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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ron, who writes:
If you like monitoring the VHF airband then this antenna might interest you.It is a half-wave dipole cut for the middle of the band. (Recall that half wave vertical dipoles do not need ground radials.)
It is very well built and pretty rugged but is not meant for outdoor use.
How well does it perform? That depends on several things…how far you are from your airport? What is the “lay of the land” where you live? Etc.
Does it work better than the supplied telescoping antenna that came with your scanner?
Yes indeed.
And you will also notice an improvement in comms from aircraft in flight, too.
I had hoped to hear the ATIS and VOR from my local airport but they are too far away (20 miles).
In addition, the eBay seller (and builder) is also very pleasant to deal with.
Two out of the five transmitters broadcasting RRI’s programmes are temporarily suspended as of 1 August
Dear friends, the Radio Romania Board of Administrators decided to temporarily suspend the use of 2 out of the 5 Radiocom shortwave transmitters that ensure the broadcast of Radio Romania International programmes, because of budget cuts. As of August 1, our programmes are aired via one transmitter in ?ig?ne?ti, one in S?ftica (both of them near Bucharest) and one in Galbeni (east). As soon as the budget of the institution is restored, we will resume broadcasts on all 5 transmitters.
The RRI programmes in Romanian, English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese and Hebrew are affected. All of them may be received on only one frequency instead of 2, as of August 1, 2023. The frequencies as well as any other prospective changes operated by Radiocom further to reception monitoring and to your feedback on reception quality will be announced in our broadcasts, on our web page and on Facebook.
Budget restrictions also prompted a reduction of the night time power of medium wave transmitters that broadcast Radio Romania News and Current Affairs programmes and of some regional stations.
We invite you to follow RRI’s programmes online at www.rri.ro (including on demand), on SoundCloud, on Android and iOS apps, via TuneIn and via satellite. You can find more details on our home page. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Spotify.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alan Roe, who shares his A-23 (version 4.0) season guide to music on shortwave. Alan provides this amazing resource as a free PDF download:
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, TomL, who shares the following guest post. Click here to check out all of the posts in this Audio Plugin series:
Audio Plugins For Radios, Part 2 – SDR Recording
by TomL
I started investigating using the old Kenwood transceiver to send audio to my laptop and process the receive audio using VST Host for a number of functions: Noise reduction, Equalization, reduce Sibilances and fading distortion, increase presence of vocals without sounding boxy, etc. It was a qualified success depending on what VST apps I used, in what order they were used, and what settings each of them were set to. In this episode of ongoing discovery, I will attempt to show how easy it is to OVER-process the shortwave broadcast audio plus comparisons to my regular Audacity post-recording treatment.
Audio Examples
I noticed for the first time that the SDR creates a somewhat compressed file which can be seen when comparing the Waveforms of SDR vs. VST Host output files. This means that the unprocessed SDR file will always appear to sound louder because of this compression. This loss of Dynamic Range makes it harder to do the comparison. Therefore, the Audacity-only examples below are reduced 3dB or 5dB to maintain apparent loudness.
Example 1: KBS Weekend Playlist – S6-S9 signal, somewhat severe fading and moderate polar flutter.
SDR Console 3.2 using my usual NR4 set to 2dB Reduction, 30% Smoothing, and 3dB Rescale plus a Blackman-Harris-7, 5.3 kHz filter.
AUDACITY file is using my usual Audacity noise reduction:
VST version 2: Used my first set of VST apps. Sounds harsh with hash-noise and overdriven:
VST version 3: Used way too much bass, too much grunge, attenuated highs, still overdriven:
VST version 4: Using a different order to the Denoiser apps, added in Modern Exciter app, cut back on some bass but still too much, and overly forward sounding midrange:
VST version 5: My current Baseline setup. Adjusted the Denoiser apps, less extreme bass & treble, adjusted the De-Esser app, set the midrange to be less forward with just a single setting:
To my ears, Audacity processing is nice but as discovered before, sounds compressed and does not reduce some of the other problems inherent in shortwave signal fading and loss of musicality. It sounds utilitarian. Also, the noise is a bit more gnarly.
Versions 2-5 go through iterations of listening to the exact same segment over and over (and over) and trying different VST apps and settings. I think my comments are mostly accurate next to each version. However, you may think differently and perhaps prefer the sound of one of the other versions?
