Monthly Archives: July 2019

Apollo 11 at 50 years: Those who made landing on the moon a reality

I’ve always said that the key to success is to surround yourself with amazing people.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate in this life to do that very thing–and certainly one of those amazing people is my friend, George Knudsen (W4GCK).

You see, besides being a ham, devoted radio enthusiast, and all around good guy, fifty years ago George was an integral part of putting Apollo 11 on the moon. George’s team was responsible for Apollo 11’s second stage.

The S-II second stage is moved into position for mating with the S-IC first stage. (Source: NASA)

Our local ABC affiliate, WLOS, featured George today:

Click here to view the video on WLOS.

Every time I’m around George, I pick his brain about the Apollo 11 days–his inside stories fascinate me. One thing that always sticks in my mind is the Esprit De Corps his team and everyone–literally everyone from the astronauts to the maintenance crew–on the mission experienced.

They had an outrageous goal and an outrageous timeline, yet they still managed to make it happen.

If you’d like to learn more about George, I’d highly recommend listening to his in-depth interview on the excellent omega tau podcast.

Here’s a description:

George Knudsen started working in 1958 on the Redstone missile, and moved on to working on the Atlas ICBM. Later he worked on the Saturn 5 launch vehicle, where he was responsible for the fuel tanks. He was on the launch team at Cape Canaveral for various Apollo missions. In this episode [we] talk with George about his work in this fascinating period of science and engineering history.

Click here to listen via the omega tau site.

omega tau, hosted by Markus Völter, covers a wide variety of topics from engineering and science. It’s one of my favorite podcasts, so I would encourage you to not only listen to this episode, but subscribe to the podcast.

Please comment with your Apollo 11 stories!

Apollo 11 and all of the missions leading up to and following it involved thousands upon thousands of skilled workers and stakeholders. Please comment if you or someone in your life played a role in any of these missions.

Do you remember Apollo 11? What was it like for you that amazing day?

Please comment!

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FTIOM & UBMP, July 12-27

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From the Isle of Music, July 21-27:
This week, a Cuban dance party with some excellent charangas including Orquesta Estrellas de la Charanga, Enrique Álvarez, and Ritmo Oriental.
The broadcasts take place:
1. For Eastern Europe but audible well beyond the target area in most of the Eastern Hemisphere (including parts of East Asia and Oceania) with 100Kw, Sunday 1500-1600 UTC on SpaceLine, 9400 KHz, from Sofia, Bulgaria (1800-1900 MSK)
If you don’t have a shortwave radio or are out of range, you can listen live to an uplink from a listening radio in the Netherlands during the broadcast at
http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/?tune=9400am
2. For the Americas and parts of Europe, Tuesday 0000-0100 UTC (New UTC) on WBCQ, 7490 KHz from Monticello, ME, USA (Monday 8-9PM EST in the US).
If you don’t have a shortwave or are out of range, you can listen to a live stream from the WBCQ website here (choose 7490)
http://www.wbcq.com/?page_id=7
3 & 4. For Europe and sometimes beyond, Tuesday 1900-2000 UTC and Saturday 1200-1300 UTC on Channel 292, 6070 KHz from Rohrbach, Germany.
If you don’t have a shortwave radio or are out of range, you can listen live to an uplink from a listening radio in the Netherlands during the broadcast at
http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/?tune=6070am

Uncle Bill’s Melting Pot, July 21 and 23, 2019:
Episode 122 brings you some very intriguing contemporary music from Serbia.
The transmissions take place:
1.Sundays 2200-2230 UTC (6:00PM -6:30PM Eastern US) on WBCQ The Planet 7490 KHz from the US to the Americas and parts of Europe
If you don’t have a shortwave or are out of range, you can listen to a live stream from the WBCQ website here (choose 7490)
http://www.wbcq.com/?page_id=7
2. Tuesdays 2000-2030 UTC on Channel 292, 6070 KHz from Rohrbach, Germany for Europe.
If you don’t have a shortwave radio or are out of range, you can listen live to an uplink from a listening radio in the Netherlands during the broadcast at
http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/?tune=6070am

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Amazon Prime Day(s) 2019

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Today and tomorrow (July 15 and 16) Amazon.com carries on an annual tradition of offering deep discounts and flash sales for their Prime members–they call it Prime Day.

