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Canadian Reginald Aubrey Fessenden in his lab believed circa 1906 (Source: Radio Canada International)
Now an annual Christmas tradition, Brian Justin (WA1ZMS) will put his longwave experimental station WI2XLQ on the air to commemorate the anniversary of Reginald Fessenden’s first audio transmission.
As in years past, he will be conducting the Fessenden transmission on Christmas Eve, as well as New Year’s Eve. The plan is to start each day around 1800z and run for 24 hours.
Update: This broadcast has been cancelled due to several of the SAQ staff contracting Covid-19. Click here for more information. Many thanks to Grant for the tip.
On Christmas Eve morning, Saturday December 24th 2022, SAQ Grimeton is scheduled* to be on the air, to send out the traditional Christmas message to the whole world, using the 200kW Alexanderson alternator from 1924, on 17.2 kHz CW.
Program and transmission schedule:
08:00 CET (07:00 UTC: The transmitter hall at World Heritage Grimeton is opened for visitors.
Transmission & YouTube Live stream:
08:25 CET (07:25 UTC): Live stream on YouTube begins.
08:30 CET (07:30 UTC): Startup and tuning of the Alexanderson Alternator SAQ.
09:00 CET (08:00 UTC): Transmission of a message from SAQ.
Test transmissions
We are planning to carry our some test transmissions on December 23rd, approximately between 13:00 CET (12:00 UTC) and 16:00 CET (15:00 UTC). SAQ will be on the air shorter periods of time during this interval, when we will be carrying out some tests and measurements. Your comments are welcome to [email protected].
Live Video from World Heritage Grimeton Radio Station
The event can be seen live on our YouTube Channel or by following the link below.
QSL Reports to SAQ
QSL reports to SAQ are most welcome and appreciated!
For guaranteed E-QSL from us, please report using our ONLINE QSL FORM.
We can not guarantee that reports by Email / mail / bureau will be confirmed.
The online form will be open from December 24th, 2022 until January 13th, 2023.
Amateur Radio Station SK6SAQ
The Amateur Radio Station with the call “SK6SAQ” will be QRV on the following frequencies:
– 3.535 kHz CW
– 7.035 kHz CW
– 14.035 KHz CW
– 3.755 kHz SSB
– 7.140 kHz SSB
QSL-reports to SK6SAQ (NOT SAQ) are kindly received via:
– Email to [email protected]
– or via: SM bureau
– or direct by postal mail (link to address here)Two stations will be on the air most of the time.
Visiting World Heritage Grimeton Radio Station
Visitors are most welcome to World Heritage Grimeton Radio Station on Christmas morning, Dec 24th. The doors to the transmitter hall will open at 08:00 CET. The entrance is free of charge and we will offer free coffee with Christmas buns and ginger snaps.
Support us to keep SAQ in running condition!
We welcome you as a member of the Alexander Grimeton Friendship Association, to support our non-profit activities in preserving, documenting and bringing to life the unique Alexanderson alternator from 1924.
As a member You get a 10% discount on World Heritage Grimeton’s entry, shop and activities, and free admission to Alexander’s evening displays and to the Alexanderson Day, upon presentation of your membership card. Four times per year, you will receive our online magazine “Alternatorn”, exclusively available only to our members.
NEW!: As member you will gain access to our online library with many unique, historical documents, related to the Alexanderson alternator.
Alexander members also have free admission to the Radio Museum in Gothenburg.
Membership costs SEK 125 / year (approx. EUR 12.-).
Tim Davie outlines vision for a world of ‘infinite choice’ where broadcast TV and radio are being switched off
The BBC is preparing to shut down its traditional television and radio broadcasts as it becomes an online-only service over the next decade, according to the director general, Tim Davie.
“Imagine a world that is internet-only, where broadcast TV and radio are being switched off and choice is infinite,” he said. “A switch-off of broadcast will and should happen over time, and we should be active in planning for it.”
Davie said the BBC was committed to live broadcasting but Britons should prepare for the closure of many standalone channels and radio stations by the 2030s: “Over time this will mean fewer linear broadcast services and a more tailored joined-up online offer.”
