Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike (VE3MKX), who shares photos taken during the Hamilton, Ontario hamfest which took place on October 1, 2022.
Readers: This is a large gallery of 40 photos courtesy of Mike (VE3MKX). If you would like to view the entire image gallery click on the link to see more.
Apollo 11 (Photo: NASA)
Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
An intracellular antenna that’s compatible with 3D biological systems and can operate wirelessly inside a living cell.
A new study could allow scientists to create cyborgs at a cellular scale, thanks to MIT Media Lab for designing a miniature antenna that can operate wirelessly inside a living cell. This could have applications in medical diagnostics, treatment, and other scientific processes because of the antenna’s potential for real-time monitoring and directing cellular activity.
Scientists named this technology Cell Rover. It represents the first demonstration of an antenna that can operate inside a cell and is compatible with 3D biological systems.
Deblina Sarkar, assistant professor and AT&T Career Development Chair at the MIT Media Lab and head of the Nano-Cybernetic Biotrek Lab, said, “Typical bioelectronic interfaces are millimeters or even centimeters in size and are not only highly invasive but also fail to provide the resolution needed to interact with single cells wirelessly — especially considering that changes to even one cell can affect a whole organism.”
The size of the newly developed antenna is much smaller than a cell. The antenna represented less than .05 percent of the cell volume in research with oocyte cells. It converts electromagnetic waves into acoustic waves, whose wavelengths are five orders of magnitude smaller, representing the velocity of sound divided by the wave frequency — than those of the electromagnetic waves. [Continue reading…]
This episode was written and produced by Jack Higgins.
We’ve all heard the iconic recordings from the Apollo missions. But how exactly does NASA manage to run live audio between Earth and the moon? And how might we chat with astronauts on Mars and beyond? Featuring Astronaut Peggy Whitson, NASA Audio Engineer Alexandria Perryman, and Astrophysicist Paul Sutter.
Click here to listen on the 20,000 Hertz webite.
Australia’s communications regulator ACMA has asked radio amateurs to comment on their proposed amateur class licence and considerations for higher power 1 kW operation
The ACMA say:
Following the extensive 2021 public consultation and associated response to submissions, we have released a consultation paper on the proposed amateur class licence and supporting operational arrangements, along with considerations for higher power operation. This is the next step in our review of regulatory arrangements for the operation of non-assigned amateur stations.
The draft class licence for amateur radio has been amended to incorporate changes suggested by representative bodies, amateur radio clubs and individual amateurs during the 2021 consultation.
The consultation paper, proposed class licence and details about how to make a submission are available on the ACMA website
https://www.acma.gov.au/consultations/2022-09/proposed-amateur-class-licensing-arrangements-and-higher-power-operation-consultation-312022
Submissions close COB, Tuesday 29 November 2022.
Questions about the consultation
If you have an important question about this consultation, please send it directly to [email protected]. Please note, we may use the Amateur radio update e-bulletin to answer frequently asked questions.
Subscribe to the ACMA Amateur Radio newsletter at
https://www.acma.gov.au/subscribe-our-newsletters
In the late 1950s television networks ruled the airwaves from 7 to 11 PM, but outside of that timeslot television was live, local and unpredictable.
Jim Hanlon, W8KGI, worked as a summer relief engineer at Cincinnati’s WCPO-TV from 1956 to 1958. At that time WCPO-TV did not have any video recording technology, so all local TV was live TV and provided a refreshing dose of live programming, equipment failures and production creativity that been lost in today’s pasteurized, homogenized TV ecosystem.
Join Jim as he recalls what it like producing live TV programming in the early days of television broadcasting.
Click here to view on YouTube.
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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Giuseppe Morlè (IZ0GZW), who shares the following:
Dear Thomas and Friends of the SWLing Post,
I’m Giuseppe Morlè from Formia, central Italy on the Tyrrhenian Sea.
This time I want to show you 2 QRP connections made with minimal antenna over long distance and very few watts of power…
The antenna is a simple dipole, 5 meters per arm, 1/4 wave for 20 meters, on a bnc / banana socket directly on the Icom 705. You’ll see that the ROS is really optimal.
I wanted to experience this very simple antenna, easy to prepare in this location surrounded by greenery, Monte Orlando Park in Gaeta on my favorite DX bench;
this location is at 120 meters above sea level and facing south / west following the long path. A suitable place for the extreme right made especially for a receiver like the Icom 705– fantastic modulation and without any kind of noise.
