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Hi all, Fastradioburst23 here letting you know about a the Imaginary Stations schedule on the shortwaves this Sunday 30th July 2023. The first show will be beamed to Europe via the services of Shortwave Gold in Germany at 2000 utc on 6160 khz and will be the debut of Skybird Radio International. Expect tunes in a global style.
Then later at 2200 hrs UTC on 9395 kHzvia WRMI is WSFR (Swiss Family Robinson/Lost Island Radio). Imagine you’re listening to the portable on a deserted island of your choice with all amenities provided. Tune in and let the imagination flow.
For more information on the shows email Imaginarystations (at) gmail (dot) com
The PIRATE Act Prohibits Landowners and Property Managers from Aiding Pirate Radio Operations
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WASHINGTON, July 21, 2023—The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau today issued nine warnings to landowners and property managers in the Miami area for apparently allowing illegal broadcasting from their properties. The FCC may issue a fine exceeding $2 million if it determines that a party continues to permit any individual or entity to engage in pirate radio broadcasting from any property that they own or manage.
“Providing a safe haven for pirate radio operations that can interfere with licensed broadcast signals and fail to provide emergency alert system notifications can have serious consequences for landowners and property managers that allow this conduct to occur on their properties,” said Loyaan A. Egal, Chief of the Enforcement Bureau. “I want to thank our field agents for their continued efforts to ensure compliance with federal law in this area.”
The Notices of Illegal Pirate Radio Broadcasting sent today target properties identified by
Enforcement Bureau field agents as sources of pirate radio transmissions. These notices formally notify landowners and property managers of the illegal broadcasting activity occurring on their property; inform landowners and property managers of their potential liability for permitting such activity to occur on their property; demand proof that the illegal broadcasting has ceased on the property; and request identification of the individual(s) engaged in the illegal broadcasting.
The PIRATE Act provides the FCC with additional enforcement authority, including higher
penalties against pirate radio broadcasters of up to inflation-adjusted amounts of $115,802 per day with a maximum of $2,316,034. In addition to tougher fines on violators, the law requires the FCC to conduct periodic enforcement sweeps and grants the Commission authority to take enforcement action against landlords and property owners that willfully and knowingly permit pirate radio broadcasting on their properties.
Readers note that the number of comments on the Shortwave Modernization Petition have surpassed well over 600 at time of posting. No doubt, this particular petition is getting more visibility and notice than expected.
You may know someone who met the love of their life through writing letters, and these days you’d be hard pressed to NOT know people who’ve met online… but have you ever come across someone who’s met her husband in Morse code?
Ulla Knox-Little knew that getting to do an expedition to Antarctica as the radio room operator would be a life-changing experience, but she never expected it to lead to her meeting the love of her life.
Last month, Readex welcomed librarians to a special breakfast presentation at this year’s ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, IL. Dr. Alban Webb, lecturer of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex, captivated the audience in attendance with his talk on “The Art of Listening: BBC Monitoring and the Historical Significance of the Transatlantic Open Source Intelligence Relationship”
Dr. Webb—a noted historian of BBC World Service—gave a fascinating and informative overview of the history of open-source intelligence (OSINT) and the role of BBC Monitoring, highlighting perspectives these newly digitized archives represent for the study of the 20th century history. Click here to read the full article.
Many thanks to SWLing Post and SRAA contributor, Dan Greenall, who shares the following off-air shortwave radio recording and writes:
In all of the recordings of Radio Botswana’s famous barnyard interval signal I can find, the barnyard sounds are accompanied by the sound of cowbells. There is usually a rooster crowing and cows mooing too.
Today, while revisiting some raw tape from an old cassette dated 1973, I came across a short [off-air] recording of some similar barnyard sounds, chickens clucking and cows mooing. No sign of the cow bells here, but perhaps they started up farther into the interval signal?
If this recording is from Radio Botswana, perhaps they were only using the animal sounds in 1973? Maybe someone out there can help with this? Sorry but I have no other info. Many thanks!
Dan Greenall
London, Ontario Canada
Thanks for sharing this, Dan.
If you can shed some light on this recording and if Radio Botswana’s interval signal has changed over the years, please comment with details! Thank you!
In Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, a wonderful old tube set appears in a scene set in a shop in old Jerusalem (the left of the shopkeeper).
