Snagging two state game lands in three days for Parks On The Air

View from Waterrock Knob on the Blue Ridge Parkway (June 13, 2020).

You might have noticed from recent posts, I’ve been on a bit of a POTA (Parks On The Air) kick lately.

I’ve been enjoying taking the Xiegu G90 to the field and seeing just how well it performs under intensive use on battery power. So far, it has certainly proven itself to be a capable field rig.

Still, on two recent activations I also brought my trusty Elecraft KX2 along as well. Without a doubt, it’s still my number one field rig. It will be difficult for another field transceiver to displace it.

With that said, the G90 is less than half the price of the KX2 (when the KX2 is configured with the optional ATU). The G90 can also pump out a full 20 watts of power–nearly double that of the KX2. I also love the G90’s spectrum display which makes it so easy to find free frequencies and hunt other parks. Its internal antenna tuner–like the KX2’s–can match almost anything very quickly.

Here are a couple of quick reports from my recent activations:

William H Silver State Game Land (K-6967)

Saturday, my family had planned a trip to visit my father-in-law. My wife encouraged me to find a nearby park to activate as there are so many between our house and his. I made it slightly more challenging by deciding to find a park or POTA entity I’d never visited.

Turns out the William H Silver State Game Land was only a 30 minute detour. I had never visited it and, in fact, it was even an ATNO (All Time New One) for Parks On The Air, meaning no one had yet activated it.

I had initially planned 1.5 to 2 hours for the activation, but we were running behind Saturday morning so I had to cut my time at the park to a total of about one hour–which included set-up, operation, and take-down.

We arrived at the site and I immediately deployed my EFT Trail-Friendly end-fed antenna.

My 12 year old daughter (who is studying for her ham radio license and is a great at digging callsigns out of the noise) helped me log contacts. I stuck with very brief exchanges so that I could work as many stations as possible. When activating an ATNO, I always want to give as many POTA “hunters” as possible the best opportunity to put the site in their log books.

I started on the 40 meter band and worked 20 stations in 25 minutes with the Xiegu G90.

I then moved up to the 20 meter band and switched over to the Elecraft KX2.

Turns out, 20 meters was pretty unstable, so I worked very few stations. I did work a station in California with 10 watts and a wire, though, so I’ll still call that a success.

I plan to visit this same site again later this year–it’s very accessible.

Buffalo Cove State Game Land (K-6886)

Monday morning, even though the weather outlook was dodgy, I scheduled another park activation which, like Saturday’s, was at a state game land which was another ATNO.

I like game lands. Unlike state parks, I don’t have to worry about crowds and I also usually get to take my Subaru or truck off-road. Access roads here in the mountains are typically steep, curvy, and washed-out in places. Finding the site can be very challenging, too. Still, I love adding a little off-road fun to a park activation!

The Buffalo Cove State Game Land is much larger than park K-6967 (above). I drove deep into the lands and found a large parking and camping area for hunters. I had the whole place to myself, so I found the best tree to support my end-fed antenna.

I operated the KX2 exclusively on this activation because I wanted to use its voice keyer and my Heil headset for hands-free VOX operation.

In the course of 90 minutes, I worked 51 stations from the trunk/boot of my car.

Many thanks to my good friend Mike (K8RAT) who made the whole process much smoother by spotting me on the POTA site.

Band conditions were actually pretty rough today, so I was very pleased with the results and intend to return here for a weekend activation later this year as well. This would actually be an ideal location for making low-noise portable SDR recordings while camping overnight.

This weekend, I decided I want to increase my portable field antenna arsenal. More about that in a future post!

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Help record the 2020 BBC Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast on June 21

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Halley VI Research Station on the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica (Source: British Antarctic Survey)

Every year, the BBC broadcasts a special program to the scientists and support staff in the British Antarctic Survey Team. The BBC plays music requests and sends special messages to the small team of 40+ located at various Antarctic research stations. Each year, the thirty minute show is guaranteed to be quirky, nostalgic, and certainly a DX-worthy catch!