In the first video the contact with VK2GJC, Greg from Australia who struggles a little to listen to me but immediately understands my name. As you can hear Greg’s voice is without any imperfection even if his signal is not that high:
In the second video, another link with Australia, VK5AVB, Tony from Kangaroo Island.
Tony had a hard time understanding my name but with the help of Nicola, IU5EYV from Tuscany, in pure Ham Spirit, he finally managed to log me:
As you can see, even with very minimal antennas hoisted on nearby trees, not even high from the ground, you can listen and contact over long distances … that’s why I love this place so much!
Thanks to you all, a cordial greeting from Italy.
Many thanks, once again, Giuseppe for showing us just how much fun we can have by building our own antennas and hopping on the air with very little power. I must say: you certainly play radio in a beautiful part of the world! Thank you!
I’m very honored to be featured with my good friend Wlodek (US7IGN) in a short radio documentary on BBC Radio 4 today.
Wlodek is long-time reader and subscriber here on the SWLing Post and QRPer.com. Wlodek lives in Kiev, Ukraine and we keep in touch these days over email. Like me, he is passionate about field radio work and before the Russian invasion, you’d often find him in nearby forests experimenting with some pretty impressive field antennas.
Sadly, when Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year, it very quickly brought an end to all of that for Wlod. Not only were amateur radio operators not allowed to transmit under the state of emergency, but it’s no longer safe to venture into nearby forests.
Radio producer, Cicely Fell, learned about our love of all things field radio and put together an audio piece that airs today on BBC Radio 4:
From the forests of North Carolina, USA to the city of Kyiv, Ukraine – two ham radio enthusiasts seek each other out and a voice from the past prompts a dialogue on listening between a rabbi and a radio producer.
Click here to listen via the BBC Radio 4 website (note that the audio can be streamed shortly after the program airs today).
Many thanks to Cicely and her talented team at Falling Tree Productions for spending a little time with us in the forest and on the air! Truly an honor.
By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM
Okay, I realize this is ham related, but I thought it was fun, and I hope you do too.
On a quiet Saturday morning in May, the “Big Gun” Motorola 1250 (which is used for running the Commuter Assistance Net) is quietly scanning through half a dozen frequencies.
The scanning stops on the 147.330 repeater, and a computer voice announces: “Echolink activated.”
Huh, that’s unusual, I think.
According to echolink.org, here’s the scoop on EchoLink:
EchoLink® software allows licensed Amateur Radio stations to communicate with one another over the Internet, using streaming-audio technology. The program allows worldwide connections to be made between stations, or from computer to station, greatly enhancing Amateur Radio’s communications capabilities. There are more than 350,000 validated users worldwide — in 159 of the world’s 193 nations — with about 6,000 online at any given time.
A few seconds later, a male voice with a distinct British accent drops a call on the repeater: “GB2022ER.”
What?!! A Great Britain call sign with multiple numbers in the middle? What’s going on?
I reply: KB2GOM.
Mark, the British ham, tells me he is running a special events station with a special call sign to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee. He tells me I am the very first contact for the special events station. I tell him that he is my very first Echolink contact.
We chat for a bit, exchange good wishes and sign off.
A bit later, I look him up on QRZ and send Mark an email. Since I am his first contact for the special events station, is there a QSL card available? He replies that he will see what he can do.
A few weeks later, an envelope arrives with this coaster inside:
For a moment, I felt like James Bond:
Also inside were these postcards:
In all, it made me smile.
Bottom line – moral of the story, if you will – you never know what’s going to happen on the radio.
Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Since September 2020, ABC Radio has been quietly trialing DRM technology in Victoria
The public-service Australian Broadcasting Corp. and its transmission contractor BAI Communications Transmission Network hosted a public demonstration of Digital Radio Mondiale broadcasts on June 29, 2022. ABC highlighted the use of DRM on both AM and FM in Wagaratta, Victoria.
According to the DRM Consortium, the demonstration was the culmination of almost two years of COVID-impacted work to assess the performance of DRM services in Australia’s VHF and medium-wave bands.
Previously, the Australian Amateur Radio Experimenters Group reported that AREG member Steve Adler (VK5SFA) had been monitoring “a very un-publicized Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) trial” on 747 kHz from Wangaratta in August 2021.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority provided ABC with a license variation to conduct the DRM 30 trials from September 1, 2020, to August 31, 2022.
At the public demonstration, senior representatives from the public, commercial and community radio sectors, along with regulators and other interested parties, were able to hear and see the capabilities of DRM broadcasting on AM from Dockers Plains and on FM from Mount Baranduda. They were also able to review the transmission equipment at Wagaratta.[Continue reading…]
Also check out the DRM Consortium’s article on this same topic.
