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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dave (K4SV), who shares this video courtesy of NASA Goddard:
The Sun is stirring from its latest slumber. As sunspots and flares, signs of a new solar cycle, bubble from the Sun’s surface, scientists are anticipating a flurry of solar activity over the next few years. Roughly every 11 years, at the height of this cycle, the Sun’s magnetic poles flip — on Earth, that’d be like the North and South Poles’ swapping places every decade — and the Sun transitions from sluggish to active and stormy. At its quietest, the Sun is at solar minimum; during solar maximum, the Sun blazes with bright flares and solar eruptions. In this video, view the Sun’s disk from our space telescopes as it transitions from minimum to maximum in the solar cycle.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bruce Atchison, who who shares this short video from the early 1980s showing a glimpse inside Radio Venceremos:
Radio Venceremos (Spanish; in English, “‘We Shall Overcome’ Radio”) was an ‘underground’ radio network of the anti-government Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) during the Salvadoran Civil War. The station “specialized in ideological propaganda, acerbic commentary, and pointed ridicule of the government”. The radio station was founded by Carlos Henríquez Consalvi (Santiago).
Despite the end of the war in 1992, the network continues to broadcast. The war years of the station and its national and international influence were documented in the Spanish-language book Las mil y una historias de radio Venceremos and its English translation, Rebel radio: the story of El Salvador’s Radio Venceremos, by the author José Ignacio López Vigil (translator: Mark Fried), a book recorded by the American Library of Congress. An exhibit honoring Radio Venceremos, including a studio room with original equipment, forms a prominent part of the Museum of the Revolution in Perquín, Morazán, El Salvador.
I also found this film on YouTube (The Radio Venceremos Story) which sheds a little more light on the station. The recording is low-resolution, but the subtitles are legible:
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Robert Gulley, who shares this fascinating video from the Alps DX YouTube channel. In this short demonstartion, you can follow the flight path of an Airbus A320 and the signal from France Musique from Marseille as it is bounces off of the aircraft. Fascinating:
Description from YouTube: France Musique from Marseille / Grande Etoile on 94.2 received via Airscatter. I’m always amazed when I see and hear those signals coming out of nowhere when the plane crosses the path … Nothing a few seconds before, nothing right after. Radio is magic !
I find this amazing. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never attempted FM aircraft scatter. Since I have an ADS-B receiver, and several excellent FM receivers, all I really need is a decent Yagi antenna and some careful planning.
Post Readers: Please comment if you’ve logged stations from aircraft scatter! Any tips?
The Requiem For Radio QSL Card (Source: RFR Facebook)
I received a number of messages from Post readers who logged one or more of the simultaneous Requiem For Radio broadcasts. Many discovered that each frequency of the broadcast was actually a separate track of the piece.
Indeed, SWLing Post contributor, Shelby Brant, posted the following comment yesterday:
Listening right now, 11580, 9690, 9620, and 5130 are on, but nothing on 6850. To get the most out of this you really ought to have a receiver on all the frequencies at the same time, because each station is broadcasting something slightly different, but if you listen to all at the same time, they go together.
Later, Shelby added:
Here’s a link to a very impromptu video I put together of how I was listening to the broadcast, I managed to gather up 4 receivers (this was after I posted earlier) and tuned them to the 4 active frequencies. Part way through I turn the other three receivers down and tune to the individual stations one at a time to give an idea of what the 4 sounded like on their own, then it goes back to all 4 together again for the end of the video
It’s often insightful to look to the past to fully appreciate the current technology we take for granted.
When we tap a favorite contact’s name in our mobile phone–even for someone on the other side of the world–we can be talking to them within seconds, with clarity that’s often the equal of visiting face-to-face. Perhaps Skype or FaceTime is more your style? Yawn… just another two-way, real-time video session. The fact that the other person is thousands of miles away no longer makes you pause at the wonder of it all. Continue reading →
Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Anthony, for forwarding this CBS/60 Minutes video: an interview with former KGB spy, Jack Barsky. During the interview, Barsky mentions that he received encrypted KGB “radiograms” via a numbers station he believed to be in Cuba. He admitted that the messages could take an hour to copy, then an additional three hours to decode. This is a fascinating story–well worth watching.
“Tonight, we’re going to tell you a story you’ve probably never heard before because only a few people outside the FBI know anything about it. It’s a spy story unlike any other and if you think your life is complicated, wait till you hear about Jack Barsky’s, who led three of them simultaneously. One as a husband and father, two as a computer programmer and administrator at some top American corporations and three as a KGB agent spying on America during the last decade of the Cold War.
The FBI did finally apprehend him in Pennsylvania but it was long after the Soviet Union had crumbled. What makes Jack Barsky’s story even more remarkable is he’s never spent a night in jail, the Russians declared him dead a long time ago, he’s living a quiet life in upstate New York and has worked in important and sensitive jobs. He’s now free to tell his story…as honestly as a former spy ever can.”