After successful listener events from years past, I’m once again calling on all SWLing Post readers and shortwave radio listeners to make a short recording (say, 30-60 seconds) of the BBC Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast and share it here at the Post (frequencies and time below).

The recording can be audio-only, or even a video taken from any recording device or smart phone. It would be helpful to have a description and/or photo of your listening environment and location, if possible. Please only submit recordings made from your location–since this is all about how you’re able to receive the broadcast at your location, we would rather not include WebSDR recordings.

Audio should be in the MP3 format and videos either hosted on YouTube or Vimeo so that I can easily embed them without having to convert and upload myself.

If you submit your recording to me, I will post it here on the SWLing Post–and insure that the British Antarctic Survey receives the post, too. The recordings will be arranged by geographic location. Note that due to my schedule this year, it might take a few weeks before I can curate all of the recordings (the process typically takes 8+ hours!).

2020 Midwinter Broadcast Frequencies

The BBC Antarctica winter solstice broadcast will be on June 21, 2020 at 2130-2200 UTC.

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Troy Riedel, who shares the frequencies the BBC plan to use. Note that, in the past, the BBC has sometimes only broadcast on three of the four announced frequencies:

5790 kHz Woofferton
6170 kHz Ascension
7360 kHz Woofferton
9580 kHz Ascension

The Midwinter broadcast is one of my favorite programs of the year. I suppose, in part, this is because it happens on June 21–the Summer/Winter solstice–which also happens to be my birthday!

Recording the Midwinter Broadcast has become an SWLing Post community tradition!

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Radio Waves: Radio Afghanistan, Postal Delays, KPH Video, and the Software Defined Radio Academy

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 Heath Hall, Tom Daly, and Alexander (DL4NO) for the following tips:

For Decades, This Radio Station Named the Dead. Few Still Listen. (NY Times)

[Note: this article may require login to read at the NY Times]

Afghans once tuned into Radio Afghanistan twice a day to hear the reading of death notices. But in an age of social media, the voice of the nation has lost much of its sway.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Through decades of coups, invasions and endless war, Afghans tuned their radios to Radio Afghanistan every morning at 7 and every afternoon at 4:05 to hear the names of the newly dead.

One of the voices they often heard reading those death notices belongs to Mohamad Agha Zaki, at the mic for the state broadcaster for more than 42 years now. For much of that stretch, his counterpart at the station has been Ziauddin Aziz, the clerk who rushes to Mr. Zaki with the messages the public brings to the station’s small “Death Advertisements” window.

“Ads today?” Mr. Zaki, half asleep, asked on a recent dawn after opening the door to Mr. Aziz’s knock. Outside, birds chirped and the new day’s soft light covered the peaks of the tall pine trees in the station’s compound in Kabul, the capital.

No, said Mr. Aziz, who had waited behind the door in the kind of deference saved for masters of a different era. They had gone weeks without anyone arriving at the little window — just four ads in 40 days, though certainly many more had died.[…]

International Postal Service Disrupted (ARRL News)

The US Postal Service (USPS) has temporarily suspended international mail acceptance for items addressed to certain destinations due to service impacts related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation could result in the return or loss of mail, such as QSL cards, addressed to affected parts of the world. The USPS has posted a list of affected countries, which is updated regularly. The Postal Service will, upon request, refund postage and fees on mail bearing a customs stamp that’s returned due to the suspension of service, or the sender may re-mail returned items with existing postage once service has been restored. When re-mailing under this option, customers should cross out the markings “Mail Service Suspended — Return to Sender.”[…]

KPH Coastal Radio Station (Southgate ARC)

In this video Shannon Morse KM6FPP visits coastal radio station KPH which provided ship to shore communications using Morse code. Volunteers have preserved it and operate weekends

Watch The Last Active Morse Code Station in the US – KPH Radio Station

KPH http://www.radiomarine.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KPH_(radio_station)

More information about the Software Defined Radio Academy (Upper-Bavarian Bulletin)

Hamradio online

The Hamradio normally is the largest ham radio exhibition in Europe. But this year it cannot be held.

