Tag Archives: Bill Hemphill (WD9EQD)

Guest Post: Remembering the great “Radio Moving Day” of 1941

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bill Hemphill, who shares the following guest post and addendum to his most recent post on BBC Re-Tune messages:

Radio Moving Day

by Bill Hemphill (WD9EQD)

After listening to the BBC “Re-Tune” broadcasts, it reminded me of when the United States had its own “Re-Tune” day on March 29, 1941. It was referred to as “Moving Day”.

At 3:00 am, 802 of the 890 radio stations moved frequency. Following are a couple of articles about this day:

http://www.jimramsburg.com/the-march-of-change-audio.html

https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/in-1941-stations-confronted-39moving-day39

And a previous SWLing Post article:

https://swling.com/blog/2021/04/am-radio-history-80th-anniversary-of-the-havana-treaty/

Like the BBC, there were also broadcasts helping listeners to get ready:

I love how it was used as an opportunity to get the radio listener to call on the radio technician to re-program the radio push buttons. And of course while the technician is there, have him do a full alignment and maybe replace a tube.

The March 1941 issue of Radio and Television Retailing (Pages 16-17) had the article “Radio’s Opportunity for Contact”.

Link: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-Retailing/40s/Radio-Retailing-1941-03.pdf

While the entire article is an interesting read, the first few paragraphs sums up the opportumities:

THE OPPORTUNITY for contact with consumers using pushbutton-tuned radios., afforded by dramatic March 29 broadcast station frequency shifts, represents an absolutely unique invitation to move more major merchandise, with the promotional expense at least partially covered by service and accessory sales.

Imagine what slick automobile salesmen could do if roads were suddenly altered in such a manner that 10,000,000 cars required some adjustment to operate properly, what refrigerator salesmen might accomplish if a change in current necessitated motor manipulation, how laundry equipment salesmen would positively gloat over the glut of prospects if that many people with old machines actually asked them to call.

Calls make sales, as the records of many home specialty retailers conclusively prove, and the beauty of this particular opportunity to make them lies in the three-fold fact that cold-canvassing is completely unnecessary, that the motivating power of any campaign built around it is obviously not just trumped-up by the trade and that only dealers selling or servicing radios can capitalize in all departments of their business.

So valuable from a major merchandising sales angle is the opportunity to call upon consumers afforded by the necessity for changing pushbutton settings that we suspect many radio retailers will hesitate to charge for this adjustment.

This may be particularly true where consumers so contacted are obviously prospects for new merchandise and will undoubtedly occur in some instances where customers are still being carried on time-payment accounts.

The Feb 1941 issue of Radio Service-Dealer (Page 8) also stressed the opportunities.

Link: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-Service-Dealer/40s/Radio-Service-Dealer-1941-02.pdf

From Page 8:

Reallocation of Broadcast Frequencies M arch 29th Opens Big Job For Service men Resetting Nation’s Push-Buttons

YOUR JOB

There are approximately 10 million push-button receivers in operation in this country. It will be your job to re-set the buttons for the new frequencies in the shortest possible time and with the least amount of confusion. It will also be your job and your opportunity to inspect these receivers for faulty operation. No such opportunity is likely to present itself again, so make the best of it.

And on page 7 of the Mar 1941 issue of Radio Service-Dealer has the article FREQUENCY REALLOCATION SERVICING PROBLEMS

Link: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-Service-Dealer/40s/Radio-Service-Dealer-1941-03.pdf

The first Problem discussed is the IF Frequency:

1A—If a station with a strong signal intensity happens to be operating on double the frequency of the intermediate frequency of a receiver, there is liable to be a heterodyne whistle. The frequency of 455 kc has been used as the standard intermediate frequency on receivers manufactured in the United States. One main reason for selecting this frequency was that the broadcast frequency of 910 kc was assigned to Canada and, therefore, the possibility of a heterodyne note being produced on a receiver in the United States was at a minimum. Under the terms of the reallocation several American stations will be moved to 910 kc thus producing a problem in the cities where these stations are to be located. If a heterodyne note is heard due to this cause the remedy is to shift the intermediate frequency to one side or another.

Thank you, Bill, for shedding more light on Radio Moving Day and, especially, providing us with the broadcaster and technician’s point of view.

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BBC Radio Stations Broadcasting Re-Tune Instructions

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bill Hemphill (WD9EQD), who writes:

Hi Thomas,

The BBC in their transition to digital radio has started closing some of their AM radio stations.

See following link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/work-warning/news/mw-closures-2021

The AM stations being closed are broadcasting “Re-Tune” instructions on their frequencies.

Not sure how long they will be doing this. The “Re-Tune” messages are interesting.

I have used the G4DYA KiwiSDR web receiver to listen and record some of the “Re-Tune” messages.

Most are just straight forward instructions, but Radio Hereford-Worcester on 738 has recorded individual

messages by several of their on-air personalities. The messages just loop continuously.

Attached are MP3 files for 738 Radio Hereford-Worcester, 1035 Radio Sheffield, 1341 Radio Ulster and 1503 Radio Stoke.

Bill Hemphill, WD9EQD

Recordings

738 Radio Hereford-Worcester

1035 Radio Sheffield

1341 Radio Ulster

1503 Radio Stoke

Thank you so much for taking the time to make these recordings and for sharing them with us here!

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Radio Songs by Silvia Swart

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(Photo: Silvia Swart via Facebook)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bill Hemphill, who writes:

I ran across a reference to Radio Delta International Shortwave, a Hollands station on 6020 kHz. The reference was to a song that was recorded for them by Silvia Swart en het Radio Delta lied. Which (according to Google) translates to The Radio Delta Song. It’s on YouTube and I like the sound of it even thought I don’t know Dutch.

YouTube link to the Radio Delta song:

There’s some nice photos and background to the station equipment on Delta Radio web site;

https://radiodelta.am/

After listening to the song by Silvia Swart, I did a search on her and found that she did other radio songs.

Radio Krachttoer:

Radio Combination Team:

Next step was to dive in and learn a little more about her. Thank goodness for Google Translate. From her website

https://www.silviaswart.nl/

I learned that Silvia has made over 155 tunes for legal / illegal pirate stations, associations.

Her parents run a record shop in Holland and that her father, Record King JB Swart, produced the Original Pirate Hits. From his web site

https://www.jbswart.nl/

I learned that his store carries Pirate Music as well as the usual Dutch and other stuff a record store would normally carry. Now I understand her interest in radio.

One last song I found that she recorded with her group, The Greenlights:

Mijn opa is een zendpiraat

Which translate to: My grandfather is a radio pirate

Maybe one of the forum members can give us a quick translation/summary of the songs.

Bill Hemphill

WD9EQD

Thank you for sharing this, Bill! Any fans of Silvia Swart out there? Please comment!

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Guest Post: Methods for discovering and recording online radio programming for later listening

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

Time Shifting Radio Programs for Later Listening

by Bill (WD9EQD)

There are quite a few programs on shortwave that I enjoy listening to for the actual program content. If I am lucky, I will receive a strong enough signal to really enjoy the experience. But all too often, I either can’t directly receive the program or conditions are such that listening is just not enjoyable. What I was looking for was good quality sound that I could listen to on my schedule.

I could always just go to the station website and listen to the live stream of the program. But what if there are two programs on different stations at the same time? I would have to choose which one to listen to. What I needed was a way to listen to the program on my schedule.

This write-up will be presenting several ways this can be accomplished.

Is the Program Streamed?

In many cases, it is possible to go to the program’s website and then listen to the latest program or even an archive of past programs at your convenience. Some examples are:

Hobart Radio International http://www.hriradio.org/

Radio Emma Toc https://www.emmatoc.org/worldserviceindex

VORW International https://soundcloud.com/vorw

AWR Wavescan http://eu.awr.org/en/listen/program/143

Blues Radio International: http://www.bluesradiointernational.net/

This is a Music Show https://thisisamusicshow.com/

Radio Northern Europe International: https://www.mixcloud.com/RadioNorthernEurope/

Alt Universe Top 40: https://www.altuniversetop40.com/links

International Radio Report https://www.ckut.ca/en/content/international-radio-report

World of Radio http://worldofradio.com/

The Shortwave Report http://www.outfarpress.com/shortwave.shtml

Lost Discs Radio Show https://www.lostdiscsradio.com/

Grits Radio Show https://archive.org/details/gritsradioshow2020

Le Show with Harry Shearer http://harryshearer.com/le-show/

Can the Program Be Downloaded?

All HRI programs are available on their Archive.org page.

Quite often, the program’s web site will also let you download the program for listening at a later date. Some examples are:

Hobart Radio International has an Internet Archive page where you can listen to and download their previous programs: https://archive.org/details/@hobart_radio_international

Radio Emma Toc has a button for “broadcast & internet relay services wishing to air our programme”.

But anyone can download the program.

VORW International: https://soundcloud.com/vorw

(Note: You will have to sign into Soundcloud to be able to download the files)

AWR Wavescan: http://eu.awr.org/en/listen/program/143

Your Weekend Show: https://open.spotify.com/show/2RywtSHWHEvYGjqsK6EYuG

International Radio Report https://www.ckut.ca/en/content/international-radio-report

World of Radio http://worldofradio.com/

The Shortwave Report http://www.outfarpress.com/shortwave.shtml

Lost Discs Radio Show https://www.lostdiscsradio.com/

Grits Radio Show https://archive.org/details/gritsradioshow2020

Le Show with Harry Shearer http://harryshearer.com/le-show/

WBCQ has a link to an Archive of some of their programs. Just click on the Archive link and you will go to Internet Archive where there are a lot of programs that can be streamed or downloaded. The programs include:

Adventures in Pop Music
Analog Telephone Systems Show
B Movie Bob
Cows in Space
Godless Irena 1
Grits Radio Show
Lost Discs Radio Show
Radio Timtron Worldwide
Texas Radio Shortwave
The Lumpy Gravy Show
Zombies in your Brain
Vinyl Treasures
Plus many, many other programs…

Does the Program Have a Podcast?

Check to see if the program has a podcast. Many programs do and this makes it easy to always have the latest program updated into my favorite podcast program.

AWR Wavescan is available on a number of podcasting platforms

Some programs that have podcasts:

Hobart Radio International
AWR Wavescan
Blues Radio International:
Your Weekend Show
International Radio Report
World of Radio
The Shortwave Report
The Lost Discs Radio Show
Le Show with Harry Shearer

Directly Record the Stream While It Is Being Broadcast

This method is a little more difficult and requires some setup. The method is to record the program directly from the internet stream of the station as it is broadcasting the program. Once set up, the procedure is completely automatic and will continue to capture the program until it is disabled in the scheduler.

Let’s walk through a typical program that we want to record. I like Alan Gray’s “Last Radio Playing” program on WWCR. It is broadcast weekly on Wednesday at 6pm Central Time on 6115. While I can receive the program over the air, it’s not very good reception, so I usually just stream it off the internet.

What I want to do is to set up an automatic computer program that will connect to the stream on Wednesday night, record the stream for one hour and then disconnect. I use the program StreamRipper which can run on either Linux or Windows.

http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/

Since I have a spare Raspberry Pi 4 computer, I chose to use the Linux version. The following description is based on Linux. A similar method I’m sure could be done with the Windows version.

Fortunately, StreamRipper is in the current software repository for the Raspberry PI and I could just install it with having to do a compile. I’m sure other Linux distributions probably also have it in their repository. It was a simple matter to install it. In Linux, Streamripper is run from the command line in a terminal window.

A typical command line for SteamRipper is:

streamripper station_URL_stream –a “filename” –A –d directory_path -l seconds

where

station_URL_stream is the http address of the audio stream. Determining this can sometimes be challenging and some methods were recently discussed in a SWLing Post:

https://swling.com/blog/2021/04/robs-tips-for-uncovering-radio-station-stream-urls/

–a says to record the audio as a single file and not try to break it up into individual songs.

“filename” the filename of the resultant mp3 file goes here in quotes

-A again says to create a single file.

-d tells it the directory path to store the mp3 file. Place the full directory path after the –d

-l specifies how long to record. Enter the number of seconds after –l.

(note: this is lower case letter l)

For Last Radio Playing, the command line is:

streamripper http://67.225.254.16:3763 –a “Last Radio Playing” –A –d /home/pi/RIP/wwcr –l 3600

when executed, this would connect to the URL stream, record for 3600 seconds (60 minutes) and then disconnect from the stream A file called “Last Radio Playing.mp3” would be in the wwcr1 directory.

Save this command line to a shell file, maybe wwcr.sh. Then make this shell file executable.

Last is to enter a crontab entry to schedule the shell file wwcw.sh to be run every Wednesday at 6pm ct.

At the command line, enter crontab –e to edit the cron table.

Add the following line at the end:

0 19 * * 3 /home/pi/wwcr.sh

then exit and save the crontab file.

This line says to execute wwcr.sh every Wednesday at 1900 (my computer is on eastern time).

There are many ways to enhance the shell script. For example, I have added the date to the mp3 file name. My wwcr1.sh shell script is:

NOW=$(date +”%Y-%m%d”)

# WWCR1 Last Radio Playing

# Wednesday 7-8pm et

streamripper http://67.225.254.16:3763 -a “$NOW Last Radio Playing” -A -u FreeAmp/2.X -d /media/pi/RIP/wwcr1 -l 3600

This will create a MP3 file with the date in the file name. For example

2021-0505 Last Radio Playing.mp3

Note: I named the file wwcr1.sh to denote that WWCR transmitter 1 was being streamed. Each of the WWCR transmitters have different stream URL.

Most radio streams work fine with the default user agent but WWCR required a different user agent which is why the –u FreeAmp/2.X is added. Normally, –u useragent is not required. The default works fine.

For each program, just create a similar shell file and add it to the cron scheduler.

Streamripper is very powerful and has many options. One option is for it to attempt to divide the stream up into individual files – one for each song. Sometimes this works quite well – it all depends on the metadata that the station is sending over the stream. I usually just go for a single file for the entire show. Some stations are a little sloppy on whether the program starts on time – sometimes they start a minute early and sometimes run a minute over. The solution is to increase the recording time to two minutes longer and then specify in the crontab file that the show starts a minute early. It’s easy to adjust to whatever condition might be occurring.

Recording the BBC

I have found that the BBC makes it more difficult to use this procedure. For one thing, they have just changed all their stream URL’s. And they have decided NOT to make them public. When they did this some of the internet radios broke since they still had the old URL’s. Of course it didn’t take long for someone to discover and post the new stream URL’s:

https://gist.github.com/bpsib/67089b959e4fa898af69fea59ad74bc3#file-bbc-radio-m3u

I have tested the Radio 4 Extra stream and it does seem to work. For how long is anyone’s guess.

I found that while streamripper did seem to work on BBC, all the mp3 files came out garbled. So the method above doesn’t seem to work with the BBC.

I went back to the drawing board (many hours on Google) and discovered another way to create a shell script that can be scheduled to record a stream. This involves using the programs mplayer and timelimit.

First step is to install the programs mplayer and timelimit to the Linux system. mplayer is a simple command line audio and video player. timelimit is a program that will execute another program for a specific length of time.

