Tag Archives: wbcq

WBCQ: variety and open source on New Year’s Eve

(Source: Stephen Kellat)

As long as our “i”‘s are dotted and our “t”‘s are crossed, there will be a New Year’s Eve special on WBCQ on 5.110 MHz from the production team at Erie Looking Productions in concert with the team behind the Ubuntu UK Podcast.

The Joint New Year’s Eve Special will be airing at 7 PM Eastern on New Years Eve, 12 AM UTC New Year’s Day. The show is a variety hour with a retrospective on the world of Linux and Ubuntu more specifically, poetry and music by Ashtabula-area musician Mike Kellat, and a policy essay on global communications in the aftermath of the World Conference on International Telecommunications 2012 in Dubai. Other PSAs such as “Profile America” from the US Census Bureau and some silliness is included as well as a music break. Cleveland-area life studies artist Big Ed Kellatis assists Mike Kellat with the poetry reading.

The show is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 United State License which is further explained athttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/ with the show to be attributed with “Joint New Year’s Eve Special” as title and “Gloria D. Kellat” as the responsible producer. Sharing and posting of airchecks is encouraged especially by sites like SWLing Post. [Gotcha!]

Erie Looking Productions produces “LISTen: An LISNews.org Program” at http://lisnews.org/podcast to cover the realm of library & information science as well as “Ubuntu Ohio – Burning Circle” at http://ohio.ubuntu-us.org/burningcircle to cover the activities of the Ohio Local Community team of the Ubuntu Linux project. The Ubuntu UK Podcast production team releases programs athttp://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/ covering the world of Ubuntu more specifically and Linux more generally. Gloria D. Kellat, producer at Erie Looking Productions, served as overall producer for the joint effort this year.

Much like last year’s shortwave special produced by Erie Looking Productions alone, this is done to highlight the impact of dangerous trends towards a fractured and broken Internet that have grown ever larger since the start of the Arab Spring. It is far too easy in today’s world for the Internet to simply go away whether by human intention or the intervention of natural circumstance as seen in the multiple failures of Netflix during 2012. This remains yet another drill to show that message content rather than transport medium is key to communications viability.

Shortwave is most certainly not dead yet…

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More shortwave digital text (and the reason behind it)

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Screenshot of digital mode being selected in FLDIGI. Click image to enlarge.

SWLing Post readers have seen previous posts regarding text being broadcast via shortwave digital modes on WBCQ, WRMI and The Mighty KBC (which broadcasts again this weekend).

Recently, Kim Elliott explained his mission behind these digital tests. Not only do I agree, but I support him completely. Why? It’s proof that the shortwave spectrum is an excellent medium to transmit digital information across the globe. Decoding requires a very basic shortwave radio, some free software and a computer. I believe, in the near future, there will be a smart phone app that can handle this with ease–it simply needs a developer (hint, hint).

Here is Kim Elliott’s post on the topic–I have emphasized points in bold:

Radio amateurs use several modes to transmit text via shortwave. It occurred to me that text via shortwave might be a workaround whe[r]e the internet is not available because of disasters, dictators, or other causes.

I have not yet convinced any major international broadcasters to let me test this hypothesis on their (remaining) shortwave transmitters. However, the Netherlands-based Mighty KBC has kindly been allowing me two one-minute segments during their broadcast to North America at 0000 to 0200 UTC on 9450 kHz. This is via leased time on a transmitter in Bulgaria.

Reception of text via shortwave is possible on an inexpensive shortwave radio, even one without single sideband (SSB) capability. The audio is patched into a PC that does not have to be especially powerful. This involves a patch cord from the earphone jack of the radio to the microphone input of the PC. If there is no patch cord, placing the radio’s speaker near the built-in microphone of a laptop might work.

Software for decoding the text should be installed in the PC. There are several available to radio amateurs, including DM780, MixW, and MultiPSK. Especially popular these days is Fldigi. This is available from www.w1hkj.com. While you are there, please also download Flmsg, because it will be needed for this weekend’s test on KBC. [Note: This software is free and open source.]

This weekend’s test on KBC will feature the MT63 modes with long interleave. After Fldigi is installed, go to Configure > Modems > MT-63 > check 64-bit (long) interleave, 8-bit extended characters, and Allow manual tuning. Also, go to Configure > Misc > NBEMS > check Open with flmsg and Open in browser and, below that, indicate where your flmsg.exe file is located.

The first KBC text transmission will be around 0130 UTC Sunday (Saturday evening 8:30 pm EST). The MT63-1000 mode with long interleave will be centered at 1000 Hz on the waterfall visible on the software display. PSKR125 will be cenetered at 2200 Hz. Decode one while listening, and decode the other from your recording of the transmission.