At the beginning of April, a team around the project manager Markus Heller, DL8RDS, started the project “Hamradio online”. This was only possible as DARC, the German hamradio society, started to introduce electronic collaboration tools long before Corona.

Within this virtual working environment a concept was developed of presentations, distinctions, and more. The program is being prerecorded and will partly be produced as live as possible. Especially the SDR Academy heavily depends on viewer feedback. There will also be videos from the Hamradio Convention that was held last March im Munich. These videos have not been published before.

The infrastructure is being maintained by the teams of the SDR Academy and “Facination Hamradio”. They produce the videos and streamline the installation so all action on the last weekend of June will happen smoothly. These transmissions will be transmitted through several Youtube cannels.

Obviously, personal meetings would be preferable. The advantage of this new solution are the possibly much more participants on both sides: audience and lecturers. The advantage is especially valid for the SDR Academy as most of it is done in English.

Nothing has been finalized. There is a preliminary program in German at https://www.darc.de/fileadmin/filemounts/gs/oeffentlichskeitsarbeit/Veranstaltungen/HAM_RADIO/HAMOnline_Sendeplan.pdf. Lectures held in English are announced in English. I hope an English version of the program will be created.

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British Antarctic Survey Annual Midwinter Broadcast test today (June 14, 2020) at 2130 UTC

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Halley VI Research Station on the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica (Source: British Antarctic Survey)

Many thanks to the British DX Club who shares the following information about a BBC Midwinter Broadcast test being held later today:

The annual 30-minute Midwinter broadcast to British Antarctic Survey staff in Antarctica is scheduled by BBC WS for Sunday 21st June.

Ahead of this, two frequencies will be tested Sunday 14th June 2130-2145 UTC from Woofferton (UK): 5790 and 7360 kHz.

Other frequencies to be confirmed.

I will certainly attempt to catch the test broadcast as I plan to record the 2020 Midwinter Broadcast on June 21 as I do each year.

Of course, I’ll also collect, curate and share SWLing Post community recordings of the midwinter service as well. Always a highlight of my listening year!

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The 2020 Software Defined Radio Academy will be held online

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alexander (DL4NO), who shares the following announcement from Markus (DL8RDS):

This year’s Software Defined Radio Academy is taking place as an online conference. Because of the great number of contributions, we are spanning the conference over two days: Saturday June 27 and Sunday June 28 2020.

We also decided to start the stream in the afternoon in order to give our overseas audience a fair chance to participate.

We have pre-recorded the talks, so there is no back-channel or interruption during the talks, but the speakers will be available in our video conferencing system and we will closely observe all the comments that will be submitted into the channel. At the end of the according slots, there is always a little time left for the speakers to respond. So there is a certain degree of interaction and we do encourage you to make use of it.

Our mother organisation, the German Amateur Radio Club DARC also decided to provide a decent online substitute to the HAMRADIO hamvention that was called off by the authorities and I’m proud to say that our team was giving the ideas and helped this really large event to take place. Alltogether our video team, the other video team from Faszination Amateurfunk and the DARC permanent staff managed to provide more than 60 hours of talks, discussions and fantastic content, which will be streamed at this weekend. For those of you who understand German, here is the streaming plan:

https://www.darc.de/fileadmin/filemounts/gs/oeffentlichskeitsarbeit/Veranstaltungen/HAM_RADIO/HAMOnline_Sendeplan.pdf

Back to the Software Defined Radio Academy:

I wrote that the programme is ready. Please check it out here:

https://2020.sdra.io/pages/programme.html

We’re looking forward to welcome all of you on our YouTube stream.
Please enjoy!

And please feel free to redistribute this information.

