Tag Archives: Paul Evans (W4/VP9KF)

Contayner Over-The-Horizon Radar site polluting the HF spectrum

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OTH radar Contayner on 7062 and 7103 kHz on 21 Oct. at 1847 UTC (Source: IARU Region 1 Newsletter)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Evans, who writes:

The news from IARU Region 1 observer reports is all over the radio internet (including news sites and other blogs), but the extent of this [Russian] OTHR is grim. [Click here to read a recent ARRL News post.]

It is also entering service on a full-time basis, along with, potentially, a similar Chinese system.

Yes, it has been in testing for many years but is approaching multiple site use, soon. As the sunspot cycle comes back they may prove to be very limiting.

The antenna picture (for the transmit site) is impressive:
https://qrznow.com/russian-oth-radar-now-reported-to-be-everywhere/

(although I think that is of the old Woodpecker site, the Google Maps street view image looks somewhat different, see below).

However, it’s not so huge that it really stands out. It can be seen here:

in satellite view and can even be seen in street view here:

Note that the magic number in the phased arrays seems to be 9.

Rather worrying is that the UK continues to run, over many years now, OTHR from sovereign bases (ZC4) in Cyprus rather obviously aimed at use in Syria and Libya for use with the RAF and for Russian air space. It too can be seen on the salt marshes in the south of the island. As an active system it seems to be rather more cloaked than the Russian system, although there are some 360 degree images in Google Maps that show the towers. This was extremely annoying on the bands when the last solar cycle was near maximum from Bermuda because it was right in the main lobe when a Yagi was pointed towards Europe and was very loud. It was considerably narrower than the Russian system but occupied a solid chunk of band.

Paul, thank you for bringing this to our attention. I have seen chatter about the QRM this particular Russian OTH Radar site has created, but it seems other countries will soon be joining the OTHR QRM scene as well.

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A radio museum…in a subway

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Evans, who shares a link from Atlas Obscura featuring the Museo de la Radio in the Parque de los Venados station in Mexico City:

Upon entering the Parque de los Venados station of the Mexico City subway system, you may be surprised to find that you’ve also entered a museum. Here, the subterranean corridors double as the Museo de la Radio (Radio Museum), a small institution dedicated to the communication system’s history.

The museum’s exhibits display different radio-related devices such as lightbulbs, consoles, and microphones. The most prominent is the famous four-key xylophone with which the XEW—dubbed “the voice of Latin America”—announced its broadcasts during the golden age of the ’30s.

Other showcases contain collections of old radios, and still more highlight radio stars’ records. The display cards narrate some important events such as the first transmission, the birth of the digital radio, tidbits of curious data, and explain how the sound waves work.

The most interesting part of the museum is the radio booth, which actually broadcasts live shows. It was installed and opened in 2018, complete with the most advanced technology. One space is the speech booth, and another is the editing booth.[…]

Continue reading and view all photos at Atlas Obscura.

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Paul attends “The Secret War” special exhibit at the Science Museum

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Evans, who writes:

From the SWLing roving foreign correspondent.

A couple of weeks before going to London on our recent trip, I was idly looking through the Science Museum web site when I spotted a special exhibit ‘The Secret War’ put on by ‘members of GCHQ’. It had to be booked in advance (but was FREE), so I duly registered and printed out our tickets.

Come the first full day of our visit, a short walk in Kensington took us to the museum and an 11am time slot. The exhibit was a little hard to find, way at the back of Floor 0 and down some stairs, however it wasn’t just shoved in a ‘lesser area’. Entry was through a computer check-in and helper. However, there was enough slack that anybody showing up could enter more or less ‘on demand’. The exhibit is limited to 100 visitors per hour (that’s the trick).

Well, it was very well done and went all the way through the earliest coding in Greece and Egypt, through WWII and Bletchley to GCHQ and modern exhibits such as Edward Snowden’s laptop.

We had the pleasure to hear G7VAK calling CQ on a straight key, so I went over and answered him and gave him a suitable signal report and we swapped cards. Paul is manning the show, it seems, through most of its run into next year [23 February, 2020]. We exchanged suitable quips about having to kill each other if we said what we couldn’t say. He had a letter about some questions asked at the exhibit printed recently in RSGB RadCom in the ‘The Last Word’.

Overall the Science Museum has improved very much, having moved from a place stuffed full of (fairly) boring exhibits, to a more open and curated layout. They have also added snack bars (very good quality but pricey) on each floor.

Well worth a visit to what is now one of the world’s best museums of any topic. One of the finest exhibits on the staircase entry to Mathematics is the recently finished Babbage machine. And it works!

P.S. Personal bias. My Uncle Fred was at Bletchley Park, Hut 6 for a couple of years before being placed overseas, including a couple of trips to the USA (shhhhhhh!)

Mum’s the word, Paul! Thank you for the quick review of this special exhibit.

If you’d like to book a free ticket for this exhibit, go to the Science Museum website and click on the “Book Now” link!

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Paul’s report from the UK’s National Hamfest

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul W4/VP9KF, who shares the following report from the UK’s National Hamfest:

Your travelling foreign correspondent took in a visit to the UK’s National Hamfest held in Newark, Notts.

