://learn.adafruit.com/raspberry-pi-radio-player-with-touchscreen

A couple of these also explain how to add a display to your Raspberry Pi internet radio.

Our Raspberry Pi radio is on each evening and has been trouble free. It is worth mentioning that this is a very portable setup, and can even be powered by a battery pack (the kind used for recharging tablets and cell phones) for a few hours. Of course you need to be near a wifi hotspot.

Thank you, Richard! What a great way to use the inexpensive Raspberry Pi. I have a spare Pi2 and an amplified speaker here at the house. Though I don’t need another WiFi radio, it would be fun putting this little system together.

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Nova Spaceline shortwave broadcasts to Antarctica

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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