Tag Archives: Kanwar Sandhu

Top 10 DX of the Year SWL Contest

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Kanwar Sandhu, who shares the following announcement/rules for the Top 10 DX of the Year Contest:

Top 10 DX of the Year Rules

The date of the contest:
From 1 December 2020, 00:00 UTC to 31 December 2020, 24:00 UTC

– The contest is open for all shortwave listeners. It is not obligatory to be a club member.

– The contest is free of charge and all costs are covered by TOP DX RADIOCLUB.

– The task of the contest:
Reception of 10 BROADCAST stations from 10 optional, DIFFERENT countries during the contest (according to the official DXCC list**).

– The aim of the contest:
Award of the best DX’er who really succeeded in receiving the year’s TOP 10 DX: it means that it received the smallest power station possible from the longest distance possible.

– It is not obligatory to register in advance. On the other hand, it would help the organizers if you sent an email with your name and 6-character Maidenhead QTH locator code*. If you don’t wish to do that it is enough to provide your data in the contest log. All personal data and email addresses are handled with care by TOP DX RADIOCLUB and they are never given to a third party. We also hate spammers. The data are used to inform the contestants in connection with the contest and the evaluation of the results.

– The rules of the contest:
Reception of 10 BROADCAST stations from 10 DIFFERENT countries. Excluding: unofficial, meteorological, DRM or other digital, military, spy, pirate, time etalon, amateur contacts and other technical receptions. It is strictly prohibited to use WEB SDR, internet radio and other remote-controlled equipment. The receiver antenna has to be attached to the radio physically and directly. One country can appear in the log only once. (Country=where the transmitter can be found)

The enabled frequency range: from 2300 kHz to 30000 kHz. The contest referees and organizers cannot take part in the contest.

– The obligatory content of the log:
Date (day, month, year),
Time (UTC),
Frequency (in kHz),
The ID name of the station,
Country (where the transmitter can be found),
ITU,
The language of the broadcast,
SINPO,
The geographical location (city) of the transmitter site,
The details of the broadcast (general description without specific details cannot be accepted)
The judges may ask for additional data from the contestants (eg. the power of the transmitter)

– The obligatory content of the log’s annex:
The name of the contestant,
Address (where the certificate can be posted)
Geographical location where he/she has participated from (according to the 6-character Maidenhead QTH locator)*
The type of the receiver(s),
The type of the antenna(s).

Example:
Name: Jean Sample
Address: France, Paris, Rue Parrot 2.
QTH locator: JN18EU
RX: Yaesu FRG-7000, Perseus SDR
Antenna: 80m Long Wire, Wellbrook ALA-1530

– The format of the log:
The logs have to be sent electronically to topdx.radioclub(at)gmail(dot)com in doc, docx, xls, xlsx, pdf, txt, or cabrillo format. We accept logs in English language and Hungarian language. All contestants get an email of confirmation after receiving the log in 24 hours.

– The deadline of receiving the logs:
5 January 2021. 24:00 UTC

All contestants declare by sending the logs that all data in the log are true and correct, all of the receiving were done by himself/herself within the given time range from the provided place according to the QTH locator and the adherence of the rules.

– Announcement of results: Before 31 January 2021.

– Scoring:
The distance between the contestant’s QTH locator and the transmitting tower’s QTH locator divided by the power of the transmitter.
The distance between QTH is dimensioned in kilometers and measured in short path. The transmitter power is dimensioned in kilowatts. Only official data are considered given by WRTH (World Radio TV Handbook – www.wrth.com). If more powers belong to a certain transmitter the higher power is considered. In case the owner of the station announces different power than WRTH, then we counting with the official (real) transmitter power.

For example:
The geographical location of the contestant: France, Paris, Rue Parrot 2. in this case the QTH locator is JN18EU*

The received station: Voice of America, from the city of Iranawila CLN. The QTH locator of the transmitter: MJ97VM. In this case the distance between the two QTH locators: 8459,38 km. For the calculation the following program is used: NØUK’s Maidenhead Grid Distance & Bearing Calculator ****

The power of the transmitter: 250 kW
Score: 8459,38 / 250 = 33,84 points (rounded to 2 decimals) According to the information above it can be clearly seen that more points are given if the station is far from the contestant AND the transmitter power is low.

Therefor if someone can receive broadcast from a station of 10 kilowatts from the distance of 12000 km it worth 1200 points.

The final points are made up by the sum of the 10 receiving.
The contestant with the highest points wins the contest.

– Awarding:
The contest has no monetary prize. The winner gets an elegantly designed, unique trophy addressed to his/her name. All contestants are posted a certificate according to result in the ranking.

