Tag Archives: Radio Astronomy

Radio Waves: HEBA Antenna Approval, Eclipse Time Signal Shift, A Novice’s Guide to Amateur Radio Astronomy, and Voyager 1 Sending Data Again!

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 Alan, Dan, and Rich Cuff for the following tips:

WQVR(AM) Is Granted CP to Use HEBA Antenna at Night (Radio World)

Developer believes antenna’s smaller footprint can help reduce property needed for AM operators

The FCC in March granted an application for a construction permit filed by WQVR(AM) 940 in Webster, Mass., requesting licensed nighttime operation.

This is noteworthy because WQVR has been licensed to operate during daytime hours with a High-Efficiency Broadband Antenna or HEBA, developed by Worldwide Antenna Systems. [Continue reading…]

Global ‘time signals’ subtly shifted as the total solar eclipse reshaped Earth’s upper atmosphere, new data shows (Live Science)

During the historic April 8 total solar eclipse, a government radio station in Colorado started sending out slightly shifted “time signals” to millions of people across the globe as the moon’s shadow altered the upper layers of our atmosphere. However, these altered signals did not actually change the time. [Continue reading…]

Nathan Butts: A Novice’s Guide to Radio Astronomy (YouTube)

NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth (NASA JPL)

An artist’s concept of NASA’s Voyager spacecraft. Credit: NASA

After some inventive sleuthing, the mission team can — for the first time in five months — check the health and status of the most distant human-made object in existence.

For the first time since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).

Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed that the issue was tied to one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth.

The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.

So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.

The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth. When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft.

During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data.

Voyager 2 continues to operate normally. Launched over 46 years ago, the twin Voyager spacecraft are the longest-running and most distant spacecraft in history. Before the start of their interstellar exploration, both probes flew by Saturn and Jupiter, and Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune.

Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.

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Radio Waves: The Discovery Dish Pre-Launch, China Radio International, Hackaday Prize, and Baseball Radio

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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 Dennis Dura and Ulis (K3LU) for the following tips:

Discovery Dish Pre-launch: A Lightweight Dish And Feed For L-band Weather Satellites And Hydrogen Line Reception (RTL-SDR Blog)

For the past few years we have been working on finding the best way to help beginners get started with L-band weather satellite reception and basic radio astronomy. We have now come up with a solution that we’re calling the ‘Discovery Dish’ – a lightweight 65 cm diameter dish and active filtered feed set.

The Discovery Dish will be crowd funded, and we currently have a pre-launch page set up on Crowd Supply. So if you are interested, please visit the pre-launch page and click on the Subscribe button for updates.

Discovery Dish is a 65-cm diameter aluminum satellite dish and active filtered feed designed for receiving GOES HRIT, GK-2A LRIT, FengYun LRIT, NOAA HRPT, Metop HRPT, Meteor M2 HRPT and other weather satellites that operate around 1.69 GHz. The dish is designed to weigh under one kilogram, and it splits into three petals, making it easier to ship worldwide. The 1.69 GHz feed contains a built-in LNA right at the feed point, as well as filtering, which means that there is almost no noise figure loss from cables or connectors.

Note that the prototype images show an early non-petalized prototype with rough laser cut wind holes. The production version will obviously be a lot neater looking! […]

Click here for more details about the Discovery Dish campaign.

How China’s Propaganda Infiltrated Radio Stations in Europe (The Diplomat)

State-owned China Radio International is airing its content without attribution on commercial radio stations in Europe.

China has consistently and systematically pursued the dissemination of its narratives on the global stage, with the primary aim of shaping the international landscape to align with its strategic interests and ideological perspectives. These endeavors encompass a diverse array of tactics, including the acquisition of media enterprises, active engagement by Chinese ambassadors in both mainstream and fringe media outlets, the utilization of paid supplements, collaboration with pro-Kremlin media, and the steadily expanding presence of China across various social media platforms.

Recently, China Radio International (CRI), an official Chinese state media outlet broadcasting in multiple languages, has garnered attention for its establishment of partnerships with and provision of content to radio stations worldwide. Remarkably, CRI has effectively outsourced the production of China-related programming to local partners, often without transparently disclosing the sponsorship of content creation to the listeners. This strategy, known in Chinese as “borrowing a boat to go out on the ocean,” plays a pivotal role in laundering Beijing’s propaganda and fostering the acceptance of its messaging among local audiences.

