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Regarding airband, try monitoring 123.45 mHz. Most airband comm is quite dry and often curt to the point of incomprehensibility (since it's just pilots and ground crew trying to give out information to one another as efficiently as possible). 123.45 is the "aircraft to aircraft communication frequency" in many places - basically, it's a pilot-to-pilot chat channel, and the talk on there is often light-hearted with pilots shooting the poo poo and just kicking back and having a natter. I've heard some funny stuff on there, pilots telling one another about how pissed they got the previous weekend or who's knobbing who and that kind of stuff. The other airband freqs can be interesting too but "the numbers" is often the most fun to hear.
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May 2, 2008 10:05
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Korendian Leader posted:After an evening of not getting too much, I just had an awesome lucky find. I was scanning ssb from about 6000khz onwards and after a few minutes of messing about I came across the Lincolnshire Poacher (at about 2107 utc I think). It was on 6960khz and the signal was really strong for a few minutes before it deteriorated. So naturally, I had to quickly wire up my pc to record it. Nice one  Sounds like it got jammed near the end?
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May 2, 2008 10:16
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GutBomb posted:yeah I am using a 30w cheapo job i got at rat shack. Would it help to "rough up" the surface area of where I am going to solder my wire to? You might sand it a bit to remove any surface oxidation and try letting the iron sit for 15 minutes first, those cheapo ones get pretty hot without any real regulation.
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May 2, 2008 12:16
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Paratus posted:Hey, so... since I haven't seen the question answered... what network is #shortwave on? irc.synirc.org, but I've never seen anyone in the channel.
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May 2, 2008 13:06
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stinky ox posted:Regarding airband, try monitoring 123.45 mHz. Most airband comm is quite dry and often curt to the point of incomprehensibility (since it's just pilots and ground crew trying to give out information to one another as efficiently as possible). 123.45 is the "aircraft to aircraft communication frequency" in many places - basically, it's a pilot-to-pilot chat channel, and the talk on there is often light-hearted with pilots shooting the poo poo and just kicking back and having a natter. I've heard some funny stuff on there, pilots telling one another about how pissed they got the previous weekend or who's knobbing who and that kind of stuff. The other airband freqs can be interesting too but "the numbers" is often the most fun to hear. I've monitored 123.45 quite regularly here in the UK and heard sweet gently caress all. I think it's not really used that much here. I always thought it was more an American thing. They're not really supposed to use it for chit-chat anyway, but I guess it happens lots.
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May 2, 2008 13:20
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thehustler posted:I've monitored 123.45 quite regularly here in the UK and heard sweet gently caress all. I think it's not really used that much here. I always thought it was more an American thing. Yeah, it's not supposed to be used for chat in the UK. I live in west Wales though so I do catch a fair bit of chatter on there from pilots doing the hop to Ireland or from the big jets doing the transatlantic crossing (which must get quite boring for a lot of the trip; one pilot I overheard telling another about how he had a laptop full of porn to pass the time on the long haul flights). It's not a channel that's continuously busy - what I tend to do is just set my scanner to monitor it and auto-record any activity and just leave it there and check the recordings every now and again.
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May 2, 2008 13:48
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player2 posted:3. What does a man have to do to find a crazy preacher or HAM radio junkies. 3. Move to the Southern states, we got preachers every other MHz on my dial. I have like 20 preachers programmed into my memory bank. Good times.  4. Another poster mentioned the 6000 and 6180 frequencies. You can also hear Radio Havana on 6060 KHz at night. If you speak Spanish, try tuning in around 5025 Khz. 5025 KHz is Radio Rebelde, basically plays nothing but communist speeches. Lots of gems on that one! My favorite is "Don't you see brothers? We are better off now thanks to Fidel and the revolution!" In response to your edit, another poster mentioned that the police use higher frequencies for their comms. Not only that, but police units use a Motorola trunking system, which means that without a trunking receiver, you will only be able to hear bits and pieces of different conversations. Police frequencies are pretty interesting to listen to. I'm trying to get my dad to let me have his trunking receiver - he never uses it! 
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May 2, 2008 18:43
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I've scanned through airband a few times now, and I don't get any chatter, but I do pick up what sounds like regular music stations, albeit a little bassy and distorted. Is that normal?
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May 3, 2008 06:38
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Accursed posted:irc.synirc.org, but I've never seen anyone in the channel. That's what I figured it was, but I couldn't tell because, well, the channel was empty. Thanks for confirming that.