Someone in Spain must be in love with old classic radios because we see a number of them in different scenes — primarily on a shelf in the shop of one of the main characters, along with a few portable radios. The large radio could be Grundig or any one of a number of other European sets — perhaps SWLing experts can provide the answer.
The rolling, green-turning-golden hills just outside Steve Shannon’s studio window at the offices of Inland Northwest Broadcasting north of downtown Moscow aren’t just pretty to look at.
They’re also the reason the AM radio dial remains important in this expansive, rural stretch of the country.
FM broadcasting is based on line-of-sight, but the pesky thing about AM waves is that they pass through anything, Shannon explained. And they reach a monthly audience that’s still more than 82 million strong across the country, most of them in areas just like the Palouse, according to a fall 2022 survey by broadcast tracking company Nielsen.
“People are tuning in to AM because they are listening to content they can’t get anywhere else,” said Shannon, operations manager for the group that is behind six stations on both the AM and FM dial broadcasting in Moscow and Colfax.
The future of the format seemed in jeopardy just a few short weeks ago, when broadcasters convened in Washington D.C. and pushed federal lawmakers to pressure carmakers who were pondering an end to AM receivers in new cars. Electric vehicles, growing in popularity and headed for a likely continued boom, especially with Washington outlawing the sale of new gas-powered cars beginning in 2035, create interference with a signal that can make AM transmissions difficult to hear, according to automakers.
That pressure, which included the introduction of legislation that would have required manufacturers to install AM receivers in new cars, appears to have made the point. In late May, Ford’s chief executive officer announced on social media it had reversed course and would provide the service in all 2024 Ford and Lincoln models after planning to remove it from some models because of higher costs and lack of listeners. [Continue reading…]
AM radio, a pioneering force in the world of broadcast communications, has for several decades been an essential medium for disseminating information and entertainment. However, its appeal has been progressively diminishing due to social, regulatory and technical challenges. Nevertheless, this scenario presents an opportunity for a significant revival.
The decline of AM radio can be traced back to significant changes in content, notably the reduction in locally focused programming. Many AM station owners made strategic decisions to move away from content that directly catered to local communities, often replacing local news, events and issue discussions with syndicated programming. These changes left a void of locally relevant content, reducing listeners’ connection with stations.
The Federal Communications Commission’s abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 exacerbated the situation. This doctrine, which required broadcasters to present contrasting views on controversial issues of public importance, ensured a balanced discourse on the airwaves. Its repeal led to increased broadcasts favoring extreme political views, either heavily liberal or conservative. While this trend may have appealed to specific audience segments, it risked alienating listeners seeking balanced discourse.
Compounding these programming shifts, religious content on the AM band has considerably increased. While serving an essential audience, the sheer volume of these broadcasts reduced the variety and balance of programming, possibly leading potential listeners to turn away. [Continue reading…]
In 1939 photographer Ralston B. Collins made a photo album of metro New York radio station WOR. This album is from the J. R. Poppele Collection at the Antique Wireless Museum.
This article describes the effects of EMP and CME and how to build a simple inexpensive Faraday cage.
Most readers of the SurvivalBlog are aware of the potential damage from either a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) or an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and the impact on everyday electronics. With an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse is generated at high altitudes from a nuclear explosion damaging sensitive electronics. A CME damages electronics in a similar way with the release of a large solar flare from the sun reaches carrying magnetic fluxes and plasma toward earth. These magnetic fluxes interfere with Earth’s magnetic fields and create current surges in power systems and electronics. As of this writing, there is several C and M class flare activity causing some Amateur Radio blackouts on the lower bands. To follow active solar weather visit Spaceweather.com. [Continue reading…]
Hi all, Fastradioburst23 here letting you know about a couple of instances of the Imaginary Station COOL on the shortwaves this Sunday 23rd July 2023. The first show will be beamed to Europe via the services of Shortwave Gold in Germany at 2000 utc on 6160 khz.
Then later at 2200 hrs UTC on 9395 kHz the show returns in a remix form via WRMI. On both transmissions expect some cool tunes for surf, sun and summer breezes and for the shortwave spectrum of course. For more information on the shows email Imaginarystations (at) gmail (dot) com
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, TomL, who shares the following guest post:
Using Computer Audio PlugIns with Older Radios
by TomL
Older radios have a way to get audio out to speakers or another audio input device, usually just a headphone jack. Software for processing audio are plentiful and very useful tools, called VST’s. Furthermore, most Plugins were made for Musicians needing full frequency spectrum capability. I will use my Kenwood TS-590S amateur radio as a test case. I have used its speaker output to a cheap Behringer UCA-202 RCA to USB converter (it has its own volume control to keep it from overloading).