In all honesty, I’m not the biggest fan of Amazon Prime Day because when I check out the deals–and some of them are pretty impressive–I end up making a lot of impulse purchases. (Anyone else do this?)

With that said, each year Prime Day seems to include more and more items. I did a quick search this morning for “shortwave” and found at least one radio I’d recommend (the Retekess HR11S emergency radio which is a great little radio to tuck away in your emergency provisions). It’s no DX machine, but it’s a capable little flashlight radio.

There are also a number of other radios in the Prime Day lineup.

If you’re a Prime member, you might give a quick browse of some of the deals. Again, I rarely make large purchases myself, but it’s a great time to find deep discounts on station accessories.

Here are a few searches you might try:

I’m planning to purchase a couple of surge protectors, a 2TB hard drive, and 16 rechargeable AA batteries.

Of course, the links above all have the SWLing Post affiliate code, which means it supports the SWLing Post (at no cost to you) when you make a purchase via the Amazon links provided. It really does help the site, but please never feel an obligation to use these links. We never create posts only for the sake of creating more affiliate links–sites like that really annoy me–we simply implement these links when you suggest a product, sale, or if Amazon is a viable option for a purchase. I struggled to publish this particular post because it’s so heavy on the Amazon links, but while browsing the Prime Deals this morning, I realize there are a number of ones that might appeal to readers and if purchases are being made anyway, it’s an effortless way to support the Post. Thanks for understanding!

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Covert shortwave transmitters smuggled into trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ed, who writes:

I ran across this fascinating historical article about how the Associated Press and the New York Daily News each smuggled a covert shortwave radio transmitter into the 1935 courtroom trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who was charged with kidnapping and murdering the young son of Charles Lindbergh.

http://www.rfcafe.com/references/short-wave-craft/short-waves-hauptmann-trial-short-wave-craft-june-1935.htm

Neither news organization knew of the other’s covert transmitter, and crossed signals led to erroneous news of the verdict being reported.

Wow! What a fascinating bit of history, Ed! I bet those briefcase transmitters were heavy!

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MLA-30 loop antenna unboxing video

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul, who notes:

This video is in Chinese, but at least we can see what’s inside the box:

https://youtu.be/mM09pT1YbjU

Click here to view on YouTube.

Thanks for sharing, Paul.

If you’ve ordered the MLA-30, please let us know your thoughts about the construction and performance!

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Dennis approves of the Hermitshell Case for CC Skywave radios

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, who notes that after seeing a number of posts about radio cases, he thought he’d share a link to the case he uses for the C. Crane CC Skywave SSB.

It’s the Hermitshell Travel Case and it fits both the CC Skywave SSB and original CC Skywave.

Thanks for sharing, Dennis. This case is well-loved by Skywave owners! Note that this case fits the Skywave series like a glove and only has enough extra room for a set of earphones and/or perhaps a wire antenna.

Click here to view on Amazon (affiliate link supports the SWLing Post).

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The Degen DE1108: a new multimedia device with shortwave radio

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Magdiel Cruz, who shares a link to the new Degen DE1108.

Perhaps “radio” doesn’t really describe this multimedia device, but it does feature shortwave, MW, LW, and FM reception along with the following features:

Dual touch screens
WiFi radio (at least, I believe it does based on the description)
Video playback via WiFi
SD Card and USB playback (supports WAV, APE, FLAC, MP3)
WIFI+ Bluetooth
AUX input
Custom audio

Here are some of the receiver specs (click to enlarge):

In truth, the translated product description on eBay is a bit humorous, but I suspect most of it is a machine translation from Chinese and has yet to be properly edited.

Obviously, this is not a standard portable or tabletop radio–I feel like it’s more of a multimedia device that also happens to receive shortwave. I doubt this will be a benchmark receiver, although I could be proven wrong.