Radiation Storm Lets You Listen Long-Distance 134
bubblegoose writes: "There is a large radiation storm in progress caused by a solar flare on the backside of the Sun. Here's a story from Spaceweather.
It has a pretty cool effect on radio signals. I was picking up a 6000 Watt North Carolina FM station from near Philly." Bubblegoose also brings you this link to dxing.com, a site all about listening in when freak atmospheric conditions create unusual RF propagation patterns.
If you think this is cool, check out Ham radio (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly, you can buy or build an inexpensive radio and antenna for peanuts. Some kit radio projects like the "tuna tin" radio can be built in 15 minutes!
While you do need a license, the technician class exam is so easy most slashdotters should be able to pass with no studying. The FCC mandates a fixed question pool from which the questions will be drawn, and these are available on-line. (So are practice tests.) So if you just like to get perfect scores, read all the questions first!
And the exam fee is also mandated by the FCC, currently $10.00, so basically this is very easy to get into.
I hope that a lot of people here are intrigued by the fascinating world of long-distance radio wave propagation. From simple chatting with people in your local area, to talking to Africa and even Antarctica, radio is the only communication system that covers the globe.
Also there's the exciting world of amateur satellites, satellite designed, built, and launched by amateur volunteers and funds. These are another great way for a low-power station to communicate DX (long distance) without much special equipment.
I guess I don't need to add how pleased I am to see radio wave propagation stories on
See you on the air!
Re:If you think this is cool, check out Ham radio (Score:1)
Re:I thought solar storms were *bad* ? (Score:1)
Wow! (Score:2)
Frequency movie links (Score:1)
An interesting link is that the Aurora Borealis in itself is a form of radiation.
Here's a definition:
"The Aurora Borealis is atmospheric conditions being in the correct alignment to see radiation in the visible from the high-energy electrons following diallel lines and causing atmospheric molecules to move to an excited energy state -- after which they emit in the visible, which we see."
Propagation Fun (Score:1)
Also, during that same period, I was able to get both sides of a baseball game between Detroit and Baltimore, on their local AM stations...WTOP out of DC I think and I don't remember the Detroit station...My logs are at home in a closet...
Got a write up in Monitoring Times...
Any CB/Ham operator knows it's called... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Any CB/Ham operator knows it's called... (Score:1)
Hams call it DX
But this is a different freqency (Score:1)
-Temporal Reverse Engineering Inc: If you need us we will call you last week
Tropospheric ducting (Score:1)
Tropospheric ducting.
It works all the way up into the UHF television stations. There are cases of people in New England picking up Florida broadcast television stations right after a tropical storm passes up the coast.
No! Don't do it! (Score:1)
For those of us in Atlanta (Score:3, Interesting)
For those of us in Atlanta, I know I picked up a Cuban station earlier. I don't know how far away this can be heard, because I haven't traveled around checking it out. I'm a little rusty on my Spanish, but it seems to be a Communist Propoganda station. It's crazy!
Natsukashii! (Score:4, Interesting)
I got the damn thing working after frequent trips to Radio Shack's free 'Tube Tester' and a lot of experimentation. (Try any tube with the right number of pins... Replace resistors that had gone black - Victory garden walls and all...)
Got the thing working and my brother and I would stay up late listening to Radio Moscow's propoganda. Brilliant, abstract stuff; The boy scouts were a paramilitary training group and the US govt was making sausage out of Native Americans. The woman who read the news sounded a bit like Natasha from the Bullwinkle cartoons.
Of course, we always switched over then to Dr. Demento when that came on...
A couple years ago on an Aeroflot plane to Moscow, I sat next to a former KGB agent and we drank vodka together and talked about how we missed the cold war. I told him about listening to the 'Voice of Moscow' or whatever it was called. We both agreed that international animosity had reached a certain level of respectability and taste with the cold war.
I asked him if they had the good movies that we did - he called them 'Spymaster' movies, but the ones he told me about only had the west Germans as the opponent - never the Americans, (Too bad. Either he was sparing my feelings, or we weren't as significant as we thought we were... I suspect the former.)
That was a time that really turned me on to communication and technology. Hearing a voice from so far away on a hunk of wires that I had badly cobbed together from cast-off parts. Hearing that series of tones that helped you tune in to the station before the broadcast.
I hope right now, some kid is sitting in his room, burning his fingers with a soldering iron over a pile of junk parts, finally hearing a crackle and then a voice.
I can't imagine a better thrill...
Cheers,
Jim (Now far away...)