One illustrative case of this approach within Europe involves two Czech radio stations, namely Radio HEY, a nationwide commercial radio station airing rock music, and Radio Color, which positions itself as “one of the last independent radios.” From 2019 to May 2023, these radio stations broadcasted a program titled “Barevný sv?t” (Colorful World), a nearly 30-minute segment aired six times a week, with the objective of acquainting Czech listeners with Chinese culture, language, and history. [Continue reading…]

Hackaday Prize 2023: A Software-Defined Radio With Real Knobs And Switches (Hackaday)

When cheap digital TV dongles enabled radio enthusiasts to set up software defined radio (SDR) systems at almost zero cost, it caused a revolution in the amateur radio world: now anyone could tune in to any frequency, with any modulation type, by just pointing and clicking in a computer program. While this undoubtably made exploring the radio waves much more accessible, we can imagine that some people miss the feeling of manipulating physical buttons on a radio while hunting for that one faint signal in a sea of noise. If you’re one of those people, you’re in luck: [Kaushlesh C.] has built a portable, self-contained SDR system with real knobs and switches, called SDR Dock 1.0.

The heart of the system is a Raspberry Pi running GQRX, an open-source SDR program that supports many different RF modules. [Kaushlesh] used an Airspy HF+ Discovery, a compact receiver that can work the HF and VHF bands, but it’s easy to modify the SDR Dock to accept other types like those ubiquitous RTL dongles. A seven-inch LCD screen with integrated speakers forms the main output device, with everything powered by a 10,000 mAh lithium-polymer battery. [Continue reading…]

With the future of AM unclear, a look back at the powerful role radio plays in baseball history (Citizen Tribune)

Many baseball fans, especially older ones, originally fell in love with America’s pastime by listening to ballgames on AM radio

Click here to browse this gallery.

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Eclipse Time and Amateur Radio Astronomy Opportunities

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Marty, who writes:

Hi Thomas,
Here’s two interesting opportunities for hams and SWLers from NASA:

Radio Jove and HamSci:
https://www.popsci.com/science/radio-jove-solar-eclipse/

Link for required radio kit: https://radiojove.net/kit/order_form.html

From the article: “Radio JOVE hopes to improve our understanding of the ionosphere… if you’re a ham radio operator, you can get involved with HamSCI, which also plans to observe the upcoming eclipse.”

Sounds like fun!
Regards,
Marty

This is a brilliant idea and Radio Jove is a solid project. You’re right that enthusiasts should also follow HamSCI as they have many opportunities to be a citizen scientist in the radio realm! Thank you for sharing, Marty!

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Radio Waves: Polish Trains Radio Hacked, Flawed Code, Radio Quiet Boxes, and EAS Reminder

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 NT and Dennis Dura for the following tips:

Poland’s Railways Halted by a Simple Radio Hack (Gizmodo)

he Polish Railway’s radio system was hacked on Friday and Saturday, bringing 20 freight and passenger trains to an unprecedented standstill. The hack, believed to be carried out by Russia, took advantage of a critical flaw in the railway’s radio security system, with the issue reportedly restored within hours.

An investigation into the cyberattack is underway, and the Polish Press Agency (PAP) reported that the radio signals sent to stop the trains were interspersed with a recording of Russia’s national anthem and a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Poland is an important transportation hub that brings much-needed weapons supplied by Western countries and other aid to Ukraine amid the Russian invasion, and Senior Security Official Stanislaw Zaryn told PAP: “For the moment, we are ruling nothing out.” He continued: “We know that for some months there have been attempts to destabilize the Polish state. Such attempts have been undertaken by the Russian Federation in conjunction with Belarus.”

Train services were reportedly restored within hours and the Polish State Railways said in a statement that “there is no threat to rail passengers” and the cyberattack only caused “difficulties in the running of trains.” [Continue reading…]

Code Kept Secret for Years Reveals Its Flaw—a Backdoor (Wired)

A secret encryption cipher baked into radio systems used by critical infrastructure workers, police, and others around the world is finally seeing sunlight. Researchers say it isn’t pretty.