In case of any questions about the rules, the parameters of the transmitter or anything else in connection with the competition, send us an e-mail and we try to respond asap. This opportunity is open before and during the competition.

The organizers wish good luck and outstanding DXs to all contestants.

*: The QTH locator can be easily found here
** The list of DXCC can be found here (Excel file, countries in alphabetical order)
***: Sample log can be downloaded from here (Excel)
****: The NØUK’s Maidenhead Grid Distance & Bearing Calculator can be find N0UK’s website

Thank you for the tip, Kanwar!

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Radio Waves: Questions About New HF Stations, Towers Damaged after Hurricanes, Evolution of Ham Radio, and The Vintage Radio Repairman

Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Because I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers. To that end: 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 contributors Ed, Paul, Bennett Kobb, and Kanwar Sandhu for the following tips:

Questions Remain as New HF Stations Wait for Licenses (DMRNA.info)

Here is the story by Bennett Kobb:
As previously reported here at DRMNA.info, the New York company Turms Tech LLC has applied to the FCC for a license for International Broadcast Station WIPE in New Jersey. The license would cover a station already built under a FCC Construction Permit, and would allow it to begin regular operations.

The FCC announced on August 13, 2020 that this license application was accepted for filing, a routine stage at which the FCC examines the application, and might even visit the station, and if everything is in order it will be licensed.

We’re not sure everything is in order. The application for Construction Permit placed the transmitter site at N 40° 57′ 40.38″, W 73° 55′ 23.97″, the broadcast and communications center surrounding the famous Armstrong Tower at Alpine NJ. Its Application for License, however, specifies N 40° 51′ 40″, W 73° 55′ 23″. (Hat tip to Alex P for noting this discrepancy. More about him below.)

While the substitution of 51 for 57 in the coordinates might seem a simple typo, the FCC typically has no sense of humor about coordinate errors. Commission examiners may wonder why a station intended for a historic radio-TV facility ended up among some Manhattan apartments.

The deeper question with WIPE and another, apparently similar station WPBC, is what these stations are really for and what that means for the FCC Rules. WIPE was extremely vague about its program plans, but told the FCC that it will transmit data obtained from third parties using Digital Radio Mondiale. Putting that tidbit together with exposures in a series of public articles in the media and tech blogs, it would seem that audio programming will not be the central mission of this peculiarly named station, whose principal is a financial executive and forestry entrepreneur without any broadcast experience we could find.

We suspect instead that the WIPE data stream will be used not for broadcasting to the public — the only function permitted to International Broadcast Stations under FCC Rules — but instead will be used for private communication with foreign exchanges for high-speed trading.[…]

KSWL-TV tower crashed into buildings near 210 Interstate Hwy (Brad Dye)

Images of tower damage in Lake Charles, LA Bottom photo by KATC-TV of KSWL-TV tower crashed into buildings near 210 Interstate Hwy

After bombarding coastal areas of southern Louisiana with wind gusts up to 130 mph and a storm surge over nine feet as a hurricane, Laura swept north while also spreading over Arkansas Thursday. Laura weakened to a tropical storm early Thursday afternoon, with winds at 70 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. Laura is predicted to move through the Tennessee Valley and the Mid-Atlantic today into tomorrow.

Power outages from the storms totaled over 900,000 as of Thursday afternoon, according to PowerOutageUS. The site collects data from utilities nationwide. The bulk of the outages were in Louisiana and Texas, according to ABC News. Mississippi reportedly had over 9,400 customers without power as of Thursday morning, reported the Clarion Ledger.

Louisiana and Texas had the most cell site outages as of Thursday mid-day, according to the FCC’s Disaster Information Reporting System. Of the 4,650 cell sites served in Louisiana, 380 were not working. Over 200 of the site outages were due to a lack of power, 141 had a transport issue and 16 were damaged.

Calcasieu and Cameron counties were hit especially hard. 140 sites (75 percent) were not working in Calcasieu County and 20 (69 percent) were out in Cameron County.

Of the 17,621 cell sites served in Texas, 113 were non-operational.

Jefferson County was the hardest hit, with 39 (15.8 percent) out of 247 sites not working. Just over 45 of the non-working sites were out due to a lack of power, 41 for transport reasons and 20 were damaged, according to DIRS.

Cable and wireline companies reported 192,915 subscribers out of service in the affected areas; this may include the loss of telephone, television, and/or Internet services.