Re:For those of us in Atlanta (Score:2)
1977 was a good year for DXing. Routinely spoke with folks well outside the normally extremely limited range of 1-2 miles with this handheld.
RD
Re:I hate to be the one to tell you this... (Score:2)
By default, the tx and rcv crystals are tuned to two slightly different frequencies ( I think by 4.5khz, if I recall properly...it's been a long time).
I swapped the transmit and receive crystals. By the way the circuits were designed, this pushed the transmitter and receiver off frequency. It did require a slight recalibration of the receiver's tuned circuits to have it see the new frequency (the tx side was pretty much fixed). Having an O-scope and freq meter came in handy to make sure thinks were tuned right.
The PLL model was a little easier because the it just meant selecting the proper input values (which were printed on the schematic). Back then, the schematics were truly open source.
Re:I hate to be the one to tell you this... (Score:2)
Meant to say...'I DIDN'T just turn them around'. Man...maybe I am that stupd...Old age setting in.
RD
Guitar amp (Score:1)
Keep watching the skies! (Score:2)
I'd be much more interested in just how far south the Northern Lights are showing up over the next day or two... up here at 50deg N, we seem them all the time.
Look at the charts. (Score:2)
But its not just solar activity. Just before a huricane, I was able to talk from Boston to Providence as clear as they were a block away, with a 1/4 wave antenna.
And for the record, I was not using a linear amp.
short rambling on Natural Radio (Score:5, Informative)
While screwing up human-created radio patterns is an interesting effect, if the idea of listening to sound generated entirely by natural phenomena emitting radio waves interests you, there is a pretty good writing --> at this url [everything2.com] <--, at the everything2 entry for "natural radio". The important thing about this site is that it contains a URL at the end containing recordings of the noise parsed by humans from natural radio. Turns out Mother Nature can create ambient about as evocative as anything we could ever replicate using our primitive tape recording systems..
If anyone else has some related links, btw, (and if y'all feel like it, we could maybe let this thread spiral way offtopic and maybe throw in a couple links regarding Oval, Pole, Farmers Manual or Disc or japanese noise groups, "Numbers Stations", etc..) could you post them as a reply to this?
In specific: The recent (excellent imho) issue of Wire with the cover story on nondeterministic music (or maybe it was the Urb where they interview richie hawtin.. can't remember. whatever.) They had a URL for some page at NASA in which they have sound files up containing natural radio emissions picked up by satellites *orbiting mars*.. with the source of the emissions being martian atmospheric phenomena. Freaky stuff, but it sounded really cool. unfortunately, i have lost that link. anyone have it?
Noise bands -Pole, Vladislav Delay, Etc. (Score:1)
For a list of Vladislav Delay's recordings
http://www.forcedexposure.com/artists/delay.vla
Pole
http://www.popmatters.com/music/reviews/p/pole-
http://music.excite.com/artist/-32631
A good Japanese band to check out is the Boredoms - they're pretty famous if you don't listen to top 40 garbage
Re:short rambling on Natural Radio (Score:3, Interesting)
I couldn't find the Mars link either, but here's some natural radio sounds recorded from Earth [nasa.gov] and Jupiter [nasa.gov]. (The INSPIRE page seems to be down.)
Re:short rambling on Natural Radio (Score:2)
Interesting stuff those sounds of Jupiter.
Numbers stations (Score:2)
Kansas station in Big Stone Gap VA (Score:1)
I was able to pick a Cimmaron, Kansas radio station in Big Stone Gap Virginia about 6 weeks ago.
Re:Kansas station in Big Stone Gap VA (Score:1)
Re:Is this legal? (Score:1)
Whoever remembers CB Radio (thats the 10-4 good buddy thing from the old 70's movies) should remember that its illegal to talk to someone over 150 miles away. Even though during the sunspot cycles, you can usually talk worldwide at the best times.
I remember last cycle sitting in my car during lunch at work, chatting away with people in Europe. And this was in 1990... Although I had used the precursor to IRC a few years before that, somehow doing it over the radio was sooo much more fun!
Re:Is this legal? (Score:1)
Yeah ! Sue the radiations !
Howard Stern (Score:1)
What ever happened to Pepsi free?
Trippy... (Score:1)
Dancin Santa
...and the one time, at band camp... (Score:1)
My Uncle (Score:2, Funny)
Unfortunately, we only get audio when he puts a megaphone against his teeth ... we're trying to figure a way to get video too ...