First I created a shell script bbc30.sh:

#!/bin/bash

NOW=$(date +”%Y-%m%d-%H%M”)

# BBC Extra 4 – 30 minute program

timelimit -t1800 mplayer http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_radio_four_extra -dumpstream -dumpfile /media/pi/RIP/$NOW-bbc.mp3

Note: The bold line above is all on one line in the shell file.

This script will execute the timelimit command. The timelimit command will then execute the mplayer command for 1800 seconds (30 minutes).

The mplayer command then connects to the http stream; the stream instead of playing out loud is dumped to the dumpfile /media/pi/RIP/$NOW-bbc.mp3

The crontab entry becomes:

30 23 11 5 * /home/pi/bbc30.sh

In this case, the program on May 11 at 2330 will be recorded.

Summary

In conclusion, Podcasts are the easiest way to get the programs. But automatically recording directly from the station stream is really not that much harder to do. Just be careful. It’s very easy to accumulate much more audio than you can ever listen to in this lifetime.

One final note. The use of a Raspberry Pi makes this a very easy and convenient method. I run the pi totally headless. No keyboard, mouse or monitor. It just sits on a shelf out of the way and does it thing. I either log in using VNC when I want the graphical desktop, Putty for the command line, or WinSCP for transferring files. The Pi stays out of the way and I don’t end up with another computer system cluttering up my desktop.

Besides recording several shortwave programs, I use Streamripper to record many FM programs from all around the United States. It’s great for recording that program that is on in the early morning hours.

Bill WD9EQD

Smithville, NJ

Thank you for sharing this with the SWLing Post community, Bill! This weekend, I’m going to put one of my RPi 3 units into headless service recording a few of my favorite programs that aren’t available after the live broadcast. Many thanks for the detailed command line tutorial!

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WNJC DX test starting 04:00 UTC on October 18, 2020

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bill Hemphill (WD9EQD), who shares the following announcement from Les Rayburn (N1LF):

DX Test This Saturday Night/Sunday Morning– WNJC 1360, Washington Township,
NJ

WNJC 1360 DX TEST– SATURDAY OCTOBER 17 INTO SUNDAY MORNING OCTOBER 18

“04:00 UTC-Midnight Eastern- WNJC will conduct the DX audio test using Morse
Code and sweep tones continuing on our nighttime pattern.

At 0500 UTC- 1 AM Eastern I will be switching to our daytime pattern at 5kw
using 4 towers directional to SSE with the DX audio test concluding at 0600
UTC. From 0600 – 1000 UTC I will be leaving the transmitter in daytime mode
but be playing a mix of 80s – 2010 pop, rock, dance, country and whatever
else I grew up listening to and feel like playing.

Listen for the sweepers between songs of movie & tv show clips along with
our voice-over guy.”

WNJC has tested previously and been heard as far away as the West Coast of
the United States and Canada. Their test signals have also been received in
the UK, Norway, and Spain. Listen for their signal if you get the chance.

Thank you for the tip, Bill!

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Deke Duncan of Radio 77: Broadcasting to an audience of one

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Photo by Ben Koorengevel

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bill Hemphill (WD9EQD), who writes:

I’ve just finished reading “Sealand’s Caretakers”. Very fascinating.

In the article, they give a link to an article “This excerpt describes the fallout that came from a gang of international scam artists bootlegging Sealand passports.”

This article is titled: “The Plot Against the Principality of Sealand” and is hosted on narratively.com.

It’s another fascinating article about Sealand and well worth the read.

Narratively.com is a very interesting site with lots of well written articles. In perusing the site, I came across an article about Deke Duncan who ran Radio 77 from a backyard shed for an audience of one.

At the end of the article, you can listen to the “Radio 77” episode of Snap Judgement by Jeff Maysh.

BBC did a piece on it in 1974:

It’s a great story about someone’s love of radio.

For even more detail about Deke, check out this article.

Thank you so much for sharing this, Bill!

