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Art Bell is hanging it up for good... Again.
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Dec 12, 2015 06:03
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 13:30 |
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ickna posted:Art Bell is hanging it up for good... Again. Ten bucks says he comes back again after he gets bored of getting no attention from people.
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Dec 13, 2015 04:17
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BigHustle posted:Ten bucks says he comes back again after he gets bored of getting no attention from people. nah, I'm pretty sure he burned some bridges with this one. I suspect it is decision made from a cumulative effect of: - doing the show has had a negative impact on his family life - the overall quality of the guest list has been in decline for the last few weeks - frustration with callers not answering when put on air or following basic protocols - being old - being paranoid - opportunistic leveraging of a minor crisis or the deliberate elaboration of it in order to establish a narrative that absolves him of the guilt for quitting, as is his historic pattern. I don't doubt there have been gunshots from some random nuts driving around in the desert, or a crazy fan wanting to peek in the window during the show, or someone who thinks it is funny to call in a threat to his home phone. I do have doubts that the incidents are the same person or even related, but there is simply not enough evidence in support of or against the situation either way, and his word alone is all anyone has to go by. Intuitively, though, the whole thing is suspect and no police reports have yet been found to support his claims.
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Dec 13, 2015 14:46
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A lot of radio stations just signed up to syndicate him for hours overnight with much fanfare. This is going to be a loving mess.
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Dec 14, 2015 16:43
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Up in eastern Canada I haven't been able to get much lately aside from the usual panel of insane preachers and bleedover radio broadcasts. I know a lot of formerly big-name players have shuttered their shortwave broadcasts (Voice of Russia, I'm looking at you), but are we really staring down the throat of the death of shortwave as anything but a cottage industry?
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Mar 6, 2016 21:40
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Oh how i'd kill for the SW equivalent of low power FM licensing. 1 kW max, domestic audiences okay.
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Mar 7, 2016 01:34
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Europe allows lower powered broadcasting utilizing former state owned facilities; not sure why North America ceases facilities then immediately tears them apart (looking at you Sackville and VOA).
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Mar 7, 2016 05:27
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Radio Nowhere posted:Europe allows lower powered broadcasting utilizing former state owned facilities; not sure why North America ceases facilities then immediately tears them apart (looking at you Sackville and VOA). Clear Channel and the other am/fm conglomerates are largely responsible for this, I think. They have considerable aversion to the bands ever getting more open to anybody who isn't Clear Channel with 100 million dollars of lobbyist cash. I'm sure there's some dumb political/foreign policy argument too.
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Mar 7, 2016 19:30
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Taking my Technician license test in two weeks. Been mostly preparing with the ARRL license manual (little skimpy in areas I'd like to know more about but overall seems fine for the test) and a practice test app on my phone. What's a good starter kit if I want to do SDR and mostly telecommand and telemetry stuff?
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Mar 10, 2016 00:32
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Passed the Technician test, now just waiting to actually show up in the database and get my call sign I guess? I bought an RTL-SDR and have been playing around with it some.
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Mar 24, 2016 07:37
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Apocadall posted:Passed the Technician test, now just waiting to actually show up in the database and get my call sign I guess? I bought an RTL-SDR and have been playing around with it some. Congratulations! I'm studying for my general now, anxious to get it out of the way so I can start playing around on some different bands. Whats the shortwave scene like in your area? I'm starting to get bored of mine.
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Mar 24, 2016 17:09
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BaseballPCHiker posted:Congratulations! I'm studying for my general now, anxious to get it out of the way so I can start playing around on some different bands. We have a ham radio club on campus that apparently does some fun things. One guy trying to get me to join got his General license at the same time I was getting my technician, but I'm too busy with the rocket club and preparing for the NASA student launch competition to really have the time for it in addition to classes. I'm at a University in electrical and computer engineering so my experience could be different from the general area. We're currently doing APRS data transmission stuff in my Linux class by writing our own AX25 frame, bell 202 encoder, and driver for some hardware to transmit the APRS data. General area I'd almost expect doomsday preppers, decently rural area. They might be entertaining for a bit but I'm more interested in the data side of things and what I can do with that myself.
