Messages

4141

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: UNID 6925 USB 0030 UTC 5 March 2021

« on: March 06, 2021, 0054 UTC »

00:53 UTC 06 MAR 2021
No joy from Toronto, Ontario Canada. Just the Peskies on LSB.

4142

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: WEZL Radio 6933 USB 2306 UTC 5 March 2021

« on: March 06, 2021, 0031 UTC »

UNID 00:25 UTC 06 MAR 2021 - 6933.0 kHz USB

Good signal (S6 ~ S7)
00:25 UTC - ELO - Evil Woman;
00:28 UTC - Crowd noise;
00:29 UTC - Radio clip;
00:32 UTC - Radio clip about the death of Margaret Thatcher;
00:44 UTC - End of broadcast.

RSPduo | Barker & Williamson antenna | Toronto, Ontario Canada

4143

Software / Re: DRM heavy childbirth 02 Mar 2021

« on: March 05, 2021, 0215 UTC »

For all interested, I have shared some screen shots of the Brazil DRM Experimental transmissions captured between 2 and 4 February 2021, including screen shots of the DRM NewsService Journaline service.

Enjoy

http://www.milspec.ca/radiodx/

4144

Software / Re: DRM heavy childbirth 02 Mar 2021

« on: March 04, 2021, 2325 UTC »

In my 02 Feb 2021 test the noise floor was approx -120 dBm and the SNR on the the Brazil DRM Experimental broadcast was 36.4 dB. The SNR in the DREAM application was at 19.9 dB. It was coming in good and strong. The station does not appear to be broadcasting at this time or is no longer making it up this far North. I would have to check a WebSDR in that region of the world to see if it is still on the air.

4145

Other / UNID - 8393.3 kHz USB - 17:37 UTC 04 MAR 2021

« on: March 04, 2021, 1746 UTC »

17:37 UTC 04 MAR 2021, 8393.3 kHz USB
UNID, 2 stations having a casual conversation; discussing US locations.
17:43 UTC - One of the station had to tend to other business. Conversation ended.

Based on the discussion, suspect the location is NE USA.

RSPduo | Barker & Williamson antenna | Toronto, Ontario Canada

4146

Utility / MARS Net - 3245 kHz USB

« on: March 04, 2021, 0136 UTC »

MARS net with voice and data on 3245.0 kHz USB

01:24 UTC 04 MAR 2021
C/S (AA)5RN, 5XF, 5RD, 5EZ (others)
Exchanging msg traffic in digital mode.

01:48 UTC - "Training net is now closed, frequency is free".

4147

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Radio 48 Relay via PRRN 3185 USB 0018 UTC 04 March 2021

« on: March 04, 2021, 0110 UTC »

01:09 UTC - S5 in Toronto, Ontario Canada
Heavy Metal music

4148

Software / Re: audio editing software

« on: March 04, 2021, 0107 UTC »

I use Snooper Pro https://www.snooper.se/ for some of my recordings. There is a small price attached to it but I do like the sound activated feature, good for VHF / UHF.

You might want to look at Voice Activated Recorder from WD6CNF http://www.hotamateurprograms.com/ and Voice Recorder from IZ8BLY http://antoninoporcino.xoom.it/. I believe they are both free. I was using the IZ8BLY software before switching to Snooper and if I recall correctly, I switched because of the new Windows audio mixer compatibility issue. I am using VB-Audio virtual cables and as such the "default  audio" setting in the legacy software does not work for me.

I had been 20+ year user of Cool Edit Pro until Windows 7. I have not been able to make it work properly. It does not recognize the modern Windows audio in/out mechanism and as such I had to revert to Audacity --- it's ok but not my Cool Edit. I have been slowly trying to work my way through Reaper https://www.reaper.fm/ but it is a steep learning curve. Reaper used to be free for individuals but there is now also a small price attached to it. For $60.00 you get your money's worth. We use to pay thousands of dollars for ProTools and Sequoia at a previous company where I was the senior broadcast engineer and Reaper is a pretty good alternative.

4149

Software / Re: DRM heavy childbirth 02 Mar 2021

« on: March 04, 2021, 0034 UTC »

The general consensus with v2.2 is that a lot of people cannot get it working, myself including because I am not using Windows 10. I would have to re-compile the source code and I cannot be bother right now. I am using the tried and proven v2.1.1 svn808.

My experience has been:
  -98 dBm, good lock;
-100 dBm, intermittent, decoder mildly breaking up;
-106 dBm, decoder now breaking up most of the time and no audio;
-112 dBm, no longer decoding.

