QUESTA E' IBC, ITALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
TRASMISSIONI IN ITALIANO
MERCOLEDI' 20-22 UTC 6070 KHZ
VENERDI' 01-01.30 UTC 9955 KHZ
SABATO 01.30-02 UTC 11580 KHZ
website: HTTP://WWW.IBCRADIO.WEBS.COM
email: IBC@EUROPE.COM
"IBC DIGITAL" "IBC DIGITAL" "IBC DIGITAL"
MERCOLEDI' 20.30-21.00 UTC 6070 KHZ
-"RADIOPASSIONI" A CURA DI ANDREA LAWENDEL, IN MFSK 32 (1500 Hz)
-"DX NEWS DX ITALIA", NOTIZIE PER RADIOMATORI TRATTE DAL BOLLETTINO DI I2MQP, IN
OLIVIA 16-500 (2200 Hz)
NEW NEW NEW NEW
VENERDI' 01.25-01.30 UTC 9955 KHZ IN MFSK32
SABATO 01.55-02 UTC 11580 KHZ IN MFSK32
-"DX NEWS DX ITALIA", NOTIZIE PER RADIOMATORI TRATTE DAL BOLLETTINO DI I2MQP, IN
MFSK 32 (1500 Hz) BUONA DECODIFICA!
Nel fantastico mondo della radiopassione ci sono bravi ascoltatori e operatori,
geniali autocostruttori di circuiti e apparati e teorici e divulgatori
altrettanto abili. Stranamente però è abbastanza raro trovare queste tre qualità
radiantistiche riunite in una sola
persona. Aldo Moroni è uno di questi personaggi e anche se lui non ama
sentirselo dire, io non finirò mai di stupirmi della sua capacità di applicare
le proprie doti (che includono la più rara di tutte, l'umiltà) a una vasta
quantità di aspetti tecnici e pratici
della radiofonia hobbystica, riuscendo ogni volta a trovare una chiave
interpretativa personale ma utilissima a tutti noi appassionati.
I suoi ultimi esperimenti ricadono nel complicato dominio "satcom", le
comunicazioni da e verso i satelliti. In particolare Aldo si è dedicato a uno
dei transponder Inmarsat utilizzati a supporto del traffico aereo civile, su una
frequenza intorno agli 1,5 GHz. Le
sue osservazioni offrono anche l'opportunità di tornare a fare il punto sulle
novità che riguardano il software defined radio, in particolare quello dei
ricevitori compatti e wide-band, tipicamente concentrati nella cal kaei "dongle"
O hVHF e nella variante costituit
a da apparati che senza essere propriamente delle "pennette o chiavette" sono
comunque alloggiati in contenitori che stanno tranquillamente sul palmo della
mano. In questo caso le prove effettuate da Aldo consentono di fare qualche
significativo confronto tra dongle
SDR che utilizzano le quattro tipologie di tuner digitali più diffusi, l'E4000
utilizzato qui da una chiavetta DVB-T e dal dongle specializzato FunCube Pro e
le due versioni R820T e
820T2 di Rafael Micro (http://www.rafaelmicro.com/).
All'appello mancherebbe una
terza tipologia di tuner, progettato da Mirics (http://www.mirics.com/node/4),
oggi presente all'interno di almeno due ricevitori SDR wide band, il
FunCube Pro+ (la pennetta-scanner
colegata all'iniziativa CubeSat dei radioamatori satellitari britannici) e il
più
recente SDRPlay (http://www.sdrplay.com/),
altro prodotto dell'estro ingegneristico inglese che insieme al
FunCube Pro di ultima generazione
sfrutta le notevoli capacità del tuner multistandard
MSi001. Un dispositivo non
utilizzato da Aldo ma di grande successo, il
ricevitore SDR AirSpy (http://airspy.com/ che
oggi, con una spesa contenuta, può essere equipaggiato con un up-converter,
SpyVerter, in grado di estendere verso il basso fino alla soglia dei 100 kHz, la
copertura di oggetti normalmente pensati per coprire solo gli
ultimi MHz della banda HF), si basa in realtà sul tuner
R820T2, quindi è assimilabile -
se si esclude per il software di demodulazione - a quello qui testato.