My Windows 10 Sounds Properties sees this audio as “3-USB Audio CODEC” which I have enabled on a physical USB hub with individual power switches for each port. Thanks to Steve (K1GMM) and his YouTube channel (K1GMM Green Mountain Maniac) for describing how to use Windows plugins for processing either Receive or Transmit audio. This article only focuses on Receive audio.
For my simpler needs, I have chosen to use VST Host. It will run the small “apps” that usually have a file extension of .VST or .DLL. I downloaded it right from Steve’s website:
I then downloaded a number of plugins suggested by Steve on his web site (“More” Menu pulldown, DAW’s/VST DOWNLOADS). Each VST file can be copied to a central directory/folder on your computer and all read from the same place inside the VST Host. Most of these are Windows types but there are some for Linux if that is something you use. I found that VST Host does NOT like a write- protected directory, so it and the VST’s reside in my top-level Documents directory.
My resulting “chain” of VST’s process the audio from my 3-USB Audio CODEC in a sequential manner, which are:
ModernAmplifier (a Limiter to keep strong signals from overloading the processing)
ReaFir (an interesting “Subtract” feature where I cut down on the “roar” around 800-1200 Hz)
Bertom Denoiser Pro (EXCELLENT static & background noise reducer)
TDR Nova (a powerful, well-made Compessor & DynamicEQ combo)
Sennheiser-AMBEO-Orbit (a Binaural soundscape).
Once VST Host is installed, create a separate folder for the VST files. Now just copy the VST3 or DLL file for each of the apps downloaded like the ones I list above. If you have a 32-bit version of Windows, you will have to use the VST’s that are 32-bit, not 64-bit.
In VST Host, set the Wave Input and Output and sampling rate (Menu: Devices—Wave). In my case it is the aforementioned 3-USB Audio CODEC for (Microphone) Input Port and VoiceMeeter Aux-Input for the Output Port. The sampling rate is set to 48000 (You can choose Output to your “Default Speakers” which should be in the list if you do not use an extra mixer software like I do).
Now, go to Menu: File, Plugins and load each plugin that you want to use. The VST3 or DLL files should all be in the same directory that you made earlier. You may have to tell VST Host where to find them by setting the Plugin Path (Menu: File, Set Plugin Path…).
Now, once you have all the VST apps opened, you will notice that all of their individual outputs go directly to the VST Host Output. Not good, since your computer will not have enough cores to parallel-process all of these apps at the same time. So, Unchain them all by right-clicking on each app and choosing “Unchain”.
Now you will see all of the yellow connecting lines gone. Arrange (click/drag) each app in sequential order on the screen. Starting from the bottom up, right click on the app just above VST Output and choose Chain After…
Repeat up the chain, choosing the one above it to Chain After until you are left with a Daisy-Chain of apps, each output going to the Input of the next app in your desired order of processing:
Now turn on the radio to get audio going through the chain of apps. Tweaking each app is part of the tedious process of learning if an app will help or not. Just replace and Chain After in the order you want with other VST apps that you find more helpful. Tinkering with this should yield some satisfactory results if you do not overdo applying features in each app. To save the layout and VST settings, go to Menu: Performance, Save As and give it a name to store in the data file shown (just a name since it will put it into the default line 000 for you). You can choose this in future sessions from the main pulldown Menu below File. (Note: It is called “Performance” because this stuff was written for Musicians to save their home studio music along with the settings for shaping the music tracks; 99% of planet earth calls this a “Layout”, a la, Microsoft Office)
Here are two examples of sound from the radio without processing and then adding in each app over a few seconds.
LZ1AA from Bulgaria. Processing 10 secs., off 15 secs., on again 8 secs.
CHU Canada. Processing on, space, processing off. Notice a little “water” effect since AM Broadcast needs quite different settings compared to SSB Ham Radio.
You can check out Steve’s “Green Mountain Maniac” YouTube channel and see for yourself what can be done with sound processing for Radio. Some of his techniques can be used with old shortwave radio receivers as long as it has a working headphone jack or AUX Out jack:
