Radio Waves: Hammarlund Legacy, FM Radio Using Arduino, VOA Report on Bias, ARISS SSTV Event, and Geminids

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 SWLing Post contributors Trevor, Dan Robinson, and the Southgate ARC for the following tips:


Ham radio operators honor legacy of Mars Hill company (Citizen Times)

During the 1950’s and ’60’s, when the Hammarlund Manufacturing Company had a factory just west of Mars Hill College, the town could have been considered a world center of advanced electronic technology. With a company motto of “Quality Without Compromise,” almost 90% of American WWII wartime military electronic equipment employed Hammarlund capacitors. They also built U.S. Navy search radar installed on aircraft carriers, battleships and cruisers.

Hammarlund was one of the three leading brands of radio communications equipment at the time, along with Hallicrafters and Collins Radio. These three companies dominated in providing state of the art electronics equipment to the U.S. military, large and small corporations, and to private individuals who had the means and taste to own the very best.

Hammarlund Radio initially operated out of New York City starting in 1910, in the early days of radio. They began consolidating all of their operations in Mars Hill in 1951, in a newly constructed facility that spread out to over 100,000 square foot on Hammarlund Drive — now named Hickory Drive. The site employed hundreds from around the area and their work lives on today. []

FM Radio From Scratch Using An Arduino (Hackaday)

Building radio receivers from scratch is still a popular project since it can be done largely with off-the-shelf discrete components and a wire long enough for the bands that the radio will receive. That’s good enough for AM radio, anyway, but you’ll need to try this DIY FM receiver if you want to listen to something more culturally relevant.

Receiving frequency-modulated radio waves is typically more difficult than their amplitude-modulated cousins because the circuitry necessary to demodulate an FM signal needs a frequency-to-voltage conversion that isn’t necessary with AM. For this build, [hesam.moshiri] uses a TEA5767 FM chip because of its ability to communicate over I2C. He also integrated a 3W amplifier into this build, and everything is controlled by an Arduino including a small LCD screen which displays the current tuned frequency. With the addition of a small 5V power supply, it’s a tidy and compact build as well.[]

2016 Report Confirmed Problem of Political Bias At Voice of America (USAGM Watch)

by Dan Robinson

Trump USAGM CEO Michael Pack Was Attacked For Attempts to Focus on Problem

It was May of 2016 and Amanda Bennett was only a few weeks into what would become a nearly four year stint as director of the Voice of America, among the “plum” jobs in Washington, D.C.

Bennett was just getting her feet wet, and at the time was dependent on a group of longtime embedded VOA managers that she would at one point describe as a “fantastic leadership team.”

She had received fair warning, from former VOA employees and extensive reporting by the independent watchdog website BBG and USAGM Watch, of disturbing issues at VOA, located in what has long been one of the most dysfunctional of federal agencies.

Some VOA journalists were using their taxpayer-funded positions to engage in self-promotion and campaign for political causes, a fact little known to most Americans. VOA’s website and digital operations were plagued by failures in breaking news coverage, and inaccuracies in content.

Both VOA and what was then called the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) were increasingly seen by U.S. lawmakers as moribund. A Republican-led and eventually bipartisan effort in Congress proposed major restructuring – there was little patience left on Capitol Hill where the agency was increasingly considered to be “broken,” “rudderless,” and “worthless.” President Obama signed the reform legislation in December 2016 to create a powerful agency CEO position and to make the BBG Board purely advisory.[]

ARISS Slow Scan TV event (Southgate ARC)

An ARISS Slow Scan TV (SSTV) event is scheduled from the International Space Station (ISS) for late December. This will be a special SSTV event to celebrate the 20th anniversary of ARISS.

The event is scheduled to begin on December 24 and continue through December 31.

Dates are subject to change due to ISS operational adjustments.

Dave, AA4KN
ARISS PR

The Geminids – a reminder (Southgate ARC)

The Geminids are a prolific meteor shower caused by the object 3200 Phaethon, which is thought to be a Palladian asteroid with a “rock comet” orbit. This would make the Geminids, together with the Quadrantids, the only major meteor showers not originating from a comet.