Example 2: Encore Classical Music, WRMI (fading S9 signal) – Audacity vs. Version 5 VST settings. VST is quieter and sounds less harsh than the Audacity version. A generally more smooth sound.
Example 3: RCI in Russian, S7-S9 with moderate polar flutter – 7kHz filter in SDR Console but VST Host is using BritPre, an analog preamp using a 6 kHz low pass filter to try to reduce DSP filter “ringing”. It shows some interesting possibilities.
Example 4: RCI in Russian – Music from the same broadcast and VST Host setup in Example 3. The screeching flute is under more control and strings more defined in the VST version.
Conclusions
I like the results of the audio processing that eventually ended up with “version 5” (plus the possibilities at 7kHz, too). It is not Earth-shattering but is an incremental improvement in my opinion (there is always room for improvement). I can use it in a simple Workflow anytime I want to record something off of the SDR. Also, I had already been using Voicemeeter Pro, a software audio mixer. It is setup with different profiles to do SDR, Ham, FM Broadcast, and now, VST Host audio routing. This process took a long time but seems satisfactory to use as a Baseline setup, which then can be tweaked slightly depending on various types of audio coming from the SDR. These changes in VST Host can be stored as their own unique profiles for audio processing.
However, a word of warning! Messing with Windows audio Sound settings and mixer software is potentially a confusing process and one can easily end up with a spaghetti-pile of conflicting connections, no audio output, doubled echo output, distortion, way too loud, way too soft, etc. If you start this experimentation, make sure to write down your current Windows Sound settings, both the Playback and the Recording settings for each item listed.
Having an SDR radio + Voicemeeter + VST Host is a very flexible setup. I can now safely say that the only thing I need Audacity for is to Normalize the peak audio to the -1 dB broadcast standard volume, which is a HUGE time saver. The SDR Console IQ files can be scheduled and processed from there at a later time. Also, the use of Voicemeeter Pro allows me to switch when to use VST Host anytime I feel like it, and Voicemeeter Pro comes with its own (manually engaged) Recorder.
Part 3 of this series will discuss Technical details for my setup. Your setup may need different settings or you may find a better way than I did. This will take some dedicated time.
The Global Jigsaw is brought to you by BBC Monitoring, a part of the BBC you may not have heard of. This team of journalists reports on media from 150 countries in up to 100 languages and provides information and analyses to BBC newsrooms and the UK government, as well as commercial clients including universities and thinktanks. It also has an intriguing and, at times, dramatic history dating back to the eve of World War Two. This bonus episode is all about us.
Vendors knew all about it, but most customers were clueless.
For more than 25 years, a technology used for critical data and voice radio communications around the world has been shrouded in secrecy to prevent anyone from closely scrutinizing its security properties for vulnerabilities. But now it’s finally getting a public airing thanks to a small group of researchers in the Netherlands who got their hands on its viscera and found serious flaws, including a deliberate backdoor.
The backdoor, known for years by vendors that sold the technology but not necessarily by customers, exists in an encryption algorithm baked into radios sold for commercial use in critical infrastructure. It’s used to transmit encrypted data and commands in pipelines, railways, the electric grid, mass transit, and freight trains. It would allow someone to snoop on communications to learn how a system works, then potentially send commands to the radios that could trigger blackouts, halt gas pipeline flows, or reroute trains.
Researchers found a second vulnerability in a different part of the same radio technology that is used in more specialized systems sold exclusively to police forces, prison personnel, military, intelligence agencies, and emergency services, such as the C2000 communication system used by Dutch police, fire brigades, ambulance services, and Ministry of Defense for mission-critical voice and data communications. The flaw would let someone decrypt encrypted voice and data communications and send fraudulent messages to spread misinformation or redirect personnel and forces during critical times. [Continue reading…]
The station aims to inform about the Antarctic activities that are carried out in the different Argentine bases, to disseminate the country’s culture to the rest of the world and also to “Malvinize from Antarctica”, highlighted its coordinator, Juan Benavente, in dialogue with Télam
Antarctic identity, sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands and inclusion are the axes of the programming carried out by LRA 36 Radio Nacional “Arcángel San Gabriel”, installed at the Esperanza Base in Argentine Antarctica , from where almost 44 years ago it began broadcasting on different frequencies to around the world and that this year it has been developing a series of technical and content innovations to amplify its dissemination strategy.
