France Sector Map

 

My FIRST EVER SITOR A Maritime Logs

 

12654.0 TAH Istanbul, SITOR A/ARQ MKCV (4360) Istanbul w/test reply to unid ship THE QUICK BROWN FOX etc (25JUN25 0557) (AJT)

12557.0 Hanjin Pioneer, SITOR A/ARQ mmsi 440021000 test req to MKCV Istanbul (25JUN25 0952) (AJT)

12557.0 Songa Sapphire, SITOR A/ARQ mmsi 248940000 test req to MKCV Istanbul (25JUN25m 1355) (AJT)

 

Here's a link to the Youtube video that inspired me to try this rather vintage mode.

 

Quite challenging to get these first SITOR decodes. Signal level into Multipsk needed to be around 40-50% (I was inputting much higher and also much lower levels). I sat my Tecsun portable on 12556.0 USB and just waited. Eventually, with luck and conditions behind me, big signal levels appeared which I recorded USING A LEAD into a small portable voice recorder. This allowed me to repeatedly input the signal into MultiPSK until I hit the sweet spot. It took several days to get there. Couldn't have done it without the help of fellow UDXF forum member Patrick. THANK YOU. Great news for me as this mode is much more challenging and hands-on than GMDSS which is a bit too easy for me.

Anyway, here was what the MultiPSK looked like with the noise/interference removed for anyone else who may want to give it a go:

 

4360 IST.RD
MQCVGA@-@-+?
TRY AGAIN OR USE 'OPR+'
*GA+? AGAIN OR USE 'OPR+' 
*GA+?
TRY AGAINAIN OR USE 'OPR+' 
*GA+?

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG 0123456789

 

I'm hooked now! 73 Adam

 

Location: Dawlish, UK
50.5823N 3.4644W

Tecsun PL660 with telescopic whip and
Realistic DX400 with indoor homemade broadband active loop
Software: MultiPSK

HF Logbook May 2025 with 8894 Algiers and Russian Navy morse code prominent

Here is my log for May 2025. Been experimenting with digital log options after a lifetime of handwritten logs. This one went wrong as the software crashed and I lost everything except screenshots!

I'll try a different programme for June.

 

HF AERO VOICE LOGS Dec 24

 Hi all,

Selection of December aero logs:

  

Air Ocean Maroc Challenger 604 heard in West Africa en-route from Ouagadougou to Rabat 

8891.0 Bodo, USB wkg Emirates 30Y over Svalbard at 00 long QSY Iceland 8864 (18DEC24 0753) (AJT)

4675.0 Iceland, USB wkg Iceair 623 checking in at 30W (17DEC24 1817) (AJT)

8861.0 Dakar, USB wkg TAM8070 with level change (16DEC24 0703) (AJT)

8894.0 Nouakchott, USB wkg Air Ocean Maroc Challenger 604 QSY 133.0 (16DEC24 0701) (AJT)

8894.0 Algiers, USB wkg Turkish 538 crossing Algierian border next 123.8 (14DEC24 0650) (AJT)

8894.0 Algiers, USB wkg Algerian Air Force IL76 7T-WIQ upon departure (02DEC24 0745) (AJT)

Location: Dawlish, UK

50.5823N 3.4644W

Tecsun PL660 and telescopic whip 

The Algerian and South Atlantic voice tfc can be silent for days, and then suddenly propagation conditions open up and it is quite active for a few hours or days. Still no LDOC traffic for months and months, aside from Stockholm. I've been monitoring my last known active freqs for Saudi Ops and Iberia amongst others, but can only presume LDOC voice is really infrequently used these days. I'll keep at it and post anything of interest. Thks. 73 Adam 

 

Russian Vega VEF-206 repair

Radio working perfectly again

  

I have a Russian Vega VEF-206, bought a few years online for the nostalgia of once again owning the first shortwave set I ever bought as a boy in 1983/4 from a local electronics shop in my hometown of Callington. Reception and audio quality is superb. And so when it recently developed intermittent very low audio and signal levels which could be remedied by a gentle slap on her head (!)  I eventually discovered this solder joint that had come away from the PCB. I have just resoldered it and she is working as good as new again. 

