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Messages - BoomboxDX

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166
General Radio Discussion / Re: Russian EW
« on: December 09, 2019, 0743 UTC »
According to one of the linked vids, Russian EW, as a whole, is pretty advanced. Even shuts down Aegis systems, apparently.

ETA: Of course, that could just have been Russian propaganda.

Here's a Popular Mechanics article on Russian EW, including a mention of the Murmansk-BN system:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a26167/russia-secret-e-weapons/

167
General Radio Discussion / Re: New Tecsun Portables to be last?
« on: December 06, 2019, 1847 UTC »


This story appeared on the SWLing Post website, besides detailing the upcoming release of the PL-990 and H-501, there is a hint that they maybe the last of the high end Tecsun portable/desktops.

https://swling.com/blog/2019/12/tecsun-pl-990-and-h-501-may-be-the-last-high-end-shortwave-portables-from-tecsun/

Hey Santa, that H-501 looks like it could use a loving home.   ;)

Sad, in a way, if the rumor is true. That would leave the Sangean 909 and a Grundig? I wonder when the HF Transceiver companies decide to pull the plug? The hobby can't be expanding to justify new, high-end radios for many more years.

168
It's all about greed and control,  http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2019/11/27/the-demise-of-radionomy-marks-the-end-of-free-streaming-for-internet-radio-broadcasters/

It always has been.  The music industry is a headless laviathan, and this new ruling probably means that a lot of small operators are going to have to shut down.  Everyone else will just make their streaming servers private and remove them from any public directory services like shoutcast or dir.xiph.org.  In an era where the only version of a song you can buy is a watermarked MP3, it serves the music industry right to sink with their own ship.  Piracy is going to come back with a vengeance.

+-RH

The subscription model is taking everything over, from news to music to books to movies -- a lot of older industries like the movie theater, free OTA broadcasting and newsprint are headed the way of the dodo -- some quicker than others. Of course, one always paid to get into movie theaters, but you didn't pay monthly (whether you went or not). That will change. Eventually.

It's sad that internet radio is sinking like a stone, unless you're part of one of the big companies. In the 1990's one of the hawked benefits of the emerging "information superhighway" was that there would be all this free access to information, and the radio aspect would be free, also. That changed fairly quickly.

169
I'm astonished that stations don't that already.
They do here.  The amount is calculated on the stations turnover, I think. The bigger the station, the more they pay.
Even ordinary businesses that have a radio on in their office/shop have to pay as it's considered a public performance.
That way,the musician gets payed  multiple times.

Way back in the 1980's. one of the big pirates here offered to pay performance rights in an attempt to appear legal but it was refused.

Stations pay BMI, ASCAP, etc., but this proposed law is a different deal. This would require stations to pay considerably more money per play than they pay now -- which, from what little I understand, is a lot less than digital royalties are.


170
If passed, more commercials, talk and religion (and other brokered radio) coming to the airwaves near you.

171
General Radio Discussion / Re: FCC approves all digital AM
« on: November 26, 2019, 0407 UTC »
Quote from: redhat
the key language here is 'voluntary'.  There is no mandate to go to digital, and in my view for any station that would be suicide.

Yes but all the puppets will goto it anyway.. All the ones running IBOC will probably be the first.....


I wont listen to them if they do that so if they wanna lose listeners let them.....

The ones who were running IBOC probably gave up on it for valid reasons, one of them being that the equipment finally broke down and/or wasn't cost effective.

If a local station happens to go all-digital I'll listen -- there are several stations that used IBOC in my metro, and they had decent formats (sports, South Asian, classic country, etc.). I'm not holding my breath for them to turn the digital on, though (see my previous sentence about equipment breakdown and cost effectiveness).

172
MW Loggings / Re: KFAB 1110 AM 0425 UTC 25 Nov 2019
« on: November 26, 2019, 0403 UTC »
KFAB 1110 usually is heard behind KBND here in the PNW -- you usually can tell by the slapback echo on Coast to Coast.

Great catch, though. The Midwesterners and Plains States stations aren't super common out here, being that they have two mountain ranges to cross.

173
General Radio Discussion / Re: FCC approves all digital AM
« on: November 24, 2019, 1337 UTC »
Won't be much change to the band. Not many stations on the AM band use IBOC HD now. I don't see much change happening.