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Mar 24, 2016 18:10
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Too good a thread to let lapse. I've been doing a lot of SW utility monitoring lately. Here are a couple weatherfaxes I pulled off Point Reyes, CA on their 12Mhz frequency today.  Still trying to figure out how to keep sync the whole way through, but still, not bad for a drat shortwave radio and an old thinkpad
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Jun 8, 2016 04:26
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So I'm just now getting into this thread and really enjoying all the great info! I'm still catching up on zillions of pages, but care to go into more info on the old Thinkpad fax deal? I've got all kinds of old hardware laying around (including a Pentium 200mhz thinkpad) that I'd love to get a non-LAN party use for again 
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Jun 8, 2016 19:52
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yeah, get an audio feed from the radio to the machine with a cable, install something like FLdigi or mixW depending on your platform, and you can decode a PILE of digital modes. Also great for just straight up tape recorder duty if you install a small sound recorder. There's a bunch of software out there to play with digital stuff on HF and VHF. If you can pick the OS, honestly Windows has the most volume of software, but Linux has the hackable nerd stuff going on too.
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Jun 8, 2016 21:22
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I didn't realize there was a fraction of that kind of software available that can look at a raw audio signal like that, how cool!! Thanks for giving me something else to throw on my list of cool stuff I want to get into.
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Jun 8, 2016 21:27
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Jonny 290 posted:yeah, get an audio feed from the radio to the machine with a cable, install something like FLdigi or mixW depending on your platform, and you can decode a PILE of digital modes. Also great for just straight up tape recorder duty if you install a small sound recorder. There's a bunch of software out there to play with digital stuff on HF and VHF. If you can pick the OS, honestly Windows has the most volume of software, but Linux has the hackable nerd stuff going on too. This is great, thanks! I've been looking for a project like this for an old laptop I had sitting around.
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Jun 14, 2016 20:37
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I love this thread  So I snagged an RTL-SDR this week on a whim and have messed with it once for about 30 minutes, it's pretty cool. To receive shortwave with it, I need an upconverter, correct? I went to the usual strong freqs and didn't pick up anything, of course I'm just using the long telescopic antenna inside the house. Any suggestions for interesting stuff to do with just the stock dongle and antenna?
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Jun 24, 2016 17:50
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The reason the RTL chip acts as a SDR in the first place is to support FM broadcast radio, so there's that obviously. With the right software you can also use it as a scanner, if you're lucky and the frequencies you care about are within a MHz or so you can actually monitor them all simultaneously rather than having to switch quickly between them. With a different piece of software you can monitor ADS-B signals and see most of the air traffic in your general area. Likewise for AIS if you're near a coast or shipping channel. Pagers are also mostly unencrypted, if you're near a hospital you might see something interesting that way. As a general rule if it's audio or low-rate unencrypted data within the tuning range of the device you can probably receive it with the right antenna. I believe people have even managed to receive GPS signals with RTL devices, though it was far from ideal.
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Jun 24, 2016 18:53
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Okay, I was wondering if there was something software-wise I needed aside from SDRsharp. Cool. I still need an upconverter for shortwave though, right? I was looking at the NooElec Ham It Up for $40-ish on Amazon. And something to mount it on, I guess. Looks like a job for plywood!
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Jun 24, 2016 20:54
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Nostratic posted:I love this thread The Spyverter is the upconverter of choice, currently, and I plan on buying it next month.
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Jun 24, 2016 22:27
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grilldos posted:The Spyverter is the upconverter of choice, currently, and I plan on buying it next month.
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Jun 24, 2016 23:11
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Is there anything on OS X that's less of a pain in the rear end to use than GQRX?
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Jun 25, 2016 18:22
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Naturally I'd gone ahead and ordered the Ham It Up before I checked back. Hmmm. I did get the HIU from Amazon, maybe I'll just return it and order the Spyverter. e: yep, ordered the Spyverter and will drop the other off for a return tomorrow. a mysterious cloak fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jun 27, 2016 |
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Jun 26, 2016 23:19
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grilldos posted:Is there anything on OS X that's less of a pain in the rear end to use than GQRX? Ebay.com, search "thinkpad t420" and get a refurb with a win7 sticker on it. Snark level down: Seriously, I've forever given up on trying to get poo poo running on my Macbook. There's just not much out there and what has made it out there has very little support. Gqrx is pretty much it for SDRs on the Mac side. If you're ok with virtualizing, a win7 box with the SDR passed through should work fine.
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Jun 27, 2016 01:03
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In a stunning turn of events, CubicSDR is actually pretty good on OS X. I have been shocked.
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Jun 27, 2016 15:50
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grilldos posted:In a stunning turn of events, CubicSDR is actually pretty good on OS X. I have been shocked. Cubic looks nice. I wish these really nice SDR apps would also just support I/Q from a sound device, I rly want to plug in my KX3 to this.
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Jun 27, 2016 22:24
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Why did I order the Spyverter from the place in China as opposed to the Airspy US site that I just noticed 
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Jul 1, 2016 17:12
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Oh yay, it's probably leaving Hong Kong soon! 