FOR MORE THAN 25 years, a technology used for critical data and voice radio communications around the world has been shrouded in secrecy to prevent anyone from closely scrutinizing its security properties for vulnerabilities. But now it’s finally getting a public airing thanks to a small group of researchers in the Netherlands who got their hands on its viscera and found serious flaws, including a deliberate backdoor.

The backdoor, known for years by vendors that sold the technology but not necessarily by customers, exists in an encryption algorithm baked into radios sold for commercial use in critical infrastructure. It’s used to transmit encrypted data and commands in pipelines, railways, the electric grid, mass transit, and freight trains. It would allow someone to snoop on communications to learn how a system works, then potentially send commands to the radios that could trigger blackouts, halt gas pipeline flows, or reroute trains.

Researchers found a second vulnerability in a different part of the same radio technology that is used in more specialized systems sold exclusively to police forces, prison personnel, military, intelligence agencies, and emergency services, such as the C2000 communication system used by Dutch police, fire brigades, ambulance services, and Ministry of Defense for mission-critical voice and data communications. The flaw would let someone decrypt encrypted voice and data communications and send fraudulent messages to spread misinformation or redirect personnel and forces during critical times. [Continue reading…]

‘Radio quiet’ boxes will now power world’s largest telescope (Interesting Engineering)

Engineers have designed and built the first set of 24 Small Modular Aggregation RFoF Trunk, or SMART boxes.

Radio telescopes detect faint radio signals arriving from distant cosmic sources.

As a result, it is critical that the site is as silent as possible, meaning that it should be devoid of noise caused by any gadgets, such as Wi-Fi, mobile phones, telescope machines, and other electronic equipment, in and around the radio facility.

Noise interference of any kind can distort or block out these signals, making astronomical studies extremely difficult.

This is one of the primary issues a multidisciplinary team of experts recently tackled by designing an advanced “SMART box” to electrically power the Square Kilometre Array Low Frequency (SKA-Low) telescope in Western Australia.

SKA-Low is part of the upcoming world’s largest ground-based astronomy facility that includes one other telescope, which has been constructed in South Africa.

“The SKA-Low telescope will receive exquisitely faint signals that have traveled across the universe for billions of years. To detect them, the SKA-Low telescope is being built in a pristine radio quiet zone far from the interference created by modern technology,” said Tom Booler, Program Lead for Engineering and Operations at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) of the Curtin University.

“It’s so radio quiet at the observatory site that the biggest potential source of interference is the electronics like ours, due to the proximity to the antennas. That meant our project had to meet the strictest radio emission requirements across the entire Australian SKA site,” Booler added in the official release. [Continue reading…]

FCC Reminds Stations to Check EAS Readiness (Radio World)

The FCC is reminding U.S. radio stations and other EAS participants to make sure the upcoming national EAS test is accessible.

As we’ve reported, FEMA will transmit the nationwide test at 2:20 pm EDT on Oct. 4 using IPAWS, the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System.

To make sure it reaches the most people, the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau has issued a reminder asking participants to make sure they’ve upgraded their EAS equipment software and firmware to the most recent version; ensured that their equipment can receive and process the National Periodic Test code and “six zeroes” national location code; and otherwise complied with FCC rules.

Here is the text of the planned EAS message:

“This is a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, covering the United States from 14:20 to 14:50 hours ET. This is only a test. No action is required by the public.” [Continue reading…]

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Radio Waves: Data RX via Web SDRs, Mystery Signals from Space, Public Media’s role in Democracy, and Pirates SPAM UVB-76

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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 Marty, Troy Riedel, and Rich Cuff for the following tips:

Receiving data with web based shortwave radios (Nuts and Volts)

Your computer and the Internet give you free access to over 100 web based shortwave receivers that you can use as if they were your own. Unfortunately, employing these radios to decode data transmissions can be very difficult or impossible — unless you know the secret.

[…]A while back, I discussed how to receive data signals with a low cost shortwave radio (N&V May 2015). Now, the concept takes on a new dimension since we are using virtual radios not in our possession.

