KONG49 - Final Preparations

KONG49 is just six days away! I'm here for a day, double-checking that we're stocked up on food and drinks. Arrived on a blustery, rainy Friday. It's peaceful this morning, but don't be fooled – the wind's just taking a quick nap before it unleashes gale-force tantrums later today. At least the skies are clear and it's dry. A brisk 4 degrees Celsius today, and it looks like the thermometer's flirting with the warmer hues for the upcoming days.

From my entrance, facing south-east

Also from my entrance, facing south

Here's a brief summary of our current food and drink options. Shopping is still in progress (with some items stored in the freezer):

50 Years of MW DX-ing. 1 - The Beginning

This October marks my golden jubilee of DX-ing on the Medium Wave band. But the journey began even earlier. This fall, I'm penning a series on my evolution as a DX-er to the present day. It's packed with tales of camaraderie, elusive stations, the evolution of radios and antennas, the highs and lows of activity, cherished QSLs, and much more. Yet, the story starts not in October, but a few years prior. In September, actually.

At the tender age of 14 in 1972, I stumbled upon the world beyond FM radio while scrubbing pots and pans on a Sunday after dinner. The only broadcaster in Norway, NRK, was airing a youth program that piqued my curiosity with tales of global stations. Our family's Radionette Menuett radio was a treasure trove of unexplored frequencies. With a little nudge from my dad, who rigged up a makeshift antenna, I embarked on an auditory adventure. It wasn't long before the exotic sounds of Radio Baghdad in English filled the air. Astonishing! The thrill of this discovery was all it took to hook me into the world of shortwave radio. I was sold.

The Radionette Menuett. It brought me the world (photo: snellingsmuseum.co.uk)

Just when I thought things couldn't get any stranger, I caught a broadcast from Radio Australia. Australia, of all places! It was as if the airwaves were playing a global game of tag. Soon after, my parents reclaimed their auditory pastime, bestowing upon me an old Radionette Kurér, the Rolls-Royce of portable radios back in its day. Armed with that and an outdoor longwire antenna, I was ready to tune into the world's secrets from my backyard.

The Kurér, the iconic RED Kurér, stands as the matriarch of portable radios in Norway. This name, steeped in history, will make a comeback as we delve into the tales of the 2000s. (photo: nrk.no)

I soon became a member of Norway's exclusive club for DXers, the DX-Listener's Club, and received the cool "call sign" LA-DX-719, or just -719 for brevity. It turned out many youngsters had tuned into the same radio show and joined the club too! We were lucky to meet seasoned DX-ers who warmly welcomed us and steered us clear of beginner's blunders, showing us the ropes of becoming adept DX-ers.

Back in the day, the Shortwave bands were bustling with international broadcasters, a scene quite different from today. Eastern Europe was a hotbed of activity with stations like Radio Moscow and Radio Station Peace and Progress (quite a name, right?), along with Radio Berlin International, Prague, Sofia, Bucharest, and Radio Tashkent adding an oriental twist. They were all on a mission to showcase the 'spectacular' technological strides of the 'socialist democracies' to the impressionable western youth.

On the flip side, there was Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio France International, Radio Sweden, Radio Japan, and a host of others, broadcasting their own narratives.

And let's not forget the shortwave stations catering to local listeners, particularly in South America, Asia and Africa.

Oh, and the jamming stations of the eastern bloc! They were like the party crashers, trying to silence the voices of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty at every turn.

I got my first taste of the MW band with the Kurér. Two stations stand out: One that almost every youngster in Europe listened to at the time - 208 Radio Luxembourg on 1439 kHz, "Broadcasting from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg". How many mornings did I not walk to school in trance, caused by only a few hour's sleep. Deutschlandfunk (DLF) often graced the airwaves, transmitting from Cologne on 1267 kHz. They even featured a special DX program in Norwegian, crafted by DX-Listeners' Club members.