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Jul 3, 2016 21:45
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I have Spyverter! And after spending about an hour with it last night, I'm still trying to get it working. I've got it connected correctly as far as I can tell, but it's not picking up anything. Not even the time station at 5000khz. Hmmm. edit: I still got nothing  edit 2: Awwww yiss got it going last night and heard some serious political ravings. Good stuff. a mysterious cloak fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Jul 19, 2016 |
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Jul 16, 2016 15:53
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Radio New Zealand International has started beaming English to North America on 7245 in our evenings. Nice clear signal.
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Aug 2, 2016 07:22
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Neat! Thanks for the heads up.
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Aug 8, 2016 16:38
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I picked up this interesting little Zenith Portable tube radio a couple of weeks ago. The 1953 L507 Meridian was basically the Poor man's version of the H500 Transoceanic. The Meridian sold for $89 while the Transoceanic H500 sold for around $150. It didn't sell well and as a result is quite rare today. The L507 Meridian covers the AM broadcast band along with two bands covering 1-6MHZ and 6-18MHZ shortwave. Unlike the H500, the Meridian didn't have a complex pushbutton band selection coil stack, but rather a basic rotary bandswitch. Despite being Zenith's low end shortwave portable in the US market, the Meridian was apparently exported to Cuba, Central and South America, North Africa, and The Mideast.  After a Recap, restringing the dial cord, and building a battery pack for it, it plays great. The original Electrolytic capacitor can tested like new on all sections on my ESR tester, and the radio played with no AC hum after the paper capacitors were replaced, so it will stay for the time being.  The 1L6 tube was weak, so I replaced it with one of the solid state versions available on eBay. The SS 1l6 provides better sensitivity and selectivity on the upper Shortwave bands. Also the power cord is twisted all to heck, but the insulation is still pliable, and since I tend I run my old tube portables almost exclusively on batteries, It'll get replaced later. The Radio runs on 6 cheapass Dollar Tree carbon zinc D cells for the filament supply and 10 NIMH 9v's in series for the Plate supply. The filament draw is so low that the D cells last for almost a month of regular listening. My next move is to use a 12V Sealed Lead Acid battery from an emergency lighting system with a 9V regulator or a diode dropper to take the place of the D Cells. Now I can bring Radio Havana Cuba, Brother Stair, and Alex Jones with me wherever I go! MullardEL34 fucked around with this message at 09:47 on Aug 14, 2016 |
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Aug 14, 2016 08:49
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That is a huge and fantastic radio! Congrats
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Aug 14, 2016 19:04
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There is something hilarious about Radio Havana Cuba using the Black Keys "Tighten Up" as bumper music for their agitprop broadcasts
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Aug 18, 2016 10:26
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Not shortwave, but i collect table radios in general. Here's my latest grab inmate number is there on the side it sounds really great. amazing sensitivity and full rich sound.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:10
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Jonny 290 posted:
Ahhhh, that would explain the glass top! Nowadays inmates can buy all kinds of electronics that come encased entirely in clear acrylic, so they can't hide contraband. Like so: https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Clear-Tunes-Tech-Security/dp/B019135MN6 As someone who enjoys the aesthetics of electronic guts, I was tempted to pick up something like that monitor for kicks, but I've heard they're over-priced pieces of crap. Not surprising, given that their market is literally a captive buyer. Fake edit: awww poo poo, check out that sweet clear boombox on page 2. Love the clear typewriters, too. http://www.jlmarcuscatalog.com/main/368/Electronics.pdf Sorry for the derail, just thought I'd share with fellow lovers of unusual electronics!
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Sep 11, 2016 18:39
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That clear poo poo is p dope. I always thought clear electronics were loving awesome. What I wouldn't give for a clear iPhone.
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Sep 12, 2016 01:35
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Not 100% shortwave related, but shortwave radio is apart of it! http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/donald-trump-voice-of-america-232442 Also this hurts, http://swling.com/blog/2016/12/radio-australia-to-end-shortwave-broadcast-service-on-january-31-2017/ Since I live in a noisy townhouse neighborhood now I've been doing most of my shortwave listening on these. http://websdr.org/ http://sdr.hu/ Cheating I know, but only so much shortwaving I can do outside now that winter's hit.
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Dec 13, 2016 01:08
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Nah, everybody websdr's now. It's my belief that these prolong our weird antique hobby in the face of dwindling real estate and home ownership by people in general these days. Don't forget about utwente, the big cat daddy of online SDRs. Custom board, hits the whole HF spectrum at once. http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/
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Dec 15, 2016 00:18
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