The James Webb Space Telescope probably needs no introduction, since it is perhaps the most important and well-known mission of the last years. It was launched on Christmas day from Kourou, French Guiana, into a direct transfer orbit to the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point. JWST uses S-band at 2270.5 MHz to transmit telemetry. The science data will be transmitted in K-band at 25.9 GHz, with a rate of up to 28 Mbps.
After launch, the first groundstation to pick the S-band signal from JWST was the 10 m antenna from the Italian Space Agency in Malindi, Kenya. This groundstation commanded the telemetry rate to increase from 1 kbps to 4 kbps. After this, the spacecraft’s footprint continued moving to the east, and it was tracked for a few hours by the DSN in Canberra. One of the things that Canberra did was to increase the telemetry rate to 40 kbps, which apparently is the maximum to be used in the mission.
As JWST moved away from Earth, its footprint started moving west. After Canberra, the spacecraft was tracked by Madrid. Edgar Kaiser DF2MZ, Iban Cardona EB3FRN and other amateur observers in Europe received the S-band telemetry signal. When Iban started receiving the signal, it was again using 4 kbps, but some time after, Madrid switched it to 40 kbps.
At 00:50 UTC on December 26, the spacecraft made its first correction burn, which lasted an impressive 65 minutes. Edgar caught this manoeuvre in the Doppler track.
Later on, between 7:30 and 11:30 UTC, I have been receiving the signal with one of the 6.1 metre dishes at Allen Telescope Array. The telemetry rate was 40 kbps and the spacecraft was presumably in lock with Goldstone, though it didn’t appear in DSN now. I will publish the recording in Zenodo as usual, but since the files are rather large I will probably reduce the sample rate, so publishing the files will take some time.
In the rest of this post I give a description of the telemetry of JWST and do a first look at the telemetry data. [Continue reading…]
The average person’s perception of a ham radio operator, assuming they even know what that means, is more than likely some graybeard huddled over the knobs of a war-surplus transmitter in the wee small hours of the morning. It’s a mental image that, admittedly, isn’t entirely off the mark in some cases. But it’s also a gross over-simplification, and a generalization that isn’t doing the hobby any favors when it comes to bringing in new blood.
In reality, a modern ham’s toolkit includes a wide array of technologies that are about as far away from your grandfather’s kit-built rig as could be — and there’s exciting new protocols and tools on the horizon. To ensure a bright future for amateur radio, these technologies need to be nurtured the word needs to be spread about what they can do. Along the way, we’ll also need to push back against stereotypes that can hinder younger operators from signing on.
On the forefront of these efforts is Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), a private foundation dedicated to supporting amateur radio and digital communication by providing grants to scholarships, educational programs, and promising open source technical projects. For this week’s Hack Chat, ARDC Executive Director Rosy Schechter (KJ7RYV) and Staff Lead John Hays (K7VE) dropped by to talk about the future of radio and digital communications. [Continue reading…]
Radio World reports the Electromagnetic Interference generated by Electric Vehicles is causing some EV automakers to drop AM (medium wave) radio
The article says:
Some EV automakers are dropping AM altogether due to audio quality concerns, but that’s just one piece of the puzzle as radio continues to fight for space on the dash.
“As carmakers increase electric vehicle offerings throughout their lineups, the availability of AM radio to consumers is declining,” said Pooja Nair, communications systems engineer with Xperi Corp., in a Radio World guest commentary. “This is because the effects of electromagnetic interference are more pronounced in EVs than in vehicles with internal-combustion engines.”
In other words, electromagnetic frequencies generated by EV motors occupy the same wavelength as AM radio signals. The competing signals clash, effectively cancelling each other out. As EV motors grow more powerful, AM static tends to increase.
Read the full story at
https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/headlines/why-are-some-automakers-ditching-am-radio
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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alexander (DL4NO), who shares the following photos and notes from Friedrichshafen:
Alexander (DL4NO)
Finally the biggest amateur radio event in Europe happened again: Last weekend hams from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, GB and more gathered in Friedrichshafen. The location is quite attractive, in Germany but near Austria and Switzerland. I could not get any numbers yet. But the event was quite a bit smaller than in 2017 when I was there the last time.
As every year amateur radio societies from Europe and the ARRL had booths. The most remarkable was from the Austrian OeVSV with their own stage. They had their own, quite interesting lectures. For example Austrian Hams have used the geostationary satellite QO-100 for LoRa experiments. They are quite active with LoRa as this technology allows to transmit data quite slowly, but quite far and with a minimum of power. Their project is called MeshCom. Continue reading