As time passed, the airwaves didn't offer much novelty. And after all, who's eager to listen to the tech triumphs of socialist democracies? I wanted to hear new stations. My enthusiasm began to diminish. But then, the summer of '74 rolled in. It was hot. And it brought change.

To be continued.

SDRPlay SDRconnect Software - Preview 4

SDRPlay announced Preview 4 of their new software around 3 weeks ago. Considering that this is version 0.4, it is interesting to see the dedication from some users when they point out  how long everything takes. From what I know there hasn't been issued a timeline for when version 1.0 is ready to download. Yes, it takes time. No, I don't worry. While it is unlikely hat SDRconnect will supplant HDSDR and SDR Console as the software of choice for my four RSPdx and RSPdxR2, I find testing different receivers and software remains fascinating and provides a chance to offer feedback to the developers.

The new or enhanced features in Preview 4 that are intriguing for exploration include RDS encoding of FM signals, timed IQ or audio recordings, and Profiles. The official release notes are depicted in the graphic below.

I'm leaving RDS out this time since FM signals are many months away, I will focus on timed (or scheduled) recordings, and profiles. And I need to return to the server bit. It was last covered in my March 8 post.

Playback/Timed Recordings:

First: IQ recordings must obviously be made in the RF64 format, as one file I recorded was 5.1 GB (11:25 minutes) when I stopped recording. Playback control is still limited, but what is does, it does well. There is a playback bar indicating total length and progress. The playback can be looped. Still missing are pause/next/previous controls, playback bar time indicator (not to be confused with the running time of the playback) and the all-important user-configurable loop, much needed when you want to replay a small section many times to see if you can tweak and ID out of the mess. Moving back and forth on the playback bar with your mouse is instantaneous. The playback bar may seem small when trying to find the right point on a very long recording. But it can float, and you can make it as wide as your display. Or displays for that matter. Ensuring it returned to a "fixed" position was a completely separate issue.

I have been assured by the development team that the Timed Recordings feature is work in progress. The dialogue box is shown below, and it is at this stage relatively basic in that you can schedule only one recording at the time. You can of course add as many (surely there is a maximum number?) sessions as you like. Recurring recordings are said to be available in later versions.

The maximum duration of any timed recording session appears to be 60 minutes. That is an issue, but if recurring is enabled in later versions, not so much. The "Override = On" switch on the top right means that the recording session will override any other activity, like if you've tuned to a signal outside of the band defined by Profile when the recording is due to start. Tested - works (but not when connected to a server, see below).

If no profile is selected, SDRconnect will record the frequency spectrum displayed on the screen.

And speaking of profiles, it's a useful addition to the software. The feature is enabled when clicking  "Profiles" on the bottom right on the image below. I have defined one profile so far, "MW-AM" with the properties listed in the Device Profile Summary. Double-clicking the profile will engage that frequency range with properties.

Unfortunately, the profile will not define frequency steps (I would liked to have one MW profile with 9-kHz steps and one with 10), or alternative demodulators and bandwidths. In short, frequency steps and demodulators are not well implemented. It is if developers have decided that "MW DX-ers use AM, radio amateurs use SSB" etc. If I want to change from AM to SAM I'm back to 1-kHz steps. If I want to use USB or LSB to avoid close-channel interference I always have to change bandwidth from the default 1.8 to say 3.0 kHz, and frequency steps up from 0.1 kHz. Further software development should include more parameters to be included in each profile. After all, that's what a profile is all about - user-defined exceptions from the global settings. 