Three television stations, five FMs and one AM reported they were off-air.[…]

Ham radio is dying! No it’s not, it’s evolving (K0LWC)

I’ve heard ham radio is dying since as far back as I can remember. It’s one of those common sayings you always hear. Like, “get off my lawn,” and “kids these days.” But is it true? Is there any evidence to support this? Let’s take a closer look.

Data from the ARRL shows that ham radio licensees are increasing. When you look at the chart above, you see two significant markers that are likely driving this growth.

The removal of the code requirement by the FCC.

The economic collapse of 2008.

The Morse code requirement was always an intimidating part of obtaining your General FCC license. Learning Morse code is like learning a second language. It takes time and effort to learn, and that’s not a bad thing. However, it doesn’t change that it scared many people away from the hobby. When the FCC removed this requirement in 2007, I believe it opened the door for many who spent years on the fence. Then you have the economic downturn of 2008. What does that have to do with ham radio? A lot.

After the economic downturn, the United States watched as survivalism, now commonly calling “prepping,” entered mainstream culture. People were worried as the country was involved in multiple wars and our economy was on the brink of collapse. Citizens stocked up on food storage, water, firearms, and…communications equipment. As our country spiraled into more turmoil ham radio licenses steadily increased to more than 750,000 by the end of 2019.[…]

The Vintage Radio Repair Man (Great Big Story–YouTube)

Click here to watch on YouTube.

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Radio Waves: Narco-Antennas, Pirate Radio Beginnings, Arqiva Restructure and Redundancies, and the Ghostly Buzzer

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Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Skip Arey, David Goren, Paul Evans, Kanwar Sandhu and Dave Porter for the following tips:

Special Report: Drug cartel ‘narco-antennas’ make life dangerous for Mexico’s cell tower repairmen (Reuters)

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The young technician shut off the electricity at a cellular tower in rural Mexico to begin some routine maintenance.

Within 10 minutes, he had company: three armed men dressed in fatigues emblazoned with the logo of a major drug cartel.

The traffickers had a particular interest in that tower, owned by Boston-based American Tower Corp (AMT.N), which rents space to carriers on its thousands of cellular sites in Mexico. The cartel had installed its own antennas on the structure to support their two-way radios, but the contractor had unwittingly blacked out the shadowy network.

The visitors let him off with a warning.

“I was so nervous… Seeing them armed in front of you, you don’t know how to react,” the worker told Reuters, recalling the 2018 encounter. “Little by little, you learn how to coexist with them, how to address them, how to make them see that you don’t represent a threat.”

The contractor had disrupted a small link in a vast criminal network that spans much of Mexico. In addition to high-end encrypted cell phones and popular messaging apps, traffickers still rely heavily on two-way radios like the ones police and firefighters use to coordinate their teams on the ground, six law enforcement experts on both sides of the border told Reuters.[…]

How Pirate Radio Rocked the 1960s Airwaves and Still Exists Today (HowStuffWorks)

If you’ve been binge-watching movies lately, you may have come across “Pirate Radio.” Director Richard Curtis’ 2009 comedy-drama stars the late Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Count, a disc jockey for an unlicensed rock radio station that broadcast from a rusty, decrepit ship off the British coast in the mid-1960s, defying government authorities to spin the rock records that weren’t allowed on the BBC at the time. The plot is based loosely on the saga of an actual former pirate station, Radio Caroline, that was founded by an offbeat Irish entrepreneur named Ronan O’Rahilly, the inspiration for the character portrayed by Bill Nighy.

“Pirate Radio” is a period piece, set in a time when the Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and the Who’s “My Generation” were still scandalous and controversial rather than nostalgic anthems for today’s aging baby boomers. So you couldn’t be blamed for assuming that it depicts a long-vanished phenomenon, like Nehru jackets with iridescent scarves and psychedelic-patterned paper mini dresses.

To the contrary, though, more than a half-century later, pirate radio is still a thing. In fact, it’s possibly more widespread than it was in the 1960s, even in an age when streaming internet services such as Spotify and Pandora put the equivalent of a jukebox in the pocket of everyone with a smartphone. And as a bonus, Radio Caroline still exists — though, ironically, it’s gone legal.[…]

Arqiva confirms restructure and redundancies (IBC.org)

[Note: Arqiva is the UK domestic broadcast transmission provider.]

Arqiva is working on a restructure of its business that could result in a third of its staff being made redundant.

According to a report in the Telegraph, the media infrastructure business is preparing to cut around 500 staff, which is approximately a third of its workforce.

An Arqiva spokesperson confirmed to IBC365 that some job losses will occur.

They said: “The sale of our telecoms business makes Arqiva a smaller organisation, changes our revenue profile and reduces our available profit pool.

