Monthly Archives: February 2017

HAARP seeking SWL reports for research experiments

(Source: University of Alaska Fairbanks News)

UAF plans HAARP research campaign

The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute is planning its first research campaign at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program facility in Gakona.

At the end of February, scientists will use the HAARP research instrument to conduct multiple experiments, including a study of atmospheric effects on satellite-to-ground communications, optical measurements of artificial airglow and over-the-horizon radar experiments.

Members of the public can follow one of the experiments in real time. Chris Fallen, assistant research professor in space physics, will be conducting National Science Foundation-funded research to create an “artificial aurora” that can be photographed with a sensitive camera. Observers throughout Alaska will have an opportunity to photograph the phenomenon, which is sometimes created over HAARP during certain types of transmissions.

Under the right conditions, people can also listen to HAARP radio transmissions from virtually anywhere in the world using an inexpensive shortwave radio. Exact frequencies of the transmission will not be known until shortly before the experiment begins, so follow @UAFGI on Twitter for an announcement.

For more details on the dates and times of Fallen’s experiments, as well as information on how to observe, visit https://sites.google.com/alaska.edu/gakonahaarpoon/. Information is also available at the HAARP website, the UAF http://gi.alaska.edu/haarp-0 and the official UAF HAARP Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/UAFHAARP/.

Operation of the HAARP research facility, including the world’s most capable high-power, high-frequency transmitter for study of the ionosphere, was transferred from the U.S. Air Force to UAF in August 2015.

Research funding agencies include the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Lab and the Naval Research Laboratory.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Contact HAARP personnel with any questions at [email protected].

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Guest Post: International Radio Fair and World Radio Day in Bhubaneswar, India

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Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ashok Shankar Das, who shares the following guest post originally published on his blog SWLDAS:

International Radio Fair and World Radio Day

by Ashok Shankar Das

For last few years Outreach International used to organize a radio fair. This year too they organized “International Radio Fair 2017” at Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Besides other participants, Amateur Radio Society of Odisha (ARSO) participated in the fair too.

Main Attractions

The main attractions of this fair was HAM radio, vintage radio collection and radio related stamp collection.

International Radio Fair 2017 Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

The Sand Art for World Radio Day in the venue

Vintage Radio collection

Mr. Ghanasyam collected several radios Most of them are vintage tube radios. Though they are non functional but for a museum it is very nice to see radios from my Grand fathers time. Around 500 to 600 radios were on display.

Mr. Ghanashyam in his 80s now a radio lover, I would say Radio Crazy man.

Vintage Radio Stall from a distance.

Few Radios with close-ups.

His collection includes several radios from Philips, Murphy, Bush and HMV to name a few…

Radio Philatelist

The other attraction is Philatelist Mr. Ashok Kumar Tiwari. his collection includes Radio inventors/researcher, development of radio, broadcast history, Emergency Communication and HAM radio. A very nice and exhaustive collection.

Alexander Popov

J.C Bose

G.Marconi

HAM radio related.

I could not put all the pictures of his collections, its huge…

Last but not the end…

The HAM radio stalls

In this category ARSO Bhubaneswar and ARCCS from Kolkata put up their stalls. Evan they have made a special call-sign for this Event(AT0IRF). In ARCCS stall, they have displayed and try to promote ON-AIR and how to reach out more people. On the other hand ARSO team focused on HAM radio Homebrew and Radio concepts.

VU2PQS(sitting) VU3XUS and VU2AOR

VU2PQS describing About HAM radio

VU2ABG from Surat came to meet ARSO team.

Concluding remarks

Though it was a very nice initiative, participation should have been more. Though it is organized jointly by UNESCO no International participation seen. hope coming year these shortcomings are fulfilled.

Ashok, thanks so much for sharing your photos and comments from the International Radio Fair and World Radio Day in Bhubaneswar.

Click here to check out Ashok’s blog SWLDAS.

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VOA Museum celebrates VOA 75th anniversary

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Photo from the control room at the VOA Bethany museum.

(Source: Southgate ARC)

National VOA Museum to celebrate 75th anniversary of Voice of America

There’s an important birthday celebration in West Chester this year: the 75th anniversary of the Voice of America.

“We’re planning a series of events and exhibits this year to celebrate the VOA’s commitment across America and the world to embrace best practices in telling the truth in order to let the world decide,” said Jack Dominic, museum executive director.

The VOA was formed in 1942 as a way to counteract Nazi propaganda in Germany and provide war news to American troops and Allies overseas.

“WLWO, a division of WLW, was transmitting news via shortwave radio overseas long before 1942,” said Dominic. “In fact, broadcasters from WLWO provided the nucleus of the early VOA broadcasting team. Cincinnati’s shortwave technology and its broadcasters truly helped the U.S. win the war.”

The reentrant rhombic antennas at the VOA-Bethany station in West Chester were so powerful that they became quickly known as the “siege guns of radio” for their capacity to reach the far corners of Nazi-occupied countries with little audible distortion. A frustrated Adolph Hitler was known to call the VOA “those Cincinnati liars.”

