Tag Archives: Southgate ARC

Amateur Radio Special Event Station on Radio Caroline

Many readers will remember with fond memories from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the famous offshore radio station Radio Caroline and the last ship they used to broadcast from, the MV Ross Revenge.

From today, a group of amateurs from the Martello Tower Group are operating special event station GB5RC from the Ross Revenge, moored in the Blackwater Estuary near West Mersea and Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex to celebrate five decades of offshore radio broadcasting.

Over the last few weeks, the group have set up quarter wave verticals for 40m, 20m and 15m along with a 5/8 wave for 10m and dipoles for 80m and 40m at various locations on the ship in preparation for the special event station. They also hope to be able to operate VHF and UHF for local contacts and with some D-STAR and DMR thrown in for good measure.

GB5RC will be on the air from today, the 5th August until Monday 8th August with two stations operating simultaneously running full UK legal output power. Let’s hope HF conditions are decent.

The Ross Revenge has been the home of Radio Caroline since August 1983 and although broadcasts directly from the ship ended in 1991, the station continues via the internet and once a month, live programmes are broadcast from the Ross Revenge with the help of the Manx AM transmitters on 1368kHz.

For more information see either https://www.qrz.com/db/GB5RC
or the Martello Tower Group website
http://www.martellotowergroup.com/gb5rc.html

Direct QSLs to G6NHU, bureau via GB5RC

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URE: Radioaficionados available as free download

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(Source: Southgate ARC)

Spain’s national amateur radio society the URE has made annual compilations of its magazine Radioaficionados available for free download

PDFs of the magazine are available from 2001 to the end of 2015.

To download each year click on the Descargar buttons at
http://www.ure.es/component/docman/cat_view/110-revistas/156-.html?orderby=dmdate_published

URE website in Google English
http://tinyurl.com/SpainURE

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Chelmsford Calling adds shortwave relay in Finland

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(Source: Southgate ARC)

The Chelmsford Calling World Service produced by Jim Salmon 2E0RMI has added a shortwave relay from Finland

Chelmsford Calling is currently relayed on shortwave by Radio Miami International WRMI on the 2nd Friday of each month at 2300 UT on 9955 kHz. The additional relay will be by Scandinavian Weekend Radio (SWR) which is located in Virrat city, Upper Tampere Region, Liedenpohja village, Finland.

The show will be broadcast on the first Saturday of the month starting on December 6 on a selection of the following frequencies – 1602 kHz, 5980 kHz, 6170 kHz, 11690 kHz, 11720 kHz, & 94.90 MHz.

Chelmsford Calling
Web http://www.chelmsfordcalling.com/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ChelmsfordCallingWorldService
Twitter https://twitter.com/ChelmCalling

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CW pirates promote separatist movement in Ukraine ?

AirChat: Long-distance digital communications via radio

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Last month, I was interviewed by NK News regarding the possibility of using inexpensive SDR dongles as a means for citizen journalists to receive and potentially send information across the North Korean border. Of course this is possible: digital communications over radio is becoming easier and more accessible all of the time.

While not yet as portable as an SDR dongle, Anonymous is developing a tool called AirChat which will allow long-distance communications via radio. AirChat borrows from Fldigi: a free application that decodes a variety of digital modes and has been used by amateur radio operators for years. Indeed, Fldigi is the same software you’ve used to decode broadcasts from VOA Radiogram and the new STF Radio.

Many thanks to the excellent Southgate ARC news site for this article about AirChat:

(Source: Southgate ARC)

The International Business Times reports that the online hacktivist collective Anonymous has announced that it is working on a new tool called Airchat which could allow people to communicate without the need for a phone or an internet connection – it uses radio waves instead

Initially the data mode software AirChat used code from ‘minimodem’ and then from ‘soundmodem’ sources but they say after suggestions from radio amateurs involved in the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), they decided to make it modular to use the Fldigi software, a broadly deployed solution for use with ham radios.

They say “So far we have played interactive chess games with people at 180 miles away. we have shared pictures and established encrypted low bandwidth digital voice chats. We have 3D printed over distances of 80 miles and transmitted medical orders at distances of over 100 miles.”

So far Yaesu FT-897D’s amateur transceivers have been used and the developers are also looking at using low-cost ($40) VHF/UHF handheld transceivers.

Read the International Business Times story
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/anonymous-airchat-aims-allow-
communication-without-needing-phone-internet-access-1445888

LulzLabs AirChat
https://github.com/lulzlabs/AirChat/

You can read about the goals of AirChat on their Github site and follow AirChat on Twitter with the hash tags #lulzlabs and #AirChat.

Anonymous has also posted the following video–a demo of AirChat:

Airchat from #lulzlabs on Vimeo.

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Listen to asteroid echos November 8th-9th

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The massive Green Bank Telescope will be listening for CW tuned to put the asteroid's echo at a constant 2380 MHz (Photo Source: NRAO / AUI / NSF)

The excellent Southgate ARC has posted information on receiving signals that the Arecibo Observatory, the Deep Space Network Goldstone facility, the Green Bank Telescope and the Very Long Baseline Array will be bouncing off of the near-Earth asteroid 2005 YU55.

The asteroid will be making a 0.85 lunar distance flyby of Earth on November 8.

While the listening frequencies are well above the HF (shortwave) spectrum, many of you may have wide-band receivers or ham radio equipment that could tune in the signals. So, apologies for this slightly off-topic post. The amateur radio astronomer in me couldn’t help but promote this rather cool and unique opportunity.

From Southgate ARC:

Because YU55 will be so close to Earth, its radar echo will be detectable with even small antennas (~1 m^2). YU55’s echo will be a slowly drifting signal with a bandwidth of ~1 Hz within a few kHz of 2380 MHz or 8560 MHz.

[…]On November 8, 2011, 19:15 – 19:30 UTC, Arecibo will be transmitting a continuous wave tuned to put the asteroid’s echo at a constant 2380.000000 MHz at the Green Bank Telescope. Observers elsewhere on Earth will see the echo within 2 kHz of 2380 MHz, Doppler-shifted by the Earth’s rotation. It will be slowly drifting in frequency and have a bandwidth of ~0.6 Hz.

On November 9, 2011, 01:30 – 02:00 UTC, the Goldstone Deep Space Network facility will be be transmitting a continuous wave tuned to put the asteroid’s echo a constant 8560.000000 MHz at a second antenna at the Goldstone site. Other observers may see the echo shifted by as much as 6 kHz, and it will have a bandwidth of ~2 Hz.

Read the full article on the Southgate ARC website.

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