”We are therefore conducting a review of the costs and systems we need to run our business over the next three years.

”Regrettably, we will need to reduce the size of our workforce, but it’s much too early to speculate about numbers.”

The Telegraph report cites the shift to streaming and a drop in income for broadcasters as reasons for the potential cuts.[…]

The ghostly radio station that no one claims to run (BBC Future)

In the middle of a Russian swampland, not far from the city of St Petersburg, is a rectangular iron gate. Beyond its rusted bars is a collection of radio towers, abandoned buildings and power lines bordered by a dry-stone wall. This sinister location is the focus of a mystery which stretches back to the height of the Cold War.

It is thought to be the headquarters of a radio station, “MDZhB”, that no-one has ever claimed to run. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the last three-and-a-half decades, it’s been broadcasting a dull, monotonous tone. Every few seconds it’s joined by a second sound, like some ghostly ship sounding its foghorn. Then the drone continues.

Once or twice a week, a man or woman will read out some words in Russian, such as “dinghy” or “farming specialist”. And that’s it. Anyone, anywhere in the world can listen in, simply by tuning a radio to the frequency 4625 kHz.

It’s so enigmatic, it’s as if it was designed with conspiracy theorists in mind. Today the station has an online following numbering in the tens of thousands, who know it affectionately as “the Buzzer”. It joins two similar mystery stations, “the Pip” and the “Squeaky Wheel”. As their fans readily admit themselves, they have absolutely no idea what they are listening to.[…]

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Kanwar recommends the analog Torgoen T9 GMT watch

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Kanwar Sandhu, who writes:

I want to share some information, which may be interesting for SWLers.

It’s the Torgoen T9 GMT watch.

It has a Swiss GMT movement manufactured by Ronda that allows to set the GMT hand to a different time zone, which in the case of a professional pilot would be the Greenwich Mean Time or GMT.

This ability makes it a perfect fit for the shortwave listener.

Thanks for sharing, Kanwar. I love analog watches, but rarely wear them these days because I like tracking my activity levels (my current watch is the Garmin Instinct recommended by my friend Sébastien (VA2SLW).

Analog watches, however, appeal to me much more than digital watches. I do like the design of the T9 watch face and the GMT hand. (Although I bet our friend Jeff over at the Herculodge blog would argue it’s not nearly beefy enough!)

I checked prices and it appears the Torgoen T9 is widely available (with different colors/bands) for about $140 – $190 US. Reviews seem mixed. At least, on Amazon, some models have a very positive review thread while others less so.

Retailers:

Torgoen
Search Amazon (affiliate link)
Search eBay

I could easily become a watch collector if I had the funds to do so. For now, that’s not a rabbit hole I’m willing to venture down because my radio passion pretty much consumes all “fun” money! Oh but I can admire from a distance–!

Post readers: Any other recommendations of analog GMT watches? Do you have the T9? Please comment!

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RTI and Space Line test broadcasts (Feb 22 – Mar 1)

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Kanwar Sandhu, who writes:

Following email was received by Radio Taiwan International, French Service:

French service will collaborate with Space Line from Bulgaria for a daily broadcast of thirty minutes from 19:00 to 19:30 UTC from Sunday March 29, 2020. Broadcasting will be provided from the city of Kostinbord on the frequency 6005 kHz.

Before the official resumption of our broadcast, we will conduct five days of trial scheduled for February 22-23, 28-29 and March 1.

We would like to invite you to help us to find out the listening conditions by sending us your listening reports on these five days of testing. (Meg Wang, French Service RTI)

Many thanks, Kanwar, for sharing this tip!

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NHK World launches new Chinese language service January 5, 2019

QSL information for Wantok Radio Light

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Kanwar Sandhu, who shares the following QSL information from Wantok Radio Light:

Wantok Radio Light is a Christian Radio Station operating in Papua New Guinea. We broadcasts 24 hours, seven days a week on 93.9 FM in Port Moresby, 105.9 FM in other provinces and short wave on 7325 kHz throughout PNG and overseas. Papua New Guinea Christian Broadcasting Network operates as Wantok Radio Light. It is a non-profit, non-commercial Christian ministry. Its operation is supported by faithful listeners Christians and corporate organizations who share the ministry’s vision and mission.

Our main duty is proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ throughout the airwaves in order for our listeners to be saved, encouraged and blessed. We do this through our daily broadcasting of preaching and teaching programs, radio drama and gospel music

Send Us Your Confirmation

Postal Address
Wantok Radio Light
P.O. Box 1273,
Port Moresby,
National Capital District
Papua New Guinea

Email
[email protected]

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