Category Archives: Ham Radio

New FCC application fees take effect April 19,2022

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(Source: FCC – Commission Documents)

DA 22-307
Released: March 23, 2022

EFFECTIVE DATE OF NEW APPLICATION FEE RATES FOR THE
WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU

MD Docket No. 20-270

On December 23, 2020, the Commission adopted a Report and Order implementing a new application fee schedule which significantly updated the Commission’s previous fee schedule.  As indicated in the 2020 Application Fee Report and Order, the new application fee rates will become effective when the Commission’s “information technology systems and internal procedures have been updated, and the Commission publishes notice(s) in the Federal Register announcing the effective date of such rules.”  On July 6, 2021, the Commission announced the new application fee rates for the Office of Engineering and Technology and the Media Bureau would become effective on July 15, 2021, and on December 15, 2021, the Commission announced the new application fee rates for the Wireline Competition Bureau, the Enforcement Bureau, the International Bureau, and CALEA Petitions would become effective on December 15, 2021. This Public Notice announces that the new application fee rates for the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, codified at 47 CFR § 1.1102, will become effective on April 19, 2022.  Wireless application fees can be paid through the Commission’s Universal Licensing System (ULS) at https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/universal-licensing-system. 

For further guidance regarding Wireless Telecommunications Bureau application fees, please refer to the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau Fee Filing Guide located at https://www.fcc.gov/licensing-databases/fees/application-processing-fees.  For further information regarding this Public Notice, please contact Roland Helvajian, Program Analyst, Financial Operations, Office of the Managing Director, [email protected]. 

Radio Waves: Station of National Resistance, CEPT Suspends Russia/Belarus, ABC Pacific Expansion, Live Ukraine News Stream, and Mali Bans French Radio & TV

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Radio Waves:  Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Because I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers.  To that end: 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 the SWLing Post contributors who share the following tips:

Ukraine’s radio station of national resistance (The New Yorker)

High up in the Carpathian Mountains, two Kyiv broadcasters keep the signal alive.

Recently, at a closed ski resort in Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountains, Roman Davydov leaned into a microphone and announced the latest news from the war. Kryvyi Rih, in southern Ukraine, was being attacked; a U.S. journalist had been shot; and the British Foreign Secretary had announced new sanctions on Russian oligarchs in London. Davydov, who is forty-three, with dark hair and an oft-furrowed brow, is the voice of Kraina FM, an independent radio station that, after Russian bombing began in Kyiv, relocated to an undisclosed location. (The staff of Kraina FM asked me not to identify the village, for security reasons.) Outside Davydov’s improvised booth, a corner office lent to Kraina FM by a local accountant, an odd sense of normalcy reigned. Beyond the ski-rental shop, where a cluster of sandbags had been piled, a man in a blue jacket and ski goggles operated a small lift for a children’s slope in the bright sunshine.

The area, which is several hours south of Lviv, has become a shelter for displaced people, Bogdan Bolkhovetsky, Davydov’s colleague, told me. Bolkhovetsky, Kraina FM’s station general manager, said that he and Davydov had arrived in the village “by pure chance.” The west of the country is full of refugees, and there are few places for families to stay as they make their way toward the borders of Europe. “We found this place because it was the only place vacant,” Bolkhovetsky said. They arrived in the evening on February 27th; just days later they were setting up the station in a sloped-ceilinged, wood-panelled space that barely fit their two desks. They acquired laptops and a mixer from the supply of aid making its way from the rest of Europe to Ukraine. “We called our friends in Austria and they were so quick,” Bolkhovetsky said. “Guys we’ve never met just sent us the equipment, and a friend of ours brought this equipment in. I mean, they brought us these German laptops and the mixing console and we’ve never seen these people before.” [Continue reading…]

Russia and Belarus suspended from CEPT membership (CEPT via Southgate ARC)

On March 17 the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications (CEPT) announced the indefinite suspension of Russia and Belarus following the invasion of Ukraine

The CEPT announcement said:

Outcome of the written procedure with the CEPT Assembly regarding suspension of the Russian Federation and Belarus from CEPT Membership.

