| 680 | Radio Continente, Venezula | 
13/4 0529 |
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| 700 | Radio Sucre, Ecuador |
0531 10/4 |
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| 830 | Radio Sensation, Venezula | 0501 9/4 | |
| 1390 | WZHF | Arlington/ Washington |
8/4 0500 |
| 1400 | Em Mariana de Bogota, Columbia |
0530 10/4 (5Kw) (Tnks AB for correction) |
Personal Firsts this month = 5 SO FAR ALL TIMES
ARE IN GMT |
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NEW (OLD) RADIO RECORDINGS: I have been uploading many more old recordings of Radio Star Country from 1989 with the late Don Allen, well known on Radio Caroline and RNI in years gone by. Don as mentioned in earlier entries this month, worked on many of the Irish radio stations of the 80's, his last station being Radio Star. The recordings were mostly made in early 1989, when it was thought that Star Country's days were numbered, after they continued defiantly after the 1988 broadcast bill was in force. Another station had come on the air by the 2nd week in January 1989. Northside Radio was broadcasting from Co Donegal, on 846kHz. This was no more than a new name for Radio North, after they closed on 31st December 1988. I have begun to upload a few long recordings of Northside Radio recorded here in Scotland on triple play reel to reel tapes. Reception is quite good, though the transmitter was really screaming it's head off. That was how it sounded like on air. This station was on the air for a matter of months, before reverting back to the name Radio North. I am hopefully going to be comparing notes with a dxer in Co Donegal to log dates and frequencies of the stations in the county. There was also a station called North Atlantic Radio, which although using many of the same presenters was probably a different station altogether. Radio North was a separate station from NAR at one time, but they seemed to turn back into yet another incarnation of Radio North..!!!
ARD RECORDINGS: I am also in the proccess of copying all the old ARD recordings I have from 1979. ARD stood for Alternative Radio Dublin, a breakaway from Radio Dublin. ARD closed on 31st December 1979. They had a good signal here in Scotland on 1161, even though they were next to semi local ILR Glasgow on 1152. I had only been able to hear ARD since the summer of 1979, due to not having a receiver that could separate Clyde and Radio Tees. It was OK with stronger continentals at night, but no use by day. (At that stage my best MW receiver was a domestic Philips radio gram. In the summer of 1979, I bought a Grundig satellit 3400. I had a Codar CR70A MK2 at the time, but on MW by day there was nothing between Clyde 1152, and BBC Radio 1 1089. The selectivity was so poor.
PMSDR RECORDING VIA AUTOHOTKEYS AND WINRAD-HD:
Well done to Davie, and hat's off to you for sharing again in the public domain straight away. We both wonder why there has never been anyone else come up with the hotkeys script for WINRAD?? Initially on looking at the original Perseus script, it looked a nightmare, but once you got into it, things became a lot easier. I only wish I had the programming knowledge it takes to write a full GUI for playback. If I could I would produce a simple white screen with black text, and not all the colours of the rainbow. I actually quite like the light grey background of Spectravue. Compare that to WINRAD, or the screenshots of the WINRADIO EXCALABAR from the WINRADIO site!! The new WINRAD HD script is included in the PMSDR ESSENTIALS which was mentioned here the other day.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PMSDR / WINRAD TOOLKIT
Incidentally I thought it was very nice of Martin, the designer of the PMSDR to completely ignore this development, after it was published in the Yahoo group. You'd have thought he would have at least had the courtesy to say thank you, considering it opens up new possibilities for his receiver, and can only be good for sales.
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/pmsdr/
FM STATIONS IN 1995 HEARD IN SCOTLAND:
I have been looking for some signal tests and notes that I made in years gone by, and came across some logs of the FM band. A very different FM band that we know today. Here is some of the logs that were coming through here in Scotland at that time.
100 Radio
Dublin
UPDATE ON SPECTRTAVIEW 3.0 BETA 19: Yesterday I asked if anyone had a copy of Beta 19 of Spectraview. This was for experimental purposes and to test the software in comparason to Perseus. But I never had it working properly either, so it is now deleted. Enough time has been spent on secondary software. Perseus was always going to be my main software in everyday use. It is so much more user friendly than anything else I have ever tried. Thanks to the dxers that sent me the link to Willie's downloads. Forgot about that excellent resource. All appreciated. Seeing as Perseus files are locked out, it looks like Mr Spectravue doesn't want dxers to be able to try his software properly either. Can't be good for sales.
PMSDR TIMER RECORDINGS WITH WINRAD AND AUTOHOTKEYS:
Well after a few weeks asking around and no one taking up his appeal for help, Davie H had almost given up with the remote timer script for recording with Autohotkeys and the PMSDR. I altered the code script last year to take in the move of a couple of buttons on the Perseus, so I thought I would try my hand at something which certainly can not be described as my specialist subject. After a look at both WINRAD HD, and WINRAD 1.6.1 it was decided to use the latter, as the HD version had more pop up boxes to attend to at start up. The recorded file of course plays back fine in WINRAD HD if required. Unlike some stuffy dxers who keep things secret, we made the script public immediately. After all, isn't the hobby about sharing logs and little tips and tricks???? Seems not everyone thinks along these lines. Any dxers using WINRAD with other SDR's such as the QUICKSILVER receiver, could probably quite easily modify the PMSDR script for the QSR. Unfortunately the pop up boxes will be all different. I know the Perseus pop up box is taller and different from the PMSDR pop up, and as a result, I had to go and visit Davie with his PMSDR on Saturday and try and put the finishing touches to the script. It was a bit of trial and error and the two of us banging our heads together for a couple of hours, but eventually we got it running fine.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PMSDR / WINRAD TOOLKIT
INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE:
1. Download the above PMSDR toolbox zip file 2. Unzip the containing folder to your hard drive (eg drag it onto your desktop) 3. Install AUTOHOTKEYS 4. Install WINRAD 1.1.6 into it's DEFAULT folder (important) 5. Optional, but install notepad plus. Better to edit with than the simple windows notepad. 6. Copy PSKILL.EXE into Winrad folder. (C:/Program Files/Winrad) 7. Open the file pm_sdr_record_sample.ahk with notepad plus. (Right click - Edit with Notepad++) 8. Select the time you desire the recordings to start and stop, eg 0258 - 0303. (In Notepad++, line 46 approx) 9. Save file as for example pmsdr_0300.ahk
Within the zip file on this server, there are a couple of sample files. 0300, 0400, 0500.
(NB - IT IS ASSUMED USERS HAVE SOME PC KNOWLEDGE AND AT LEAST HAVE THEIR FILE TYPES SHOWING. MY COMPUTER - TOOLS - FOLDER OPTIONS - VIEW - UNTICK "HIDE EXTENSIONS FOR KNOWN FILE TYPES") This lets you see whether your file is a .txt, .doc, .mp3, .ahk etc. By default Windows hides this, but I have no idea how people can work properly with a PC without their file extensions showing.
WINRAD - FORCES CHANGES TO YOUR WINDOWS SETTTINGS..!!!!! How about that. I was seeing silly fading menus and things today on my PC and thought something funny was going on. Then I had a look at the advanced settings. (Right click My Computer - Properties - Advanced - Performance Settings). Many of the unwanted frills of Windows XP had been reticked, but not by me. What was running? I had only installed WINRAD since yesterday. There was nothing much unusual running in the old "RUN - MSCONFIG". So where did that leave us. After unticking and a reboot, the boxes were again reticked, and I had silly fading on menus again. How weird.
I uninstalled WINRAD. Voila. Back to my own personal settings. Why would an SDR GUI wish to hi jack the windows settings. Is it so that it can operate the weird spinning compas all the time??? Who knows, but it is now gone anyway. Deleted. This may have been version 1.3 or similar number from Alberto's site, an 11 meg download. When I went to David H's QTH to try and finalise the script on Saturday, I found he was running version 1.6.1, which did NOT hijack the windows settings, and had thankfully only 1 frequency display instead of an annoying two. There is still a weird spinning thing though. BUT...BUT... After doing yet another trial with Spectraview using a WINRAD recorded file, using WINRAD 1.6.1 (850k or thereabouts) and Perseus, I found that on my PC, the silly fading menu options are again reticked themselves. But they weren't selected on Davie's PC. Odd. We haven't really compared versions of Windows yet to see who is using what.... At any rate, I found WINRAD to be a very poor second to the Perseus software. It will not even attempt to play a 1600kHz file. A 1mhz file is somewhat stuttery as well. This is despite the WINRAD CPU use reading being pretty low. Tuning is a nightmare compared to the Perseus GUI. Perseus files play flawlessly, and I still have plenty horsepower to play with for other applications that may be running. I have no real use for it other than to experiment and try and get the timer recordings working for PMSDR dxers, so it will soon be gone...
WANTED - SPECTRAVUE 3.0 BETA 19: I was trying Spectraview with the Perseus recordings, but they were seen as invalid. It seems that the author of the software has locked out the Perseus capability again for some reason and only users with and SDR-IQ rx for example plugged in to the PC at least once, can use Spectravue for Perseus files. However reading up on line, I see version 3.0 beta 19 is the required version, with no silly tricks. Anyone have that version available???? I doubt it comes close to the Perseus software for user friendly operation, but I would have liked the opportunity to try it with a Perseus file to compare for example the digging out of weak signals. Can anyone mail me a copy of BETA 19 to try????
THE WORLD FAMOUS AMPEX TAPES: As readers of this blog will have been aware in the last month or so, I have been quite active in archiving my old manky reels of tape as well as old cassettes. Yesterday I had an odd reel that I must have been given by someone. I can't recall who, but I only ever bought the triple play reels that could record 6.5 hours per track. Each tape had 4 mono tracks, or 2 stereo tracks. These triple play tapes are all Maxell. They are playing as though they had been recorded yesterday, and playing flawlessly. But I have 1 AMPEX tape which although on a 7" reel, is only 1hr 37m per track at slow speed. There are a couple of minutes at the start of each side of a test tone, then a second leader tape!! Odd. But despite the name AMPEX, a name well known in radio studios of the past, the reel is falling to bits. One play yesterday clogged up the tape path and heads to the extreme. No use. So that tape will be left until last, and I will have to record it bit by bit. Shocking that some of these tapes are now almost unplayable. Also showing the same characteristics as the duff AMPEX are those orange BASF cassettes that you used to get in the early 80's. Even C60's are no use, and have to be copied bit by bit!! Some of the orange BASF c120's are full of plastic things to aid the mechanism. But after all these years being unplayed, they are also sticky in a mechanical way, and there are some amount of squeaks and whines coming through the speakers that are not on the tape. The way to overcome this is to change the tape housing whether briefly or permanently. I was given a box of old music tapes a couple of years ago that someone was putting out, and I also fell in with a sealed box of music tapes.. some dance thing. So I have plenty shells lying around that I can use. Many of my 1980's ID tapes are on these BASF c120's.
DON ALLEN ON RADIO STAR COUNTRY: The late Don Allen's last radio station was Radio Star in Co Monaghan. Don worked for a range of stations including Sunshine and Nova, but his great passion was for country music, so he moved from station to station in Ireland during the 1980's. Don was first heard in Europe I believe in the 1960's on Radio Caroline with his country and western jambouree. Later he was on Manx Radio, before joining Radio Northsea, where I first heard his shows as a youngster in 73/74. I believe Don was also on the Voice of Peace in Israel. In Ireland, Don was heard on Sunshine, see links below. He also went on to be part of Royal County Radio 846, and joined a host of other stations. Those I think I remember are: Sunshine, Royal County Radio, Carousel Navan, Nova, ERI, Radio West, Rosscommon Radio, Erneside Radio, Cavan Community Radio, and finally Radio Star Country. The first three long tracks of Don on Radio Star Country are given below as well. There should be more to come on this front. These were recorded after the broadcast bill came into force on 1/1/89. Only Radio Dublin and Star Country defied the draconian Irish law. Radio Dublin was raided in the February, and we believed at the time that Star and Northside Radio would not last much longer. As a result, I have hours and hours of both on old reels. Northside was really the return of Radio North 846 about 2 weeks later under a different name, with exactly the same presenters. I guess they fooled no one..lol In fact as it happened Star and Northside were not touched at that time. I can't tell you their history since then, but both Radio North and Star continue today. Radio Dublin was brought into disrepute by Cooke, the owner, with regards to some other dubious matters, and as far as I am aware, Eamon Cooke is still in the nick.
820310_sunshine_531_0719_don_allan.mp3 820310_sunshine_531_0814_don_allan.mp3
890208_wed_0918_1547_981_jerry_don_at_1300_ann_co_tyrone_reel_26_kb.mp3 890214_0915_1340_981_star_country_don_allan_jerry_burn_reel_27_kb.mp3 890215_1135_1505_981_star_country_don_allen_inc_sole_survivor_1247_jerry_1300_reel_9_kb.mp3
CREATING LISTS OF FILES: There was often shouts years ago from PC users about the creation of lists of files, something that was desired for folders loaded with MP3's for example. Windows never had a simple solution. I am not sure if they do even now. But I noticed that Firefox, the common web browser has the ability to create folder listings. Simply browse to the folder in Windows Explorer, and copy the address from the address bar. eg "F:\perseus files" Paste in the address bar of FIREFOX, and you have a list which is printable. If you try and do the same with Internet Explorer, at least the version I have on the PC, all it tries to do is log on to Microsoft. With FIREFOX the "file - open file" command in the menu doesn't seem to work, and "file - open location" doesn't do much either. So the copy and paste method as described above seems to be the best option. Once you are in a folder, you can navigate the whole PC using FIREFOX.
For MP3 listings, I used to use (and still do) WINAMP. Again, I can't be bothered with the clutter of the newer versions of this software, and use version 2.65, which dates back to 2000. It is a quick and small and relatively unobtrusive MP3 player. I sometimes believe that the later versions also have something funny about the audio quality. It is as though it has built in "cheap" sound...
NORTH AMERICAN LOGS TODAY: Some strong North American signals around at 0500 etc today. Nothing too much to report, though I did hear a full WEEI 850 id, complete with their ESPN thing on 1370 at 0500. I would guess this was the Redsox game being carried on 1370 WDEA. Rebelde was gd 1620 0300, and 1390 had WFBL with ABC nx at 0500. For the first time in ages WWKB Buffalo 1520 was hammering in at 0500. Lately it has been kinda weak, and mixing with LA sounding music, although I have yet to id that station. It has been making a long extended toth ann recently, but of course on the day it is strong, it was the usual quick fire toth id.
JOHN PLIMMERS SOUTH AFRICAN PERSEUS FILES: Well this was certainly exotic for dxers here in Europe, to be given a chance to listen to the MW band from a South African viewpoint. two dxers were off by the sea to a cottage with no power, which is seemingly used regularly by nudists. (I have never tried dxing in the scud!! lol... ) They had their own power sources with them, although something in their kit was giving strong random carriers across the mw band. But that apart, what fun tuning the band as they would out on a remote beach in Western South Africa. Fantastic. Signals that have been heard here include Nigeria on 917, BBC 1323 Cyprus, 1233 Monte Carlo Middle East also from Cyprus, and a few other surprises. Radio Nacional De Espana on 1314, form where I am not sure. RNE also on 620, but isn't this prob from the Canaries? There are quite a multitude of Australian signals on the band at 1900. I was surprised to hear the religious propaganda from WYFR, even spouting their rubbish into the African continent, and trying to kill off African cultures. There seems to be a never ending stream of money when it comes to these religious broadcasters. Where does this money come from? I think I am in the wrong trade. They can afford to keep high power transmitters running when others trying to entertain by playing music may struggle.