BR / VY73
Markus
DL8RDS

Thank you for the tip, Alexander! Looks like an amazing lineup!

Click here to view the SDR Academy YouTube channel.

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Radio history videos are a serious benefit of Social Distancing!

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bill Hemphill (WD9EQD), who shares the following guest post:

Benefits to Social Distancing

I have discovered that there is a positive side effect of social distancing. With so many organizations using Zoom and other video methods for their meeting, the volume of great videos to watch has drastically increased, with most of it residing on YouTube. Also everyone is sharing video links that they have found with other.

For example, the New Jersey Antique Radio Club (NJARC) has, for some time, posted their monthly meetings on their YouTube channel. They have very enjoyable presentations. Last night was their virtual monthly meeting for June and they had a great talk by Prof. Joe Jesson on “What You Did Not Know About the RCA AR88.”

I am a fairly new member to NJARC and must recommend them to others. They are a very active group and are currently having Zoom conferences weekly between the members. They also host the RADIO TECHNOLOGY MUSEUM at the InfoAge Technology Center.

Link to NJARC:

http://www.njarc.org/

Link to NJARC YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/njarc/

Link to the Radio Technology Museum:

http://www.rtm.ar88.net/

Last week, I received an email from Mark Erdle (AE2EA) referring to some videos by the Antique Wireless Museum which is hosted by the Antique Wireless Association (AWA). From his email:

The Radios (and Filming) of “Across the Pacific” presented by AWA member Brian Harrison. Brian served as the radio consultant for the 3-hour PBS documentary “Across the Pacific”, which tells the story of the early days of Pan American Airways and of Hugo C. Leuteritz, a RCA radio engineer who helped make Pan Am’s expansion across the oceans possible with radio communication and navigation systems. Brian explains how he worked to insure that this documentary portrayed the pioneering work of Hugo Leuteritz as accurately as possible. Much of the early radio equipment that Pan American used was custom made for Pan Am, and is quite rare today, but Brian hunted it down.

In addition to Brian’s video, you can also see Tom Perera’s updated presentation of “Phil Weingarten’s Fabulous Fakes” which was originally presented at the 2007 AWA conference:

Link to AWA: https://antiquewireless.org/homepage/

Link to AWA You-Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX55peBhzeX1qps_VYXdLBA

Here are some other videos that people have passed along to me that I have found enjoyable. Most of these are radio-oriented and I have omitted the many cat videos:

Thank you for sharing these links and videos, Bill! I’ve been watching Phil Weingarten’s Fabulous Fakes this morning–what a fascinating bit of history!

Post readers: Have you discovered videos and sites while social distancing (a.k.a. Social DXing)? Please comment and share your links!

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Help building a general coverage QRP transceiver list

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Over the past few weeks, I have been building curated lists of ham radio transceivers. It all started when I needed to learn about multimode VHF/UHF transceivers for my EME project. As I got deeper into the process, I decided to make my master list of VHF/UHF multimode transceivers public. The goal with the list was to familiarize myself with the makes/model numbers and have an easy way to check out any used gear deals.

Next, I started a list of QRP general coverage transceivers–something I had been meaning to do for ages because I get so many inquiries about these from readers.

To be clear, by “general coverage” I mean radios that can receive HF and possibly MW broadcast bands in addition to ham radio bands. By “QRP” I mean radios that have output power of about 20 watts or less–some define the term QRP more strictly, but since our list has less to do with the transmitting function, I’m a little more flexible.

I like QRP general coverage transceivers because they’re often portable, have modest power requirements, and some offer superb sensitivity and selectivity for broadcast listening.

Click here to view the list so far.

Please comment if you note a missing transceiver. I’m certain I’ve left some out. I’d appreciate model numbers and links if possible. If you’ve ever owned one, please consider sharing your thoughts on its performance from the point of view of an SWL as well.

I’ve already started working on a list including all general coverage transceivers. It’s massive so it could be a while before it’s published! I’ll certainly ask for your input then as well.

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