Nel documento PDF (http://www.iw2dzx.it/INMARSAT/Inmarsat.pdf)
messo a disposizione dei suoi colleghi, Aldo presenta le misure ottenute, con i
diversi dispositivi messi alla prova, nel corso della ricezione del servizio
Inmarsat Aero I (http://www.inmarsat.com/wp-con
tent/uploads/2013/10/Inmarsat_Classic_Aeronautical_Services.pdf) attivo a
1.545 MHz. Per il suo esperimento
Aldo si è ispirato alle spiegazioni fornite nel tutorial realizzato da
RTL-SDR.com (http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-decoding-inmarsat-std-c-egc-message
s/) a sua volta basato sulle dettagliate istruzioni per la ricezione dei
satelliti alle frequenze L-band fornite da UHF-satcom (http://www.uhf-satcom.com/lband/).
Il manuale del portale delle chiavette SDR parte in realtà dalla ricezione dei
servizi per la navigazion
e marittima di Inmarsat-C (in particolare i messaggi della EGC SafetyNet
http://www.inmarsat.com/services/safety/inmarsat-c/), ma a parte il software
di decodifica utilizzato - il nuovo arrivato JAERO (http://jontio.zapto.org/),
sviluppato dal neozelandese Jonti Olds
- gli accessori al contorno sono gli stessi. Riuscire a sintonizzarsi sulle
frequenze Inmarsat non è banale e richiede almeno un amplificatore "low noise"
per impianti satellitari domestici. È consigliata una antenna ad alto guadagno,
che Aldo ha realizzato seguendo
un altro tutorial di RTL-SDR che riporta il video di Adam Alicajic 9A4QV (http://lna4all.blogspot.com/)
per illustrare il funzionamento di una antenna "patch", composta sostanzialmente
da due lamine metalliche quadrangolari. Nelle zone in cui le emittenti FM locali
disturbano molto è opportuno utilizzare anche un filtro notch che attenui
l'intera banda 88-108 che rischia di saturare il ricevitore SDR. L'antenna patch
è sicuramente utile ma lo stesso Aldo ha concluso positivamente alcune prove di
ricezione effettuate collegando
all'amplificatore LNA una semplice stilo e utilizzando un foglio di carta
stagnola come parabola riflettente.
Adesso vi lascio alla lettura del report di Aldo Moroni, ma in un prossimo post
cercherò di fare il punto sulle ultime evoluzioni delle piattaforme software
cresciute intorno ai ricevitori SDR perché soprattutto dopo l'arrivo di
AirSpy e
SDRPlay si stanno moltiplican
do le possibilità di fare del monitoraggio serio in ambienti Windows, Linux e
OSX. Per le sue prove Aldo ha lavorato in Windows con programmi come HDSDR e la
console SDR-radio (http://sdr-radio.com/) di
Simon Brown.
.
"IBC DIGITAL" "IBC DIGITAL"
SWITCH NOW TO OLIVIA 16-500(2200 Hz)
RSID: <<2016-07-20T20:43Z OL
16-500
@ 6070000+2200>>
START
"DX NEWS DX ITALIA" by I2MQP
ON NOW OR WITHIN NEXT WEEK - IN ARIA
ORA O ENTRO UNA SETTIMANA
3DA0 Swaziland Jul 18 - Jul 25 ZS6AYE as 3DA0AY qsl Dir H.C. OQRS
8T Antartica Now - Dec 2016 VU3BPZ as BT2BH qsl I1HYW
CP Bolivia Jul 1 - Aug 3 EA5RM as CP1XRM qsl H.C. LoTW
D2 Angola NOW CT1CRS is active as D2XX No more details qsl H.C.
EA8 Canary Islands Jul 11 - Jul 25 IW2NEF as /EA8 qsl IK2DUW
HH Haiti Jul 8 - Jul 26 HB9AMO as /HH qsl M0URX OQRS
HK0 S.Andres Jul 18 - Jul 23 HL3Y as 5J0Y qsl H.C dir & bur
J6 St. Lucia Jun 22 - Jul 24 NY3B as /J6 qsl LoTW
JD Minami Torishima Jul 19 - Sep 10 JG8NQJ as /JD1 qsl JA8CJY
JT Mongolia Jul 19 - Jul 24 RA9YGC, RA9YTX and UA9YPS as JT0YGC, JT0YTX and
JT0YPS also via EME qsl H.C. dir OQRS
JW Svalabard Jul 23 - Jul 24 G4PVM as /JW
JX Jan Mayen Apr 12 - Oct 4 LA9JKA as JX9JKA qsl H.C. dir only
OX Greenland Jul 21 - Jul 27 F6ACH as /OX from NA-134 qsl H.C. dir & bur
OZ Denmark JULY OZ4SOP as OZ4CG from EU-030 qsl H.C. bur & LoTW
P5 N.Korea Not yet fixed 3Z9DX has received confirmation of a 5 days license on
a single band
SM Sweden Jul 18 - Aug 5 SM5EFX as SF2X/p from EU-135 qsl H.C.