The VOA-Bethany station transmitted VOA news to Europe during WW II and South America during the Cold War through its innovative shortwave rhombic antenna network developed by the Crosley Corporation. The Bethany station was decommissioned by the federal government in 1994, after shortwave radio technology was supplanted by television and satellite technology.

“The men and women who made up the VOA broadcasting system were our journalistic beacons of light during the 20th century,” said Ken Rieser, president of the VOA museum board.

“Elmer Davis, John Houseman, Edward R. Murrow and Robert Bauer all had positions of leadership within the VOA.

“We hope that the VOA enjoys many more years of embracing the highest of journalistic standards in its reporting so it inspires people in war-torn and oppressed countries to hope, dream and work toward democracy.”

The Voice of America, based in Washington, D.C., is the world’s largest international broadcaster, providing balanced and comprehensive news and information in 47 languages to 236 million people each week, according to the VOA website. It continues to reach people in countries lacking a fee press today and its languages include: Russian; Ukrainian; Azerbaijani; Serbian; Armenian; Thai; and Somali.

The National VOA Museum of Broadcasting is located in the art deco Bethany station building and houses three collections: Gray History of Wireless radios; VOA-Bethany station’s Voice of America control room; and the Media Heritage Cincinnati Museum of Broadcast History. The West Chester Amateur Radio Assn. operates station WC8VOA from the museum building.

The VOA museum now offers an annual $50 membership that provides free admission for the member, an adult guest, and up to three children under 12. Members also receive updates and advance information about new exhibits and programs.

For $250, members receive the benefits above, as well as a 50 percent discount on any and all lectures, programs or visiting exhibit tickets.

The National VOA Museum of Broadcasting is open the third Saturday of each month from 1 to 4 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults and $1 for children. The museum is located at 8070 Tylersville Road in West Chester.

Museum will be open this Saturday, Feb. 18

For more information, visit the VOA Museum website at www.voamuseum.org or call (513) 777-0027.

To access Voice of America programs, visit www.voanews.com

The VOA Bethany museum is certainly worth a visit! I went there in 2015 and was most impressed with the work these volunteers have accomplished.

Click here for our short photo tour.

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Kris also forced the Shipping Forecast to repeat a broadcast

Visualising shortwave band activity throughout the year

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This article originally appeared on the London Shortwave blog.

24-hour shortwave spectrum image, showing activity for a single day in the first week of February 2017 (©PA3FWM, Twente WebSDR).

As many of my readers and followers will already know, these days I mostly enjoy listening to shortwave radio via the outdoor spectrum captures I make in my local park. Although I have built a system that helps me deal with urban radio interference at home, some of the weaker signals still can’t make it through the indoor noise. Since I have a limited amount of time for making outdoor trips, capturing entire portions of the spectrum allows me to record a lot of shortwave signals simultaneously, which I can then explore individually at a later time. However, these trips still need to be carefully planned because the time of the day and the time of the year both affect long-distance signal propagation, and do so differently depending on the frequency range. For example, signals on the 16 meter band are usually at their strongest during the daylight hours, whereas the 31 meter band is at its busiest around sunrise and sunset. Because my current portable recording set-up allows me to capture only 10% (3 MHz) of the shortwave spectrum at any one time, I decided to carry out a systematic exploration of activity on the shortwave bands to help me time my outings so as to capture as many signals as possible during each trip.

Capturing the shortwave spectrum out in the field with a portable SDR set-up.

Luckily, I didn’t need to make any of my own measurements for this. For over a year, the wide-band WebSDR at the University of Twente has allowed its users to see what the shortwave spectrum has looked like over the past 24 hours in a single image. More recently, however, the creator of the service, Pieter-Tjerk de Boer PA3FWM, has opened up his spectrum image archives, so it is now possible to see the past conditions of the bands on any single day in the last two years. Intrigued by how band activity changes depending on the time of the year, I created a timelapse animation of these images by taking two from each calendar week and lining them up in sequence. With Pieter-Tjerk’s kind permission, I share this animation below.

First, a really fast version to illustrate the broad effects the time of the year has on peak activity times across the bands:

Click here to view on YouTube

The X axis represents the frequency and the Y axis is the time of day, starting at the top. Conventional wisdom about band behaviour can be easily confirmed by watching this video: the 60m, 49m and 41m bands are mostly active after dark, with the 60m and the 49m bands being generally busier during the winter months. The 31m band is most active around sunset, but carries on all night until a few hours after sunrise. The 25m band is active during sunrise and for a few hours afterwards, and around sunset during the winter months, but carries on all night during the summer. Peak activity on the 22m and 19m bands is also clustered bi-modally around the morning and the evening hours, though somewhat closer to the middle of the day than on the 31m and the 25m bands. The 16m band is mostly active during the daylight hours and the 13m band is quiet throughout the year except for the occasional ham contest.

It almost seems as though someone positioned in the middle of the image’s right edge (corresponding to noon UTC) is shining two flashlight beams on the bands in a V-shaped pattern, and is changing the angle of this pattern depending on the time of the year: wider in the summer and narrower in winter. Here’s a slower version of the animation that shows some finer week-on-week changes:

Click here to view on YouTube

Thanks to this data being made freely available, visualising and understanding these dynamics will help me schedule my spectrum capture outings in the weeks and months ahead.

