Messages

1

General Radio Discussion / Re: Dangers posed by the increasing availability of low cost Software Defined Radio

« on: February 14, 2012, 1934 UTC »

Ehh.  What's old is new again.

The line in the article that really bothers me is this: "thanks to SDR it’s no longer possible to assume that calls made over commercial and specialist wireless networks are inherently secure."  That's bullshit: you could never assume they were inherently secure.  SDR is just another potential avenue of attack on the radio-based portion of the data transmission; it completely ignores the fact that a compromise or abuse of the wireline infrastructure carrying the traffic after it has been received by the carrier would be far more effective and, in some ways, easier to accomplish.

It really reads like someone's trying to whip up a tempest in a teapot with this one.  Sure, an SDR could be used for Evil Purposes(tm), but it's not like these attacks aren't already happening.  I get that the idea was to show that the software component of the SDR has driven down the cost of the hardware, thus making it easier to acquire and implement - but there are other, better ways of attacking these standards.  For now

2

General Radio Discussion / Re: O.K. I give up.

« on: February 09, 2012, 2153 UTC »

Hm, looks like things have changed a bit in the last 24 hours or so.  The site appears to be back up, and its nameservers have changed to ns23.worldnic.com and ns24.worldnic.com.

Their DNS is still kinda screwy, though.  Depending on how your query is handled, it could potentially resolve to either 208.91.197.27 (the current FRN site) or 69.38.106.211 (which happens to be the IP address for www.joplinglobe.com).  Basically, it looks as though there are two A records for www.frn.net in the frn.net zone when (I'm guessing) one is meant to be a CNAME.

3

General Radio Discussion / Re: O.K. I give up.

« on: February 08, 2012, 1906 UTC »

I do not know for sure what the current problem is; the FRN software is ancient and apparently extremely fragile, so perhaps it exceeded some limit, or maybe became corrupted somehow. There may be a hardware issue, or perhaps the hosting site changed in such a way that the software couldn't deal with it. In any event, it is up to Cruzan to fix the problem, and until then the FRN will probably stay down.

My guess is that it's meant to stay down, at least for now.  Querying the DNS servers that whois info says are handling the frn.net domain (ns1.joplinglobe.com and ns4.teklinks.com) returns nothing other than the results for those same DNS servers.  There are no entries for www.frn.net or anything else, so there's no way (short of directly entering an IP address into a browser, etc.) to get to the server that the FRN was hosted on.

This is why it seems like it's meant to be gone: people generally don't yank DNS records for a domain unless there's a good reason for it.  Maybe it'll return, maybe it won't.  Personally, I'd like to see it come back - just without the unpleasant culture it seemed to spawn over the past few years.

4

General Radio Discussion / Re: 6900.5 USB activity

« on: February 05, 2012, 0211 UTC »

i here a bunch or spanish speaking activity on 6900.5 USB always spanish speaking males and it goes on for hours. does anyone else hear them or know what it is. i get strong signals 5/9 plus on them into so. maryland.

Sounds like pescadores.  Used to get them all over 43m in a couple of places I've lived.

Usually they don't really bother anyone, but every once in a while one of them will get a case of possessiveness over the band and try to give pirates and hams a run for their money.  Never really amounts to much.

5

General Radio Discussion / Ragnar's back!

« on: January 08, 2012, 1903 UTC »

It's not the Piratesweek...  But it is the Hall of Fame Spotlight.  First episode looks to have been released today, featuring The Voice of Laryngitis.

http://shortwavepirate.info/pw/wordpress/2012/01/08/spotlight-1/

Haven't listened to it yet so can't comment, but good to see he's back up and around.

6

General Radio Discussion / Re: low power Serbian pirate testing on 2023 kHz Dec. 17

« on: December 26, 2011, 0331 UTC »

Hey, skeezix - completely off-topic, but did you ever do any tracker tunes?

7

General Radio Discussion / Re: Those Canadians - next thing you know, they'll have their own TV stations!

« on: November 24, 2011, 0028 UTC »

And that's another thing. They have this ritual called "Icing the Puck". They start each hockey game by actually putting frosting on the puck, to make it look "cuter". Those hockey players are just so precious.

I dunno - any sport where felony assault results in a 2-minute bench penalty is pretty much OK in my book.

8

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Two presumed parody numbers stations logged

« on: November 22, 2011, 0344 UTC »

I can't quite make out the accent. Perhaps it is from Venezuela - not sure really.

The accent sounded "German" to me.

Possibly German, though it also struck me as similar to the type of English accent that a good deal of people who grew up first learning a Southeast Asian language often have.  It does seem very 'cut & paste', however - almost like it's too good at fitting the format of a numbers station.

FWIW, if it is a fake, it looks as though there may be a spate of that going on - though this time they're numbers stations run (once again) from phone lines rather than over the airwaves.  More on that here.