I thought at first it was a component failure, but after posting a question on the UK Vintage Radio Repair forum and needing to more carefully clarify the symptoms, I discovered the intermittent nature of the fault. So as well as a small degree of technical skill and patience which I learnt in abundance over the few years it took me to eventually get my vintage Swinburne CR600 airband scanner working, this weekend I have also discovered that carefully clarifying the symptoms is also key. 

But more than any of these things, I have learnt that without the help and kindness of other people us beginner repairers would be lost. Not sure it would have been possible in the pre-internet days to ask for and receive help and guidance from technical experts and other hobbyists and enthusiasts from around the world. So if I'm ever tempted to think ill of the internet and complain about the time it wastes and how we'd be happier without it, I shall remember this!

I actually sent my airband scanner from Swinburne Electronics, a 6-channel, crystal-controlled scanner from the 1980s, off to several "professional" repairers advertising their services online. At huge expense. One even charged me £50 just to tell me it was completely broken and no longer repairable due to the age of parts! Can you believe it. You pay to send it off, you pay to have them look at it, you pay to have the *hopeless radio" returned. And then....... with the kindness and patience of other people who offer their services for nothing, you work on it together over the months until it is fixed and working just as it did when your parents first bought it for you, some 40 years previously. Some of these "repair" people ought to be ashamed of themselves. But of course, none of it is regulated. 

No wonder so many of our belongings end up in landfill and few people get anything repaired.

I'll post a video of my own VEF-206 radio receiving a shortwave station in the next few days.

 

Russian Navy Tactical Callsign 2 Logs

 

14552.0 : RUNY CW XXX XXX DU78 DU78 85509 KRUGLÄ K 331 331 UPSOPSIH ... 77K (23AUG23 1010) (AJT)

12461.0 : RUNY CW FBMC FBMC DE Y87S Y87S (28AUG23 0600) (AJT)

Using Tecsun PL660 and Telescopic whip 

50.5823° N, 3.4644° W

More Russian Navy CW Monitoring with decode of SYNOP message

 As you may know I have been listening to the Russian Navy morse code messages on HF in my latest shortwave adventures. Last night I received a message from Yakov Grebelsky UCBC5 which was something like this:

UCBC5 .......SML FOR RCD88 RMB97.....17181 99568 10118 41598 71304 10170 40240 54000......

This is a routine weather observation which can be decoded by hand (eg 99568 means latitude 56.8 degrees north etc). In fact even just those two first sets will give you its lat 56.8N and long 11.8E in Kattegat.

But inputting these codes into metaf2xml will give you all the data including temperature, wind direction, pressure etc in a visually appealing and easily understood format.

This is quite an intricate area of shortwave that many may be unfamiliar with but keen to have a bash at, so hope this gives you inspiration! It's great fun. And CW, unlike SSB, propagates much better.

GL 73 Adam

Russian Navy Morse Code Monitoring on HF

 

Russian Navy Replenishment Ship "ELJNIA"

08784.0 : RUNY CW RCLH RPT (06AUG23 1815) (AJT)

08784.0 : RUNY CW RMP DE RBDF QSA? QTC K (07AUG23 1606) (AJT)

08784.0 : RUNY CW RBDF OK QR SK (07AUG23 1810) (AJT)

12464.0 : RUNY CW RBCS OK QYT4 QCMK (08AUG23 1448) (AJT)

08784.0 : RUNY CW RMP DE RBDF QSA? QTC K B48 J4 8 1800 SML (08AUG23 1608) (AJT)

08784.0 : RUNY CW RMP DE RCLH QSA? QTC K (08AUG23 1815) (AJT)

12464.0 : RUNY CW QYT4 QSX678 QWH1237 ..... (09AUG23 0954) (AJT)

14555.0 : RUNY CW UCTA5 DE RIW Moscow clg Ru Navy Replenishment Tnkr Eljnia (10AUG23 0845)

11000.0 : RUNY CW UCTA5 DE RIW QSL 592 K (10AUG23 1525) (AJT)

08821.0 : RUNY CW Naval Air Ground Station “S” Mkr (10AUG23 1730) (AJT)  

These are some of my recent logs from listening to shortwave stations for Russian Navy activity in morse code. I record the transmissions on a digital voice recorder and playback slowly. If I still can't get the code, I record that into my phone, and run it through an MP3 speed reducer app. It's easy then!