They are the biggest meteor shower of the year, and normally occur between 4 December – 17 December.

The peak is expected on 14 December.

Expect FM “pings” and hopefully interesting dx opportunities.

Mike


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Dockside DXing with the super-portable Belka-DX receiver

I’ve been on the coast of South Carolina enjoying a little R&R with my wonderful family.

We rented a vacation home on a tidal river just south of Charleston, SC and it was just what the doctor ordered. The location was gorgeous, the weather was amazing, and there was very little RF interference outside our home.

The best part? We had full access to a private dock.

I took a few portable radios on vacation (ahem…obviously!) but I so thoroughly enjoyed my time with the Belka-DX.

If you haven’t gathered already, I really appreciate simple radios for field operation and it doesn’t get much more simple than the Belka-DX or Belka-DSP.

The radio is so incredibly compact, durable, and a pleasure to operate–especially if cruising the broadcast bands.

On the dock, I didn’t have a place to easily hang a wire antenna, so I used the supplied telescoping whip antenna. It served me well on a number of listening sessions.

As 13dka pointed out in his brilliant review of the Belka-DSP, the Belka radios are so compact, yet pack so much performance, they smack of a little spy radio! On top of that, the chassis is incredibly durable. I can’t tell you how much I love this. My Belka receiver has been living in my EDC bag in a small zippered pouch.

I barely notice it in my bag–it take up almost no space and weighs so little–but in the back of my mind I know I have a portable DXing machine everywhere I go.

I have no fear of being damaged in my bag, either–the chassis protects it so well.

Since London Shortwave has sorted out how to make spectrum recordings using the Belka-DX I/Q out, you’d better believe I’ll be sampling spectrum as I travel the globe post-pandemic!

I didn’t have time to gather what I needed for making Belka-DX spectrum recordings on this trip, but you can be certain I will when I return!

I should add that one of the little joys about my dockside DXing spot this past week was watching dolphins swim by as I tuned to some of my favorite broadcasters. Bliss.

Post readers: Have you taken your radios on vacation recently? Please comment! Better yet, consider submitting a guest post with photos!

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April’s collection of Japanese language WebSDR recordings for November 2020

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, April TimeLady, who shares her latest collection of Japanese language WebSDR recordings–this time, for November 2020.

Feel free to listen to her recordings via the clickable playlist below, or on her Archive.org page.

Thank you, April for once again uploading and sharing your recordings!

Click here for a link to this and all of April’s archived recordings.

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RTI’s New Korean Language Service on Shortwave

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

Generally, the news about shortwave is bad (stations that close, stations that leave the short wave and go to the Internet), but this time the news is good: After 15 years, Radio Taiwan International is broadcasting again in Korean language in short wave.
At the link, the article is in Spanish (not yet available in English).
Good week

David Iurescia (LW4DAF)

(Source: RTI – translated into English)

After 15 years, RTI restores shortwave broadcasts in Korean language

Starting on Sunday the 13th of this month, Radio Taiwan International will resume shortwave broadcasts in the Korean language. Today, 10 during a ceremony held at the radio station, the president of the RTI board of directors, Lu Ping, highlighted the many common aspects that Taiwan and South Korea present and highlighted the audiovisual and cultural exchange with which both countries can learn from each other. The reestablishment of broadcasts in Korean through the short wave is a new milestone that will further strengthen relations between the two countries.

Also present at the ceremony were the director of the Department for Asia-Pacific Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Larry Tseng, and the representative of South Korea in Taipei, Kang Young-hoon.

Lu explained that since taking over as chairman of the board five years ago, he has supported the restoration of Korean broadcasts. In 2018, programming was relaunched through the RTI website and YouTube, and now, two years later, shortwave broadcasts are resumed.

These were her words: “As of December 13, short wave broadcasts will resume. Under the leadership of our CEO, Chang Cheng, this is a very important date. This is a new milestone and we hope that through programming in Korean the exchange in various fields will increase and that communication will strengthen the values ??in which both peoples believe. “

Lu Ping explained that Taiwan and South Korea have many similarities in historical and cultural aspects. Through the exchange, both countries will be able to enjoy the values ??that the two peoples share.