ST Sudan JULY ST2M as ST0A qsl H.C.
SV Greece Jul 13 - Jul 23 HA1YA from EU-052 as SW8YA qsl H.C. dir & bur
SV Greece Jul 23 - Aug 1 SV1EJD as /SV8 from EU-067 qsl H.C. & LoTW
SV5 Dodecanese Jul 19 - Aug 1 OH2FUW as /SV5 from EU-001 qsl OH2AB dir & bur
T8 Palau Jul 20 - Jul 23 JA7XBG will sign T88GA H.C. dir
UA Russia Jun 3 - Sep 3 RI1C from EU-133 qsl RW1F OQRS
V3 Belize Now - Oct end PA0C as V31HV & V31HV/p qsl H.C. dir
V3 Belize Jul 23 - Aug 12 W2JHP as V31TA qsl EA5GL dir only
W USA Jul 24 - Jul 31 WB8YJF as /4 from NA-067 qsl H.C. dir & bur
Hello and welcome to DigiDX 21, a weekly review of the latest shortwave
and DX news broadcast mainly in MFSK32 mode. This broadcast includes
shortwave news, some more tests of SVG files, Base64 encoded HTML file
and the over-the-air QSL card back as an MFSK32 image.
DigiDX weekly schedule:
Sunday 2130 - 15770kHz via WRMI (Okeechobee, FL, USA)
Sunday 2330 - 11580kHz via WRMI (Okeechobee, FL, USA)
Monday 2000 -
6070kHz via Channel 292 (Rohrbach
Wall, DE)
Daily 0530/1830 - 6070kHz via Channel 292 (Rohrbach Wall, DE)
Thanks to Channel 292 broadcasting the extra daily repeats of DigiDX, to
buy shortwave time from Channel 292 at very reasonable prices go to http://www.channel292.de.
If you enjoy DigiDX and find the service useful please consider donating
via Paypal to reports@digidx.uk
or via our Patreon page. Any money
donated will go towards paying for airtime to keep DigiDX on the air to
Europe and North America.
Thanks very much to listeners Oscar Marazzini, Alan Gale, Jordan
Heyburn, Fred Albertson, Mike Stapp, Mark Braunstein and Richard Langley
for contributing via Paypal or to the Patreon campaign.
Latest Shortwave News:
Voice of Turkey and Turkish coup attempt
Shiokaze Seabreeze on Medium Wave
Unidentified African station on 7750kHz
Clandestine Radio Adal launches on shortwave
Voice of Turkey and Turkish coup attempt
The attempted military coup d'etat in Turkey on the 15th and 16th of
July lead to an increased interest in Voice of Turkey’s shortwave
broadcasts and any reactions or changes to the VoT broadcast as parent
company TRT’s TV broadcasts were taken off the air by the coup
plotters.
Voice of Turkey broadcast in English at 2200 to 2300 on 9830kHz was
recorded earlier which is normal practice from VoT for all broadcasts
after 1830 and therefore had no mention of the attempted coup instead
focusing on the reactions to the terrorist attacks in Nice. At the same
time Voice of Greece on 9935kHz had been broadcasting non-stop news
about the crisis in its neighbouring country. BBC World Service also had
rolling news about the events in Turkey on several frequencies aimed at
Asia.
The first indications changes to normal programming was on the 0000UTC
broadcast in Turkish to East Asia on 9735 which broadcast audio from a
chaotic sounding street with the sound of shouting, screaming and
gunfire heard in the background. Sometimes this sounded like a
discussion between presenters and guests but sometimes it sound like a
microphone that had just been left open.
The 9870khz 0100 Spanish broadcast seemed to be another recorded
programme from the day before. According to monitoring reports via DXLD,
French programming at 0500 was missing from shortwave.
On Saturday the English language programme devoted the entire news
section of the broadcast to news of the coup including reactions from
the Turkish president, prime minister and parliament. However the rest
of the programme did continue as normal.
Some recordings of the first English programme after the coup attempt is
expected to be added to
http://shortwavearchive.com/
in the coming days.