MORE CAROLINE SW FILES ADDED TO THE DOWNLOAD PAGES: I have spent some considerable time recently transferring my old reel to reel tapes to MP3. I have also been copying old cassettes too. I have added four long files many hours long, as well as four shorter files mainly of late night recordings and sign offs. I have also copied a reel which wasn't recorded here of the day of the illegal boarding of the Ross Revenge in International Waters by drunken gun slinging criminals from Holland back in 1989. This starts at 0530 and bar a couple of gaps, takes you right up to the dramatic boarding around 1300 and the closedown.
PM SDR YAHOO GROUP: David Hamilton has started up a Yahoo group for PM SDR owners. I am not sure how many units have been sold so far, but I do know that a great many of the Perseus owners joined up to the Perseus group very quickly. Mr PM SDR, Martin himself is already a member. So best wishes to the group. Although I don't have a PM SDR, I will look in from time to time to see how the group is going. Glad to see this group is public, ie readable to the public, and not kept secret, like many of them!!!
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/pmsdr/
TODAY'S LOGS:
Remember in my personal firsts lisings at the top, I may have logged some of the Latins before, but records are poor from the 1980's and 90's.
RANDOM PAGES IN THE OLD ID TAPES: I had to sit and wait for someone recently, and decided to take some reading material to pass the time. I took an ID tape listing folder, and noticed that I have heard a lot of Latins throughout the years, although listings in my all time lists here are non existant. Let's have a look, in freq order at a fraction of the old id tapes, and see what I have heard in the past.. It is not all Latins by the way, some listed for my own interests later.... Some common stuff on 1470 and 1500 for example is not listed. There are a lot that have to be listened to again....
550 unid
ss jin 0651 + 0655 20/10/95 3915
odd usb traffic. like a volmet yet threat warnings 7/12/94 1320 (23/3/94
scottish ssb traffic too)
I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY:
LATIN DX AGAIN: I have been surprised by the amount of SS on the MW in the last week, around dawn, 0500 - 0530 time UTC. It has been fun to have a go at the Latin dx again. Sometimes they are notoriously difficult to ID, sometimes they have clear echoy voice overs. I have mentioned here in the past that I seem to remember I used to have Latins much better than I do these days. Maybe after all it was simply down to band conditions. During the last few years DX neighbour Paul C was hearing Latins when I heard either strong North Americans, or just mush. I have had a multitude of wires up to try and recreate the antennas I had in the 80's, but I have come to the conclusion the main factor is the propagation. Since the high ks and auroras etc, I have even had SS on 1520, 1580, and other common strong North American channels. The Latins can be much more dx friendly than the American stations. Many are still music orientated, and will play echoy jingles and voice overs regularly, unlike some of the dross that comes from North America, with 1 id per hour on some of these networked talk and sports stations. I have started to include these as personal firsts, but I maye have old logs from the 80's somewhere with many of them. Below are some recent logs. You can see many of the LA / CA stuff heard as unid ss. It has always been one of my problems, extracting the SS IDs. It is fine when it is a shouting voice over like Radio Coro, but some are difficult. But if someone tells me, here's what you have heard, then often it IS clear!!!
560 unid
ss 0530 13/4 680
Radio Continente, Venezuala 0529 13/4 (Maybe my 1st
id of this) 700
Radio Sucre, Ecuador 0531 10/4 No trace of usual WLW (Maybe my 1st
id of this) 700 Unid
relay of BBC 0530 13/4 A couple of poss I think here?? 830
Sensation, Venezula. ss just past toth 0501 9/4 (Maybe
my 1st id of this) 1080
WHIM Miami/ Fort Lauderdale 2/4 0600 (New call for Coral Gables stn) 1190
unid ss. like R Revolution or something 0506 8/4 best lsb with notch 1390
0500 8/4 ee like WZHF Arlington / Washinton. Not a common call. ss
/ ee 1400
Em Mariana de Bogota, Columbia 0530 10/4 (1st for me on this freq.) 1450
Unid snds like Radio Marseean or something. needs further listening
0500 13/4
HOME MADE TRANSMITTERS FROM THE IRISH PIRATE DAYS:
I decided to post some classic photos of real old rough installations from about 20 years ago over in Ireland. This is the entry on the Perseus group after one guy responded favourably to the old photos.
.....I
saw many of these home made style of transmitters on my travels in
years gone These were running 24 hours a day.... the
signals we used to hear on mw in Scotland were usually very respectable,
and They
were lethal though. I remember the engineer at Boyneside Radio in
Droheda The
tx on the photos as you said is a 2 by 2 813. 2 in the PA and 2 modulating Some
of them were 4 by 4 and the transformer would sing even louder!!!
The PA The tuning cap is classic!!!!! Maybe
I can publish more images on line as I have quite a few shots of that The
Radio North transmitter previous to the one in the photos had the
output Well
I thought the old photos might bring a few laughs, and remind us what
rough
Here are a few snaps, but I have left the big images quite big, about 500k each, just to show the detail. I was always intrigued by these home made pieces of kit. They consisted of a PA stage, which was an EL84 or a 5763 oscilator, into an 807 driving either 2, or sometimes 4 813's. If the PA had 2 of the 813's, then the AM modulator would have 2 also. If 4, then 4.... The two by two rigs were noisy and great to see. The four by fours were even more awsome.
I must look back my old notes, but the above may well have been North Atlantic Radio at that time in the very early 1990's. Below was definitely a Radio North transmitter from about a year before. I still have to put my head together with a dx friend in Co Donegal to work out dates and station names, as the scene was forever changing back then.
WHAT OR WHO WAS THE VOICE OF LOVE??
The station was always a mystery. Why was this so? Well for starters, they never announced any contact details. Was it on the strength of their unsociable lack of address that we used to think of them as a mystery? Perhaps. But they also had some odd habits. They always seemed to be testing, and always seemed to go off abruptly. They never seemed to have the "sound" of a traditional Dutch pirate, that plays a mixture of pop and Dutch music. They seemed as though they had the "offshore" sound, rather than the "Dutch" sound. Were they simply only another Dutch pirate that had no contact details? Or were they from some other country?? What is the accent of the announcer? Maybe they came from the city and not the country areas of Holland where the programmes would have maybe been different styles?? They were noted certainly around 1980, although not heard here at that time. I was hearing them around 1984, as well as 1988 when the recording below is from.
1988_may_june_various_clips_voice_of_love_reel_8_etc_kb.mp3
QSOs ON MW: Talking of mystery stations. I had always known exactly what stations like Radio Jackie and Telstar South were all about down in London. But what about those QSO stations that once were heard from the South East of England? Does anyone know this voice on Radio Buckineer?? Is it any of the well known voices from the radio in later days?? The time for this was 0142. I wonder if this was GMT, in which case local time was 20 to 3 in the morning?? The freq was on the old 227m band. I also heard another station there one time in about 1979 called Radio Landora, which I thought was Irish. Was that about the last of them by 1980?? Had all the ILR activity killed it? As well as gradually losing 227m to 24 hour services. Has anyone got any old recordings of the late night QSO's on MW other than one I have a link to, click below. I have to stress that the Buckineer recording was made here in Scotland, but the main QSO link was made in the SE. Who made the original tape I can't remember...
mw_qso_stations_london_1975.mp3
ECHOS DEL TORBES 4980..!!!! I also found today a 30m recording of Echos Del Torbes from Venezuala closing down at 0400 on 19th March 1988. Freq for this well heard tropical band station was 4980. Is this now sadly a memory? Initially I had this clip listed as Radio Juventud, another station which was well heard, on 4900 from memory. Careless!!!!
Click here for the closedown and a 7 minute clip, about 5 meg.
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