RMP is Kaliningrad and RIW Moscow. 

Lots of information can be found here at UDXF Utility Files Info

All this on just my Tecsun PL660 and it's own built-in whip

Washing Up Bowl Micro Pond Oxygenating Plant - Watercress

 

The above are two photographs of my washing up bowl pond! It has been an enjoyable project and makes a nice feature in the garden. For year one I bought some Starwort online, and it did a super job of keeping the water clear and fresh. But by year 2 it was looking a bit sorry for itself. After reading you could use watercress from the supermarket, and as it was under £2, I decided to give it a try. You just buy the bag of salad watercress (the big-leaved stuff and not the "mustard & cress tiny stuff) and put it in the water, floating freely. There is no soil in my pond, but some pebbles, and I hinestly didn't think it would work. But it did, and it does, and within a few days the cress was forming healthy-looking roots and settling in nicely. Within weeks it was huge! And soon tall white flowers were towering over the frogs and pixies! I thinned it out to enable me to see the water. And now, 9 months later and the following January, it is still alive and the water crystal clear, despite one or two nights where the pond froze completely. I am confident, as the temperatures rise again in spring, that the cress will grow nicely again, but if it doesn't, a quick trip to Sainsbury's and I can get some more.

Roberts R862 Short Demonstration

 

Crystal Scanner Oscillation Fault

This is a short video demonstrating the fault I have with my Swinburne Electronics CR600

airband receiver.

Initially it only displayed this behaviour on one or two channels and it was intermittent. But now it behaves like this permanently, which makes me think that perhaps a component in the crystal oscillator part of the circuit has failed. 

When I tune to the fundamental frequency of the crystal on a handheld scanner, there is an oscillation from both sets. But the working set continues to oscillate strongly as I move the scanner several feet or so away from the crystal circuit. The faulty radio oscillates only weakly and stops doing so only a few inches away.

France ATC Sectors UAC and frequencies

For those of you living in the south of England and listening to VHF airband traffic over France I hope the above will be of some help. They are taken from the AIP for France on the 30th of December 2021 from section GEN 3.4. The AIP package is available to download for free from the SIA website but you need to create an account first and check out, even though the AIP package PDF file (approximately 1 GB) is free. 

As well as Brest UAC LFRR, there are frequencies listed for Paris, Bordeaux, and Reims. 

French ATC sector map is available here:

https://www.cypouz.com/article/150203/cartes-des-secteurs-controle-espace-aerien-civil-francais

Orion Nebula with Celestron Travelscope 70mm and Smartphone

 This is a photo of the Orion nebula taken with my Celestron 70mm Travelscope and Huawei P20 Lite. No stacking, no tracking, just a simple 2.5sec exposure. Great fun! Next project is to try to capture a moving video of the Moon and also in the autumn a planet, hopefully Saturn. If I'm lucky enough to capture the latter I shall try to use the PIPP program and Deep Sky Stacker to create a photo. 

I've seen some cool videos on YouTube of people using a budget 70 mm (and even a low-cost 60mm) to obtain photos and videos of Saturn where surprisingly the rings are discernible. 

I tried taking multiple exposures of the Orion Nebula and stacking them in DSS, but despite multiple attempts none of the final images looked half as good as the single shot taken on the camera. 

As you can probably tell I don't want to get into the hobby in too much depth, but it has been great fun to dip my feet in with budget equipment and obtain results that I have found pleasing. 

Swinburne Electronics CR600 Airband Radio (1983)