As astonishing as it seems, many of these Web based shortwave receiver data signals can be processed and decoded using just your PC and some free decoding software. Yes, some signals are encrypted, and can’t be decoded. Fortunately, there are plenty of unencrypted data signals around to keep us busy for a long time.

However, as will be discussed later on, it does require a special trick to allow you to pipe the streaming audio signals from the Web to the decoding software. In this article, I will show you how to use these Web based shortwave receivers to access data transmissions and to get started in this exciting hobby. [Click here to read the full article…]

Unknown objects at the heart of the Milky Way are beaming radio signals, then mysteriously disappearing (Business Insider)

Ziteng Wang found a needle in an astronomical haystack.

Wang, a physics PhD student at the University of Sydney, was combing through data from Australia’s ASKAP radio telescope in late 2020. His research team had detected 2 million objects with the telescope and was classifying each one.

The computer identified most of the stars, and the stage of life or death they were in. It picked out telltale signs of a pulsar (a rapidly rotating dead star), for example, or a supernova explosion. But one object in the center of our galaxy stumped the computer and the researchers.

The object emitted powerful radio waves throughout 2020 — six signals over nine months. Its irregular pattern and polarized radio emissions didn’t look like anything the researchers had seen before.

Even stranger, they couldn’t find the object in X-ray, visible, or infrared light. They lost the radio signal, too, despite listening for months with two different radio telescopes. [Continue reading…]

Do countries with better-funded public media also have healthier democracies? Of course they do (Nieman Lab)

But the direction of causality is tricky. Do a democracy’s flaws lead it to starve public media, or does starving public media lead to a democracy’s flaws?

There’s a new book coming out in the U.K. this week called The BBC: A People’s History, by David Hendy. Its publisher calls it a “monumental work of popular history, making the case that the Beeb is as much of a national treasure as the NHS…a now global institution that defines Britain and created modern broadcasting.”

Cross the pond: While Americans generally like PBS and NPR, I wouldn’t expect them to come up quickly if you asked someone on the street to begin listing national treasures. (I’m even more sure America’s health care system would go unmentioned, too.) Who “created modern broadcasting” in the U.S.? It certainly wasn’t the two public broadcasters that didn’t hit airwaves until 1970. And what TV network is a “global institution” that “defines” the United States abroad? Apologies to PBS Newshour, but that’s CNN.

No one says “Auntie Peebs.”

It’s obvious that the U.S. approached the new broadcasting technologies of the 20th century in ways wildly different from their European peers — and in ways that reflect on the countries themselves. American radio began wild and unregulated, experimental, a bubbling font of creativity — and then quickly became commercialized, optimized for mass audiences and massive profits. The BBC, which turns 100 this year, was more structured, more statist, more controlled — but has remained more central to residents’ lives, more civic-minded, and more beloved. [Continue reading…]

Pirates Spammed an Infamous Soviet Short-wave Radio Station with Memes (Vice)

The UVB-76 numbers station took a break from being a suspected communications tool of Russian intelligence to blast ‘Gangnam Style’

Pirates hijacked an infamous short-wave radio station, which dates from the Soviet era but is still online today, and used it to broadcast everything from Gangnam Style to audio that draws memes when inspected under a spectrum analyzer.

For decades the numbers station known as UVB-76 has emitted an enigmatic series of beeps and a voice reading numbers and names, in what people suspect is a long running communications method for Russian intelligence. Since the broadcast is public, pirates are able to use their software-defined radio (SDR) transmitters to effectively flood the frequencies with noise and memes.

The recent barrage of attacks on the station come as Russia prepares to invade neighbouring Ukraine, where radio enthusiasts speculate at least some of the pirate broadcasts originate. [Continue reading…]

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Radio Waves: The Barbed Wire Comms Line, FCC Denies AM Appeal, Raspberry Pi Radio Astronomy, and Interview with Dick Smith

Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Paul, Dennis Dura, Dan Van Hoy, Alokesh Gupta, and the Southgate ARC for the following tips:

Atrocious but efficient: How ranchers used barbed wire to make phone calls (Texas Standard)

A barbed wire telephone call didn’t sound great but could quickly warn others about something such as a wildfire.