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May 3, 2008 07:33
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After taking a firsthand listen I think I'm going to bite the bullet and get a shortwave radio. What am I missing out on if I get a G6 instead of a G5/KA1103? I don't really want to spend more than 100 bucks on one, so it's either a G6 or a KA1103. Unboxing Day fucked around with this message at 14:58 on May 3, 2008 |
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May 3, 2008 14:50
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There is an #swl channel on StarChat that has a good number of people inside, though it is not very active. For instance, the chat log since last night consists of this: <@nc-jay> morning guys <@ChrisSmol> off to buy tomato plants <@ChrisSmol> i have 48 tomato plants to plant. of course there's a 0% chance of rain today, and it is raining now. <@k4pml>  plant them in a bucket upside down, <@PhilcoBill> hi guys Emo Businessman posted:After taking a firsthand listen I think I'm going to bite the bullet and get a shortwave radio. I have the G6 and wonder the same thing. The G5 looks a little nicer, but I can't imagine the extra $50 going toward reception. Rather, I imagine it is a price for different features. But again, I am ignorant and just guessing.
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May 3, 2008 16:11
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Emo Businessman posted:What am I missing out on if I get a G6 instead of a G5/KA1103? I don't really want to spend more than 100 bucks on one, so it's either a G6 or a KA1103. Longwave reception and internal battery recharging. There isn't anything to listen to on Longwave, and the battery recharging is a fairly minor convenience. So, you're not really missing anything. player2 posted:I have the G6 and wonder the same thing. The G5 looks a little nicer, but I can't imagine the extra $50 going toward reception. Rather, I imagine it is a price for different features. But again, I am ignorant and just guessing. You already have your G6? Whyt he gently caress did you keep quiet?!?! Give us the full lowdown. We've been waiting to hear from an owner for weeks!
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May 3, 2008 17:15
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thehustler posted:meltie you just became my new friend I've always wanted to get into this kind of poo poo. I know lots of people like to do analysis of VLF stuff to try and decode the data protocols and stuff. And also with satcom stuff. Found a loopback cable lying around and decoded my first bit of RTTY tonight. Cocoamodem is sweet for its wideband monitoring, just click on the spectrogram to set the frequency, and play around with the parameters until...  ...SP6KEP, apparently from Poland, via the WebSDR
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May 3, 2008 18:30
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meltie posted:Found a loopback cable lying around and decoded my first bit of RTTY tonight. Cocoamodem is sweet for its wideband monitoring, just click on the spectrogram to set the frequency, and play around with the parameters until... Loopback cable? I will stick Cocoamodem on my MBP tonight and have a look PS come to Blackpool goon meet in your landrover! See goon meet forum for details!
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May 3, 2008 19:29
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AstroZamboni posted:You already have your G6? Whyt he gently caress did you keep quiet?!?! Give us the full lowdown. We've been waiting to hear from an owner for weeks! Haha, to be fair I did mention it a page or so back, but I didn't give any review or anything. So here goes my initial thoughts. Bear in mind I have never owned a SW radio before and know nothing about other models... When I received the G6 in its tiny box, I realized it was much smaller than I had anticipated. In fact, it is about three by five inches just looking at it. and an inch or so thick. Ergonomically, it's built very well. The outside casing has sort of a rubbery/non-slip feeling to it, and the buttons press nicely. I have pretty skinny fingers, so I don't have trouble with the interface, though fat hands might experience a bit of trouble on the pad. Really fat hands. The printing on the buttons is slightly skewed and uneven, but it's only a minor, aesthetic drawback. From the back, a piece of plastic can be swung out to create a makeshift stand so you can view your G6 at an angle, and the telescopic antenna is about four times the length of the machine. The red backlight is nice; when plugged in, the light stays on if you want it to, and on batteries, it turns on for five seconds when you press the button then shuts off to save energy. I can't really rate the reception with my noob status, but I have picked up Vatican State radio, muffled Radio Havana, some Morse code transmissions, and a few others in French, Spanish, and English from across the board. My location in Portland, Oregon and my residency in an apartment complex probably has something to do with my difficulty in finding much on SW in my two or three sessions so far. You can obviously input frequencies directly with the numpad or use the dial, which can jog quickly or slowly (or be locked). As far as I can tell, there's no way to switch between GMT and local time, but you can tell it which timezone you're in for ease of changing the clock when traveling. The small speakers are very clear when the signal is also clear. You can switch between regular and super bass (or whatever they call it). The bass mode ups the fidelity, but because this entails amplifying the dynamics, more fuzz comes in with it. Its good for music stations or bringing out vocal audio from ambient noise, though the regular setting I find best for vocal audio