WRVA Richmond,Virginia from Toronto (Score:3, Interesting)
I was picking up a 6000 Watt North Carolina FM station from near Philly
Today, WRVA, Richmond, Virginia. Crystal clear DX reception in Toronto. On the original made-in-September-1975 Motorola AM radio (with 8-track!) on the dashboard of my 1976 Dodge Ram. Very cool.
I've got you all beat! (Score:1)
At first I was flabbergasted, what in the world is some Hawaiian radio station doing talking about the Rangers? Then I recognized some of the broadcasters' voices and finally heard a station ID.
Then I was really amazed.
Go Stick Pins in a Map! (Score:2)
When the Ionosphere would drop on summer nights, I'd be up until about midnight, recording stations as I could identify them. Some would come in strong for a few minutes, and fade, others would oscillate between clear and gone with a period as short as a half second or as long as a few minutes.
I lived in Midland, Michigan and recorded 5,000 watt stations from Clearwater, Florida and a couple in Texas. I was a frequent listener of WOWO, Ft Wayne, IN and WWWE Cleveland, OH when things got too squirrely. (This all started as me being a rabid baseball fanatic when I was 12 and scanning the dial for any game, once the Tiger's game was over)
For anyone with nothing better to do, particularly kids, this would probably be a fun summer project, however, two suggestions:
Go to a Hamfest (Amature Radio Swap 'n Shop) and get yourself a tube receiver (Hallicrafters, Hammerlund, Heathkit...), these old beasts still have the lowest noise and best sensitivity.
Keep your antenna away from Cable TV lines, Computers, Floresent lights, Lamp dimmers, or anything else which generates RFI.
Have fun! :-)
Re:Go Stick Pins in a Map! (Score:2)
Go to a Hamfest (Amature Radio Swap 'n Shop) and get yourself a tube receiver (Hallicrafters, Hammerlund, Heathkit...), these old beasts still have the lowest noise and best sensitivity.
Oh yeah. I have a 1947 Hallicrafters S-40 [dxing.com] shortwave radio. It's an *ugly* beast, but since I've replaced all the capacitors in it and realigned it with the original shop manual, man, it is stable and clean and it can suck in stations from anywhere.
I used to have a balanced rhombic antenna attached to it, and that really helped it. The antenna was aimed right across the American heartland from Ottawa, Canada, and it would pick up Aussie shortwave services without a problem.
Between my old Dodge Ram [nedworksal.nl], my Hallicrafters radio and my old TI-99/4A [glowingplate.com], I can tell you for sure, they don't build 'em like they used to. [sigh]
Re:Go Stick Pins in a Map! (Score:1)
Hardware Hacking in the 1940s. (Score:2)
S-40, yep, my brother has one of them. My dad has probably one more on a shelf in the basement, too.
Mine's got some neat proof that hardware hacking didn't originate with computers.
The S-40 had an 80 rectifier tube powering it, about 350V B+ to the rest of the tubes.
Mine, on the other hand, was modified. Nice ceramic socket (different from the rest of the radio's sockets), hole neatly punched into the chassis. The new wiring is almost indistinguishable from the original radio, but it was clearly done when the radio was still nearly new - 1947-1955, somewhere in that range.
The tube that was added is a VR150 gas regulator, and the regulated B+ is fed to the RF amp, local oscillator, IF, AVC and detector stages. The only part of it on non-regulated B+ is the audio amplifier and output.
An electrodynamic speaker (early 1940s vintage) was fitted into the set in place of the original permanent magnet speaker, and the new speaker's field coil is hooked up where a power supply choke would be, if the radio had one.
It's all a very nice hack, looks original, was done with period parts when the radio was new. And it improves stability like you couldn't imagine: pop out the voltage regulator tube and it starts to drift. With the tube in, it's rock-solid stable and steady.
I'm wondering if it was a common hack, maybe covered in QST magazine or something. Do either of your S-40s have that mod?
Re:WRVA Richmond,Virginia from Toronto (Score:1)
More Signals (Score:2)
Re:More Signals (Score:1)
Nashville, Tennessee from New Brunswick, Canada (Score:2)
Re:Nashville, Tennessee from New Brunswick, Canada (Score:1)
Re:WRVA Richmond,Virginia from Toronto (Score:1)
Re:WRVA Richmond,Virginia from Toronto (Score:2)
Re:WRVA Richmond,Virginia from Toronto (Score:2)
Years ago, on long drives, we'd sometimes be able to pick up distant radio stations in the crummy radio in our Dart. The record was a New Orleans station we picked up in central Indiana. Getting to hear Wolfman Jack (before his death) doing an oldies show [what else!] was better than the bad country or Bible-thumping you'd normally have to listen to.
Rubes. Concrete shoes went out of fashion is big cities like Chicago and New York decades ago. :-)
Re:Cool! (Score:1)
Your radio's behavior does not prove nor disprove anything about Media Player.
Yeah, I've done DXing routinely when outside metropolitan areas. In southern Minnesota, flipping to WLS Chicago around sunset, or listening to KOMA Oklahoma City (nice mix of live radio and music at the time). Driving between states also offers random events, such as a favorite program being replayed from Penn at a time when I could listen for several hours from Wisconsin, listening to hometown Minnesota stations in Colorado and Tenn, and Kentucky FM in Iowa.
I also happened to encounter a day when a TV antenna pointed toward Minneapolis was picking up a Toronto station instead of the Minneapolis station which was on the same channel. Minneapolis usually came in clearly due to the geometry being just right for picking up the first bounce of the signal, but one of these storms instead presented the signal from hundreds of miles beyond.
I've also tended to have a general coverage receiver for SWL, usually with a simple spiral loop antenna on the back of a bookcase that was at right angles to the direction I was interested in. I recently picked up a used digital SW receiver, which certainly makes it easier to hop right to a frequency to check if a station is coming in now.
Trop vs skip (Score:3, Informative)
Although the speed of light is nearly as fast in air as it is in a vacuum, it does differ slightly. And it is lower in dense, cool air than in thin, warm air. In other words, the refractive index of cool air is higher that of warm air. The signals are bent back to earth when they hit a discontinuity in the refractive index caused by a layer of warm air overlaying a region of cool air. Inversion layers commonly form on cool, clear nights. So you will often hear anomalous FM reception in the morning -- distant stations heard between local stations, or even interfering with weak locals.
A Yahoo search on "temerature inversion radio propagation" [yahoo.com] will enlighten the curious - this [ips.gov.au] is one result. Or run to the library and look in "The Radio Amateur's Handbook".
It might seem cool at first... (Score:1)
Re:It might seem cool at first... (Score:1)
It's very faint and hissy, but i can tell it's french they're speaking..
Tropospheric Fun (Score:1)
Other propagation stuff:
When I was doing a lot of HAM stuff (back during the last Solar Maximum), I could sometimes get some real distance at the HF frequencies, on small amounts of power. I was able to hit Argentina with 10W on 40 meters, and was able to hit all across the US with 1 watt sometimes (also at 40M), just on a plain old dipole antenna. Most hams are familiar with this, I guess, but to a kid in Jr. High it was pretty cool!
A friend of family was able to go from Santa Barbara to the midwest (Indianapolis maybe?) on something ridiculous like 10mW. It was (and may still be) some sort of record for distance/power.
Foley
N6RWE
Re:freaky (Score:1)
My guess it would be similar phenomena responisble for your acidental pickup of the radio. The only reason for it not happening before is prob. that no station near by transmit at the particular frequency that your amp. aparently is tuned to. (a circuit-board might act as an antenna, and the amplifyer handles the rest, or poor screening of the cable from your guitar allows it to act as an antenna tuned to a specific frequency determined by the capacitance and inductance of the whole system).
The solar activity mearly resulted in longer range of this station so that you could pick it up. :-)
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer
Re:freaky (Score:1)
javaradio (Score:3, Informative)
'Frequency' (Score:3, Informative)
You can go click the link for a summary of the movie. Fairly decent flick, got too wrapped up in funny timetravellish things, and how the radios magically did not need the TX buttons pushed anymore was particually annoying.
Re:'Frequency' (Score:2)
Re:'Frequency' (Score:2)
Re:'Frequency' (Score:3, Informative)
Actually no. What's happening now is standard ionospheric skip, just on higher-than usual frequencies becuase of higher ionization levels. "Frequency" was about Long Delayed Echoes, where you'll pick up a transmission from years or even decades ago. LDE's still aren't fully explained; the difficulty of course is that in order to pick up a ten-year old signal you need either some sort of store-resend mechanism (aliens on the moon!) or the signal needs to travel a distance the same as to Proxima and back. And still be audible.
Local Radio (Score:1)
AM != FM (Score:4, Informative)
"Skip" (explained in other posts) is common in the HP range (3-30MHz), but much less so in the VHF range (30-300MHz). HF's skip characteristics are varied depending on frequency, but fairly predictable. Hams talk of "maximum usable frequency" (MUF), which deals with the less-predictable frequencies in the upper parts of HF and lower parts of VHF. It is significant to hams when the MUF tops 50MHz, because that allows skip traffic over 6 meters (50-54MHz-so THAT's what happened to channel 1!), which most of the time is restricted to line-of-sight.