For his part, Kang said that, due to the pandemic, this year interpersonal relationships have been severely limited and that, in this scenario, Korean broadcasts that transmit news about Taiwan have become an important bridge that crosses borders and connects hearts.

Radio Taiwan International’s programming in Korean was launched for the first time in 1961. In 2005 the broadcasts were suspended after adjustments in the organization’s budget, although during those decades many groups of listeners who followed these broadcasts were formed. At today’s ceremony, seven Korean listening friends expressed their congratulations and congratulations through a video. The listeners told that they went from childhood, adolescence to adulthood listening to these broadcasts and one of them even asked his son to offer a word of greeting in Chinese. Listeners look forward to tuning in to these broadcasts that they will hear with great pleasure.

This is the schedule that RTI gave me:

Radio Taiwán International : New Korean Service : Schedule

10:30 – 11:00 UTC – 9610 Khz

22:00 – 22:30 UTC – 5955 Khz (Repetition 1)

23:00 – 23:30 UTC – 9430 Khz (Repetition 2)

Thank you very much for the tip, David!

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Radio Waves: RIP Phil Erwin, Federal Watchdog Targets Pack, Eclipse Festival of Frequency Measurement, and VOA testing DRM

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 SWLing Post contributors Dave Zantow, Michael Guerin, Eric McFadden, and Dan Robinson for the following tips:


The voice of Phil Irwin will be greatly missed (Rappahannock News)

Where wasn’t the presence of Phil Irwin felt in Rappahannock County?

A constant of virtually all proceedings of the Rappahannock County community and government, cherished innkeeper of Caledonia Farm – 1812, founding member of the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection, regional director of the Virginia Farm Bureau, committee member for both Rappahannock County Farmland Preservation and the Agricultural Forestal District, Rappahannock tourism advisory member — for 25 years chief of morning broadcasts for Voice of America (VOA) — Irwin was found dead Thursday at his working cattle farm north of Washington.

“What a contribution Phil made to our county over his many years here,” Huntly friend Ralph Bates reacted upon learning of Irwin’s death. “He will live in our memories as we drive and see how well our viewshed and environment has been protected because of his commitment and work.”

Former Washington Mayor John Fox Sullivan recalled “a good man and such a part of the Rappahannock fabric. His love for this county, and commitment to it, was unmatched.”[]

Federal watchdog finds ‘substantial likelihood of wrongdoing’ by Trump appointees overseeing Voice of America (NBC News)

The federal watchdog’s findings mark the latest rebuke of the Trump-appointed CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Michael Pack.

WASHINGTON — A federal watchdog agency has found “a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” by Trump administration appointees who oversee the Voice of America and other U.S.-funded media outlets.

The finding from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent government agency charged with safeguarding federal employees’ rights, marks the latest rebuke of Michael Pack, who President Donald Trump appointed to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the parent agency to VOA and other broadcasters.

A federal judge last month ordered Pack to stop interfering in the newsrooms of VOA and other media outlets and found that he had jeopardized the First Amendment rights of journalists that his office had targeted for investigation. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and press freedom groups have blasted Pack over his actions since he took over in June, accusing him of undermining the broadcasters’ editorial independence and defying congressional authority.

After reviewing allegations from current and recent employees, the Office of Special Counsel wrote to the whistleblowers Wednesday saying it had demanded Pack and the U.S. Agency for Global Media conduct an investigation into the allegations.[]

The December 2020 Eclipse Festival of Frequency Measurement (HamSCI)

Changes in ionospheric electron density caused by space weather and diurnal solar changes are known to cause Doppler shifts on HF ray paths. For example, see Figure 7 in Boitman et al., 1999. HamSCI’s first attempt at a measurement of these Doppler shifts was during the August 2017 total solar eclipse. We plan a careful measurement during the 2024 eclipse. As part of the WWV centennial, 50 stations collected Doppler shift data for the original Festival of Frequency Measurement, demonstrating the value of volunteer participation in collecting this data. During the June 2020 Eclipse Festival, we enlisted participants around the globe and experimented with different data collection protocols. This winter, we request that all amateur radio stations, shortwave listeners, and others capable of making high-quality HF frequency measurements help us collect frequency data for the December 14 total eclipse.[]

USAGM, VOA Testing Innovative Digital Radio Platform (Inside VOA)

A few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the world, broadcast engineers in Greenville, North Carolina, launched a test of digital radio signals. The U.S. Agency for Global Media began aiming a digital broadcast at Cuba and Latin America, which included Office of Cuba Broadcasting and Voice of America content.