A handful of stations, in major metros, at best, may take the option.

174
Just imagine the havoc wreaked when the new 5G cell system goes down in a Carrington event. Gazillions of cell sites, all fried. And I doubt they can back all that up. They apparently have enough problems trying to back up the present cell system during extended blackouts.

175
General Radio Discussion / Re: All Digital AM broadcast
« on: November 21, 2019, 0344 UTC »
No, we don't want a dead AM band, but it's kinda like a tree... you prune out the dead wood and the tree is healthier.
You gotta wonder how financially viable are stations that run 44 or 26 watts or 6 watts of power in the evening.
All it does is add to the QRM and render the  frequency useless.

True, but they generally don't have listeners in the evening... Radio in general usually doesn't, comparatively. Numbers apparently drop off after 7 p.m. or so, according to radio experts I've interacted with on a different forum.

My concern is that everywhere in the world -- Europe especially -- that the MW band has been 'pruned', it disappears. The Americas are basically the last holdout for a fully used MW band, and even at that, countries like Mexico are giving up on MW -- only certain stations are allowed to continue on indefinitely -- until they decide to leave the band, or simply leave the air altogether.

As for the 44 or 6 watts, such low powers are obviously (in many recent cases, anyway) placeholder, for licensing reasons... A station in my state just dropped night power (and day power, also) after getting an FM translator which covers the same area at a couple hundred watts. They're just holding place legally.

The band is aging out, and it will gradually 'prune' itself, regardless of what we radio enthusiasts think. I just find suggestions that we need a thinner band to be counterproductive in the long run -- to me it sounds like wishing for the die-off to happen prematurely.

It will happen, just the same, though... On that I think we can all agree.

176
General Radio Discussion / Re: All Digital AM broadcast
« on: November 16, 2019, 1035 UTC »
I don't agree with the notion that the AM band is better off with less stations. A dead medium is less useful in the eyes of government than a slowly dying one.

I know a lot of DXers complain about the plethora of signals they have to dig through to hear that rare one on the other side of the continent, but do we really want a dead AM band?

In most of Europe right now, there are no MW stations. Is that the kind of band we want?

177
General Radio Discussion / Re: Play me some Jones
« on: November 12, 2019, 1001 UTC »
Alex Jones is on some AM stations. He was on several I'd hear during the evening up until at least a couple years ago.

The fact that the radio in the video is a Panasonic wouldn't necessarily make it spur-proof. It's probably single conversion, as many other AM/FM's are.

Or you might have picked him up on a station from Florida on 790 (according to his affiliate list -- no idea how current his list is), if you heard it at night.

Either way -- interesting catch. I've never heard SW on an AM/FM radio on the AM band, except a long time ago, a friend's home stereo would pick up Radio Moscow sometimes, very high up in the AM band -- it was an obvious image or spur (mixing product of some type).

178
General Radio Discussion / Re: All Digital AM broadcast
« on: November 02, 2019, 1109 UTC »
Let 'em do it if they want. I don't think there will be an AM band in the US without analog. Some stations here and there who believe they have the HD audience would go all-HD.

And like Redhat mentions, a lot of stations switched off their HD / IBOC. Obviously they didn't see the audience for it.

Both local stations that had HD on AM dumped it two years or so ago. It's too bad, in a way, because they sounded good on HD, but they made a business decision apparently, and radio stations will make business decisions because they are primarily a business...

Which means if they don't think that HD will increase their audience, or serve their audience, they won't go there.

179
General Radio Discussion / Re: Finding the random fishermen...
« on: October 26, 2019, 0443 UTC »
40-41 meters is a fascinating area of HF -- hams, SW broadcasters, Russian single letter beacons, Spanish (and Portuguese) fishermen and outbanders, and Indonesian 'village radio' chanters in the early AM hours. Then you have the odd pirate around the 6900 khz range.

Of course, the past few years conditions haven't been terrific even in that swath of HF territory, but when I seriously tune HF, that's the region I usually concentrate on.

180
General Radio Discussion / Re: RTE returning to Longwave
« on: October 26, 2019, 0439 UTC »
The comments beneath that article were uninspiring, to say the least. I.e., who cares about older demographics that use LW to hear what's happening in the mother country. Or Irish fishermen and mariners, for that matter...

Glad the Irish government believes it's a worthwhile effort, though. Awesome.

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