This radio was made by Swinburne Electronics of Birmingham Airport and was bought for me by my parents in 1983. The audio quality and sensitivity of this fine-looking radio is phenomenally good. No modern scanner I have used to date, and I have used a fair view being a radio enthusiast all my life, none of them have come close to matching it. I have a Signal R535, and although it is a nice looking radio and much sought-after for fans of slightly older radios with a bit more character than the modern "breeze block" scanners that followed it, it doesn't come close in terms of audio quality. After falling into disrepair, Dad had the good sense to keep my CR600 safely stored in a barn on the farm and had wanted me to try to get it working again for years. As he got seriously ill later in life, I wanted very much to give new life to this radio. I had no idea as a young lad, but at around £130 (if I remember correctly) it was no small sum of money back then, and to Mum & Dad must have taken ages to save up for. With the help of Martin M0IME from my local amateur radio club in Watcombe I managed to solder in place a new volume POT/power switch and replace the broken aerial socket with a new BNC one. Dad did finally get to see the red LEDs scanning again, just like Michael Knight's car "Kit" in Knightrider! But it wasn't working well and has ben a labour of love for the last 5 years on and off. A fantastically helpful lady from a vintage radio forum spent 3 months giving me online instructions and guiding me through various repairs and replacements. I shall be forever indebted to her for the hours and hours of patients help and skills she taught me, including using a desoldering pump and how to re-align a radio using only an analogue and digital airband radio set. Darren at the Airband Radio website has been helpful too, looking at his own finely restored CR600 for component part numbers for me, enabling me to change my 6V rectifier, which seemed a bit low we thought, to an 8V one like his own. This, along with a change of all 6 crsytals diodes to 1N2222s for their higher capacitance, enabled me to finally tune all 6 crystals again. WONDERFUL! Another person without whom I would never have my old radio working was Duncan at Shortwave Shop in near Tiverton who did a very tricky soldering job onto a TOKO coil that was beyond my own ability.

I also had the horrible experience of sending it off to various so-called "radio repairers" I had found online, and being charged lots of money only to be told the radio didn't receive, which was utter nonsense and very disheartening as I myself have struggled financially for the last 5 years especially, due to poor health. Some of them did little more than take the back off. 

Dave at Cotswold Screen Printers along with their Painters Vale Powder Coatings put the icing on the cake for me with the incredible, professional work they did to restore the flaking front panel. The CR600 doesn't just look as good as new, it looks better than new, as the finish is simply stunning.

I use the radio daily in my radio shack, and every time I look at it it gives me so much pleasure.

 

Bodo Oceanic (Norway) 8891

 Don't hear this one very often so it was great to catch Bodo radio on 8891 this morning (20.May.2021 0544UTC)

wkg/UAL898 (Chicago-Delhi) B787 Dreamliner
position: Just off Svalbard Island southbound
ATC instructions to ctc Bodo on VHF 127.725 at next position
and thereafter Murmansk Radio HF 8950 primary 5694 secondary

I have never heard Murmansk

2 Nice "catches" on Stockholm Radio

 

Heard the pilot of this aircraft calling Stockholm Radio on 11345khz this morning (0957UTC) from Paris Le Bourget for a selcal check. He spoke to the Stockholm controller partly in Swedish.

The aircraft is an Airbus A318 Corporate Jet (Elite) operated for Hamza Al-Kholi (hence the HK on the tail), a Saudi Businessman. I read recently on the Civil Aviation forum that these pre-flight calls on HF must take place after re-fuelling for safety purposes, which I found interesting.

The second interesting flight was a Smartwings Beoing 737-800 OK-TSF calling for 2 radio checks on his way from Prague to Bacau, Romania

Listening mostly to VHF, where I get my fair share of Ryanair and British Airways, it is really cool to hear such an unusual range of aircraft and companies on Stockholm Radio.

Ethiopian Freighter on 11300 khz

 

After reminiscing about former HF activity on 11300 on the Civilian Aviation forum, I decided I'd listen in for a while last night and I caught a huge signal from this Ethiopian Airlines Cargo 737-800 as it entered Khartoum airspace on its way to Addis Ababa from Benin. All this on a little Tecsun PL660 with it's telescopic whip in the kitchen!

Interesting HF Logs February/March 2021

 After an interesting message exchange with IrishSea about HF listening, I am posting a few of my top logs over the past few weeks.