The future will involve “bringing the BBC together in a single offer”, possibly in the form of one app combining everything from television programmes to local news coverage and educational material. This could ultimately see the end of distinct brands such as BBC One or BBC Radio 4, although the programmes they currently air could continue online. [Continue reading at The Guardian…]
Citizens for Informed Land Use is against a proposal before the Planning Board to reclassify the former Nokia site for redevelopment.
HOLMDEL, NJ — Citizens for Informed Land Use, Preserve Holmdel and others are rallying to preserve the Bell Labs Horn Antenna, which they say is threatened if the 43-acre site it stands on is reclassified for residential development.
The property at 791 Holmdel Road is home to the Bell Labs Horn Antenna, once used by Bell Labs scientists Dr. Robert Wilson, who still lives in the township, and Dr. Arno Penzias, to study microwave radiation from beyond the Milky Way, the organization says.
The site is also described by the group “as the highest point in Monmouth County, providing remarkable views of Raritan Bay and Manhattan.”
The scientists’ “research confirmed evidence of the Big Bang Theory as the origin of the universe and earned both men a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978,” the land use group said in a news release.
But on Nov. 22, the Township Committee approved a resolution directing the Planning Board to study whether the former Nokia site in the Crawford Hill section of Holmdel – the site of the Horn Antenna – should be reclassified as an “area in need of redevelopment.” [Continue reading…]
In Tuckerton, NJ, a massive cement monolith sits out of place, and upon closer inspection, out of time. You see, this gigantic block was once the base of the tallest structure in North America and the second tallest in the world after the Eiffel Tower. Built in 1912, the Tuckerton tower stood at 825 feet and was the first and most potent transatlantic broadcasting tower ever, but here’s the twist, although it was on US soil, it was entirely built by and belonged to Germany.
The Warsaw Radio Mast (Polish: Maszt radiowy w Konstantynowie) was a radio mast located near G?bin, Poland, and the world’s tallest structure at 646.38 metres (2,120.7 ft) from 1974 until its collapse on 8 August 1991.
Designed by Jan Polak, and one of the last radio masts built under Communist rule, the mast was conceived for height and ability to broadcast the “propaganda of the successes” to remote areas such as Antarctica. It was the third tallest structure ever built, being surpassed as the tallest by the Burj Khalifa tower in the United Arab Emirates in 2009 and Merdeka 118 tower in Malaysia in 2022. Designed by Jan Polak, its construction started in July 1970, was completed on 18 May 1974, and its transmitter entered regular service on 22 July of that year. The opening of the mast was met with extensive celebration and news coverage by the Polish Film Chronicle.
The Antique Wireless Association/Museum recently posted another excellent presentation on YouTube; this time taking a look at the history of British Broadcasting. Here’s the description followed by the video:
Radio broadcasting in the UK followed a much different path than it did in the US, and there’s more to the story than the BBC. Tim Barrett tells the whole story in this history of British Broadcasting.
Get it while you still can: The Luxemburg-Gorky effect
by 13dka
The Radio Luxembourg longwave transmitter Junglinster in the 1930s [RTL Group]
“In radiophysics, the Luxemburg-Gorky effect (named after Radio Luxemburg and the city of Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod)) is a phenomenon of cross modulation between two radio waves, one of which is strong, passing through the same part of a medium, especially a conductive region of atmosphere or a plasma.” (Wikipedia)
That sounds pretty abstract, right? In my own words, imagine your radio is tuned to a station on let’s say 162 kHz, 500 miles away. Somewhere in the middle between your receiver and the 162 kHz transmitter is a station transmitting on a different frequency, let’s say 234 kHz. The Luxemburg effect is that you can hear the modulation of the 234 kHz transmitter in the middle, on the 162kHz station you are receiving. The effect is not depending that much on the frequency/wavelength though, the longwave station could affect medium wave stations and it has been created using shortwave frequencies far apart.
