Tag Archives: Stephen Cooper

Photo Gallery: Stephen makes a pilgrimage to the Duga site

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Stephen Cooper who shares photos from his recent visit to the Duga Soviet Union era over-the-horizon (OTH) radar system near Chernobyl.

The following photo gallery contains images of the antenna, control room, training room and server room. Click on the thumbnails below to enlarge images and browse:

What an amazing site, Stephen! Thank you for sharing your photo tour with us.

Readers: Stephen is also an application developer and the kind fellow behind Shortwave.am, Interval Signal Ringtones for Android, and the Shortwave Radio Schedules app. Check them out!

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Shortwave Radio Schedules adds Premium upgrade

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and app developer, Stephen Cooper, who shares this press release:

7th August 2017 – Shortwave Radio Schedules adds Premium upgrade

Popular Android app Shortwave Radio Schedules has this week been updated to add two of
the most requested features as a premium upgrade to the app.

“Now” and “Favourites” options have been added to the app which currently is free in the
Android Play Store.

Current free features which will always remain free include the ability to search EiBi and
AOKI shortwave schedules by station, time or frequency. Search results are shown in a list
and can then be displayed on a map showing beam directions and broadcast power. The log
feature also allows a log to be kept of stations heard including SINPO rating with the ability
to export logs or share individual loggings via social media.

The new Now tab shows what stations are currently broadcasting using an innovative “radio
dial” style interface to browse through each shortwave band in the same way as a radio
would be used to tune up and down the bands.

The Favourites option allows stations to be “starred” and added to a favourites list making it
easy to quickly lookup the frequencies of stations regularly listened to. These favourite
stations can also be shown on a map.

All options including maps and logs are available offline (once the initial schedule download has taken place) making the app perfect for taking on DXpeditions where internet connectivity is not available.

The App is free in the Google Play Store with the Premium upgrade (adding Now / Favourites tab) available for GBP£1.49 / USD$1.49 / EUR€1.69.

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Interval Signal Ringtones for Android

This morning, while browsing for an Android app, I noticed that SWLing Post contributor, Stephen Cooper, has published a simple app for adding interval signal ringtones to your Android device.

Interval Signal Ringtones appears to have a very simple interface and over 40 interval signals included. The price is very modest at $1.98.

Click here to view in the Google Play store.

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DigiDX: a new digital broadcast via Channel 292

DigiDXMany thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Stephen Cooper, who shares the following news about the new DigiDX broadcast:

DigiDX is a 30 minute MFSK32 broadcast covering shortwave and DX news, radio related reviews, schedule information and listeners letters and after a success test broadcast to Europe, a broadcast for North America is planned for 0200 UTC Sunday.

Broadcasting from Channel 292 in Germany on 6070 kHz the time has been chosen to maximise chance of reception on the East Coast of North America and beyond.

The programme features the majority of the broadcast in MFSK32 but around 10 minutes of the broadcast is in the slower Olivia 64-2000 mode to test for resilience against bad propagation to North America and interference on 6070.

The tests to Europe on Channel 292 earlier this week showed good reception and near perfect decodes despite Radio China International and Vatican Radio being on the same frequency during some of the test.

To decode use FlDigi, MultiPSK or the Tivar Android app, just putting your radio next to the PC microphone or phone/tablet is enough to decode the broadcast. If you have decoded the VOA Radiogram before, DigiDX uses the same digital modes.

Please send reception reports and decodes of the text/images in the broadcast to [email protected], an e-QSL will be sent by email and on the next broadcast an e-QSL card will be broadcast over the air in MFSK32 mode as well.

For European listeners the second edition of DigiDX with an include e-QSL card from the last episode will be broadcast on 6070Khz at 1100 UTC. For information on further broadcast times like DigiDX on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/digidx/) or follow on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Digi_Dx)

This is brilliant, Stephen! I’ll attempt to log DigiDX this weekend if conditions are fair!

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Video: Stephen’s Poldhu Radio Kit

Radio-Kit

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Stephen Cooper, who recently shared a video on the SWLing chatroom:

I’m a sucker for cute radio kits, so I purchased one of these from the UK-based seller on eBay as well. There are two kit packages: one with the receiver only, another with the receiver, amplifier and speaker. Shipping is free–even to the US–and pricing is fair (19 – 25 GBP or roughly $30-38 US)

Click here to search eBay.

Readers: if you haven’t checked out the SWLing chat room, I would encourage you to do so! There’s almost always someone there and, many evenings, readers share reception reports in real time. Click here to check out the chat room.

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Shortwave.am: a new online frequency guide

ShortwaveAMA few SWLing Post readers have recently recommended that I check out a new shortwave radio schedule site: shortwave.am.

Shortwave.am has a unique layout that lists broadcast schedules along with a map that displays broadcast footprints (both short and long path).

Fortunately, I was able to get in touch with the site developer, Stephen Cooper, who frequently comments on the SWLing Post.

Stephen kindly answered a couple of questions I posed.

My first question was why, with the number of shortwave schedule sites on the Internet, he felt motivated to create a new site.  Evidently, inspiration came from Stephen’s Android app, Shortwave Radio Schedules. He responds:

I first created the [Shortwave Radio Schedules] app to give me searchable listings on my phone which I found interfered much less with my radio than on my PC so I could turn my PC off and look at frequencies and schedules on a phone/tablet.

Since then I have just added extra features that I find useful, such as the ability to save logs including the station name, time, SINPO, a comment and a recording of the audio. I’ve used the app to then share my logs to Facebook groups, DXLD Yahoo Group etc. including the audio recordings made on the app.

The maps option I added because I had been using AOKI listings with the beam direction to try and work out favourable beam directions of broadcasts for me in the UK even if they were not targeted to Europe. I realised that it would be much easier to visualise this on a map and started looking at the Google Maps API to work out this would be possible on the app.

Once I added to the app I had noticed screenshots of the maps being posted on groups such as the Rally DX 2012 Facebook group’s and a few people who didn’t have Android asking if there was a web version. I looked into it and it wasn’t too hard to create shortwave.am after converting the Java code to PHP:and Javascript then the site was complete.”

When I asked Stephen what made his site differ from others, he responded:

“[I]t uses data from a combination of Eibi and AOKI to display the listings with maps showing the beam direction. It can also show estimate long paths of each broadcast and uses AJAX web technologies to show search results and maps without having to reload the page for each search or change of parameters.

[…]If you choose a station or language or both and click “Save” (next to the “Set Defaults” part of the site) it will set these as the default that will open each time you go to the site.

Also if you click on a transmitter it now shows all broadcasts coming from that transmitter.

[…]I am going to add some more of the features from the [Shortwave Radio Schedules] app such as the ability to add logging reports, view others reception reports from each station and the options to add recordings of a station and listen to others recordings.”

I think shortwave.am is fantastic, and I’m glad Stephen has put the time behind developing it in his spare time.

Stephen is eager to hear your comments, as he wishes to further develop the shortwave.am. Either post them here, or email Stephen directly.

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