Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, who shares he following announcement from Airspy:
This year, we offer a 15% discount on all the Airspy products between the 17th and the 25th of June.
Check it out: https://airspy.com/purchase
Thanks for the tip, Dennis!
Mark Fahey’s Wellbrook antenna
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, who shares the following news from the Wellbrook Communications homepage:
Wellbrook Communications will cease trading at the end of April 2023.
This is due to retirement.
I would like to thank everyone for their custom over the past 27 years.
No doubt, the venerable Wellbrook loop has helped thousands radio enthusiasts mitigate RFI/QRM and make it possible to once again DX from home.
We wish Wellbrook owners a wonderful retirement!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, who shares the following video via YouTube:
Click here to view/listen via YouTube.
Wonderful recording. Thank you for the tip, Dennis!
Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Dennis Dura for the following tips:
The potential sale of one of the country’s only major manufacturers of high-power FM broadcast antennas is causing concern among public radio engineers who have long depended on the company for challenging projects such as directional antennas and multistation combiner systems.
Antennas and combiners made by Shively Labs carry the signals of many major stations, from Boston’s WBUR to Dallas’ KERA/KXT to Seattle’s KUOW. Shively’s headquarters in Maine boasts one of the few test ranges needed to fully prepare complex directional antenna systems for real-world performance.
Founded in 1963 by former RCA engineer Ed Shively, the company has been owned since 1980 by Howell Laboratories, an engineering firm that now has a wide range of product lines. Those include water purification systems, dehydrators and an increasing amount of contract work for the U.S. Navy.
While its military and commercial marine business has grown, broadcast antennas have become a smaller piece of the company’s portfolio, said Shively VP Angela Gillespie. [Continue reading…]
Catching signals from others is how we have started communicating as human beings. It all started, of course, with our vocal cords. Then we moved to smoke signals for long-distance communication. At some point, we discovered radio waves and are still using them for contact. This article will describe how you can tune in using Fedora Linux and an SDR dongle.
My journey
I got interested in radio communication as a hobby when I was a kid, while my local club, LZ2KRS, was still a thing. I was so excited to be able to listen and communicate with people worldwide. It opened a whole new world for me. I was living in a communist country back then and this was a way to escape just for a bit. It also taught me about ethics and technology.
Year after year my hobby grew and now, in the Internet era with all the cool devices you can use, it’s getting even more exciting. So I want to show you how to do it with Fedora Linux and a hardware dongle. [Continue reading…]
There’s something missing from the newest F-150 Lightning truck
These days, the auto industry is as disrupted as broadcast radio. Like the radio companies – a group of independent operators, each moving down a different pathway – automakers are highly individual companies. Continue reading
Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio.
A special thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, for these news tips! Enjoy:
Citizens for Informed Land Use is against a proposal before the Planning Board to reclassify the former Nokia site for redevelopment.
HOLMDEL, NJ — Citizens for Informed Land Use, Preserve Holmdel and others are rallying to preserve the Bell Labs Horn Antenna, which they say is threatened if the 43-acre site it stands on is reclassified for residential development.
The property at 791 Holmdel Road is home to the Bell Labs Horn Antenna, once used by Bell Labs scientists Dr. Robert Wilson, who still lives in the township, and Dr. Arno Penzias, to study microwave radiation from beyond the Milky Way, the organization says.
The site is also described by the group “as the highest point in Monmouth County, providing remarkable views of Raritan Bay and Manhattan.”
The scientists’ “research confirmed evidence of the Big Bang Theory as the origin of the universe and earned both men a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978,” the land use group said in a news release.
But on Nov. 22, the Township Committee approved a resolution directing the Planning Board to study whether the former Nokia site in the Crawford Hill section of Holmdel – the site of the Horn Antenna – should be reclassified as an “area in need of redevelopment.” [Continue reading…]
In Tuckerton, NJ, a massive cement monolith sits out of place, and upon closer inspection, out of time. You see, this gigantic block was once the base of the tallest structure in North America and the second tallest in the world after the Eiffel Tower. Built in 1912, the Tuckerton tower stood at 825 feet and was the first and most potent transatlantic broadcasting tower ever, but here’s the twist, although it was on US soil, it was entirely built by and belonged to Germany.
The Warsaw Radio Mast (Polish: Maszt radiowy w Konstantynowie) was a radio mast located near G?bin, Poland, and the world’s tallest structure at 646.38 metres (2,120.7 ft) from 1974 until its collapse on 8 August 1991.