The second text transmission will be just before 0200 UTC Sunday (9 pm Saturday EST). This will be MT63-2000 centered at 1500 Hz. This message will be formatted for Flmsg. If all goes well, the shortwave transmitter in Bulgaria will open a new window of Flmsg and then open a new window of your web browser with formatted content, in color no less.

One week after my first text transmissions (11 November) on KBC, Arnie Coro at Radio Havana Cuba began transmitting digital text modes on his Dxers Unlimited program (in English). He might do so again this weekend. The schedule for DXers Unlimited can be found at the World of Radio website (where all times and days are UTC, so those UT Monday transmissions are actually Sunday evening in North America).

More discussion of the concept of digital text via analog shortwave broadcast is in Kim’s December 2012 column (pdf) for the North American Shortwave Asociation.

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WBCQ special broadcast of The Grateful Dead Aug 25th/26th

How to decode WBCQ’s digital message

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Last night, WBCQ’s sent a digital message about ten minutes before the end of the Allan Weiner Worldwide show. If you missed the broadcast, no worries; we recorded the show, and you can download the audio (below) to try decoding the message for yourself.

The digital message can be decoded using a variety of free software packages. The package we used–and which we use for many other digital modes–is FLDIGI, which can be found at http://www.w1hkj.com/Fldigi.html.

Downloading and installing FLDIGI is straightforward. But although this is a simple program, there is a slight learning curve involved. Below, we explain how to use FLDIGI to decode the message.

1. Download the mp3 recording by clicking here (right-click, then save file).

2. Download and install FLDIGI.

Screenshot of digital mode being selected in FLDIGI. Click image to enlarge.

3. Launch FLDIGI and tell it that you wish to decode the digital format MFSK-64. Do this by selecting the menu items “Op Mode” –> “MFSK” –> “MFSK-64.”

4. Play the audio so FLDIGI can decode the message.

There are a few simple ways to play the audio:

If your computer has a built-in microphone, simply play the pre-recorded audio file from an mp3 player with a built-in (or amplified) speaker. Hold the speaker near the computer’s microphone. FLDIGI can decode the digital signal from the computer’s buit-in microphone if the mp3 player volume and microphone gain are adequate. FLDIGI is reasonably forgiving, but you should try this in a low-noise environment.
Better yet, if you have a way to feed the audio directly from your mp3 player into the line-in (or microphone input) on your computer–say, with a shielded audio patch-cord–this will insure a clean signal into FLDIGI. Note that you should lower the volume of your mp3 player to do this. In some cases, you can actually damage your sound card if you feed it audio at a high volume.
Another method would be to play the mp3 file on your computer and use a program such as Virtual Audio Cable to link the audio to FLDIGI.

FLDIGI capturing the digital message and decoding. Note the solid block of color in the waterfall display. Use your pointer to click in the middle of this block in order to tell FLDIGI where to decode. Click image to enlarge screen capture.

Note that in our recording we include several seconds of normal audio before and after the digital message. When you watch the “waterfall” display on FLDIGI, you will see a solid block of coloring indicating the digital message when it begins (see screenshot on right). When the hosts are talking, this block will not be visible.

5. When the digital message begins, use your pointer to click in the middle of the block of color that represents the digital message in the waterfall display of FLDIGI. This tells FLDIGI where to find the digital message in the audio.

6. Your decoded message will appear in the text area of FLDIGI (as in the screenshot).

Image of decoded message as an HTML page. Note that copy was excellent, save one small error in the text. These minor errors are fairly normal in a digital broadcast. Click to enlarge.

7. Copy the decoded text to your PC’s clipboard, and paste into Notepad (or Word, OpenOffice, etc) and save the file as HTML by giving it a “.htm” or “.html” file extension.

Now the message should appear.

See, that wasn’t so difficult! This digital message could be decoded without purchasing any special software or other accessories. Most of us have everything we need to decode the bulk of the digital messages on the shortwave bands–and there are many, many more out there.

Please leave a comment if you successfully decoded this message, or if you have any other tips for decoding it.

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WBCQ to send digital message over shortwave tonight

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Update: Missed this broadcast? No worries–not only did we record the digital message, but we’ll teach you how to decode it.

(Source: WBCQ on Facebook)

On Friday, May 4, 2012, during Allan Weiner Worldwide (8pm US eastern time, 0000 UTC), we will be presenting an experiment in the transmission of text messages in digital formats. During the show, we will transmit a brief message in MFSK64 format. This message consist of text that listeners can save to a file with an .htm suffix, then open and view it in a web browser.

The message can be decoded using a variety of free software packages. One such package is FLDIGI, which can be found at http://www.w1hkj.com/Fldigi.html.

Thanks to Kim Andrew Elliott, audience researcher at the International Broadcasting Bureau, for coordinating this test.

You can find Allan Weiner Worldwide on 5,110, 7,490 and 9,330 kHz tonight (Friday, May 4th) at 00:00 UTC (20:00 in Eastern US)

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