Based on a request from a number of CEPT members, the CEPT Presidency carried out a written procedure, in accordance with the CEPT Arrangement, on the proposal to suspend indefinitely and with immediate effect the memberships of the Russian Federation and Belarus in the CEPT.

Thirty-four responses were received to the CEPT Assembly letter in support of the proposal and one abstention.

Based on the above, the CEPT Assembly has therefore decided: Continue reading →

Radio Waves: Colorado Inmate Radio, Experimental Radio News 4, BBC World Service to Ukraine, DIY Radio, and When the World Tuned to Shortwave

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Radio Waves:  Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Because I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers.  To that end: Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!

Inmate-produced radio station streams beyond prison walls (NBC News)

Inside Wire, available 24/7 to incarcerated people in Colorado and to online listeners around the world, is said to offer a chance for prisoners and those they harmed to heal.

LIMON, Colo. — Herbert Alexander stares at the sound waves jumping on the computer screen in front of him, his shaved head partially covered by headphones. He’s editing a short audio feature on incarcerated fathers, a subject with which he is intimately familiar.

His two sons will soon hear his voice and his story because Alexander, 46, an inmate at Limon Correctional Facility, is preparing a segment for Inside Wire: Colorado Prison Radio, billed as the first radio station to be produced inside a prison and available to the world outside.

Other radio stations created in prisons generally air only within the walls of their lockups, but Inside Wire, which premiered March 1, reaches all 21 prisons in the state and beyond, online and by app, making the first of its kind in the country, organizers said.

“In spaces where isolation continues, this medium can cut through that,” said Ryan Conarro, general manager and program director of Inside Wire and creative producer for the University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative, which oversees the program in partnership with the Colorado Department of Corrections. [Continue reading at NBC…]

Experimental Radio News 4 (Experimental Radio News)

This issue of ERN includes novel aeronautical experiments, life-detecting radars and non-wearable health monitoring, the latest on those mysterious shortwave trading stations and more.

Click here to read a wide variety of topics in Experimental Radio News 4.

BBC World Service resurrects shortwave broadcasts in war-torn Ukraine (TPR)

The BBC has resurrected an old school way of broadcasting in order to reach people in the crisis area of Ukraine: Shortwave radio. What is shortwave, and why has the BBC decided to begin using it again? Continue reading →

“It’s magic, but it’s real”: The joys of listening to the ham bands

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jock Elliott, who shares the following guest post:

Icom IC-756 Pro Transceiver Dial

The joys of listening to the ham bands

By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM

            “It’s magic, but it’s real.” That statement was uttered recently by an amateur radio operator – a ham – from South Carolina. He was on the 20-meter band (around 14,187 USB), operating in upper sideband (USB), chatting with a British ham from the Isle of Wight off the coast of England, and another US ham located about 60 miles south of Chicago, Illinois.

The South Carolina ham was expressing his delight that a ham from the United Kingdom could deliver a loud signal at such a distance with a mere hundred watts of transmit power, and that they could talk as easily as two people chatting on the telephone. A little later in the conversation (a QSO in ham lingo), the South Carolina ham related how he run a special events ham station from a vintage B17 bomber while in flight! He said it was very noisy, even with headphones.

Listening to the ham bands is just plain fun. You never know what you might encounter. During the same monitoring session, I tuned up the spectrum to the 10 meter band (around 28,400 USB) and heard a ham loud and clear from Santiago, Chile. According to that ham, the climate there is apparently similar to California.

You don’t need a lot of fancy gear or a ham license to listen in on the fun. A shortwave receiver with single-sideband capability will do the trick. If your radio came with an auxiliary wire antenna, deploy it. It will help to boost faint signals. If your radio did not come with an auxiliary wire antenna, it is easy to make one. Get yourself 20 feet of insulated wire (any type will do, but thinner is easier to coil up when not in use), attach an alligator clip (available from most hardware stores) and clip it to the whip antenna on your shortwave portable.

