Category Archives: Videos

Video: Pairing the AN-200 loop antenna with the Icom IC-705

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, who shares the following video featuring the Tecsun AN-200 on the Waters & Stanton YouTube channel:

I told so many over the years that I honestly think the AN200 is one of the most useful and effective mediumwave antennas you can purchase. It’s portable and it pairs so easily with most any radio.

Retailers:

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Ivan demonstrates the incredible SDR# Co-Channel Canceller

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ivan (NO2CW), who shares the following short demo of the new SDR# Co-Channel interference canceller tool:

That is simply amazing!

Readers note: this powerful tool for DXing is a free upgrade for SDR# users!

Click here to read more about the Co-Channel Canceller.

 

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Video: Uncovering a Buried Co-Channel Station with the New AirSpy SDR# Tool

AirSpy’s Youssef Touil shares a video from YouTube author “PY3CRX&PY2PLL” which dramatically demonstrates the extent to which the Co-Channel Canceller tool can uncover a much weaker signal beneath a powerful one:

Youssef commented on the video that It only needs some tweaking to the lock/offset to get a perfect decode. So, presumably the result could be even better than heard here.

For more information on the Co-Channel Canceller, see my original article here, and the follow-up piece.

Guy Atkins is a Sr. Graphic Designer for T-Mobile and lives near Seattle, Washington.  He’s a regular contributor to the SWLing Post.

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Shortwave listening in the field with the Icom IC-705 transceiver

Yesterday, I took the new Icom IC-705 to the field for another Parks On the Air (POTA) activation. My goal at this particular activation was to make a couple of posts for QRPer.com: first, to test the new mAT-705 ATU on loan from Vibroplex, and secondly, make a short video about full break-in CW operation.

I also wanted to do a little shortwave listening after completing the activation. I had no idea what propagation would be like, but thought I’d tune around below the 20 meter band where the antenna was currently resonant.

I deployed the CHA Emcomm III Portable random wire antenna which, I must say, is a superb shortwave listening antenna for the field.

Since you can’t see the antenna in the first photo below, I marked up the second one. The blue line represents the 73′ radiator, and the green line the counterpoise:
Here’s the short video I made around the 22 meter band:

I had planned to make a few audio recordings via the built-in digital recorder but I left my MicroSD card at home. No worries, though, as I plan to make some recordings for readers to compare in the coming days if time allows.

If you have any questions about the IC-705, feel free to ask in comments.

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Val’s Morse Code videos and practice sessions

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Valery Titievsky, who writes:

Perhaps it will be interesting to SWLing Post subscribers. A short video for those wishing to improve their skills in Morse code. Poem by George Byron “Prometheus».

The channel also has lessons in studying Morse code and a few videos with my SWL on shortwaves of various radio broadcasting, weather and other service and number stations.

73! Best Regards

Valery Titievsky (R9O-16) SWL

Click here to check out Val’s YouTube channel.

When I practice my CW skills, I do like listening to real content like this instead of randomly-generated characters. One reason is you start to recognize the sound of common words (like “the” “an” “and” “is” etc).

Thank you for sharing this, Val!

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Video: When “Tomorrow’s World” demonstrated digital radio

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jason W, who writes:

You might be interested in this episode of the BBC series tomorrow’s world from 17th Feb 1993 on YouTube:

10:23 to 14:50 has a introduction and demonstration of digital radio in the UK and concluding with “the experts say we will be fully digital by 2020 it’s a long wait” (referring to the switch from fm to digital radio in the UK which is yet to happen).

I thought it might be interesting to highlight this on the blog in 2020.

We can forgive the bit where she suggests digital radio will operate alongside analogue FM in the same frequency band. This Wikipedia on the history of digital broadcasting in the UK shows the UK adopted the DAB Eureka 147 standard in a SFN (single frequency network) from the start of test transmissions in 1990.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_radio_in_the_United_Kingdom

The same episode has a later piece on wide-screen digital television. (20:18 to 23:41) ending with the line “like digital radio, it is a few years away” 🙂

This is fantastic! I love watching vintage Tomorrow’s World episodes. It’s great to see how well they predicted the future and what they considered to be meaningful future innovations at the time. Thank you for sharing, Jason!

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