on clear signals. Moving between FM, AM, Airband, SW, and SSB is as easy as pressing single buttons, as it should be. 700 memories too, which are organized into pages of 10 memories each. It has alarms and auto turn-off, and it saves your frequency when turned off. I've most likely skipped over juicy details, so just fire away and I can provide answers. Overall, I would give it an 8/10, which is completely out of context as I know nothing about other radios. It loses points for lacking a GMT clock, though you could obviously set it to GMT as its normal time unless you really want to use the alarm without confusion, but with cell phones and Nintendo DSs, who the hell needs the alarm and the correct time? Seriously, if I lived in a less developed area and could pick up signals more easily, I can't imagine what else, other than two clock settings, I would want in my first handheld radio. It is a fine piece of equipment. Is the G6 new? I can't find reviews or launch dates for it anywhere online except for a January 2008 Grundig press release about the G5 and G6. Oh, 10/10 for new radio smell. In addition, Passport to World Band Radio is great and super user-friendly. It also receives a 10/10 for new glossy book smell. I love books like that, where most of the time you just want to mindlessly flip and feel the pages instead of read it because the art and weight and physical quality is so nice. Of course, there is a drat wealth of information ON the pages as well, with pretty pictures of radios and honest and conversational writing. For instance, from What's on Tonight?: "Voice of Korea, North Korea. Abysmal programs from the last of the old-style communist stations. Worth a listen just to hear how bad they are. One hour to East Asia on 3560, 7140, 9345 and 9730 kHz."* *A little piece of my proverbial heart dies every time I have to skip a serial comma due to quoting. Edit: In the Grundig G6 box - One pair of headphones (have not tried them yet), one power adapter, one Grundig G6, and one sweetass carrying case. player2 fucked around with this message at 19:36 on May 3, 2008 |
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May 3, 2008 19:29
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thehustler posted:Loopback cable? Simple little jack-to-jack thing. Line out to line in I tried using a software loopback but it absolutely roached the signal.I'd love to - i'll take a look, however the LR gets 8MPG... 
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May 3, 2008 19:41
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meltie posted:Found a loopback cable lying around and decoded my first bit of RTTY tonight. Cocoamodem is sweet for its wideband monitoring, just click on the spectrogram to set the frequency, and play around with the parameters until... Whoa, that is cool! Do you know of a good PC equivalent to Cocoamodem? I Googled Cocoamodem and it doesn't look like the author writes anything for PCs. I did a quick Google search and found a freeware program called MultiPSK. I tried using it on the hospital paging system frequency I mentioned earlier in the thread to try to decode the pages. But, MultiPSK has so many drat buttons and other doo-dads that I don't really know how to use it. It's not very beginner friendly. I'm pretty sure that I'm not using it properly since if I switch it to a PSK mode, it starts showing gibberish in the data screen even though there's no signal since the squelch is active.I was wondering if you (or anyone in this thread) knows of a good freeware PC data decoder that can work with a sound card.
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May 3, 2008 20:02
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player2 posted:
Sounds for the most part like the experience with an E5. I really like the fact that it has a RED backlight on the display instead of the blue/white on the E5/G5. Red light preserves night vision, and as I frequently use my radio while also doing amateur astronomy stuff, I may have to eventually replace my E5 with its smaller, cheaper cousin.
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May 4, 2008 02:20
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about the G6
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Dolemite posted:But, MultiPSK has so many drat buttons and other doo-dads that I don't really know how to use it. It's not very beginner friendly. Dolemite posted:I was wondering if you (or anyone in this thread) knows of a good freeware PC data decoder that can work with a sound card. I personally use Ham Radio Deluxe for most stuff, the beta version can handle a lot of protocols with the included Digital Master 780. A lot of hams prefer the MixW line of software, but I think it's really difficult and unintuitive to use. (...and it costs money to get the full unlocked nag-free version.) More narrowly focused software: MMTTY for decoding RTTY CWGET for decoding CW Digipan for PSK Sream for PSK, MFSK, etc. IZ8BLY's Hell reader for Hellschriber On HF the most common digital modes you'll see are RTTY, PSK31, and SSTV, at least on the ham bands. As for decoding pager signals and other stuff like that on VHF, those protocols are usually not open and are difficult for the random person to decode.
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May 4, 2008 02:59
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I'm getting good results using HamScope. It's not too complicated to figure out, a little fiddling with the buttons and a few adjustments of the frequency and suddenly you start to see bits of text that make sense... I seriously got goosebumps as soon as I saw "HELLO" flash across my screen. Right now I'm seeing CQ TEST and bits of two letter acronyms and callsigns amongst the gibberish of the background noise. It's feels like intercepting an alien communication or something, a serious  moment.