Bear in mind that due to horrendous local QRM I'm only listening on a portable (Tecsun PL660) with it's built-in whip, or homemade broadband active loop from here in Dawlish, SW England:

18FEB21 0932 8891khz Bodo Radio working United flight to QSY Iceland 8891 at 78N 00E
20FEB21 0730 8888khz Syktyvkar Weather in Russian
02MAR21 1647 8888khz Samara Weather Russian heard word "Kazan"
11MAR21 1841 11300khz Seychelles ACC wkg Reunion 9971 from St Denis to Paris
11MAR21 1842 11300khz Khartoum ACC wkg Turkish 6152 from Entebbe to Istanbul

Thanks. 73 Adam

Logs June 2020

4182.0   23JUN20 2225 USB RMCW West, Naro Fominsk channel marker "T"
5292.0   23JUN20 1940 USB RMCW West, St Petersburg "Fazan 37" channel marker "D"
8123.0   23JUN20 0950 USB french fishermen "peche" "pecheurs" catch weights etc
6824.0   22JUN20 0732 CW 5 figure groups // no ID
9996.0   21JUN20 0839 CW Moscow Time Signal ID "RWM" slow morse . good signal
8191.0   20JUN20 2025 CW Russian Navy Kaliningrad RMP msg to Russian Baltic Fleet REO
  321.0   18JUN20 0918 CW St Mary's Isles of Scilly NDB beacon "STM"
10871.0 16JUN20 1906 CW Single Letter Beacon Moscow "C"
  345.0   14JUN20 0745 CW Villacoublay AFB near Paris NDB beacon "TA"

 
RMCW: Russian Military Commandment Network

Homemade Active Loop for LW, NDBs, MW and HF

I've been experimenting with loop aerials for years as from my very first project I was wowed by their ability to reject local noise and give me back my hobby of short wave listening, which was becoming increasingly difficult as RF noise plagued the ether.

My first loops were ugly and crude but worked extremely well and saved me lots of money. Over the years the designs have improved and looked more like something I was proud to have in the shack.

But being interesting in a huge chunk of radio spectrum, from LW right up to HF, I needed to swap loops around. A lot. And even assuming I could have made a passive tuned loop to cover all of this, I would still have needed to retune each time I changed frequency.

In the end I suppose I compromised and ended up with a wide 2.1 to 18MHz loop for HF (well, most of it) and pretty much neglected LW, MW, and NDB DXing.

So it had long been an ambition of mine to build my own active loop. The Wellbrook loops were too big and too expensive for me, and with the little outside space I have available being plagued by RF, would need to be sat inside the shack, and to be honest I found their design too ugly for this!

The AOR active loops were my favourite, but still they were very costly and I was put off by the very small 30cm diameter. I know from my own experiments that doubling up to, say 60 or 70cm, gave a huge in signal, especially on the 5 and 6 MHz bands, were I do a lot of utility DXing.

So I decided to build my own. And it has been surprisingly straight-forward.

I bought the amplifier ready assembled from Rainville Communications in California. Luke there was incredibly helpful, and after patiently explaining to me what I needed for the project (I was getting confused between an active loop and adding a PRE-AMP to my tuned loops, that would have added more noise and little else) I ordered the LAMP-1A HF Receiving Loop AMP.

Putting it all together was really simple, though you do need to have basic soldering skills just slightly beyond what you might need to build a passive tuned loop, but only ever so slightly. If I can do it, anyone can! I had given months of thought to how I wanted it to look, as this was very important in this build. I wanted a small, somewhat flatter box than my normal bulky looking ones, and a sleeker, lower-profile design. I wanted a little LED to show me when it was on, and ideally to give an indication of the amount of gain I had selected. The variable gain is simply a variable resistor (potentiometer) used to reduce the power (I chose a 1K linear which is about perfect). I used a 75cm Witzig Hula Hoop from onbuy.com and 15mm single hinge clips from Talon to secure the loop to the project box.

So for £50 I ended up with what I think is a very sleek-looking loop which outperforms anything I have ever made before. The AMP is superbly quiet and generates no noise at all, unlike previous supposed "low noise" RF Amps I have bought before from China for £6.

Rainville state it is an HF AMP, but it works extremely well all the way down to 200khz, which was a really nice surprise when I was testing it out. I spent a long time comparing it to a larger passive tuned loop, and in every respect it outperformed it. I was really surprised as I had a pre-conceived notion that any kind of amplifier in a noisy RF environment was a big no-no.

The joy of being able to hope around from NDBs in the 400khz band to HF, back to MW, and all without re-tuning or swapping loops is indescribable. SWLing heaven!

I am attaching some photos of the loop. I have also done Youtube video

Message me via comments on this blog or my Youtube Channel if you want to ask me any questions. I enjoy hearing from you and chatting about this fine radio hobby of ours.

73 Adam