former sackville site and its neighbours

https://www.cbc.ca/arts/this-new-brunswick-town-was-literally-haunted-by-the-radio-1.3768831

city signpost for my listening location

Fullsize image (2177x1489; 377KB)

shortwave scanning, august 2017

To get reacquainted with shortwave listening, I scanned some of the broadcast bands during daytime, assisted by short-wave.info for identification. These receptions were at home via my battery-powered Tecsun PL-310 connected to ceiling-mounted random wire antennas. I've provided quick impression SIO codes to describe the reception quality.

2017-08-21 -- 2101-2148 UTC

10000 : WWV (no WWVH) -- SIO 353
11635 : HM01 number station -- SIO 454 (credit: priyom.org)
11930 : too faint to copy; likely Radio Martí (Spanish)
12050 : EWTN-WEWN (Spanish) -- SIO 353, moderate fading
13740 : Radio Havana Cuba (Spanish to South America) -- SIO 252
15000 : WWV (no WWVH) -- SIO 353
15120 : Voice of America (Bambara) -- SIO 353
15610 : EWTN-WEWN -- SIO 242
15760 : Overcomer-WHRI -- SIO 555
17540 : NHK World Radio (Portuguese to South America via WHRI) -- SIO 454

2017-08-23 -- 0000-0040 UTC

7385 : WHRI -- SIO 252
7520 : WWCR -- SIO 252
9370 : WWRB -- SIO 353
9455 : WRMI -- SIO 222
9475 : WTWW -- SIO 454
9955 : WRMI -- SIO 252
10000 : WWV -- SIO 555
11520 : EWTN-WEWN -- SIO 353
11670 : Radio Havana Cuba (Spanish to South America) -- SIO 353
11760 : Radio Havana Cuba (Spanish non-directional) -- SIO 353, significant fading
11840 : Radio Havana Cuba (Spanish to Central America) -- SIO 353
13740 : Radio Havana Cuba (Spanish to South America) -- SIO 454
15000 : WWV -- SIO 555 15120 : CRI (Spanish to Asia) -- SIO 252
15230 : Radio Havana Cuba (Spanish to South America) -- SIO 252

2017-08-25 -- 2302-2327 UTC

9350 : WWCR -- SIO 353
9370 : WWRB-Overcomer SIO 252
9475 : WTWW -- SIO 353
9505 : WHRI-Overcomer -- SIO 252
9980 : WWCR-Overcomer -- SIO 454
10000 : WWV -- SIO 555
11670 : Radio Havana Cuba (Spanish to South America) -- SIO 353
11760 : Radio Havana Cuba (Spanish non-directional) -- SIO 353
11825 : WRMI-Overcomer -- SIO 151
11880 : Radio Havana Cuba -- SIO 252
11930 : Radio Martí (Spanish) -- SIO 252
12050 : WEWN-EWTN (Spanish) -- SIO 555
13650 : CRI (Portuguese to South America) -- SIO 454
15000 : WWV -- SIO 252
15230 : Radio Havana Cuba (Spanish to Central America) -- SIO 252
15610 : WEWN-EWTN -- SIO 353

2017-08-27 -- 1758-1838 UTC

9370 : WWRB-Overcomer -- SIO 252
9475 : WTWW -- SIO 232
9655 : KNLS (Russian; at 1758 UTC) -- SIO 454
9965 : Firedrake (versus RFA) -- SIO 212
10000 : WWV -- SIO 353
11635 : HM01 -- SIO 252 (credit: priyom.org)
15000 : WWV -- SIO 252
15000 : WWVH -- SIO 252
15760 : WHRI-Overcomer -- SIO 555

longwave ndb logs, aug-sep 2015

Here's a small collection of non-directional beacons logged in August-September, 2015 from Northern California. I used my Eton E5 and Sony ICF SW7600GR receivers for these receptions.

Logs

223 "YKA-" (Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada; 900 mi)
236 "YZA" (Ashcroft, British Columbia, Canada; 885 mi)
251 "YCD-" (Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada; 800 mi)
290 "YYF-" (Penticton, British Columbia, Canada; 825 mi)
326 "DC-" (Princeton, British Columbia, Canada; 815 mi)
332 "XH-" (Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada; 1030 mi)
335 "CC" (Concord, California; 36 mi) ** logged daytime and nighttime
335 "CVP" (150 w; Helena, Montana; 810 mi)
338 "RYN" (400 w; Tucson, AZ; 750 mi)
344 "FCH" (400 w; Fresno, California; 159 mi) ** logged daytime and nighttime
344 "XX-" (50 w; Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada; 785 mi)
350 "NY-" (Enderby, British Columbia, Canada; 920 mi)
359 "BO" (400 w; Boise, Idaho; 535 mi)
368 "SX-" (Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada; 900 mi)
368 "ZP-" (Sandspit, British Columbia, Canada; 1175 mi)
371 "ITU" (100 w; Great Falls, Montana; 880 mi)
374 "EX-" (Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada; 855 mi)
374 "LV" (25 w; Livermore, California; 41 mi) ** logged daytime and nighttime
378 "OT" (North Bend, Oregon; 405 mi)
385 "WL-" (Williams Lake, British Columbia, Canada; 1015 mi)
397 "SB" (San Bernardino, California; 370 mi)
400 "QQ-" (Comox, British Columbia, Canada; 855 mi)
404 "MOG" (100 w; Montague, California; 285 mi)
408 "MW" (Moses Lake, Washington; 690 mi)

Sources

• http://www.airnav.com/
• http://www.dxinfocentre.com/ndb.htm
• http://www.geobytes.com/citydistancetool/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-directional_beacon

firedrake logs, oct 2015, part 2

(I wish I had more recent content to share with you. But for now, I'm dusting off some old drafts and publishing them...)

