Shortwave listening and everything radio including reviews, broadcasting, ham radio, field operation, DXing, maker kits, travel, emergency gear, events, and more
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Wlodek, who has been quite busy repairing vintage receivers and ham radio gear during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Wlod’s neighborhood in Kiev experiences frequent blackouts, thus much of his soldering work must be done while mains power is available.
Wlod just shared the following video documenting a recent repair he did on a new-old-stock Sony ICF-SW7600.
Wlod notes:
One of [my last repairs] was new old stock Sony ICF-SW7600 restoration. One guy watched my past videos and wanted one for himself. I don’t know where he found it in such excellent external condition, but age and typical problems require it to be prophylaxis.
The first turn on and it does not receive the station at all. These receivers have a known problem of leaking electrolytic capacitors. They also need to be alignment.
I demonstrate how to safely remove old capacitors.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, JP, who shares a link to the FCC Pirate Radio database:
Pirate Database
In accordance with section 511(g) of the PIRATE Act, the following databases are provided to identify (i) each entity against whom an enforcement action for pirate radio broadcasting has been issued, and (ii) licensed radio stations.
Pirate Radio Database
Licensed AM and FM Radio Station Database
As far as islands go, Manhattan is one of the most famous and instantly recognisable. But if you were to charter a boat and sail around its coastline and through New York’s natural harbour you’d come across many more islands so small that hardly anyone knows are there. There are around thirty or so of these odd little islands, all mostly uninhabited or privately owned and strictly off limits, but filled with strange tales and peculiar histories.
Many of these islands are tantalisingly close to New York City, but remain out of reach. As travel writer Robert Sullivan put it “the islands are our silent neighbours. It is easy to live here and never notice them.”
[…]This story however, is about one such tiny island, just 150 feet square, and so small you can barely spot it on Google Maps unless you knew where to look. Once known as Little Pea Island, it is located about a mile off shore from Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, and has room enough for just one building. It has been home to a Jazz Age era swanky yacht club, a radio station and for a while, the home to a glitzy Hollywood showbiz couple who ran a morning radio show from their home on the island. The last owner recently renovated the island into a self-sufficient, five thousand square feet luxury home, which today lies empty. [Continue reading the full story…]
A new ultra-low-power method of communication at first glance seems to violate the laws of physics. It is possible to wirelessly transmit information simply by opening and closing a switch that connects a resistor to an antenna. No need to send power to the antenna.
Our system, combined with techniques for harvesting energy from the environment, could lead to all manner of devices that transmit data, including tiny sensors and implanted medical devices, without needing batteries or other power sources. These include sensors for smart agriculture, electronics implanted in the body that never need battery changes, better contactless credit cards and maybe even new ways for satellites to communicate.
Apart from the energy needed to flip the switch, no other energy is needed to transmit the information. In our case, the switch is a transistor, an electrically controlled switch with no moving parts that consumes a minuscule amount of power.
In the simplest form of ordinary radio, a switch connects and disconnects a strong electrical signal source – perhaps an oscillator that produces a sine wave fluctuating 2 billion times per second – to the transmit antenna. When the signal source is connected, the antenna produces a radio wave, denoting a 1. When the switch is disconnected, there is no radio wave, indicating a 0. [Continue reading…]
Don Moore’s Photo Album: Cuenca, Ecuador (Part One)
by Don Moore
For me travel is all about seeing new places and having new experiences. When I retired in 2017 my plan was to spend the next fifteen years visiting new countries and new places in countries I already knew. Is that a viable goal? Three years ago while crossing the border from Ecuador to Colombia I shared a taxi with Dutch man who, like me, was traveling overland by bus with just a knapsack and a suitcase. And two weeks earlier he had celebrated his eightieth birthday. I don’t remember his name but he’s my hero.
The pandemic put a pause on travel but I’m happy to be back on the road. I’m currently in Ecuador, the country where I’ve spent more time than anywhere except the United States and Honduras. After landing in Quito at the beginning of December I visited four provinces I hadn’t been to before, including spending three nights at the bohemian beach town of Montañita where I had some good DX. I like seeing new places but there is also something to be said for returning to a familiar place that holds a special meaning. For me that place is where I am now – Cuenca, Ecuador.