Regardless of the national situation, the station aims to inform about the Antarctic activities that are carried out in the different Argentine bases, to spread the country’s culture to the rest of the world and also to “Malvinize from Antarctica”, reflecting not only testimonies of war veterans but also of stories that unite sports and education with the archipelago, indicated its coordinator Juan Benavente.
As in the case of the “historic” communication made on March 15 with the Argentine marathon runner Daniela Badra when she was in the Malvinas to participate in a competition and which was broadcast to the world via short wave band during the “Uniendo Voces” program. . “This was something that filled us with emotion, it is something that had never been done before,” said Benavente, in dialogue with Télam.
Its inauguration in October 1979
LRA 36 broadcasts to the world on shortwave and is currently the only station on that band in the country. It works jointly with Radiodifusión Argentina al Exterior (RAE) – in charge of the experienced producer Adrián Korol – and they are listened to from places as far away as Alaska, Iceland or Japan, according to the latest reception reports. It also transmits by modulated frequency with local reach and a few years ago added streaming over the internet. [Continue reading in English, or in the original Spanish version…]
A new 1000 kW transmitter commencing construction to match the Indian one on the other side of the common border
On Thursday morning, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation officially passed the AM For Every Vehicle Act on to the Senate floor. The executive session was broadcast live and facilitated by committee chair Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat representing Washington state.
The ranking Republican, Sen. Ted Cruz, supports the measure, saying in a statement that “AM radio is vital to free expression and viewpoint diversity” and “allows Americans, especially conservatives, to communicate their points of view and help free speech flourish.”
The legislation was passed via a voice vote, and, while not every senator’s vote was recorded, the National Association of Broadcasters said Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat from Michigan, asked that he be recorded as a ‘no.’” Michigan is home to the U.S. automaker industry, which opposes the AM For Every Vehicle Act. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which has a base in Michigan, recently said, “Congress has never mandated radio features in vehicles ever before.” It called the bill unnecessary. [Continue reading…]
Littlejohn and Mullinax describe recent projects to protect and extend its investment
At a time where the viability of the U.S. AM broadcast band has come under the microscope, what’s the prevailing attitude of iHeartMedia and the 250 AM properties it owns and operates?
Continue to invest, says Jeff Littlejohn.
“iHeart is still focused on AM radio as a medium,” said the company’s executive vice president of engineering and systems integration. “We see the importance AM has not only as an entertainment medium, but for news and information.”
Among other things, Littlejohn strongly believes in AM’s importance for emergency weather coverage. Perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in South Florida.
In addition to being an iconic AM signal dating to the 1920s, iHeartMedia’s news/talk 610 WIOD in Miami has received notoriety and awards — including regional recognition from the Associated Press — for its breaking news and weather coverage, notably during Hurricanes Andrew, Katrina and Wilma. [Continue reading…]
Notes about two Spanish language stations (Tracy Wood)
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Tracy Wood, who writes:
I continue to enjoy the blog. Yes, those radio sets that appear in Spanish TV (and in the movies) are great! Lots of Grundigs, Philips, Telefunkens, and national brands.
Here are the two items
(1) Swan Island
At one time this was the home to Radio Swan, the US-funded anti-Castro clandestine radio station on AM and shortwave of the 1960s. Now Honduras wants to convert it to a prison island
Yes. Radio Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial, Malabo, is now streaming on the Internet. The main language is Spanish but I suspect other languages may be heard. The hosting company (out of Atlanta) handles both their TV and radio streams. The TV channel’s website is https://tvgelive.gq/ but there is no radio-specific website yet.
As a reminder, the country’s other station is commercial – Asonga Radio. It is owned by the president’s son. Audio is at https://asongaradio.com/
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who writes:
This review of the ATS-120 is quite good and should be of interest to SWLing readers. This is a feature packed portable, with some quirks such as lack of FM mode on shortwave. It has a LNA amp feature that appears to duplicate the Hi-Z function on Malachite portables. It has a very good feature that enables vertical or horizontal screen display. And it has both BT and WIFI.
On the downside the reviewer notes cross modulation from AM/FM signals which appears even with the LNA pre-amp off. I would say that for anyone interested in this receiver, perhaps waiting until design changes address this and other downsides.
If you like monitoring the VHF airband then this antenna might interest you.It is a half-wave dipole cut for the middle of the band. (Recall that half wave vertical dipoles do not need ground radials.)