A couple of cautions: do not go nuts with the length of wire. 20 feet is plenty. In addition, do not EVER deploy your antenna where it could fall on a power line or a power line could fall on it. And, finally, if you deploy your wire antenna outdoors, be sure to disconnect it and/or bring it in when foul weather threatens.

For the record, to intercept the ham communications above I listened with headphones on my Satellit 800 receiver, using my horizontal room loop antenna and the BHI Compact In-Line Noise Eliminating Module.

What can you hear? Lots of times, you will hear hams swapping signal reports and telling each other what kind of ham radio transceivers and antennas they are using. During contests, you’ll hear hams making contact after contact, as quickly as they can. But other times you will hear conversations of all types.

Three decades ago, when I was actively DXing as a ham, I once had a conversation with a UK ham who was a falconer. He had flown the birds for the movie Lady Hawke. No kidding. Another time, I worked a station in Christchurch, New Zealand, from Troy, New York, on just 100 watts. If you were a shortwave listener back then, there’s a chance you could have heard those contacts, and it’s a good bet that interesting contacts are taking place today on the ham bands, if you are willing to accept the challenge of tuning around to find them . . . so join the fun!

With the start of a new solar cycle conditions appear to be changing to favor long-range propagation. It seems like the perfect time to start monitoring the ham bands. You never know what you might find.

You can find a complete downloadable list of the US ham bands by clicking here.

Check out more of Jock Elliott’s guests posts by clicking here!

Jim is impressed with the Collins 75A-4 and Kenwood R-600

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jim Meirose, who recently shared a few photos and writes:

 

This is the equipment currently in use here in Somerville, NJ. The Collins 75A-4 is a recent acquisition. This radio is used to cover all amateur bands. The other is the Kenwood R-600, for general coverage up to 30 MHz. The Collins has proven to be a wise purchase, as I can hear both ends of almost any SSB QSO picked up on any band. The Collins is sensitive enough to be able to even pull in signals from bands which real-time band condition maps say are nearly or totally dead at the time.

Comparison of the Kenwood to the Collins on ham bands has shown nearly an even match; but, the Collins can sometimes detect weak amateur signals that the Kenwood can’t (using the same antenna) and totally beats the Kenwood for clarity of SSB audio. The Kenwood has much better audio quality on AM, however.

Both radios are very easy to use. Before using a 75A-4, however, study the manual to set up the controls, because there are some odd (non-intuitive) quirks to know to get the set to work properly.

The antennas here are a 150′ long wire, which works well on all frequencies. A 15 meter half-wave dipole was put up to get the most from the Collins on that band. A 10 meter dipole will soon be put up also. For ham bands 20 meters and lower the long wire does the job. For convenience’s sake, I have the 15 meter antenna and the long wire connected to the Collins all the time. But, an odd quirk; 10 meters comes in stronger with just the 15 meter dipole connected. Looking forward to see how it sounds with the 10 meter antenna.

I bought the Kenwood at the beginning of the pandemic. I knew for general coverage it would beat anything I’d used before (Heathkit and Hammarlund radios). I got the 75A-4 purely based on reviews I had read. I wanted a peak performer in the amateur bands. It has proven to be great on every ham band and under nearly any atmospheric conditions.

Regarding the Tristan Da Cunha QSL card; I find the mystique of this world’s remotest community to be fascinating. When I saw this QSL card up for sale in eBay, I grabbed it. Especially since the QSO ocurred on August 1948, when I was slightly over one month old.

Thanks for sharing this, Jim!  That Collins is a thing of beauty! I would love to have one if I had the space for it! It’ll certainly keep the shack warm on cold winter nights.

Termination Event May Indicate Solar Cycle Strength

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Predictions for Solar Cycle 25. Blue is the “official” prediction of a weak cycle. Red is a new prediction based on the Termination Event.

Feb. 26, 2022: Something big just happened on the sun. Solar physicists Scott McIntosh (NCAR) and Bob Leamon (U. Maryland-Baltimore County) call it “The Termination Event.”

