Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares illustrated radio listening report of a recent Reach Beyond Australia.
Carlos notes:
Part of evangelistic preaching (in Japanese) from Reach Beyond (Australia). Listened in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Good morning/afternoon/evening to all SWLing Post community. FastRadioBurst 23 here in a dressing gown drinking a coffee as I’ve just woken up, but I am awake enough to let you know about what Imaginary Stations have coming to the shortwaves this coming week.
There’ll be a couple of episodes of a show called WREM which is all about that pastime/necessity called Sleep. The moniker can be also be translated as “Witnessing Rapid Eye Movement” or even as “Willderness Response Escape Monitor”. The show may even be Michael Stipe related too, who knows what dreams may envoke.
The first show is brought to you via the services of Shortwave Gold on Saturday November 2nd 2024 at 1200 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and on Sunday November 3rd 2024 at 1000/1200 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2100 UTC on 3975 kHz.
Then on Wednesday November 6th 2024 at 0200 UTC on 9395 kHz there’s WREM 2 via WRMI for more slumber inducing programming in the best way! Enjoy your hot sleepy beverage and then drop off with us!
For more information on all our shows, please send to [email protected] and check out our old shows at our Mixcloud page here.
Note: I originally published this post on QRPer.com, but I thought I’d cross-post it here since so many of you have been checking in on me post-Hurricane Helene. As an update, we’re all doing fine here at SWLing Post HQ, and things are starting to normalize. It will be many months, or even years, before our town fully recovers from this devastating event. Again, thank you all for your kind thoughts and support!
Best,
Thomas
As many of you know, I’m proud to be a regular on the Ham Radio Workbench podcast.
Last week, we published an episode focused on emergency communications, specifically my first-hand experiences in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
When we recorded, our road was still without power, and we had no mobile data service. I was able to join the recording thanks to a high(ish)-speed internet connection via HughesNet and our whole-house solar power backup.
HRWB podcast episodes are long-format, allowing us to dive deeply into topics like this one. If you’re interested in listening, I encourage you to check it out on the HRWB website and even subscribe via iTunes, Android, and other platforms.
Click here to check out the episode on the HRWB website.
The next episode will also cover emergency communications, focusing on the question, “How would you plan for the next emergency?” It’s a roundtable discussion including Josh (K7OSH). It’ll appear here when published (likely, later this week).
I’d also add that joining my friends on the HRWB podcast recording was truly good for the soul. At that point, we were still in the early stages of cleanup after the disaster, and spending time with them in real-time was incredibly therapeutic.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Greenall, who writes:
This is a follow up to the SWLing Post article from last May informing about a frequency change at the Voice of Indonesia from 4750 to 4755 kHz.
My long time friend Ken (VE3HLS) has been retired and living in northern Thailand for several years now. He continues to enjoy his radio hobby from that location, and recently sent me a recording he made of the Voice of Indonesia on 4755 kHz:
He states:
“It’s not a vintage recording from back in the 70s. It’s from last night! I was tuning around and found the Voice of Indonesia booming in on 4755 kHz in English, no less!”
It reminded me of the good old days so I thought I would pass it along to share with the group.
73
Dan Greenall VE3HLC
Thank you Dan and Ken for sharing this recording!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Pavel Kraus, who shares the following guest post:
by Pavel Kraus
This antenna for MW was made according to the instructions from Everyday Practical Electronics magazine, September 2000. The author of the Active Ferrite Loop Aerial construction project is Raymond Haigh.
The antenna was only adjusted mechanically according to my capabilities. Reception on this antenna was tested with receivers Malahite DSP 2 – original, Belka, Qodosen DX 286, AOR 7030+, Eton E1 XM and other receivers. Of course, the antenna does not replace a long wire antenna, but in limited urban conditions its performance is sufficient. I compared the antenna to Garry Thomas’ factory Quantum Loop.
Both antennas work similarly, Quantum Loop has a shielded ferrite rod, it is less susceptible to elmg. interference. Raymond Haigh’s antenna shows a bit more gain, the ferrite antenna is made up of 7 pieces of ferrite rods 20 cm long and 1 cm in diameter. The antenna is not shielded.
The construction of the antenna according to the instructions is not difficult. A Raimond Haigh antenna will definitely improve MW reception, especially for radios without an internal ferrite antenna. Instructions can be found at https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Practical-Electronics/00s/Everyday-Practical-Electronics-2000-09.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk-ngCQ8TFc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F77HOJSmu_4
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bill Meara who shares the following article from the excellent SolderSmoke Podcast blog:
This is really cool and very easy. Easy nerd thrills.
On Friday, Steve VE7SL, put up a blog post on how we can relive the glories of our youth by monitoring HF long-distance maritime traffic. In the old days the ships were on CW and many report that it was great fun to listen to the various “fists” in action from coastal stations, and from ships on the high seas. While the CW is long gone, this maritime traffic is still on the air. Today they are using a SEL call system called Digital Selective Calling or DSC.
Happily, it is very easy to decode these transmissions. Steve recommends a program called YADD (Yet Another DSC Decoder). I downloaded it in seconds and had it installed on my computer in minutes. Next I had to find a general coverage receiver. I thought about pressing my old HQ-100 into service, or maybe even the S-38E, but a cooler head prevailed. I remembered that Farhan had given us a general coverage receiver in his uBITX transceiver. So it came off the shelf and got powered up. Around dawn on October 14, 2024 I put the receiver on 8.415 MHz LSB. I didn’t even have to do a real connection to the computer — I just put the speaker close to the mic and that was sufficient.
Boom. Soon I was getting signals from ships afloat and from coastal stations. I heard Shanghai, New Zealand, and Australia. See above. From the U.S., I heard Miami, but the most emotional for me was hearing the station at Pt. Reyes, in California. This is the station that Dick Dilman W6AWO has volunteered at for many years. FB.
Back in 2017, Steve had another post on DSC and YADD:
https://ve7sl.blogspot.com/2017/08/yadd.html
Thanks Steve!
This site explains very well what DSC is. From this I think we can see that there is nothing illegal about using YADD to monitor the DSC alerts (that are all emergency-related): https://infoshipping.tripod.com/gmdss_dsc.html
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares illustrated radio listening report of a recent Radio Nacional FM broadcast.
Carlos notes:
Part of Radio Nacional (Brazil) news bulletin (in Portuguese) about police and drug dealers shooting, storms that left people dead in Rio de Janeiro. Listened in Rio de Janeiro in a walkman GE 3-5470B.