As I find myself getting into Short Wave Radio again I find myself picking up more radios to play around with and assess. The latest acquisition is a Sangean ATS-909X. $205! OUCH! But lets see what we have before we pass judgement.
First of all in the batch of current model short wave portable radios this is by far the most attractive of the bunch (in my opinion). Attractive is good but sound, sensitivity, and selectivity are really what matters with a radio of this caliber.
Here’s something you haven’t heard about in a while. Short Wave Radio. Heck, walk around Walmart, Best Buy, Target, wherever and you CAN’T EVEN FIND A SHORTWAVE RADIO IN THE STORES ANYMORE. It seems like a dead medium. And yet it isn’t.
When I was a young boy I had a great big tube Short Wave receiver that a friend of my fathers gave to me, and that’s the way it worked back then. The old hams would happily teach the up and coming hams. Anyway I spent untold hours listening to that thing and was always stunned and amazed at how much content and how varying it was. And of course back then the prize was listening to a station as far away as possible.
Well, Short Wave sure has changed. There aren’t nearly as many stations, even less high power stations and most of Short Wave seems to be mostly Christian content, and political propaganda. Also you’ll find a healthy dose of Patriot and Prepper community folks and alternative news sources. And when I mean alternative, I mean alternative. Out there stuff. Also you’ll hear hams talking, morse code (CW) and various types of data, some of it critical such as NOAA Weather Fax (WEFAX), Radio Teletype (RTTY), and real life spies transmit coded messages called “Numbers Stations” on Short Wave as well. Short Wave is very much still alive and well but clearly not as active as when I was a kid in the 60’s and 70’s.
The Tecsun PL-880 is one of the finer Short Wave table top radios being made today. One of the best features of it is that it has a Line Out feature which means you can plug it into a computer and record. Well………..sorta. If you plug it into a computer it is full blast line out which overloads and distorts awfully. There are no instructions in the manual for turning down the Line Out volume however there is a super top-secret page of firmware hidden features that tells you how to turn down every band EXCEPT short wave. Here’s the entry:
An RTL_TCP server first of all is a taking a USB Software Defined Radio, RTL-SDR, and setting it up as a server for receiving radio signals within the frequency parameters of the SDR device which can them be connected to from anywhere. For example an RTL-SDR Version 3 operates from about 500 kHz (with direct sampling enabled) to about 1.7 GHz.
So if you set up the server you can be anywhere provided your server allows incoming connections to the internet or you can access your network via VPN, as I do, and connect back to it and hear all the local radio stations or radio signals that interest you.
What good is that? Maybe there is a radio program you like but the station doesn’t stream. Maybe you want to hear your kid playing his high school football game broadcast on local radio. Additionally, maybe you set a microphone and transmitter up in your home as a security device (such as a baby monitor). Maybe you want to listen to the local weather broadcast or maybe you are a scanner junkie and like hearing your local police scanner. Whatever. There are lots of reasons.
This is one of my favorite subjects. Repurposing an older computer and using it when there is no available internet connection. If you have internet that is a big plus and you can and should use it but computers are still pretty useful with no network with the addition of a couple of pieces of inexpensive hardware.
What can a computer do that isn’t hooked to the internet? Quite a lot actually. Here’s a few things you can do:
DSD+ is a popular Windows digital decoding program that handles various digital protocols. I’m going to install and use it with WINE on Ununtu 18.04. The example I’ll show here today is a digital trunking control channel that the local Emergency Services uses. Without DSD+ the signal will sound like this:
I set Screen Sharing up on Ubuntu 18.04 but then found out none of my clients could connect to it. After a little digging I found that in order to use VNC Viewer (or other software) from another computer that I had to disable encryption. Yeah, not ideal but I need it to work.
First go to Settings and then “Sharing”. Make sure to turn the Slider in the upper right hand corner to the ON position.
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I am always blathering on about network security. The only real security is a firewall. Your router that you bought on Amazon or at Walmart is NOT secure. Look at the box. It says it is FAST. It doesn’t say it is secure. Furthermore there is a sticker on the bottom of it with a WiFi password that looks like this:
098798te6rfghjvhfydtHY(UYGIGUYTTUI^(*&)(&*(^*&T*&%TGYIKHLNLKL
That’s awesome. It really is.
So then you plug your router into the cable modem which attaches it to the INTERNET via direct physical connection. Guess what the password is for that direct physical connection?
Answer: password
Who doesn’t check the weather everyday? Most have a favorite website or just check the local news. The folks at WeatherUnderground have an exportable Weather API that can be used with Internet of Things (IoT) devices. I built another device recently with a little color OLED screen and it’s cool but it is a battery hog and dies frequently. Then when you turn it on it goes through this updating routine that leaves you waiting 20 seconds or so to see the weather. Heck I could check 2 websites in that amount of time.