Designed by Jan Polak, and one of the last radio masts built under Communist rule, the mast was conceived for height and ability to broadcast the “propaganda of the successes” to remote areas such as Antarctica. It was the third tallest structure ever built, being surpassed as the tallest by the Burj Khalifa tower in the United Arab Emirates in 2009 and Merdeka 118 tower in Malaysia in 2022. Designed by Jan Polak, its construction started in July 1970, was completed on 18 May 1974, and its transmitter entered regular service on 22 July of that year. The opening of the mast was met with extensive celebration and news coverage by the Polish Film Chronicle.
The Midland WR120 weather radio.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, who shares the following article from Slate:
NOAA Weather Radio needs some serious upgrades.
In March, a group of massive tornadoes struck communities around Des Moines, Iowa. Seven people were killed, including two children under 5. The crisis received attention not only due to its human cost, but also because of delays in emergency wireless communications: Thanks to a broken fiber optic cable at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Weather Service offices, wireless emergency transmissions were switched to an auxiliary satellite system, which all NWS offices use. Overloaded with extreme weather messages from elsewhere in the Midwest, the satellite messaging system found itself backed up just as the Iowa tornadoes reached their peak. This caused anywhere from a two- to nine-minute delay in tornado warning messages—and may have significantly reduced warning time at a moment when seconds count. The issue lasted for several hours as the deadly tornadoes ripped through the state.
NOAA Weather Radio, on the other hand, continued broadcasting effectively during the crisis. According to Bruce Jones, a weather radio expert and meteorologist with Midland Radio Corporation, “because the NWR broadcast comes direct from the National Weather Service local forecast office, those NOAA Weather Radio alerts and warnings were unimpeded and reached folks immediately.”
Often referred to as the “voice” of the National Weather Service, NOAA Weather Radio is a 24/7 public service that broadcasts weather information from more than 1,000 stations across the United States and many of its territories. And while Des Moines was a great success story for NOAA Weather Radio, the service faces mounting issues with aging technology and infrastructure, raising concerns over whether it will be able to continue protecting communities facing extreme weather.
[…]While NOAA Weather Radio has historically been an important, consistent, and life-saving means of emergency communication, it may not be for long. Outdated technology and failed attempts at modernization are threatening the NOAA Weather Radio system and resulting in extended outages for locations at risk. And as the climate crisis intensifies, this important technology is often vulnerable to the weather about which it’s meant to inform.
Interviews with NWS employees about outages reveal many local technical problems that take out communications, sometimes for weeks or months.
[…]Recent congressional action, however, has given new life to the possibility of systemic weather radio modernization. Rep. Stephanie Bice, a Republican from Oklahoma, has proposed the NOAA Weather Radio Modernization Act of 2021, which passed in the House of Representatives in May but has yet to pass in the Senate. From Oklahoma, Bice was well aware of the need for consistent weather communications during natural disasters like tornadoes, which affect her constituents.
The bill would authorize $20 million to expand coverage to the remaining 5 percent of the country without access to NOAA Weather Radio communications, as well as $40 million to modernize its hardware and software, including upgrading communication from copper wires to Internet services. According to Wesley Harkins, a representative from Bice’s office, “this paves the way for future development and provides failsafe options, so NWR is never down for an extended period of time.”
[…]The NWS itself acknowledges the benefits of this legislation. Maureen O’Leary, deputy director of public affairs at the NOAA, told me via email that improvements would include “expanding NWR coverage to rural and underserved communities, national parks, and recreation areas.”[…]
Click here to read the full article at Slate.com.
Click here to read articles relating to weather radio in the SWLing Post archives.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, who shares the following article from CBS Miami:
Click here to view on YouTube.
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – A massive shortwave radio antenna sits in a cow pasture north of Lake Okeechobee in Central Florida.
“We have 14, 100,000-watt transmitters and 23 antennas beaming to all parts of the world,” said Jeff White, the general manager of Miami-based WRMI.
The multi-signal station is said to be one of the largest shortwave radio operations in the world.
WRMI stands for Radio Miami International and worldwide coverage means it can easily send signals into Ukraine and Russia.
Shortwave is old school technology, think of World War II or the Cold War, as American-produced news beamed behind the iron curtain. Now, during the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has shut down journalism as we know it.
Kate Neiswender, one of the guiding lights behind funding news programming for Russian audiences, said, “they were going to pass a law making journalism essentially illegal, facing a 15-year criminal penalty.”
Neiswender and fellow former journalists formed a fundraiser to beam news into Russia, where state-controlled media, at best, does not tell the true story of the invasion and many Russian citizens have no clue about the severity of the invasion.
“This is a journalistic pursuit more than anything else,” said Neiswender. [Continue reading at CBS Miami…]
Click here to read our previous post about Shortwaves for Freedom and contribute to the campaign here.