Historian J. Evetts Haley wrote that, in its time, the old XIT Ranch up in the Texas Panhandle was “probably the largest fenced range in the world.” He recalled that its barbed wire enclosed over 3 million acres of land. At the north end alone, the fence ran for 162 miles. The unique enclosure helped keep in enormous cattle herds, keep out rustlers, and also gave rise to the creative use of a new technology: the telephone.

I’ll come back to the XIT in a moment, but first, consider these smattering of reports from that era. In 1897, The Electrical Review, reported that “on a ranch in California, telephone communication had been established between the various camps . . . by means of barbed wire fences.” The article says the novel use of the phone was a great success and was being used in Texas as well. That same year, the New England Journal of Agriculture was impressed that two Kansas farmers, living a mile apart, had attached fine telephone instruments to the barbed wire fence that connects their places and established easy communication. From the Butte Intermountain in 1902 we see this notice: “Fort Benton’s latest development is a barbed wire telephone communication.” The article points out that people of the range were not all that happy with barbed wire, which they thought was an “evil” that had arrived with the railroad, but they had decided to look at the practical side of its existence and use it to create a telephone exchange that would connect all the ranches to Fort Benton. [Continue reading…]

FCC Says No to Appeal for a New AM in L.A. (Radio World)

Schwab Multimedia has lost an appeal to the Federal Communications Commission in a case involving a planned AM station near Los Angeles for which it had a construction permit.

This is a “tolling” case, one that involves the FCC construction clock. The history is complex — the FCC’s summary is 2,500 words long, not counting many extended footnotes — but the upshot is that KWIF in Culver City was never built and, barring further developments, apparently will not be. Its call sign has now been deleted.

Levine/Schwab Partnership, which does business as Schwab Multimedia, had applied in 2004 to build a new AM station in the Los Angeles area. It eventually secured a CP in 2016 for the station at 1500 kHz. [Continue reading at Radio World…]

Radio Astronomy with Raspberry Operating System (Glen Langston)

Check out this fascinating radio astronomy project by Glen Langston that is not only affordable, but quite accessible. Thank you for the tip, Paul!

This article is in PDF form and can be downloaded from with this link.

Dick Smith Live: Adventuring, Electronics & Amateur Radio (Ham Radio DX on YouTube)

Dick Smith, VK2DIK has lived an adventurous and extraordinary life. He is a proud Australian, businessman, adventurer, entrepreneur and he single handedly changed electronics and CB/Amateur Radio in Australia.

Dick has recently released his autobiography titled, Dick Smith: My Adventurous Life and tonight we’re privileged to sit down live with Dick, speaking to him about his adventures, including the first solo helicopter flight around the world, his business ventures and being a pioneer for Amateur and CB radio.

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“Strange radio waves emerge from direction of the galactic centre”

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(Source: University of Sydney)

Strange radio waves emerge from direction of the galactic centre

A signal from deep in the Milky Way is tantalising scientists

International student Ziteng Wang detected unusual signals from deep in the heart of the Milky Way using CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope. Now astronomers are on the search for more evidence of what type object could be emitting them.

Astronomers have discovered unusual signals coming from the direction of the Milky Way’s centre. The radio waves fit no currently understood pattern of variable radio source and could suggest a new class of stellar object.

“The strangest property of this new signal is that it is has a very high polarisation. This means its light oscillates in only one direction, but that direction rotates with time,” said Ziteng Wang, lead author of the new study and a PhD student in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney.

“The brightness of the object also varies dramatically, by a factor of 100, and the signal switches on and off apparently at random. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

Many types of star emit variable light across the electromagnetic spectrum. With tremendous advances in radio astronomy, the study of variable or transient objects in radio waves is a huge field of study helping us to reveal the secrets of the Universe. Pulsars, supernovae, flaring stars and fast radio bursts are all types of astronomical objects whose brightness varies.

“At first we thought it could be a pulsar – a very dense type of spinning dead star – or else a type of star that emits huge solar flares. But the signals from this new source don’t match what we expect from these types of celestial objects,” Mr Wang said.

The discovery of the object has been published today in the Astrophysical Journal.

Click here to read the full article at the University of Sydney.

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