Author Archives: Thomas

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

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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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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!

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!

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).

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.

Degen DE1108

The price is a hefty $449 US shipped on eBay. It’s also available on AliExpress for the same amount.

Thanks for the tip, Magdiel! Of course we’ll post updates as we learn more about the DE1108.

Click here to view on eBay.

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Radio in the third season of “Stranger Things”

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

I started to watch season 3 of “Stranger Things”.

In the first chapter, “Dustin” uses a “ham radio” rig to contact his new girlfriend and builts a strange Antenna in the top of a hill. She didn´t answer, but he listens a coded transmission in Russian.

Thank you for sharing, David! Stranger Things certainly has a number of interesting radio references!