Server:

As mentioned in my March 8 blogpost, SDRconnect offers a server function, both for LAN and WAN connections, and they can also be combined. The server supports a maximum of 8 clients. It is somewhat ironic that in the world of graphical user interfaces, a command window har to be used to start the server. Luckily for us who have long forgotten the art of command lines (my first PC actually used a DOS 3.3 OS), the team has advised how to create a batch file to put on your desktop or elsewhere. There are a number of options to put in the command line, each preceeded by "--". So for instance since I'm a MW DX-er I have selected this command line: 

start .\SDRconnect --server --centerfrequency=875

As mentioned before, the first user always has control over the sample rate and frequency range - all the others have to follow. In addition, all users, both on the LAN and the WAN can connect to IQ in addition to Audio. In fact for WAN users, IQ connection is the de facto default choice since it's the first option you get in the drop-down window. You would need an extremely fast and stable internet connection for your server to entertain guest users that connected to the IQ option. Also, if the first/local user for some reason terminates SDRconnect, control is transferred to one of the other users, even WAN users (in my case, the third one to connect). I would much prefer that a LAN user (usually the owner) always has control.

IQ is the "Default" connection mode for WAN clients (the Audio option is found further down the drop-down menu)

There are options in the command line that can partially remedy any ill effects, like setting a defined number of users allowed, and an "exclusive" option. The latter will affect all clients including the owner so it's not really useful in my opinion.

I expressed my concerns on the SDRPlay reflector. The response I got from an SDRPlay team member was that if I feel client connections over IQ is bogging me down, "just restart the server". Or if I want control over my local LAN, "just connect as the first client". Well, I knew that, didn't I. I aimed to take an additional step to enhance the owner's control. Maybe I'm just asking too much. It will be interesting to hear how SDRPlay implements the server feature in their upcoming nRSP-ST.

Another thing: In its current version, Profiles do not seem to be supported when you're connected to the server, even as first user on the LAN. This will affect IQ (and audio) recordings as well, since you can't select a profile for timed recordings. The Profiles option is not greyed out however, It just doesn't respond to mouse or keyboard action. So maybe it is available further down the road. Or just a bug.

UPDATE on profiles when connected to the server: You CAN use profiles, but you need to define profiles within the type of connection. So, if you have defined a profile while running "direct" (without the server), you must define it again for when you're a client. The best way to avoid confusion is to label the profiles accordingly.

KONG48 - End Notes

 A week has passed since we "officially" started KONG48. This week I've spent 3 days in Norway's "rain capital", Bergen, without seeing a drop of rain. While in this area it's been raining cats and dogs. Actually we needed rain after an extremely dry (and comparatively warm) summer.

Anyway. I took a few photos on Sunday morning, and while much of the info below has been given before on this blog, a refresh might not be all bad.

The photo below is our kind of "DX Central". Four beverages enter through the wall and connect to the four DX-Engineering RPA-2 preamps on the bottom of the photo. From there, tailor-made coax cables (made by Bonito in Germany) connect to the 1:8 passive MiniCircuits splitters at the top. From there, the signals are distributed to the three of us.

The four RPA-2 preamps in the middle are mine. My equipment is located elsewhere than Ole's and OJS' stuff. So, another set of Bonito coax cables go from the splitters to the preamps, and from them out of sight from the bottom of the photo.

... and into sight here! Three of my four Perseus are located on this shelf, together with a spare one. The WR-G31DDC Excalibur is not in use.

Neither are the earphones. Well they are sort of, they are connected to the Intel NUCs seen below because the NUCs need an audio driver to make us hear audio when we're listening remote. The blue cable in front is the 5V power supply for one of the Perseus, powered from a USB3 connector on one of the PCs.

And the three PCs that are fed from the three Perseus are  on the shelf above, shown below. (huh?)

The two Intel NUCs are refurbished, and was bought as part of a package of 10 by OJS on Ebay from a US supplier. The dark one to the left of the NUCs is a Dell Micro PC. Other hardware seen on the image are 8 and 12 TB hard drives from Seagate. I have two for each PC. The Jaguar software will automatically change to another hard drive if the first one runs full.

The fourth Perseus is situated closer to my "station", and is connected to a Lenovo "midi" desktop, the one to the right on the image below. The other desktop is a Dell, and the Perseus22 and an RSPdx-R2 are connected to that one, with a 4 TB Samsung SSD for external storage.