“Old Solar Cycle 24 has finally died–it was terminated!” says McIntosh. “Now the new solar cycle, Solar Cycle 25, can really take off.”

The “Termination Event” is a new idea in solar physics, outlined by McIntosh and Leamon in a December 2020 paper in the journal Solar Physics. Not everyone accepts it–yet. If Solar Cycle 25 unfolds as McIntosh and Leamon predict, the Termination Event will have to be taken seriously.

(Read the full story here at Spaceweather.com)

Robert Gulley, K4PKM (formerly AK3Q), is the author of this post and a regular contributor to the SWLing Post. 

Radio Waves: Virtual Winter SWL Fest March 4-5, 2022, SDRplay Updates, Contact with Ukraine Radio Ops, and Hams in Poland Provide WinLink Options

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David Goren (left) and Richard Cuff (right) during the Shindig live broadcast at the Winter SWL Fest.

Radio Waves:  Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Because I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers.  To that end: Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!

Winter SWL Fest: March 4-5, 2022, Online using the Zoom webinar platform

The Winter SWL Fest is a conference of radio hobbyists of all stripes, from DC to daylight. Historically, every year scores of hobbyists have descended on the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania suburbs for a weekend of camaraderie. The Fest is sponsored by NASWA, the North American Shortwave Association, but it covers much more than just shortwave; mediumwave (AM), scanning, satellite TV, and pirate broadcasting are among the other topics that the Fest covers. Whether you’ve been to every Fest (all 34, starting with the first year at the fabled Pink & Purple Room of the Fiesta Motor Inn) or this year’s will be your first, you’re sure to find a welcome from your fellow hobbyists, even if it’s a “virtual” welcome!.

In 2022, the 35th Annual (!!) Winter SWL Fest will again be going virtual courtesy of the Covid-19 pandemic.  All activities will be conducted online via the Zoom webinar platform.

Registration will be $10 per computer screen to defray the Zoom hosting expenses.  If you already have a PayPal ID you can simply send $10 from your account to swlfest [at] naswa.net.  If you aren’t a PayPal member you may also register online via PayPal here.  Paper registrations will not be processed for 2022.

Your hosts, Richard Cuff and John Figliozzi, work throughout the year to ensure that attendees have a great time over the weekend, and by all accounts, they succeed stunningly. How else could this event have lasted for 35 years (egad) — even with a Pandemic — and draw people from around the world to southeastern Pennsylvania? Won’t you join us?

Click here to join the 2022 Winter SWL Fest!

SDRplay Updates on Hardware Shortages (RTL-SDR Blog)

As we all know many electronic components are currently in shortage, and this global shortage is affecting some SDR manufacturers like SDRplay. Recently on their blog SDRplay have provided some updates on their hardware shortage situation. They write:

As we have mentioned before,  due to the worldwide shortage of electronic components, we are suffering from production delays at both our manufacturing subcontractor operations here in the UK.  This means that many of our resellers have completely run out of RSP1A and RSPdx devices.

However we are pleased to say that this week, we have  been able to build some additional units.  This means that by the end of next week (February 25th), our resellers should have more stocks of RSP1A and RSPdx.   More RSPduos are promised for mid to late March.

It is highly likely that even after the latest production runs are delivered, some of our resellers will run out again in the weeks ahead.  Meanwhile we are working to do all we can to secure more critical components for our manufacturers. This includes tweaks to the designs so that they can accommodate alternative more readily available parts.

Many thanks to customers who have been left waiting to buy, and to our resellers for your patience as we navigate though this situation.

A list of our authorised resellers can be found here: https://www.sdrplay.com/distributors/

[Read this full post on the RTL-SDR Blog…]

Meet the Jersey man using his radio set to make contact with people in Ukraine (Southgate ARC)

A man in Jersey is using amateur radio equipment to make contact with people caught up in the fighting in Ukraine.

Paul Mahrer spoke to more than 1,700 Ukrainian radio operators last year, but says all communication has been lost since the country declared martial law. Continue reading →