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May 4, 2008 03:42
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 Okay, so I am guessing that the question mark on the left side is just regular old RTTY, but what about the big WTF's? Seriously, what. the. hell.
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May 4, 2008 06:13
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Heart Iris posted:
The question marks are RTTY, and the big WTF is a huge pile of static which likes to walk up and down the bands. Considering that the hardware behind the utwente WebSDR is this:  ...plugged into a PC in a lab in the roof of the uni, i'm surprised it all works so well I'd REALLY REALLY like a radio that I can see the band on a spectrogram like the WebSDR offers. I love being able to go "Oh, there's RTTY over there. click! I guess that for that kind of thing it's going to be an SDR, aye? I don't actually know much about this kit, someone tell us about wideband SDRs and spectrograms and having a really nice wide frequency reception range and all that lovely jazz I'd also like to know next Wednesday's lottery numbers, please 
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May 4, 2008 11:28
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Looks like it's really pretty cheap to get into SDR. Softrock make kits for receiving which work in conjunction with (free) software on your PC to provide the point-and-tune functionality. The Softrock Lite kits cost just $10 each including postage in the US. The bad news is that the Softrock Lite kits are discontinued now. However it looks like a newer version is about to be released, "Softrock Lite Xtal", which is a lot better in that it covers all the HF bands. (The original Softrock Lite required one kit per band - so you'd need one for 80m, one for 40m etc). If you're interested it's worth keeping an eye on this page: http://www.softrockradio.org/SoftRock to check the availability status. At the moment they reckon the new version will be available mid-May. In the UK, Waters and Stanton still show the Softrock Lite as available: http://www.wsplc.com/acatalog/SOFTROCK-LITE.html but they are charging £20 each for the kits, getting on for 4x as much as the US price. I'd be inclined to wait for the better XTAL version anyway. I'll definitely be having an Xtal when it's available. SDR seems to be ome of those rare things that's cool as gently caress *and* cheap as chips .
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May 4, 2008 12:22
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stinky ox posted:The bad news is that the Softrock Lite kits are discontinued now. However it looks like a newer version is about to be released, "Softrock Lite Xtal", which is a lot better in that it covers all the HF bands. (The original Softrock Lite required one kit per band - so you'd need one for 80m, one for 40m etc). Ooooh, nifty. Cheers for the headsup e: When they go on sale, would you like to go halves on shipping to the UK? meltie fucked around with this message at 13:04 on May 4, 2008 |
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May 4, 2008 12:40
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meltie posted:The question marks are RTTY, and the big WTF is a huge pile of static which likes to walk up and down the bands.
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May 4, 2008 23:03
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meltie posted:Ooooh, nifty. Cheers for the headsup Sure, absolutely, once they become available let's see what we can arrange .
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May 4, 2008 23:10
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nmfree posted:I've been staring at that screenshot, and I don't think those are RTTY. RTTY usually shows up as two almost solid distinct lines with a space in the middle; there's too much stuff in the middle of that spectrum for it to be RTTY, I think. It's likely PSK (phase shift keying) which is pretty common down that end of the band. There's a ton of digital modes you can find all over HF and there's plenty of geeky fun to be had trying to work out what's what and decode it. This page http://www.kb9ukd.com/digital/ has samples of what the various modes sound like and is pretty helpful in trying to identify what you've found. Digipan (which was mentioned a few posts ago) is pretty good for PSK decoding.
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May 4, 2008 23:19
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stinky ox posted:It's likely PSK (phase shift keying) which is pretty common down that end of the band. There's a ton of digital modes you can find all over HF and there's plenty of geeky fun to be had trying to work out what's what and decode it. Anyway, my latest project has been trying to get the US Coast Guard's Weather Fax broadcasts to work.
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May 5, 2008 00:29
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nmfree posted:Holy gently caress, you're not kidding. I downloaded it a while ago but never got around to unpacking and running it, So now I remember why that Ham Radio Deluxe sounded familiar - the guy at work who is huge in to HAM radio uses it to control his radio. Problem is, he actually has a radio the program supports- I just have an ISA-based Winradio receiver. It doesn't look like anyone has written a driver for the program to support the Winradio. I'm going to have to check out the other programs you linked. I hope to pick up some data transmissions! Hopefully even some slow scan TV!
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May 5, 2008 07:07
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Picking up spanish lady at 5900 kHz since 8:10 GMT. It's been really clear and easy to find lately.