The Perseus is in the background, resting on top of a vintage Tandberg speaker.

Today we heard news of another SDR coming out of the SDRPlay works, the nRSP-SP web-capable SDR. Maybe it will find its way to this radio shack in not too long.

To finish off this blogpost, a few photos from near our location on Sunday. Sorry about not being able to keep the mobile phone camera steady enough, it was just too windy.

Our location, take one

Our location, take two. Direction east.

Turning north. The island is named "Grønnøya", meaning "Green island", quite a fertile place due to centuries of seagull droppings. Grassy and lots of cloudberries.

Another perspective of Grønnøya, this time facing east.

KONG48 - Farewell To Loran

For those familiar with our Loran site, it has been dismantled. Previously, I gathered the 70 support rods and several ground rods. Today, we walked up to retrieve the steel antenna spool, which contains 1000 meters of wire—a real behemoth! We transported it to our vehicles, a kilometer downhill, using a wheelbarrow. The photos  below were taken in the vicinity of the site.

Massive swells originating from the Barents Sea.

Kjølnes Lighthouse dwarfed by the waves

On our return journey, we paused several times to capture the diminishing storm - the wind and waves had subsided significantly, yet the sight remained impressive. Photos can never fully convey the same impact. As a "road man," I took photos from where road damage occurred precisely a year ago from a similar storm and forwarded the images to my colleagues for assessment if there were any further damages. With any luck, the scheduled repairs from last year's storm will proceed.

That's me. The KONG-HQ isn't visible, but it's located across the fjord, just to the left behind me. Photo: OJS.

White inferno. In my youth we used to fish salmon in small open boats from this bay.

So, what else is there to say? Everything seems to be working fine here. Some issues regarding the AND and Smøla HQs were also sorted out via remote control.

Since we're off very early on Monday morning, dinner was earlier than usual. So, a lamb steak is never wrong. Served with a sauce comprised of beef stock, fried mushrooms, chili, ginger, fresh juniper berries and red wine, and a stew of potatoes, carrots, seleriac and rutabaga. Flavoured with butter. With the lamb we enjoyed a Scarpa red wine from Piemonte (shame on those who don't know it's Italian). 

For dessert we had the usual chocolate pudding with custard, Grappa and Amaretto. So, all in all quite a substantial contribution from Italy this evening.

And that's it from the KONG crew! We'll be back in the second half of October. Cheers from Ole, OJS and Bjarne. Happy DX!

PS! Finally something nice to hear! 1269 ABC Radio National, Bussleton WA at 19:00 and 729 ABC Radio National, Adelaide SA at 19:30!

KONG48 Day Three - Keep Calm And Carry On

Which meant - set up Ole's and OJS' gear! Now, that's a handful with six Intel NUCs, mulitple hard drives, six Perseus, internet connections and sorting out the four coax cables to each of them. Below is how it looked like after job done. 

Where do all the cables go?

I took a walk to see how the water supply was getting on - not too good I'm afraid after this summer's draught. We'll need an awful lot of rain to get even. While out, I took these pictures during a hail shower.

Still quite a lot of wind, and frequent rain and hail showers, but much less windy than on Friday. Wind had shifted direction a bit so we had some huge swells into the bay near my house. Impressive. And they make an awesome sound. 6-7 degrees Celsius.

Nothing much to say radio-wise except conditions do appear to be improving. A little bit.

Dinner! Fried salmon fillets marinated in sesame oil, sesame seeds, red chili, garlic and ginger. Tagliatelle with proper pesto and parmesan cheese. And bacon. Accompanied by our all-time favourite white wine, Kim Crawford from New Zealand.

For dessert, our traditional chocolate pudding with custard. And a little bit of Amaretto and Grappa.

Tomorrow is our last day, and may be a bit busy. The wind is supposed to calm, the rain not so much.

KONG 48 Day 2 - Storm? What storm?