After the B15 schedule went into effect, I began a new set of Firedrake logs. Frequencies in kHz, via UTwente WebSDR in Enschede, Netherlands. Times shown are the hour during which a Firedrake broadcast was received.

6010: 2000 UTC
6020: 2000 UTC
6095: 2000 UTC
7445: 2000 UTC
9410: 2000, 2100 UTC
9455: 1900, 2000, 2100 UTC
9860: 1900 UTC

a thought on portable radio ergonomics

I use exclusively portable radios. Recently, I wanted to revisit my Degen DE321 to see how it tuned strong local signals and what kind of tuning refinements were possible. So I put a couple alkaline batteries in it and tuned to my usual local news radio station, KCBS AM 740.

At some point, I was ready to switch it off and do something else. I picked up the radio and thoughtlessly moved my thumb along the right side. I heard a click sound and thought "okay, it's off." But then I took another look at it, and saw the Tune light was still lit. Then I remembered that there was a power switch on the left, and what I did was probably lower the volume.

If the volume dial didn't end with a hard stop, I would've noticed my error right away. There's something that portable radios could adapt from smart phone user interfaces: an indication that the end has been reached. When scrolling to the edge of a page, there's a sort of rubber banding effect that lets the user continue to move the content but smartly indicates that the edge was reached. What if volume knobs and tuning knobs continued to travel a bit at the edges, and produced a quick vibrate?

finding stations in a new city

My family had recently moved due to my father changing jobs. My parents found a well-maintained brick house with a spacious backyard for their growing children. The kitchen had a nice layout, the living room had an incredible view of the backyard, and the spacious family room would be great for parties and gatherings. All of the schools were within walking distance, and our grandparents were just a few miles away. The only problem was that we only had three bedrooms for five people. The parents got a room, our older sister got her own room, and my brother and I shared one. Thankfully, my older brother Mark and I got along well and we were young, so sharing a room wouldn't be a problem.

"Hey Eric," my brother told me, "there's a lot more stations now."

He was tuning the General Electric clock radio in our room. The larger city we previously lived in had numerous AM and FM stations, but my brother was discouraged by what little he found on the radio in our new city during the day. I was just reaching the age where I paid attention to the radio and I even had some favorite songs. We mostly listened to pop and classic rock stations; a highlight for me each week was Casey Kasem's American Top 40.

"All the new ones are on AM." I acknowledged what my brother said, but wasn't actively participating. It was around bedtime, and I was flipping through a comic book while sitting on my bed.

In my adult years, I would delve deep into the wonders and mysteries of radio, learning about shortwave, amateur radio, and ionospheric propagation. But as a grade-schooler, I only understood a few concepts: on/off, volume, and tuning. I had a vague awareness of AM and FM. My grandfather had a car radio that picked up only AM, but all of it seemed to be talk, not music. As the youngest one in the family, I was rarely ever controlling the tuning dial.

"I think she said Cincinnati!" my brother exclaimed, referring to a station he had been listening to for a couple minutes. I finally put my comic book aside and we discussed what that meant. Was it news? Was that female announcer actually in Cincinnati? Cincinnati was hundreds of miles away from us, so how was this possible? Then we heard a call sign. WLW. We didn't recognize it, and found it strange as we thought all radio call signs had four letters.

He moved the tuning dial around some more and we heard music, strange voices, commercials, and some stations that sounded very faint. Mark demonstrated his fine-tuning method to me, using his pointer finger instead of his thumb so he could move the tuning dial very slowly.

"This station is pretty cool. I'll leave the radio on this one and I'll turn it off when the song ends." It was a station playing one of his favorite songs. Our parents had also signaled that it was time for lights out.

"Cool," I replied. I was impressed but also relieved that the radio and the lights would soon be off so I could sleep.

The next morning, my brother grabbed the radio excitedly and switched it on, but he heard nothing but faint static. The stations that we were listening to the night before had vanished.

That's how I was introduced to the phenomenon known as medium wave DXing.

(Images from Wikipedia and Apple Maps. Thanks to Jerry and Stephen for their input into this post.)

about a radio call-in contest

The year was 1999. I was driving around the Oakland/Berkeley area, locally referred to as the East Bay, and some FM radio station I was listening to was giving away concert tickets. I listened for the phone number, and rushed to pull over so I could use my wireless phone safely.

I was the correct caller, and the DJ who answered the phone did the standard thing of asking questions and recording the call to play back on the air. At the end of the call, she asked me my favorite radio station.

Uh.

I wasn't a regular FM radio listener anymore. I certainly didn't have any loyalty to the stations in my area. But it was a nice distraction in the absence of other things to listen to. Digital audio players apparently existed for a year by that point, but I didn't own one yet.

So I had maybe two seconds, tops, to remember and say the name of this station, who were so generously giving me two tickets to an upcoming concert.

Let's see, what frequency am I on? 101-something. I don't have that car anymore, so I don't remember what the radio tuner looked like. But it was definitely factory, so I did an image search and see that the radio had a digital frequency display. So I was likely looking at 101.3 on the tuner display. And it's not one of the callsigns I know. Embarrassingly enough, I knew the callsign of the local smooth jazz station, KKSF (since changed to KOSF, and with a different format now). And there was the ubiquitous KOIT, the easy listening station that you might hear in a dentist's office. As for this frequency? The station's identity hadn't been stored in my brain yet.

I had a good guess, and decided to go with it rather than admit I didn't know what station I was calling. I mumbled through the branding for the station, which was correct, and heard it played back a few minutes later on the broadcast.

Thank you, KIOI aka K-101, for those concert tickets!