World Heritage Grimeton Radio SAQ 17.2 kHz

Listen to World Heritage Grimeton Radio (SAQ)

Grimeton Radio is the last transmitter in the world generating rf power without any electronic parts. No tubes, no semiconductors, only an engine driving an AC generator.

The above station will transmit on 24th December 2013 at 0730 and 0800UTC in CW from Sweden.

The DX-394 will tune down to 1khz (have a look here for how to modify the DX-394 with button presses only) 

The DX-10 Vertical antena on the washing line performs a dream on VLF, and so i will try to listeni in tomorrow morning and see if I can hear anything.

First 24H with ERA Microreader

This is a photo of the new microreader reading amateur cw yesterday. I have done a side by side
comparison with fldigi and it is just as good yet without all the hassle (not to mention noise!) of loading up the pc. I am very impressed. In fact there were digits that the fldigi program failed to copy that the microreader read OK, which surprised me, given its age.

Era Microreader

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I have bought an ERA Microreader for decoding cw and rtty signals in the shack. My parents bought me one when I was a lad and after years of fun decoding press agency signals and aero stations in Africa, I foolishly let it go for a song with a big box of radio equipment I thought I no longer wanted. Years later I regretted that decision, especially as Mum & Dad must have saved so hard to buy it for me.

I am not a lover of computers at the best of times, and certainlty not when I want to relax with the radio hobby, so a stand alone unit such as this has huge appeal for me. I am hoping to spend some enjoyable hours monitoring the 10m beacons, some CW maritime stations, and if I can find any some maritime RTTY stations.

I have spent the past few months since my last entry monitoring broadcast stations and was sad to recently discover Radio Exterior de Espana no longer broadcasts to Europe, the demise of this service being accelerated by the economic climate.

Last year I bought a Pure Evoke Flow internet radio and although it has taken a while to adjust to this more contemprary way of listening to worldwide radio after using short wave all my life, I am thoroughly enjoying it now. I especially love the excellent audio quality of some of my favourite music stations, and what a joy to hear previously weak signals from the tropical band stations in Brazil in modern digital sound quality. another bonus is these DX stations can be heard during the day, instead of only at 3 o clock in the morning!

German Air Force on HF

I have been doing an HF scan on my Icom 703 of 20 or so European military SSB voice frequencies, primarily Navy and Air Force, for an hour or so each morning for several months now. I no longer hear the Italian Air Force and Navy like I did last autumn and in fact have heard so little I was beginning to wonder if during this short space of 12 months a lot of the military had dropped the use of HF. As I have mentioned recently, the French Air Force and Navy are active on HF, as indeed are the Portuguese Air Force.
What a joy, then, this morning to hear much activity on the German Air Force frequency of 5687 with callsigns GAF041 and 033 calling in with solid signals and departure and arrival times in a mix of German and English language. I even heard mention of "frequency kilo" which I understand is 8965khz. So a little later in the day I will try that one for a few hours and see what I hear.

If anyone has any more information on HF voice frequencies used by the military, please do drop me a line, either via the comments page of the blog or via my email mentioned in the profile. I would love to hear from you.

In the meantime I will keep monitoring and report anything interesting here on the blog.

French Air Force AWACS

Cracking bit of early morning DX on aircraft in the South Atlantic today and then later, on 6700 khz I heard some RTTY and French voice comms for a FAF AWACS aircraft using the familiar "Cyrano" callsign. I went to play the recording back to try and translate a little of it but I had the audio routed into the PC for PSK and not my tape recorder. Silly me. A shame as the comms were long and sounded interesting. Logged at 0757UTC today 11th October. I understand these Boeing Sentry E3's are based at Avord AFB......

Royal/VIP Flight Ascot (RRR) 1610

I heard this very aircraft serial number ZD621, a BAe HS-125 700B as flight Ascot 1610 calling TASCOM on 6733 earlier today 10th October 2012 at 1103UTC. I didn't hear all of the conversation, but caught the aircraft's selcal code of DJFK and his request for the Keflavik weather. I shall have a look at a few news pages and see if any of the royal family were travelling across the Atlantic today as this range of callsigns belongs to 32 (Royal) Squadron and is used for the Queen's flight and other VIPs.

Lots of activity also on the French Navy (Atlantic) frequency of 5708 early this morning around 0730UTC in voice and RTTY. Clearly heard the ships using the stations callsign "Armor".

No DX the last few mornings as the K indices have been so high, but hopefully they will gradually settle down and allow some South American monitoring before the weekend.

Portuguese Air Force on HF

I have returned from my holidays with a sprained knee so am unable to get out and about as much as usual. The upside of this is that I have more time to spend on the radio! I have had a few interesting logs this afternoon.

8992 Portuguese Air Force 1412UTC flight x27 wkg Lisboa w/several overs in Portuguese
8992 Hickam AFB, Hawaii 1431UTC with std broadcast. Very clear. First time ever for this AFB!
8764 (pres) USCG with an ALE data burst. Had to stop monitoring with the PC now on.

I have seen listed for Portuguese Air Force the following HF frequencies in addition to 8992 but am not sure how old/accurate the information is:

5687 khz
6685 khz
8992 khz (heard this one many times myself but guess they must have lower back-up HF freqs...)
9007 khz

This is a Nord 2502 Noratlas of the Portuguese Air Force pictured at Sintra AFB, Lisbon

I have a special interest in Portugal and the Portuguese language so expect to see more posts on the Portuguese Air Force.

Must get this PC off now and get the DX394 back on!