It may be worthwhile to explain to our friends outside the Germanic language area that the Norwegian term "storm" only refers to a specific wind level. So, we don't have thunderstorms or rainstorms or any other "storm". A Norwegian "storm" starts with 10-minute average wind levels of 22 m/s or roughly 80 km/h or 50 mph. Above 33 m/s our name for this wind level is "orkan", loosely translated to hurricane in English. Most Germanic languages use the same terms for wind levels as we do.

So, the weather is not good, with wind gusting at storm levels (26 m/s) and temperatures fallen to around 8 Celsius, but outdoor activities aren't hindered much. Late in the morning we walked out to the 80-degrees beverage to terminate the end point. Three ground rods, each 75 cm long were hammered into the ground, and a 560-ohm resistor mounted between ground and antenna.

Two of the ground rods, collected from a previous antenna site

Ready for some heavy duty action

Done! A bit of camo to make the site less visible

Having finished this job, a dough of bread was put in the oven for "heat treatment". When done we drove to Berlevåg for some shopping, including the delicious, local "fish cakes" as we call them in Norway. So, upon return, we had this excellent late lunch:

Home-made bread (warm), fish cakes (warm) and Jarlsberg cheese

Nothing much else to report, we're awaiting OJS' arrival late in the evening when we will have a spicy fish soup for dinner, and fresh cloudberries with whipped cream for dessert. More on that tomorrow!

KONG 48 Day Zero - Waiting For The Storm

Indeed, we are bracing for the storm! The weather forecast predicts very high tides (which are not a concern for us), severe gale winds, and heavy precipitation. Quite the start to our September DX-pedition!

However, let's start from the beginning. Today (Thursday) started off exceptionally pleasant, reaching up to 20 degrees Celsius, with just a few clouds and gentle breezes. Ole arrived at KONG HQ just before noon, followed by Bjarne a few hours later. OJ Sagdahl is tied up with business in London and won't be joining us until late Friday evening.

Seizing the opportunity presented by the fair weather, Ole and I decided to install the last antenna before conditions deteriorated. Around 15:00 local time, we ventured out and were soon met with a series of unpleasant rain showers. Temperatures were nice, however, and the rain soon gave way to delightful sunshine peeking through the clouds.

The 340 beverage antenna, a staggered dual run measuring 340 meters each, took us about an hour to set up, complete with all connections and grounding. The photos below capture how it appeared at that moment.

End point of one of the dual 340 beverages.

Grim weather ahead

The treasure appears to be located at the end of the 50-degree beverage.

Red Man Walking - Ole on his way to the starting point of the 340.

From nearby Berlevåg (photo: Norsk luftambulanse)

At the time of writing (around 22:00 local time), the rain and wind have intensified somewhat, although it's nothing out of the ordinary. It's too dark for outdoor photography, so we've spent the evening savoring some fine beer and enjoying a meal of "Vossakorv," a unique sausage from the town of Voss (close to Bergen), accompanied by bacon and mashed root vegetables. For dessert, we had chocolate pudding with custard, Amaretto, and Grappa.

Conditions? Forget about them. We're not even close. And it's going to be a dark and stormy night.Temperature around 10 Celsius - still quite mild by mid-September standards. See you on the other side!

Season Preps And a New Feature On My Blog: The KONG And Smøla Yaslogs!

 Another beautiful and dry morning at the KONG HQ, the photo below was taken at 06 local. DX here is totally dead due to the high solar activity with X flares and an ongoing proton event.

Yesterday afternoon was spent removing ground rods from a previous antenna installation for later use. Hard work, but as Billy Ocean once sang: When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going....!

Collected ground rods (among tools and other antenna related things)

A new feature on this blog is Yaslogs! These are a vital a part of a MW DX-ers' daily routine - that is, for Perseus/Jaguar users. A short look of the Yaslog is enough to see if it's worthwhile to check recordings or not. They also provide an interesting illustration into how signals are affected by geomagnetic activity. For those not familiar with this feature, below is an illustration of what it does and what we can see.