9

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Radio Waves International 7415 AM

« on: November 13, 2011, 0541 UTC »

Caught part of it as well, and it looks to have been these guys.  More info at their site, but apparently this will be happening on the 13th (tomorrow) as well.  Their history booklet is a neat look into their past.

10

General Radio Discussion / Re: Duck and cover, kids! EAS is coming!

« on: November 10, 2011, 0500 UTC »

I happened to be in the car today when the nationwide EAS test kicked off, and did a little tuning around on the FM band while it was taking place.  About half of the stations were carrying the EAS test correctly; the other half were dead air.

Obviously I wasn't able to tune all receiveable stations due to the short duration of the test, but that's still a better result than in the EBS false alarm of 1971! 

11

Other / Re: Constant tone 0745UTC

« on: November 02, 2011, 2120 UTC »

I'm thinking that's local RFI.  I've heard that same noise on 6930 but only on that particular Global Tuners receiver.  It doesn't appear on any other receivers in the same region.  If you get a chance, compare both #1 and #2 Kentucky receivers.

Finally managed to hit globaltuners when both of the Lexington receivers were up, and I think you're probably right.  Only #1 had the tone, not #2.

Interesting bit of QRM to be sitting there with that constant of a tone.  Almost makes me wonder what might be causing it.

12

Other / Constant tone 0745UTC

« on: October 29, 2011, 0647 UTC »

Lexington, Kentucky #1 global tuner feed.  6930U, constant tone since about 0700UTC.  No idea what it is.  Sorry, no recording at present.

13

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Family Radio 6924.70

« on: October 29, 2011, 0059 UTC »

Think I've got you right now (0153Z) via the Southern New England globaltuners feed.  Techno with 'mayday' mixed over it repeatedly; occasional CW in the background as well.

14

Equipment / Re: Software Defined receivers (radios)

« on: October 26, 2011, 1926 UTC »

Yes, that's a waterfall. The app reads recording files generated by SV. It does not record from the SDR, however.

Got it.  Makes more sense now; I was trying to reconcile the X-axis being calibrated in kHz against the .wav files it appeared to be displaying.  Now I see how it was deriving that.  Unfortunately, I'm still a good way off from being able to afford an SDR, so it looks like the application would be of fairly limited utility for me until I can.  Bummer, but you've got at least one person interested in it for the day UPS brings that particular toy to the doorstep  

Any fellow Mac programmers here? Maybe together we could get it finished?

Unfortunately, that's not me - this is something I'd love to see.  My background's multiplatform Windows/*nix/OS X, but I'm by no means a programmer - at best I can tweak someone else's code a little, but I know what my limitations are in that department.

15

General Radio Discussion / Re: FCC Issues $10,000 Forfeiture Order to Pirate Cat Radio Founder

« on: October 26, 2011, 1912 UTC »

This is total BS-- as they have no proof that he's operating any transmitter.

Well, they claim to have seen him at the control point of the station, and that could have rather unfortunately screwed him.  Quoted from the article, emphasis mine:

"In late April, 2009, FCC agents located the source of the radio transmissions, identifying an antenna on a roof of a residence in San Francisco. At the same time, the agents also “observed Roberts operating and controlling the unlicensed radio station” and subsequently “recognized Roberts’ voice and identified Roberts as the voice on the unlicensed transmissions on 87.9 MHz.3.”"

Whether or not that's a valid claim is anyone's guess in the absence of additional information, but, further to that:

Based on that logic, they would fine TCS for producing a show, which is then broadcast on transmitters which I do not control.

Agreed - that would be unenforceable, though it wouldn't surprise me if they tried.  One thing I do wonder about, however, is if this is indicative of an attempt by the FCC to start cracking down on people producing and supplying programming to be relayed by another station - which is pretty much what it sounds like Pirate Cat Radio may have been doing.  Frankly, that's something I see as unenforceable: the transmitted material is incidental (rather than material) to the act of transmission.  Also, if that is the direction they're taking, it brings up the question of whether any material is thus covered - would someone saying 'bleepblorp' over and over into a microphone for a couple of hours have the same degree of culpability for the content as someone who provided an hour-long programme to a relay?  Would an open key with no content be considered programming?  What about an unmodulated carrier?

So, I guess, taking that principle to its natural conclusion, the FCC will now be fining record companies, if the companies are "aware" that their product is being broadcast on pirate radio stations!

"Hello, Mr. Osbourne?  Yes, KDERP Radio - an unlicensed 10W FM pirate station you've never heard of 40 miles east of St. George, Utah played "Paranoid" a few weeks ago.  No, we're not here to deliver your royalty cheque.  In fact, that'll be ten thousand dollars, please - your band wrote and performed the song in question for the recording that was broadcast illegally, so clearly you're the party responsible for the unlicensed station's actions.  What's that, sir?  Uh, I should advise you that telling a federal employee to autoinsert official documents rectally is a federal offense, punishable by..."