Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio
Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Ron Chester, Benn Kobb, Chuck Rippel, Pietschman, Dennis Dura, and Dave Zantow for the following tips:
“Market Makers” Want to Expand Their Use of Shortwave (Radio World)
The FCC seeks comments on a proposal to use HF spectrum for financial data
The FCC is taking public comment on a proposal to revise the rules governing the frequencies above 2 MHz and below 25 MHz.
The Shortwave Modernization Coalition thinks the 2-25 MHz band is underused and wants to use it for the long-distance transmission of time-sensitive data from fixed stations. The users would be companies working with certain kinds of financial transactions; the proposal would prohibit voice transmission and mobile operations.
The firms in the coalition are “market makers and liquidity providers” for exchange-traded financial instruments.
This high-frequency trading industry has in fact been using shortwave links for several years to send trading data between U.S. and foreign exchanges, but it has done so under experimental authorizations. [Continue reading…]
QTC: I Have a Message for You (Archive.org)
Many thanks to Bill Pietschman who notes that the book “QTC: I Have a Message for You” has now been published on Archive.org for all to read and download free of charge. Bill writes:
I knew Ray Redwood, and besides being a Professional radio operator, he was indeed a Ham’s Ham. You will find here not just the story of radio, but a detailed analysis of the Titanic, from a radioman’s point of view. Part documentary, part autobiography, and part technical, it’s a great read. I’m so glad that his work has been preserved here. Future radio historians will, I am certain, find it to be a valuable record of the Ship Radio Officers Era, and Ray’s insights at the dawning of the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System as we have today which utilizes satellite technology.
Click here to check out QTC: I Have a Message for You on Archive.org.
The Golden Years of Shortwave Listening (YouTube)
There was a time, some 50 years ago when cell phones didn’t exist and computers were only owned by large corporations, that people learned of the world around them by listening to shortwave radio. This is a journey back to that time to hear the sounds and see the correspondence from shortwave stations from all over the world. Sit back, listen and enjoy!
SDRplay and SDRconnect – The Update! – Dayton Hamvention (YouTube)
Steve Brightman (KI5ENW) from SDRplay demonstrates the new updates to SDRconnect to Ham Radio Outlet’s Julian Frost (N3JF).
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That’s good news about SDRConnect! I recently added an M1 MBA to my platforms and my hope is that it has a bit more endurance off-grid at the dike – I’d love to do some spectrum recordings out there and generally give my RSPDx some work to do! 🙂
Regarding stock trading by way of HF RF transmission… I wonder how they proposed to keep it secure and free from interference, including jammers.
They have been using Digital Radio Mondiale in a data mode. It has a controlled access mode for both audio and data. This means that only radios with the right key number will be aware of the broadcast, then the actual data can be encrypted and a different key number will be required in the decrypter to turn the scrambled data back into the original data.
DRM is quite resistant to jammers. This is because provided the signal to interference received power ratio is sufficient it will have no effect on the accuracy of the received data. In addition if they try and use a DRM jamming signal, it will have to not only be an identical in frequency, the data rates have to be identical and timed so that the data blocks are also synchronised and arrive at the receiver within a certain time tolerance, otherwise the receiver will mute.
I gotta say, it’s pretty darn fascinating to see how SDRconnect has evolved since they first announced it. And let me tell ya, I’m really excited to get my hands on this platform, whether it’s on my desktop or my mobile. Can’t wait to give it a whirl!
This looks nice and a positive development for SDRplay. I hope that it’s a stable, crash resistant application that is suitable for use across the SDRplay family. Earlier HW/SW has not been so robust IMO, compared to say, the wonderful KiwiSDR (RIP)