Today's Yaslog (including 4 hours from yesterday) on the 50-degrees beverage

The Yaslog we see on our PCs is updated every minute, while the net version is updated every hour.

Now obviously, the Yaslog has its limitations. A DX-er in North America will not be able to track interesting openings inside his/her continent since signal levels will be high most of the time anyway. Same goes for us in Europe if we want to chase specific Asian and Pacific signals such as New Zealand. But it makes it super easy to see if transcontinental signals are present. And the effects of geomagnetic disturbances are extremely easy to spot - and often provide an opportunity for excellent DX in itself.

Naturally, the Yaslog only gives us the broad picture. To detect the really interesting signals, we focus on the carriers of each frequency. But when I checked the 10-er frequencies on our 310-degrees beverage this morning, I know for sure that I don't have to check my recordings. By the way the rather strong signals on some frequencies are where the American and European/Asian frequencies "meet", such as 900, 990, 1080, 1170 etc.

"Nothing to see here folks, move on!"

The links to the Yaslogs are on the right-hand section of the blog:

At the time of writing, the KONG-340 Yaslog is empty - the antenna is not up yet and the Perseus is not running.

So, why make these Yaslogs available? Well, I know for sure that some DX-ers use the URLs as browser favourites for their own info, especially if they don't use the Perseus/Jaguar combo themselves. So, they may be of use for some. The links would probably not be active from mid-April until late August when the antennas are down.

KONG48 (the short version) is held the coming weekend with Ole and OJS arriving Thursday and Friday to set up gear, work with antennas (including the 340), enjoy a bit of food and drinks before leaving Monday morning. And would you believe it - it's going to rain!

The Nooelec 50 kHz - 150 MHz 20-dB LNA

I ordered it because the Fobos SDR I was using had pretty mediocre sensitivity, and I wanted to see if a preamp could increase it a bit. The Fobos had other issues too, so I ended up returning it. But I think the Nooelec will come in handy when FM season kicks off next May.

At KONG HQ, we’re no strangers to preamps. We need to split each of our signals to three users using MiniCircuits 8-port passive splitters. Sometimes, the MW band signals are so weak that preamplification actually makes a difference.

However, many DX-ers deal with high noise floors where a preamp won’t help and might even overload the receiver. So, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Anyway, I was curious to see how it performs on the SW bands.

This device is tiny compared to what we’re used to, like this 16-dB preamp from DX-Engineering!

Nooelec LNA vs. DX-Engineering RPA-2

So, it’s got SMA ports on both the input and output. You power it with a 5VDC supply through a Micro-USB port. Honestly, it might be a good idea to switch to the more common USB-C port soon.

For this quick test, I set up a Perseus22 with a center frequency of 15 MHz, which lets me receive from 14.2 to 15.8 MHz. I picked 15290 kHz kind of by chance - NHK World Radio was broadcasting in Japanese from the Issoudur transmitter in France at that time. I used a 5-meter high, 20-meter long sloping L-antenna, which worked great. The LNA was powered by a battery bank

So, this is what the spectrum and waterfall looked like before I hooked up the LNA.

The noise floor is around -120 dBm, with signal levels hitting just at or below -70 dBm. When I turned on the LNA, here’s what happened

The noise floor has gone up to about -100 dBm, and the peak signal levels are just below -50 dBm, which matches the 2.5 dB loss the manufacturer mentioned. The 27-dB gain increase on 15290 is because of random and quick signal level changes. We do see a few more signals on the waterfall that might be clearer with the LNA, but there’s also more noise. So, in this test, the LNA likely didn’t help with signal recovery. With a lower noise floor, it might make a difference.

I spent about  USD 35 on the device and another $12 for the slow USPS shipping. Right now, the RPA-2 HF Preamplifier from DX-Engineering (shown above) is priced at USD 270. It’s definitely more versatile. But it makes you wonder: Could we do with less?