On rare occasions, such as during this radiation storm, the MUF can go past 150MHz, allowing skip for FM broadcast, 2-meter (144-148MHz) ham, and many of the VHF broadcast TV channels.
It can be loads of fun seeing what all you can pick up on your FM radio which this happens.
Re:AM != FM (Score:1)
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/propagation.html has a whole host of links to articles about propagation modes, including [arrl.org]this [wulfden.org], and this article [arrl.org] from QST.
Generally, HF (3-30 MHz) skip (off the F-region of the ionosphere) is a function of solar activity, with the MUF occaisionally rising into the VHF region as ebh above states.
For VHF (50-300 MHz), skip of the E-region (Sporadic-E) is the most common skip. This is not a function of solar activity, and occurs randomly for (usually) short periods. Most long distance VHF communication is due to tropospheric conditions.
50-54 MHz is known as the 'magic band' because it happens to support a range of different propogation phenomena, F-skip like lower frequencies, sporadic-E, tropospheric propagation, meteor bounce, aurora bounce, moonbounce (really difficult at 50MHz, easier as you get higher), and some *really* funky others (transequatorial-F, field-aligned-irregularities) that you will have to look up elsewhere. The ARRL handbooks are *really* good sources of info.
As TV channel 2 is only just above 54 MHz, then the time to look for long distance TV reception is when conditions are good for the 6m (50-54 MHz) HAM band.
AM radio is at a very low frequency, and so it's behaviour will be similar to that of the 160m (1.8-2.0 MHz) ham band. F-skip of AM radio will be best at night.
This link [arrl.org] has monthly charts of expected f-skip propagation showing what time of day is the best to listen for various frequencies. For AM radio, you are interested in the Lowest Usable Frequency getting as low as possible, whilst F-skip on TV channels 2-4 is only possible during the day when the solar flux is *very* high, so as now, hopefully. E-skip on VHF TV channels, and FM radio is possible pretty much any time during daylight though.
If anyone sees any mistakes I've made, please feel free to correct them,
Alan
Re:AM != FM (Score:2)
From what I understand, it's possible with the right conditions to hear these high powered stations from thousands of miles away.
A handy resource for finding out where that station is that you're listening to, is the FCC databases. They're moving stuff into a new system called CDBS, but it's harder to search.
For AM: http://www.fcc.gov/mmb/asd/amq.html
For FM: http://www.fcc.gov/mmb/asd/fmq.html
For TV: http://www.fcc.gov/mmb/vsd/tvq.html
You can see their allowed power (day/night for AM), transmitter location, antenna height...
Lots of neat stuff.
Not the Sun at all (Score:2, Informative)
Would you like fries with that? (Score:2)
Re:Would you like fries with that? (Score:1)
Re:Would you like fries with that? (Score:1)
Darnit. (Score:1)
This is very cool (Score:2)
Re:This is very cool (Score:1)
they tune in like ten, clean amplification and offered exceptional AM reception too, with directional ferrite.
--Not to mention many (all?) had electrostats for the highs, good eqs and tuning eye tubes
---oh wait, this isn't the vintage radio discussion
Re: (Score:1)
Wayyy long distance (Score:4, Interesting)
Aurora Borealis! (Score:1)
Skinner: Aurora Borealis?
Chalmers: Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?
Skinner: Yes.
Chalmers: May I see it?
Skinner: Oh, erm... No.
Skip, DX, and other such things (Score:1)
N0YWI
Re:Skip, DX, and other such things (Score:2)
OhMiGod!! (Score:2, Funny)
AM vs FM (Score:1)
AM station out of Chicago: WBBM 780. Picked it up in Denver.
I was pretty impressed.
Great! (Score:1)
Watch HF conditions in real-time (Score:1)
ISS (Score:2, Interesting)
-"I know you all. Even if I have never met you." -The Mentor
Re:ISS (Score:1)
Re:ISS (Score:1)
(NYT, registration required)e /AP-Space-S huttle.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/scienc
Anyone know what's going on?
jaz
Re:ISS (Score:1)
Amateur Radio stations aboard the now toasted Mir, Shuttle, ISS and other satellites use(d) frequencies from VHF (30 MHz -300 MHz)and up. even during solar events, VHF and upper HF frequencies will probably penetrate the ionosphere if the entry angle is steep enough.
Re:radio (Score:1)
Re:radio (Score:1)