With this 2020 test, VOA embarked on a new phase of global innovation on a platform called Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM), a versatile digital signal not well known in the U.S., but the only one that can cover the entire spectrum: shortwave, mediumwave and longwave, as well as VHF (FM). As digital radio emerged in the 1990s, VOA was among the first broadcasters testing a signal that promised to even out shortwave radio signals that often faded in and out and were marred by static.

VOA tested the DRM signal in the 1990s at the agency’s Morocco transmitter site, one of five facilities opened in a period of expansion in the previous decade. However, other digital signals became the standard in various markets around the world. The U.S. standard audio digital platform is called HD.

Around the world, as other digital radio platforms were adopted, DRM was held back by the marketplace. Nobody was making commercially available receivers.

By the end of the 1990s, VOA innovation focused more on television, the platform that promised larger audiences, even in some places in the world where shortwave dominated. By the early 2010s, the rallying cry became “Digital First,” as VOA strived to attract readers for its language service websites and began tapping into the growing audiences on new social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

By 2020, however, DRM had come full circle.

“You’re no longer limited to just reading the news or playing music,” says Gerhard Straub, supervisory director of the USAGM Broadcast Technologies Division.

Straub, along with Gary Koster, Broadcast Radio Technician and transmitter expert and Macon Dail, Chief Engineer at the Greenville Transmitting Station, set up the test broadcast in February of this year, not long before the COVID-19 pandemic grounded global travel. The trio put up a DRM signal with Radio Marti and VOA audio along with scrolling text messages and rotating images.

Engineers have received reports of a clear signal as far south as Brazil.

The USAGM test, says Straub, is “coasting along” in the pandemic, but additional content will be added when technicians can travel again. Straub says the VOA signal was taken off in the initial test to concentrate on the OCB digital content and to keep the signal robust. Now that there is good reception data, he noted, the digital bit rate can be increased and VOA content added back into the test in 2021.

Because DRM operates at lower power, more radio stations and digital signals can be broadcast on a single transmitter. The platform is starting to grow in countries of interest to Western international broadcasters. DRM signals will soon cover all of China, though its government is expected to attempt to control the stations accessed by its citizens. India built 39 transmitters and, more importantly, 2.5 million vehicles already are equipped with DRM radios. Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil and North Korea all have nascent DRM operations.

Religious broadcasters, who sometimes target audiences similar to those sought by Western governments, are experimenting with the technology. For example, a missionary group, TWR.org, sent the Bible’s Gospel of Mark from Guam to Cambodia via DRM shortwave.

“You have to stop thinking of it as radio, because it’s not,” says USAGM’s Straub. “We are now broadcasting digital data. Just like we broadcast digital data on the internet, we can broadcast digital data over shortwave without being hampered by an internet firewall that maybe limits what we can send to a particular country.”

Reason enough, Straub believes, for VOA to continue leading innovation in a new-again technology.[]


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Hammarlund HR-10: David seeking advice about weather frequency adjustment

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David Korchin, who needs a little advice regarding his recently restored Hammarlund HR-10:

After doing a heart transplant on my Hammarlund HR-10 Weather Sentry multi band receiver (I found a rough user on eBay and swapped out the chassis into my unspoiled case) the rig is running to spec; MW is very strong with that long bar antenna, the FM+AFC is terrific , and I’ve been sandbagging 75-80 m hams in their AM QSO’s. But the Weather band is fixed reception at 162.550 MHz—that works in New York City but the NOOA stations out here in easternmost Suffolk County NY use different frequencies. I’m wondering if the radio can be adjusted to another frequency? Or the crystal swapped?

Any ideas would be appreciated!

Please comment if you can help David sort out how he might add or modify the HR-10’s weather frequency!

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