And from my testing, the best decoder settings are:
Frequency Interpolation = Linear
Time Interpolation = Linear
Time Sync Tracking = Guard Energy
Number of Iterations = 1
No ticks in any of the selection boxes. (The bandpass filter can at times help if there is heavy interference.)

Molson Canadian Eh!

4150

Shortwave Broadcast / Re: 3955 kHz AM "You are listening to a test transmission" 0245 UTC

« on: March 03, 2021, 0322 UTC »

03:16 UTC - I can just hear the station with music and voice above the noise floor. I had to tune to USB to overcome the amateur radio stations on LSB. I believe they were complaining about "this type of nonsense back in the 80s".

RSPduo | Barker & Williamson antenna | Toronto, Ontario Canada

4151

Software / Re: DRM heavy childbirth 02 Mar 2021

« on: March 03, 2021, 0315 UTC »

DRM can be a bear to catch and there are some stations out there to listen to. I was recently enjoying Brazil DRM Experimental and it sounded great. I have a post on the board if you search for it. DREAM documentation is vague at best but since the Brazil DRM signal was coming in extremely well for me for extended periods of time over several days it gave me a chance to experiment and tweak all of the DREAM setting to a point where I think it is the most effective. Let me know and I can share.

Radio Marti on 7345.0 kHz is a big player, unfortunately they use an incompatible audio codec that DREAM will not decode. You will get the ID but that is it.

Here are some successful decodes from logs.

23:43 UTC 2021-02-02
11910.0 kHz (tune 11905.0 kHz)
Brazil DRM Exper (Brazil DRM Experimental); 12.46 kbps EEP aac+ Mono
DRM Journaline (data) is working;
Signal level is hovering around -80 dBm;
transmission is aac+ mono (12.46 kbps) + MM (2.30 kbps);
02:00Z -100 dBm, decoder mildly breaking up;
03:30Z -106 dBm, decoder now breaking up most of the time and no audio
03:53Z -112 dBm

Other stations to watch for which I was able to decode are:

23:46 UTC 2021-02-01
5875.0 kHz DRM (tune 5870.0 kHz)
TDF Radio France with French programming
aac Mono (8.08 kbps) + MM (6.8 kbps);
00:00Z End of broadcast

13:25 UTC 2020-05-16
15110.0 kHz DRM (tune to 15105.0 kHz Digital)
KWT Radio Kuwait Digital
Briefly received station then it went off the air

15:17 UTC 2020-05-15
15750.0 kHz DRM
WINB (http://www.winb.com/)

4152

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Sycko Radio 3185 USB 2340 UTC 1 Mar 2021

« on: March 02, 2021, 0033 UTC »

00:27 UTC - An S4 ~ S5 from Toronto, Ontario Canada with some strange sycko electronic music.
00:30 UTC - Male voice / announcement with English accent. Too weak of a signal to understand.

Update:
01:03 UTC - Station ID "Sycko Radio" followed by "recordings".

RSPduo | Barker & Williamson antenna

4153

HF Mystery Signals / UNID Multi-Tone Data Transmission - 8088.0 kHz

« on: March 01, 2021, 1635 UTC »

UNID multi-tone data transmission sounding like a 39-tone modem.

Frequency (kHz): 8088.0 kHz
Time (UTC): 16:10 UTC 01 March 2021
Duration: Continuous
Receiver Mode: Digital (4 kHz bandwidth)
Receiver Location: Toronto, Ontario Canada
Description: Similar in nature to a 39-tone modem

The best user that I have been able to identify for this frequency is the Office of Polar Programs - U.S. Antarctic Program https://www.nsf.gov/od/opp/antarct/treaty/pdf/plans0708/attacha_08.pdf and with some additional reference found at the RadioReference Wiki site https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Antarctica.

Update: 16:51 UTC - End of transmission.

4154

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: KIND 6932 usb 1401 utc 2/28/2021

« on: February 28, 2021, 1413 UTC »

14:11 UTC - S6 with some fading from Toronto, Ontario Canada.

RSPduo | Barker & Williamson antenna.

4155

Shortwave Broadcast / Re: WRMI / Texas Radio Shortwave 5950 am 0210 UTC 28 Feb 2021

« on: February 28, 2021, 0443 UTC »

04:30 UTC - Have been listening for the past hour but approx 04:30 UTC, the playlist is stuck on a loop constantly repeating Huey Lewis and the News - Power of Love.
04:36 UTC - Playlist is back to normal with Duran Duran - Hungry like the Wolf.

Huey Lewis was recently featured on the "The Wellstone Agency" episode of the "The Blacklist".

WRMI at +25 over S9.

RSPduo | Barker & Williamson antenna | Toronto, Ontario Canada