My ex-wife and I finished our Peace Corps service in 1984, flew home to get married, and then in January 1985 flew to Quito, Ecuador to begin a long journey that would take us overland all the way to Buenos Aires and back. On our way to Peru in late February we stopped for a few days in Cuenca and fell in love with the little city. We visited Cuenca again in July at the end of our travels. When we left I knew we would be back but I never could have imagined the circumstances that would lead to that next visit. In 1997 we returned with our seven-year-old daughter to adopt a six-year-old son. We spent almost three weeks in Cuenca doing all the required paperwork but we had no complaints as we enjoyed being there so much. I clearly remember sitting in a park one day and commenting that Cuenca would be a perfect place to retire in someday. I was only ten years ahead of my time.
La Voz del Río Tarqui
Cuenca was home to several shortwave broadcasters over the decades but La Voz del Río Tarqui was probably the best known to my generation of DXers. The station was founded in 1960 by Manuel Pulla but didn’t begin its shortwave service on 3285 kHz until 1982. My loggings of the station run from July 1982 through 1997 but I believe they were on shortwave for a few more years after that. (Don’t confuse La Voz del Río Tarqui with Radio Tarqui, a sometimes broadcaster from Quito on 4970 kHz.)
La Voz del Río Tarqui in 1985. The facilities inside were no more impressive than the outside of the building was.
La Voz del Río Tarqui takes its name from the famous Battle of the River Tarqui. After the new countries of South America gained their independence from Spain there was often disagreement over just where the boundaries were that they had inherited from Spanish rule. Ecuador was in a union with present-day Colombia and Venezuela until 1830 and during this time Peru claimed much of present-day southern Ecuador, including Cuenca and Guayaquil. In 1828 a large Peruvian army occupied Loja, to the south, and a few months later marched north to complete their conquest. In February 1829 General Antonio de Sucre, a hero of the war of independence, met the Peruvians on the banks of the Tarqui, twenty-five kilometers south of Cuenca. Both sides suffered heavy losses but Sucre’s army routed the Peruvians. Cuenca, Guayaquil, and Loja remained a part of Ecuador. Continue reading →
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Steckler, who writes:
Hi Thomas,
A few weeks ago, I watched the movie “Bullitt”, starring Steve
McQueen, and shot on-location in San Francisco. The centerpiece of
that movie was a thrilling car chase through San Francisco; McQueen
did a lot of the driving himself. The director was Peter Yates, who is
English. He went on to direct “Breaking Away”, every cyclist’s
favorite movie.
Yates had directed an earlier movie, “Robbery”, a fictionalized
account of the Great Train Robbery of 1963. I purchased the DVD, and
watched that one tonight. That movie also featured a harrowing car
chase, this time through London. After robbing the train, the crooks
hole up in the basement of an abandoned building on a Royal Air Force
airfield. To keep tabs on the cops, they’re monitoring the airwaves
with what appears to be a Lafayette HE-30.
I’ve attached a screenshot of the scene which shows the radio most
prominently (sorry, it’s a little fuzzy).
The Zenith is seen sitting between an elderly German couple who were helping to hide a Jewish family from the Nazis.
Hunters is an excellent, if sometimes hard to watch, series which brought Pacino back to TV. The scenes with the Zenith radio were almost as long as the one in Last of Us containing the Grundig 700.
What a gorgeous Zenith, Dan. Thank you for sharing this and your notes about Hunters.
It was 1913, the year of the Binghamton Clothing Company Fire, and the year after the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and the sinking of the Titanic.
Several major disasters that had left the region and the nation reeling from the loss of human life amidst a growing industrial base in the country. Thousands of immigrants were arriving to find new lives and work among the huddling masses. Many of those would make their way to the Binghamton area to find employment in the many cigar and shoe factories scattered on the landscape.
It was important to find a feel-good moment in the ever-rapidly increasing technology world that was changing the way we performed our work and lived our lives. Communication growth was one aspect of those changes. The number of newspapers and their influence was important, but so was the development of what we today call radio – originally known as wireless telegraphy, using radio waves to transmit telegraphic signals from point to point.
