Tag Archives: QTC

Radio Waves: FCC Comments on Shortwave Trading, QTC eBook, Golden Years, and SDRconnect Demo

Radio Waves:  Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

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 Ron Chester, Benn Kobb, Chuck Rippel, Pietschman, Dennis Dura, and Dave Zantow for the following tips:


“Market Makers” Want to Expand Their Use of Shortwave (Radio World)

The FCC seeks comments on a proposal to use HF spectrum for financial data

The FCC is taking public comment on a proposal to revise the rules governing the frequencies above 2 MHz and below 25 MHz.

The Shortwave Modernization Coalition thinks the 2-25 MHz band is underused and wants to use it for the long-distance transmission of time-sensitive data from fixed stations. The users would be companies working with certain kinds of financial transactions; the proposal would prohibit voice transmission and mobile operations.

The firms in the coalition are “market makers and liquidity providers” for exchange-traded financial instruments.

This high-frequency trading industry has in fact been using shortwave links for several years to send trading data between U.S. and foreign exchanges, but it has done so under experimental authorizations. [Continue reading…]

QTC: I Have a Message for You (Archive.org)

Many thanks to Bill Pietschman who notes that the book “QTC: I Have a Message for You” has now been published on Archive.org for all to read and download free of charge. Bill writes:

I knew Ray Redwood, and besides being a Professional radio operator, he was indeed a Ham’s Ham. You will find here not just the story of radio, but a detailed analysis of the Titanic, from a radioman’s point of view. Part documentary, part autobiography, and part technical, it’s a great read. I’m so glad that his work has been preserved here. Future radio historians will, I am certain, find it to be a valuable record of the Ship Radio Officers Era, and Ray’s insights at the dawning of the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System as we have today which utilizes satellite technology.

Click here to check out QTC: I Have a Message for You on Archive.org.

The Golden Years of Shortwave Listening (YouTube)

There was a time, some 50 years ago when cell phones didn’t exist and computers were only owned by large corporations, that people learned of the world around them by listening to shortwave radio. This is a journey back to that time to hear the sounds and see the correspondence from shortwave stations from all over the world. Sit back, listen and enjoy!

SDRplay and SDRconnect – The Update! – Dayton Hamvention (YouTube)

Steve Brightman (KI5ENW) from SDRplay demonstrates the new updates to SDRconnect to Ham Radio Outlet’s Julian Frost (N3JF).


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QTC Article: Clear Channel MW Broadcast Stations in Australia

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Kris Partridge, who notes that the July/August 2020 issue of the Australian amateur radio magazine QTC (an issue we noted in a previous post is free) actually has an article about the mediumwave scene in Australia.

Click here to download a PDF of those pages only from the magazine, or better yet, grab the full issue from our previous post.

Thanks for pointing out this article, Kris. I really enjoyed reading this issue of QTC. Great to see a ham radio publication that covers more than *just* ham radio!

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Free issues: RASA QTC Winter and July/August 2020 magazines

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Evans, who notes that The Radio Amateur Society of Australia Inc. has made two issues of their QTC Magazine available to view free online.

Click here to view the free issues of QTC magazine.

Thank you for the tip, Paul!

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Radio Waves: Deep ABC Cuts, Ham Radio Saves a Life, SDR Academy Updates, and a new free e-magazine from RASA

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 Michael Bird, Alexander von Obert, and the Southgate ARC for the following tips:


Up to 250 ABC jobs to go, ABC Life brand scrapped, flagship radio news bulletin dumped to tackle $84 million budget cut (ABC News)

The ABC will axe up to 250 jobs and cut programming as it deals with budget cuts of $84 million.

Managing director David Anderson said a flagship radio news bulletin would go, the ABC Life lifestyle portal would be rebranded, and programs would be reviewed as part of a major overhaul of the national broadcaster.

There will also be cuts to travel and to spending on television productions, as the organisation moves to become more relevant to more Australians and better reflect community diversity, he said.

Mr Anderson said the redundancies and savings would affect every division across the ABC.

“We anticipate we may farewell as many as 250 colleagues through this process,” he told staff in a briefing.

The News division is set to lose about 70 staff, the Entertainment and Specialist division 53 staff and the Regional and Local division 19.

Mr Anderson said there would be changes to executive staffing, but did not offer any details.

And he said the organisation would aim to have 75 per cent of its content-makers based outside its Sydney headquarters by 2025.