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Celebrate World Radio Day 2017

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Today is UNESCO World Radio Day:

“a day to celebrate radio as a medium; to improve international cooperation between broadcasters; and to encourage major networks and community radio alike to promote access to information, freedom of expression and gender equality over the airwaves.

Radio is the mass media reaching the widest audience in the world. It is also recognized as a powerful communication tool and a low cost medium.”

In honor of World Radio Day, at Ears To Our World, we sent 60 HumanaLights and 40 self-powered AM/FM/SW radios to be distributed in Haiti through our partners, the Haitian Health Foundation.

We’ve been working steadily in Haiti since 2009, shortly before the 2010 earthquake. You may know that Haiti has most recently been dealing with the effects of Hurricane Matthew which struck on October 4, 2016. Shortly after urgent food and medical supplies started making their way to the island, we began sending radios and other supplies.

The importance of radio access in disaster situations cannot be overstated, and the results getting receivers into the hands of those in need are both immediate and enduring. According to the Knight Foundation, a non-profit organization that advances journalism in the digital age, radio was “the undisputed lifeline for the Haitian public after the [2010] earthquake.” In their report, “Media, Information System and Communities: Lessons from HAITI,” the Foundation asserted, “Of all the available humanitarian information tools, radio was the most effective means to share information with the community and to distribute information to affected populations.”

This remains true today as Haiti rebuilds after Hurricane Matthew.

If you would like to help those who ETOW serves, please consider a donation of any amount. This is unquestionably a meaningful way to give the gift of radio, as well as education on World Radio Day!

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Tecsun S-8800 update

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UPDATE: Click here to read our full review of the re-engineered Tecsun S-8800. Note that the post below refers to the first production run units only.

If you’re considering purchasing the Tecsun S-8800, this is an important post.

I’ve had the S-8800 for about two weeks and had planned to have audio clip comparisons prepared and posted by now. My exceptionally busy schedule has made this difficult–and there a few other complicating factors.

First off, the good news: in terms of sensitivity, selectivity and audio fidelity, I’m very happy with the S-8800. I’ve compared it a number of times with the Tecsun PL-880 and the Sony ICF-SW7600GR and it either holds its own or even has a leg-up on both radios in terms of overall performance. I find that the S-8800’s AGC is more stable than my 1st generation PL-880.

Of course, what will be most telling is what you, dear reader, think of the performance when compared in a blind audio test.

As I mentioned, though, there are complicating factors–It’s not just my schedule which has made the S-8800 review come to a halt.

Birdies…

Yes, birdies. Lots of them.

At first, I thought the noises were due to the fact my mobile phone and Zoom H2N digital recorder were too close to the S-8800. I dismissed this interference as it didn’t sound like the typical steady tone/carrier birdies I’ve come to loath over the years.

As my testing continued, though, I quickly realized these variable heterodyne and digital hash noises must be internally-generated.

Quite literally, as I was outdoors testing the S-8800 and making this discovery last week, I received a message from SWLing Post contributor, Bertrand Stehle (F6GYY). You might recall, Bertrand provided us with an initial review of his S-8800e (the European version of the S-8800). He also started noticing the birdies and, like me, initially assumed they were due to an external source of RFI.

Bertrand kindly mapped out the extensive list of birdies he found on his S-8800e–he noted a total of 81 birdie/carrier locations:

14 birdies on longwave
4 birdies on mediumwave
63 birdies between 1859 – 29095 kHz

Comparing notes, there are some differences between Bertrand’s S-8800e and my S-8800:

Only 50-60% of the birdies on my S-8800 are in the same frequency locations as those mapped by Bertrand on his S-8800e
The total number of birdies, however, are likely identical–I find birdies where Bertrand hadn’t noted them

The appearance and intensity of the birdies can vary depending on listening location and the strength of any nearby broadcast signals. I’ve noticed four distinct birdie sounds: a variable carrier, a steady carrier, digital hash, and something I might describe as digital variable noises.

I’ve even noticed some change slightly as you move the radio around.

Here are a couple of examples:

Example on 610 kHz:

Click here to view/listen via YouTube.

Example on 2009.15 kHz:

Click here to view/listen on YouTube.

Moving forward

Obviously, this is a major issue for an enthusiast-grade portable.

I’m sharing all of this information with Anna at Anon-Co. No doubt, she’ll share this information with Tecsun engineering. The last I heard, projected availability of the S-8800 from Anon-Co is late March 2017. Perhaps there will be time for Tecsun to eliminate these birdies by improving internal grounding and/or shielding?

Until the birdie issue is sorted out, I’m not proceeding with audio comparisons or a full review. It goes without saying that, at present, I couldn’t recommend purchasing the S-8800. Sad, because this is otherwise a great radio.

I hope Tecsun can sort this out, though.

I will share any/all updates here on the SWLing Post.

Follow the tags S-8800 Birdies or S-8800.

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