The first practical incarnation of wireless telegraphy was created by Guglielmo Marconi of Italy. The discovery of those waves had been made only about two decades prior to his use of those to transmit telegraph signals. In 1897, he formed the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in the United Kingdom. The company would later be called the Marconi Wireless Company, and continued to work on the ability to send these wireless signals farther and farther. Eventually, he also worked to see if these signals could be transmitted and received by moving objects, such as ships at sea and railroad trains. [Continue reading…]
Orson Welles’ contrived The War of the Worlds news bulletin “interrupted” a radio broadcast in 1938 to advise terrified listeners that aliens had invaded the Earth. As many as 12 million people were tuned in, according to NPR – and perhaps a million of them apparently worried that it was actually happening.
We’ve gained historical perspective on the stunt, even while the way we consume media has vastly changed over the decades that followed. Critics would later downplay the impact of The War of the Worlds, with some arguing that newspapers purposely over-sensationalized the broadcast to cast doubts on the trustworthiness of then-new technology that was siphoning off ad revenue.
What’s clear is that signal intrusions – including unauthorized hijacking of radio, television or satellite feeds – have continued ever since. They’ve served a variety of purposes, as you’ll see on the following list. Many were a form of political protest, while others were just looking to have a little fun. All of them trace back in some way to Welles’ fateful “interruption.”
Southern Television Broadcast
Nov. 26, 1977, England
Viewers of an early evening Southern Television broadcast in England were alarmed when an electronic voice purported to represent the “Ashtar Galactic Command” overtook the audio of a news segment for a full six minutes. The message, which was accompanied by a pulsating sound and eerie distortions, said: “For many years, you have seen us as lights in the sky. We speak to you now in peace and wisdom as we have done to your brothers and sisters all over this, your planet Earth.” This strange voice went on to advise humanity to “abandon its weapons” in order to participate in a “future awakening” and “achieve a higher state of evolution.” It also warned viewers that government officials weren’t who they claimed to be, and that they were leading the unwitting public into a New World Order. The hack ended with a final message: “Have no fear, seek only to know yourselves, and live in harmony with the ways of your planet Earth. We hear at the Ashtar Galactic Command thank you for your attention. We are now leaving the planes of your existence. May you be blessed by the supreme love and truth of the cosmos.” The interruption prompted a flood of phone calls from an understandably concerned audience then living under the threat of Cold War. A local newspaper said “thousands” of viewers were horrified; one man described the experience as “very eerie indeed” and said it “sounded very authentic.” A woman said she had to call her friends to make sure she wasn’t “hearing things,” adding that “it sounded like a genuine voice from outer space and was quite frightening.” An investigation revealed the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s Hannington transmitter had rebroadcast the signal from a nearby, unauthorized transmitter. The mastermind behind it all was never identified.
Researchers in Drexel University’s College of Engineering have developed a thin film device, fabricated by spray coating, that can block electromagnetic radiation with the flip of a switch. The breakthrough, enabled by versatile two-dimensional materials called MXenes, could adjust the performance of electronic devices, strengthen wireless connections and secure mobile communications against intrusion.
The team, led by Yury Gogotsi, Ph.D., Distinguished University and Bach professor in Drexel’s College of Engineering, previously demonstrated that the two-dimensional layered MXene materials, discovered just over a decade ago, when combined with an electrolyte solution, can be turned into a potent active shield against electromagnetic waves.
This latest MXene discovery, reported in Nature Nanotechnology, shows how this shielding can be tuned when a small voltage—less than that produced by an alkaline battery—is applied.
“Dynamic control of electromagnetic wave jamming has been a significant technological challenge for protecting electronic devices working at gigahertz frequencies and a variety of other communications technologies,” Gogotsi said.
“As the number of wireless devices being used in industrial and private sectors has increased by orders of magnitude over the past decade, the urgency of this challenge has grown accordingly. This is why our discovery—which would dynamically mitigate the effect of electromagnetic interference on these devices—could have a broad impact.”