We arrived right on opening time (10am) and were the first in the door.

There was a ‘rush’ to the SDRPlay stand because they were giving away some nice FLASH drives to the first 25 people to get there. The author managed to get one and later found it was a) fast b) pre-loaded with software for all things SDRPlay. They were busy showing the new diversity software amongst other things.

bhi had some new hardware and I took the chance to thank them for a prize won in the W5KUB Xenia draws.

The hall was pretty empty (this was the second day and a Saturday). Noticeable was that some products were already sold out and on back order [such as the amazing nanoVNA].

It’s a shadow of the former Leicester Show which was the precursor to this event with a lot less parts on sale.

I had a long chat with Eric of Elecraft while twiddling with the K4 and suggested some improvements to the button usage, which he said would be tested in use. A date of the ‘beginning of the year’ for first shipments was mentioned and that the first batch would be ‘large’ [much more than 100] followed by smaller batches. Components are on order, some of which are on long lead times (and have to arrive in good shape for surface mount assembly down the line).

The K4 was ‘playing’ the 7 Area QSO Party on several bands and most controls were operable. This was streaming from an IQ recording and an RF modulator straight into the rig. Just exactly how close this was ‘to the original sound’ and TRUE performance of the rig and/or software is
to be seen.

The weather was fine for the show (although patchy – XYLs reported that it poured with rain back in Nottingham itself!). Turnout was very disappointing and a lot of grey hair was to be seen in the one (yes one) Hall Building.

73,

Paul W4/VP9KF [and G4BKI]

Thank you so much for the report, Paul. I do want to make a pilgrimage to the UK’s National Hamfest one year–any excuse to visit my home-away-from-home country! 

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Parker Solar Probe gathering data from our local star

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(Source: NASA)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Evans (W4/VP9KF), who writes:

Parker Solar Probe supposedly going to yield some interesting data [see below].

Hopefully it’ll bring forth some interesting new findings for Short Wave users!

(Source: Engaget)

Over the past months, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe flew closer to the sun than any other spacecraft before it — not once, but twice on two flybys. The probe obviously collected as much data as it could so that we can understand the sun better. Now its mission team at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland has just received the final transmission for the 22 gigabytes of science data collected during those two encounters. That’s 50 percent more than it expected to receive by now, all thanks to the spacecraft’s telecommunications system performing better than expected.

Parker’s ground team found out soon after launch that the probe is capable of a higher downlink rate. In fact, they’re taking advantage of that ability by instructing the probe to send back even more data from the second encounter in April. During that event, the spacecraft’s four suites of science instruments kept busy collecting information. That’s why the mission team is expecting to receive an additional 25GB of science data between July 24th and August 15th.

The mission team will release the data from the first two encounters to the public later this year. Before that happens, the spacecraft will conduct its third flyby, which will start on August 27th and reach closest approach on September 1st. Researchers are hoping that over the net few years the mission can gather the information we need to unravel some of the sun’s biggest mysteries, including why the sun’s corona (its aura of plasma) is far hotter than its visible surface.

Click here to read the full article at Engaget.

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Hackaday looks back at the venerable RTL-SDR

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Evans (W4/VP9KF), who shares the following article from Hackaday:

Before swearing my fealty to the Jolly Wrencher, I wrote for several other sites, creating more or less the same sort of content I do now. In fact, the topical overlap was enough that occasionally those articles would get picked up here on Hackaday. One of those articles, which graced the pages of this site a little more than seven years ago, was Getting Started with RTL-SDR. The original linked article has long since disappeared, and the site it was hosted on is now apparently dedicated to Nintendo games, but you can probably get the gist of what it was about from the title alone.

When I wrote that article in 2012, the RTL-SDR project and its community were still in their infancy. It took some real digging to find out which TV tuners based on the Realtek RTL2832U were supported, what adapters you needed to connect more capable antennas, and how to compile all the software necessary to get them listening outside of their advertised frequency range. It wasn’t exactly the most user-friendly experience, and when it was all said and done, you were left largely to your own devices. If you didn’t know how to create your own receivers in GNU Radio, there wasn’t a whole lot you could do other than eavesdrop on hams or tune into local FM broadcasts.

Nearly a decade later, things have changed dramatically. The RTL-SDR hardware and software has itself improved enormously, but perhaps more importantly, the success of the project has kicked off something of a revolution in the software defined radio (SDR) world. Prior to 2012, SDRs were certainly not unobtainable, but they were considerably more expensive. Back then, the most comparable device on the market would have been the FUNcube dongle, a nearly $200 USD receiver that was actually designed for receiving data from CubeSats. Anything cheaper than that was likely to be a kit, and often operated within a narrower range of frequencies.

Today, we would argue that an RTL-SDR receiver is a must-have tool.[…]

Click here to continue reading the full article at the excellent Hackaday blog.

Of course, for all things RTL-SDR and beyond, I highly recommend bookmarking RTL-SDR.com.

The RTL-SDR.com blog also manufactures my favorite flavor of the RTL-SDR dongle along with a nice bundle of antennas. Click here to check it out on Amazon.com (this affiliate link supports the SWLing Post).

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