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Bill’s first DX contest using a Panasonic RF-2200 and a hombrew diode/loop radio

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

My First DX Contest

by Bill Hemphill, WD9EQD

Being a recent new member of NJARC, this is my first time competing in this contest. I have always been a big fan of BCB DXing and have recently got back into it – especially with the amateur radio bands being in such poor conditions. The acquisition of a couple of Loop antennas plus two Panasonic RF-2200 radios have just enhanced my enjoyment.

For the contest, I used two completely different radios. First was the RF-2200 and second was a spur of the moment creation.

The RF-2200 was its usual good performer. While the RF-2200 has a beautiful built-in rotating bar antenna, I enhanced it with the 27” Torus-Tuner Loop Antenna as made by K3FDY, Edmund Wawzinski. I think I had picked this antenna up at one of NJARC’s swap meets. So I wish to thank whoever it was that was nice enough to bring it and sell it at the meet. I have really enjoyed using it. With this setup, I was hoping that I might be able to pull in Denver, Salt Lake City and maybe even a Mexican station, but it was a complete bust on them. But I did have a nice surprise in receiving the Cuban station Radio Enciclopedia on 530 in addition to the usual Radio Reloj time signal station. Following is photo of it in operation:

Originally, I had thought that my second contest entry would be done with a 1962 Sony TR-910T three-band transistor radio. This radio has a fairly wide dial along with a second fine-tuning knob which would be a big help. I would have again used the 27” hula-hoop antenna.

But I made the nice mistake of running across Dave Schmarder’s Makearadio website:

http://makearadio.com/

Dave’s site is a wonderful resource for creating your own Crystal, Tube, and Solid State radios as well as Audio Amplifiers and Loop Antennas. While going down the rabbit hole of his site, I ran across his Loop Crystal Set, #19 Crystal Radio:

http://makearadio.com/crystal/19.php

What grabbed my attention was the wood frame loop antenna which is similar to one I had acquired a couple of years ago at a ham fest:

It was a really nicely constructed, nice swivel base.

I replaced the tuning capacitor with one that has a 6:1 ratio.

At this point I started thinking that I could create something similar with my loop.

I randomly grabbed a diode from my parts box. Not sure what the exact model is. (I later found out that it was an IN-34 which is what I was hoping it was.) Then quickly soldered the diode, a resistor and capacitor to a RCA plug:

I then proceeded to use some jumper cables and just clip it to the tuning capacitor on the antenna base:

The RCA plug was then the audio out (I hope) from the radio.

I quickly realized that I did not have a crystal headset or any headset that would reproduce any audio. So I used an old Marantz cassette recorder to act as an amplifier. Fed it into the mic jack and then tried to listen to the monitor out. Bingo – I could pick up or local station on 1340 really weak.

So I then fed the audio from the Marantz into a Edirol digital recorder. Now I was getting enough audio for the headphones plus could make a recording of the audio.

At last I was receiving some signals. To boost the audio some more I removed the resistor from the circuit.

I found out the I could only tune from about 530 to 1350. I probably needed to clip the lead on one of the loop turns, but I really wanted to see how it would do at night. I spent several hours and was just totally amazed at how well it performed and how good the audio was. The hardest part was when there were very strong signals on the adjacent frequency. What I found really interesting was that it was not linear in its tuning. At the low end of the band the stations were more spread out than at the higher end. This made tuning fairy easy at the low end and very touchy at the high end. I was able to hear a couple of Chicago stations along with Atlanta and St. Louis.

Here’s photo of it in action:

I have created an audio file of the station ID’s heard with the diode/loop radio. The audio file is on the Internet Archive at:

https://archive.org/details/bcbstationidsondioderadio

I had a lot of fun in the contest and especially enjoyed trying something really different with the diode/loop radio. Now I have a whole year to try to think up something really creative for next year’s contest.

Absolutely brilliant, Bill! I’m so happy to see that your ham fest homebrew loop has served you so very well in a contest. I love how you pulled audio from your homebrew, make-shift diode radio as well–using your audio gear in a chain for amplification obviously worked very well.

Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Bill!

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