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.