Shiokaze Seabreeze on Medium Wave
DigiDX reported at the start of June on tests from Babcock on 1431kHz
broadcast from the Choybalsan transmitter in Mongolia. It was speculated
that this test was for the BBC who are soon to launch a radio service in
Korean to North Korea however from 1430 to 1500 each day the Japanese
clandestine station Shiokaze Seabreeze will use this frequency.
This suggests the tests were actually for the Japanese station which
uses Babcock for other frequency brokering and not the BBC.
Shiokaze Seabreeze is a station aimed at Japanese people who were
abducted by North Korea in the period of 1977-1983. The number of
victims is officially recognised by the Japanese government to be 19 but
it is possible there may be hundreds of victims.
Unidentified African station on 7750kHz
Since the 26th June there have been reports of a new unidentified
African station broadcasting on 7750kHz in upper sideband mode. The
station has been heard in Central and Northern Europe around
1700-1930UTC.
Between 1800-1830 the broadcast relays the BBC Somali broadcast which
suggests that the station is from or is targeted at Somalia or one of
the breakaway countries in the Horn of Africa. Because of the BBC relay
the station is likely to be related to one of these governments rather
than being militant-controlled ( e.g. Al Shabab or Al Qaeda).
Clandestine Radio Adal launches on shortwave
A new clandestine targeted at Eritrea called Radio Adal has started on
shortwave since the 13th of July on 15205kHz at 1500UTC on Wednesdays
and Saturdays only.
The first 30 minutes of the programme is Arabic while the 2nd half is in
the Tigrinya language. The broadcast transmitted at 100kW and is
possibly from the Nauen transmitter in Germany.
The Adal Sultanate or Kingdom of Adal was a medieval Muslim state
located in present day Eritrea.
Upcoming relays and special broadcasts:
VOA Radiogram will be on air this weekend on the following frequencies,
for more information on the modes to be used visit http://voaradiogram.net/
Sat 0930-1000
5745
kHz
Sat 1600-1630 17580 kHz
Sun 0230-0300
5745 kHz
Sun 1930-2000 15670 kHz
All broadcasts are from Greenville, NC.
IBC - Italian Broadcasting Corporation has added a digital mode
broadcast to weekly broadcast via Channel 292 on 6070kHz.
The entire broadcast is Wednesday 2000 to 2200 UTC, with MFSK32 followed
by Olivia 16-500 at 2030-2100 UTC. The text includes DX and amateur
radio news.
On the 17th and 18th of July PCJ Radio International will present a
special two hour program called From the Radio Netherlands Archives.
The special program will broadcast material from the Radio Netherlands
archives that has not been heard since it was originally broadcast.
Material will be from 1947 to 1995 and will include some rare material.
Rare material will be from Jerry Cowan, Dody Cowan, Harry van Gelder,
Eddie Startz, Tom Meijer and many others. Also included will be rare
performances recorded at the wereldomroep of some internationally known
artists.
The program will be presented by Paulette MacQuarrie; producer, editing
will be Keith Perron who will also do the prologue. This will be the
first of a number of specials. PCJ Radio have also promised that
listeners who write in will also get a special e-QSL.
17th July - Europe: 0600 to 0800UTC – Frequency 7780kHz
18th July - North America: 0100 to 0300UTC – Frequency 7570kHz
Now follows a SVG file of the DigiDX logo, to open this file copy and
paste the text broadcast from (and including) <?xml to </svg> to Notepad
or similar text editor and save as digidxlogo.svg. You should then be
able to open this file in Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox or any
other modern browser to view it. Thanks to Merkourus for making this
version of the DigiDX Logo.