It was observed first in 1932, when listeners of the Swiss Beromünster 60kW medium wave station built just one year prior also heard a bit of Radio Luxemburg’s longwave transmitter (250kHz) on the Beromünster frequency (653kHz until 1934). Of course this was assumed to be some kind of crosstalk within the receivers and probably drove radio engineers insane until 1933, when Bernhard D.H. Tellegen, a Dutch electrical engineer and inventor suggested the true origin of the effect: The new (1932) 150kW Radio Luxemburg longwave transmitter in Junglinster was directly modifying the ionosphere hundreds of kilometers above, it “heated” the ionosphere in a way that it made the plasma’s charge and reflectivity follow the amplitude modulation of Radio Luxemburg, thus modulating waves of other wavelengths crossing this part of the ionosphere.
Practical demonstration
Even if you’re living in Europe, you may never have witnessed that effect and according to this article by Paul Litwinovich, chances to observe this in the US are rather slim, due to the relatively low power of the stations. I’m in Europe but never noticed it either – until recently: Continue reading →
The new 2022 “Belka” (generation 3) general coverage receiver
by 13dka
Since its introduction in 2019, the super-tiny Belka (back then called “Belka DSP”) shortwave receiver sure gained an enthusiastic followership among SWLs and hams. The main reason for this is certainly the way how the Belka is incredibly small yet playing in a different league than the various consumer grade, Chinese mass-production radios, particularly the DSP-based ultraportables: The Belka is an all-mode shortwave communications receiver with a completely different (direct conversion SDR) architecture, developed and produced by a radio enthusiast (Alex, EU1ME) in a small mom&pop shop in Belarus.
In case you’ve never heard about it amidst all the buzz about more popular brands, here’s the skinny:
The Belka offers true allmode (including NFM and CW) reception with a proper 400 Hz CW filter and individual settings for the low and high filter slopes for AM, FM and SSB. It has an AM sync detector and comes with a 0.5ppm TCXO-controlled local oscillator for absolutely spot-on, calibration-free frequency precision and stability, which makes SSB or ECSS reception of broadcast stations a pure joy. The second iteration “Belka DX” brought a slightly extended coverage down to 1.5 MHz and an I/Q output for panadapter display and/or processing via your favorite SDR software.
All Belkas are quiet and very sensitive radios with a surprisingly robust front end, the filters are better and its AGC works like you’d expect it from a communications receiver, without the artifacts and distortion the DSP radios are infamous for, and of course smooth, non-“muting” tuning in variable steps down to 10Hz.
The Belkas have no built-in speaker (available as option tho) but really excellent audio on headphones and external speakers and they actually give my Icom IC-705 a run for its money in terms of reception quality, and they do that for up to 24 hours on a single charge of the internal Li-Ion battery. This stunning feature set is crowned by the best performance on a telescopic whip antenna ever – the Belkas have a high-impedance (>10 kOhm) antenna input optimized for this whip and taking it on a walk is (really!) like having a big rig with a big antenna in tow…
Despite all this goodness setting the Belka(s) quite fundamentally apart from most (if not all) current and former, even much higher priced portables and simultaneously putting it solidly into pricey tabletop territory, it hasn’t put Tecsun et al out of business for a couple of reasons: One reason is that it can only be obtained from Alex in Belarus, which is now often assumed to be impossible (it isn’t, more on that later). Another reason is that it doesn’t try to compete with aforementioned multiband radios from China, so there is no FM broadcast band and – until now – no AM BC band, but most owners and potential buyers particularly in the US really wished it had at least the latter. Well, Alex obviously heard us! After the Belka DSP and the Belka DX, the new Belka is just called “Belka”, so in order to avoid any ambiguity I’m going to refer to this model as “Belka 2022”.
What’s new?
The most prominent addition to the Belka 2022 is the extended 0.1-31 MHz coverage, the previous version only started receiving at 1.5 MHz. With LW and MW included, its “pseudosynchronous” detector (as featured in venerable radios from Harris, Racal or Drake), the great filtering and the great frequency precision for hassle-free ECSS reception are promising that the “squirrel” is now an ultra-ultraportable companion for MW DXers as well.