The ABC had already flagged that it would shed about 250 jobs due to a three-year funding indexation pause announced by the Federal Government in 2018.

Mr Anderson said the flagship 7:45am radio news bulletins would end, and be replaced by a five-minute bulletin at 8:00am. A 10-minute bulletin at 7:00am will remain.

The changes include:

  • ABC Life will become ABC Local and have a “broader editorial direction”
  • The travel budget will be cut by 25 per cent
  • Spending on external and independent television productions will be cut by $5 million a year
  • The ABC Comedy television channel will be rebranded to cater for a broader array of programs and content
  • Leasing of space at the ABC’s Sydney headquarters will be explored
  • TV and radio broadcast channels will remain, but transmission cuts have been flagged for future years[]

Ham Radio Saving A Life Locally! (Western Massachusetts ARRL)

On Tuesday, June 15, Alden Sumner Jones IV, KC1JWR, was hiking on the southern part of the Appalachian trail in Vermont (it’s also been reported as being on the Long Trail) with his cousins at around 12:30 PM. Alden started feeling light headed, his pulse was racing and the next thing he remembers is waking up with an EMT named Dave, from AMR out of Springfield, MA, who was hiking and saw Alden go down. Alden had suffered seizures. It was later determined that this was caused by low blood sugar. Dave attempted to call 911 on his cell phone. He could connect, but the 911 operator couldn’t understand him. At this point, Alden pulled out his HT ham radio, a BaoFeng.

He made contact through the K1FFK repeater. This repeater is located on Mt. Greylock on 146.91. The repeater is owned and maintained by the Northern Berkshire Amateur Radio Club. The initial call went out just before the Cycle 1 of the Western Massachusetts Traffic Net. Ron Wonderlick, AG1W, took the call. Alden initially asked if the 911 call went through. Ron began an eight hour process of acting as a relay between Alden, the emergency crews and various others.

The Traffic Net was truncated and the frequency was cleared by Peter Mattice, KD2JKV, who also stood by as a backup for Ron. KC1JPU, Matthew Sacco, was also monitoring and after a short consultation with Ron & Peter, proceeded to head to the staging area where the Fire and EMS crews were going to come from.[]

Software Defined Radio Academy 2020 Update (Markus Heller)

Dear ARRL recipients,

this year’s Software Defined Radio Academy is going to take place during the next weekend on June 27 / 28. We have now finalized the programme.

Since we decided very early in March that we’d organize an online strategy, we were not grounded by Corona. Using YouTube and our video conferencing system, we were able to organize a rich SDRA conference with speakers from all over the world.

Since this year’s European GNURadio Days conference in Besancon, France, could not take place either, we were asked to give their speakers a stage. This is the reason why we have a specially strong GNURadio focus.

With such a rich programme, we decided to span the talks over two days and start in the European afternoon, so that we could give our overseas audience a chance to participate live.

The mode is this: Even though all the talks are pre-recorded, the speakers will attend in the video conferencing system and respond to questions that come in through the YouTube channel. This way we can maintain a certain degree of interaction, which is important for any kind of scientific conference.

Here is the programme:
https://2020.sdra.io/pages/programme.html
and here is our YouTube stream URL:
https://youtube.sdra.io

We will start on Saturday 27 at 12:30 UTC+2
and on Sunday June 28 at 13:00 UTC+2.

For those of you who understand German, please note that this year’s HAMRADIO conference will also go online. We have worked hard in the past two months to record 65 hours of talks and discussions. Here is the HAMRADIO programme, which the SDRA is part of:

https://www.darc.de/fileadmin/filemounts/gs/oeffentlichskeitsarbeit/Veranstaltungen/HAMRADIOnline/HAMOnline_Sendeplan.pdf

QTC e-magazine (RASA via the Southgate ARC)

RASA is pleased to announce the release of a new E-magazine for Amateur Radio in Australia.  The magazine, QTC, named after the Q-code “I have a message for you” will be published every two months.

We’ll be renaming our regular email bulletins QTC-Lite and they’ll be aligned with the release of our fortnightly Podcast.

In this first issue of QTC, we have news and updates about regulations, and information on our 60m submission in response to the ACMA’s Consultation paper.  There’s a “Getting started” regular column, with this issue covering HF DX-ing.  There’s also a regular column on how you can deal with QRM and RFI in your shack.  This month we have a feature technical article on 3-Phase Power Converters.

Click here to download the first issue of QTC.


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