KDKA Transmitter
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike Hansgen, who shares the following 1944 film via YouTube:
https://youtu.be/b1ba1Je9lAI
Video: The Story of Radio Broadcasting (Westinghouse 1944)
3 Replies
Radio spotted in “The Day the Earth Caught Fire”
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mark Hirst, who has discovered yet another radio in film:
Spotted this in the 1961 sci-fi movie, ‘The Day the Earth Caught Fire‘.
I’m guessing it’s an old military set.
I believe it is indeed, Mark! Perhaps an intrepid SWLing Post reader can sort out the model number? Please comment!
I’ll add this post to our growing archive of radios in film.
78 Megahertz: Australian astronomers detect signal from the dawn of the universe
(Image: NASA – Hubble Space Telescope)
(Source: ABC Science via William Lee)
Astronomers detect signal from the dawn of the universe, using simple antenna in WA outback
They have picked up a radio signature produced just 180 million years after the Big Bang using a simple antenna in the West Australian outback.
The ground breaking discovery, reported today in the journal Nature, sheds light on a period of time known as the “cosmic dawn”, when radiation from the first stars started to alter the primordial gas soup surrounding them.
[…]The signal they’ve been looking for is a miniscule fraction — between 0.1 and 0.01 per cent — of the radio noise from the sky.
“It’s like trying to hear a whisper from the other side of a roaring football stadium,” Professor Bowman said.
The signal is also within the lower range of FM radio, so finding a place on Earth that is free of human radio interference was essential.
That’s why Professor Bowman and colleagues decided to base their experiment at CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, 300 kilometres north-east of Geraldton.
“Going to Western Australia and working at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory was an absolutely critical first step for us,” he said.
There they built a small table-sized radio spectrometer with a radio receiver attached to two metal panels that act as an antenna. Akin to a set-up from the 60s or 70s, the EDGES instrument is much simpler in design than bigger array telescopes around the world.[…]
UA searching for family of console radio struck by meteorite in 1954
Meteor that struck Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges. (Photo source: University of Alabama)
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike Hansgen, who shares the following story from Forsythe County News (which could win Headline of the Year) and notes, “No One Is Safe! Build a bunker!”:
University of Alabama searching for family of owner of radio struck by meteorite
If anyone in Forsyth County knows the family of Eugene H. Hodges, officials with the University of Alabama are trying to contact them to talk about a radio struck by a meteorite.
Mary Beth Prondzinski, collections manager with the Alabama Museum of Natural History on the university’s campus, said the museum is searching for family members of the late Eugene Hodges, the owner of a radio of struck by a meteorite in the 1950s that is on display.
“The radio is part of an event that occurred here in Alabama back in 1954,” she said. “It was actually called the Sylacauga Meteorite Event. It fell in Sylacauga, Alabama, and it went through somebody’s home and struck the radio that we currently have on exhibit, which hit the woman who lived in the house.”
The woman struck by the meteorite was Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges, then-wife of Eugene Hodges.[…]
Continue reading at the Forsythe County News.
Vernal equinox ‘cracks’ in Earth’s magnetic field
Credit: NOAA SWPC
(Source: Southgate ARC)
Equinox ‘cracks’ forming in Earth’s magnetic field
The vernal equinox is less than 10 days away. That means one thing: Cracks are opening in Earth’s magnetic field.
The seasonal phenomenon is known as the “Russell-McPherron effect,” named after the researchers who first explained it more than 40 years ago.
These “equinox cracks” are causing geomagnetic activity and bright auroras around the Arctic Circle even without strong solar activity.
Visit today’s edition of Spaceweather.com for the full story.
The Sony ICF-M780SL: Peter catches some serious MW DX on Gran Canaria
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Peter Wilson, for sharing the following guest post and DXpedition report:
Sony ICF-M780SL MWDX on Gran Canaria
by Peter Wilson
Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain
I have spent the last two months in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean.
I travelled light and didn’t bring my radio/SDR collection with me.
A portable I saw in a local department store caught ny eye, and I ended up buying one from a local electronics retailer which had it on special at €55. It is a Sony ICF-M780SL which as turned out, is something rather special. It is a four band (LW, MW, SW,FM) DSP receiver, with an AM IF (LW, MW,SW) of 45 kHz and an FM IF of 128 kHz.
There’s too much hash in my apartment block to use it at home, but as I am a couple of streets away from the Ocean I intended to use it there.
Problem is there almost as much RF hash at the oceanside as at home. Also the Atlantic breakers crash loudly on the shore, and the wind can howl quite loudly. I did have some limited success and have included a couple of clips.
I discovered a better DX location at a small Plaza a short distance inland from the Ocean. There is an early morning peak for MW TA leading up to about 07:30 UTC (= local time)
The radio is used barefoot in each clip. There is some camera hash.
Here are the highlights:
USA Transatlantic
1500 WFED booming with ID 5736 km
Click here to view on YouTube.
790 WAXY with ESPN Radio ID 6369 km
Click here to view on YouTube.
1540 KXEL 6935 km
Click here to view on YouTube.
1530 WCKY 6373 km
Click here to view on YouTube.
770 WABC 5459 km
Click here to view on YouTube.
1520 WWKB
ESPN Radio with sports talk. 5841 km
Click here to view on YouTube.
Ocean front around dusk
1350 TWR Armenia 5377 km
Click here to view on YouTube.
1521 Duba Saudi Arabia 5004 km
Click here to view on YouTube.
1458 Lyca Radio, Brookmans Park UK 2914 km
Click here to view on YouTube.
The Sony ICF-M780SL is a great MW/LW/FM performer. SW propagation has been mediocre and suffers from the RF hash QRN, so difficult to test.
Amazing, Peter! It’s hard for me to believe the reception you had of WFED (Federal News Radio). I listen to that station every time I go through the DC/Baltimore area and I think your reception is just as good. A TA crossing of almost 5,000 km with armchair copy! Quite an accomplishment!
Thank you for sharing your Gran Canaria DX with us. I’m pretty impressed with the Sony ICF-M780SL as well.
Post Readers: make sure you check out Peter’s YouTube channel by clicking here.
Click here to search Amazon.co.uk and click here to search eBay for the Sony ICF-M780SL.
Wired: Hunting Radiosondes
Image source: NOAA
(Source: Wired via David Korchin)
SOME RETIREES TAKE up fly fishing. Others pick up golf. But when Roland—or “F5ZV,” as he’s known on ham radio—left his job in Belfort, France a decade ago, he devoted his newfound leisure to a far more peculiar hobby: hunting radiosondes.
The white plastic boxes contain instruments to measure things like wind, temperature and humidity; meteorologists send them skywards on balloons, and they transmit data back over radio waves. But somewhere around 100,000 feet, the balloons burst, and the radiosondes parachute back to earth.
Roland began using a radio receiver and antenna to track them to the rooftops, parking lots, and random cow pastures where they land. “He was completely obsessed with radiosondes,” says Swiss photographer Vincent Levrat, who documents the chase in his quirky series Catch Me If You Can. “He would wake up at night just to hunt.”
By Roland’s own estimation, there are hundreds of other radiosonde hunters across Europe who monitor launch schedules for weather station balloons. They begin each hunt by using software called Balloon Track to predict the general area where a radiosonde might land; Balloon Track calculates the trajectory based on wind speed and burst altitude.[…]