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May 5, 2008 09:23
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nmfree posted:I've been staring at that screenshot, and I don't think those are RTTY. RTTY usually shows up as two almost solid distinct lines with a space in the middle; there's too much stuff in the middle of that spectrum for it to be RTTY, I think. Hmm. The bands looked like this last night:  very sodding busy!...and the software I use was happily decoding the lot as 'RTTY'. That screenshot is with the waterfall speed set quite high, so you see the spaces as the frequency flips. Nifty link, i've been looking for something like that to train my ear with
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May 5, 2008 10:41
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God I know I've seen this before, but can someone explain this to me: Scanning around on some of the higher frequencies, I've found a few "repeats" of FM stations - the only one I've been able to 100% identify is 100.7MHz "repeating" on 233.5MHz. What's this phenomenon called and how does one calculate what possible frequency is being "repeated"?
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May 5, 2008 12:46
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TetsuoTW posted:God I know I've seen this before, but can someone explain this to me: It'll be a harmonic, but I forget the mathematical explanation behind it and always mess it up. Perhaps someone else can step in.
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May 5, 2008 17:20
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TetsuoTW posted:Scanning around on some of the higher frequencies, I've found a few "repeats" of FM stations - the only one I've been able to 100% identify is 100.7MHz "repeating" on 233.5MHz. What's this phenomenon called and how does one calculate what possible frequency is being "repeated"? 1) the transmitter isn't surpressing the transmitter harmonics/spurs completely or 2) your radio is mixing a harmonic of one of the local oscillators with the original frequency and not filtering that completely. 233.5-100.7=132.8, which would be a multiple of whichever LO handles FM in your radio.
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May 5, 2008 22:10
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How do I set CwGet to use my regular computer audio (from the Netherlands Web SDR) as input? Right now I'm turning the speakers on and pointing them at the computer (which works, somehow) but that's not really optimal. Still managed to pick up this: The quality of the input was pretty lousy because of my crappy speaker-pointed-at-microphone-jack setup, but it was still pretty thrilling to see real words begin to crawl across my screen. Foggy fucked around with this message at 06:15 on May 6, 2008 |
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May 6, 2008 04:16
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Thanks, thehustler, for the name of the thing. I had a hunch it began with h, but all I could remember was heterodyne, and that's not right at all.nmfree posted:There are two usual causes (that I know of) for hearing a harmonic: Given Taiwan's amazing ability to produce the most high tech stuff on the planet and then completely lack any idea how the hell to use it properly, I'm going to assume number 1 since that seems to imply someone done hosed up. Thanks for the details on that, I'll keep track of when I find more and see if it turns out to be number 2 though.
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May 6, 2008 06:20
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Foggy posted:How do I set CwGet to use my regular computer audio (from the Netherlands Web SDR) as input? Right now I'm turning the speakers on and pointing them at the computer (which works, somehow) but that's not really optimal.
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May 6, 2008 10:36
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nmfree posted:Instead of a common-law speaker-and-microphone marriage, why not have a real wedding by using a loopback cable? (It's just a cable with a male speaker plug on each end.) MAKE SURE YOU HAVE MICROPHONE PLAYBACK IN SPEAKERS MUTED, else you'll fry your soundcard. And you'll never forget the sound of a sound card screaming for its life. nmfree what's your email address?
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May 6, 2008 15:45
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Hello. There's a lot of love in this thread for the Grundig/Eton G5s, but I was wondering something. I read several reviews online and it seems that there were a decent amount of people that bought them and had them break hours later. I was planning on buying a G5 this weekend from Radio Shack, but now I'm a little apprehensive. Now I'm not sure if I should get the G5 or the Sony SW7600GR. They both look like good radios, but the reports of funky G5s has changed my plans. I could probably buy the G5 this weekend, or I could wait and order the Sony from Amazon.com. Any pointers in my selection, or should I just get the G5 without worry?
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May 6, 2008 19:59
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Haier posted:Hello. There's a lot of love in this thread for the Grundig/Eton G5s, but I was wondering something. I read several reviews online and it seems that there were a decent amount of people that bought them and had them break hours later. I was planning on buying a G5 this weekend from Radio Shack, but now I'm a little apprehensive. Now I'm not sure if I should get the G5 or the Sony SW7600GR. They both look like good radios, but the reports of funky G5s has changed my plans. One thing I tend to notice is a lot of people won't write an online review unless something goes terribly wrong. About 60 people in this thread have E5s and are satisfied.
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May 6, 2008 20:10
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