KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

SWLing

On the Internet – 11/26/12

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WITCHWITCH gets a reboot. The world’s oldest digital computer was brought back to life by engineers at The National Museum of Computing in Buckinghamshire, England. The computer was first turned on in 1951 and uses 480 relays and 828 vacuum tubes called Dekatrons, which store ten discreet values. EETimes also ran a story on this computer.

First Visible LED Demoed 50 Years Ago. Since we’re doing history today, here’s a link to a Wired article marking the first demonstration of an LED that emitted visible light. The article notes, “In the February 1963 issue of Reader’s Digest, Holonyak predicted that the LED would eventually replace incandescent bulbs. Bold words from a man who worked for GE, a company founded by Thomas Edison.” We’re finally getting around to this 50 years later.

How to Listen to Real Spy Broadcasts Now. Lifehacker shows you how to dial in to numbers stations and the like. The article says, “The behavior of shortwave radio in the atmosphere makes it ideal for long range radio transmission. You can send messages on a given frequency all over the world, and most people who use shortwave radio use it to communicate with ships at sea and people in locations all over the world.”

From the Twittersphere

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The Twittersphere is kind of like the ionosphere. It helps you make contact with other hams and brings you news from far and wide. Here are a few interesting links that I found on Twitter in the last day or so:

Global Pirate HF Weekend 14-15.1.2012.  This station lists pirate SW radio stations that it expects to be on the air this weekend. They include one using the callsign WEMP. Look for it between 15.005 – 15.095 MHz. They’ll be broadcasting with 100 W to Europe: 12.00 – 16.00 UTC – (check 15.010 or 15.040 or 15.090 MHz).

The Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories Zener Diode Tutorial. Confused about zener diodes and how they work? Read this.

Monitor your Ham Radio transmitter with an oscilloscope. In this video, Alan, W2AEW builds a little adapter that lets you connect your transmitter output to a scope input so that you can see how clean its output is.

More Bad News for Shortwave Broadcasting

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Voice of AmericaIn an interview this morning, David Ensor, the new director of the Voice of America said,

We mentioned shortwave radio. You know, it is less and less useful, and there’s a certain amount of money being spent on it that should move quickly, and I will try to accelerate that process, into, you know, new media, into Internet sites that are mobile device-friendly, into satellite television broadcasts that can reach in some of these countries. So, we’re working on that hard.

It was also reported that they are going to discontinue their broadcasts in Mandarin and Cantonese.

What are they going to replace these services with? Facebook and Twitter, of course.

DX Made the Ear Grow fonder

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Radio World is a magazine for radio managers and engineers, but occasionally they have articles of interest to radio amateurs as well. The latest article to catch my eye was “Distance Made the Ear Grow Fonder.” This is a collection of replies to an earlier article, “AM Radio: My First Real Love.”

Both are reminiscences of AM radio in the old days. Just as the author logged all of the clear channel stations west of the Mississippi, I logged them east of the Mississippi. My favorites were WBZ in Boston and WCAU in Philadelphia. Both of those stations had talk radio shows before Detroit did, and I enjoyed listening to it. Radio was my window to the world.

Nowadays, more stations play syndicated content and there’s less local content, even on the clear channel stations. That’s our loss truly.

Ham Monitors Libyan “Psyops” Campaign

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An Australian newspaper reports that a Dutch amateur has been monitoring and Twittering about the Libyan military campaign, specifically an operation. The article starts:

A DUTCH ham radio operator has been able to learn about a psychological US special forces operation undertaken as part of an international military campaign designed to establish a no-fly zone over Libya.

Listening to his radio, this ham operator from the Netherlands was able to monitor radio exchanges between civilian and military flights in the region and make his findings public on his Twitter account @FMCNL.

Hunched over his radio, he listens in on unencrypted exchanges among military aircraft and their air traffic control centres.

The messages contain information about the location of the planes, which is necessary to avoid collisions between military and civilian aircraft.

You can read the entire article at http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/ham-operator-reveals-us-psyops-broadcast/story-e6frfku0-1226025610252#ixzz1HKwuV0Ur.

IW5EDI lists some of the HF frequencies used in the campaign, including:

  • 4169 kHz
  • 4196 kHz
  • 6690 kHz – Several players over No-Fly Zone
  • 6688 kHz – French Air Force
  • 6712 kHz – Mixed Use; Several Players
  • 6761 kHz – Global Aerial Refueling Operations
  • 6877 kHz – Reported PsyOps
  • 5368 kHz – Libyan GMMRA ALE Network
  • 6884 kHz – Libyan GMMRA ALE Network
  • 9375 kHz – Libyan GMMRA ALE Network
  • 10125 kHz – Libyan GMMRA ALE Network
  • 10404 kHz – Libyan GMMRA ALE Network
  • 9031.0 kHz USB – RAF frequency… very active while writing.

He notes, “I’ve found these frequencies mentioned on some yahoo groups dedicated to milcom (military radio communications), but we know that all important communications are encripted and use satellite. So dont’ expect to hear any interesting communication.”