The code that follows is a base64 encoded zipped html file of this weeks e-QSL a
card. In order to view the html file, you have to decode the base64 block (not
including --START-- or --END-- )
</style>
<link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Faster+One' rel='stylesheet'
type='text/css'>
<body>
<table style="width:50%;background-color:#e5e5e5;"><tr><td style="text-align:center;
color:red; font-family: 'Faster One', cursive; font-size:60pt;">DigiDX
</td></tr>
<tr><td style="text-align:center;"><h2>Thank you for listening</h2></td></tr>
<tr><td><p>Frank Kreuzinger (DE), Kim Andrew Elliott (US), Mike Pompey (US)
Emiliano Rocchetta (IT), Alan Gale (UK), David Crawford (US),
Guy Leblanc (CA), Klaus Fuchs (DE), Jonathan Coles (CA),
Ralf Urbanczyk (DE), Merkouris (GR), Finn Orestad (NO),
Mark Braunstein (US), Nestor Vargas (VE), Gary Woods (US),
Louis Declerck (FR), Klaus Höfinghoff (DE), Rafael MartÃnez (ES),
Richard Langley (CA), Mark Harper (UK), Bruno Costantini (IT),
Christian Denoux (FR), Don Wycoff (US), Willy Andersen (DK),
Mark Hirst (UK), Varga Tamás (HU), Richard Cook (UK),
</p></td></tr>
<tr><td>
<h3>Freq: 15770 kHz Date/Time: 2016-07-10 2130 UTC TX: Okeechobee 100kW</h3>
<h3>Freq: 11580 kHz Date/Time: 2016-07-10 2330 UTC TX: Okeechobee 100kW</h3>
<h3>Freq: 6070 kHz Date/Time: 2016-07-11 2000 UTC TX: Rohrbach Waal 10kW</h3>
</tr></td></table>
</body></html>
You should always specify the encoding used for an
HTML or XML page. If you don't, you risk that
characters in your content are incorrectly interpreted.
This is not just an issue of human readability, increasingly machines need
to understand your data too. A character encoding declaration is also needed
to process non-ASCII characters entered by the user in forms, in URLs
generated by scripts, and so forth. This article describes how to do this
for an HTML file.
Thanks for all the emails and reception reports received for episode 20
of DigiDX. On the SVG file, Richard Langley in Canada has commented:
"...a couple of errors in the HTML code during the first replay of the
audio resulted in an incomplete QSL image: the SVG graphic of the DigiDX
logo did not appear in the browser -- just the symbol for a broken or
non-existent image -- although the rest of the image was o.k. I did have
to change the encoding used in the browser from Western (Windows-1252)
to Unicode (UTF-8) to get the accented characters in the listeners'
names to display correctly, though. Setting it to "Auto Detect" also
produced the correct rendering.
It was not obvious what the errors were in the SVG part of the code or
how to manually correct them. But I replayed the audio a second time
without changing any settings in Fldigi and this time the HTML coding
was error-free and the image displayed correctly (see attached screen
grab). It seems this way of sending the QSL image requires a strong
interference-free signal and just one improperly decoded character may
render the image useless unless it is an easily recognizable and
correctable error."
Hopefully the experiment of sending the file as a normal SVG and not as
a URLencoded embedded file in a HTML document may make a difference this
week and the fact that it will be in MFSK32 and not MFSK64.
Mark Hirst from the UK commented on the article broadcast last week
which included a review of the Panasonic RF-2220 and said "Liked the
review of the Panasonic RF-2200 - love those seventies radios with their
giant dials and big cabinets. I bought a Sony ICF-6700L on eBay a few
years ago (spent more than I should but what the heck) - after some
cleaning with DeOxit it performs well and has a beautiful sound. I use
it occasionally to record VOA Radiogram using it's giant whip antenna.
The interior is something to behold, pulleys, string, a giant tuning
gearbox, little light bulbs, and seemingly miles of circuits and
discrete components spread across multiple circuit boards with barely a
microprocessor in sight - compare and contrast with my CommRadio CR1a
which has two small chips and not a lot else !" Thanks for emailing in
Mark and for your tips on making the SVG file as small as possible! Here
is Mark's SVG file of the VOA Logo which was included in a VOA Radiogram
programme last year, copy the text and save as a .SVG file to view it:
RSID: <<2016-07-21T18:30Z
OL 4-500 @ 6070000+2000>>
Hello and welcome to the extra broadcast of DigiDX 21, a weekly review of the
latest shortwave and DX news. This experimental broadcast includes shortwave
news and the over-the-air QSL card.
The QSL will be transmitted in parallel to this broadcast, using the slow MFSK11
mode, centered on 2500 Hz in html format. The html code has been edited in order
the output to look similar to the original eQSL image. Also, it has been
stripped down to the essential
code in the direction of reducing the transmission time.
In order to view the QSL card, please copy the received text from <html> to
</html> (including the two tags) to a text editor and save it as html file (e.g.
QSL20.html) which can be viewed in your favourite browser. Please note that the
html code will be transmitted
two times, starting in about 6 minutes. You can now open a second instance of
your decoding software and set the mode and center frequency manually.
DigiDX weekly schedule:
Sunday 2130 - 15770 kHz via WRMI (Okeechobee, FL, USA)
Sunday 2330 - 11580 kHz via WRMI (Okeechobee, FL, USA)
Monday 2000 -
6070k Hz via Channel 292 (Rohrbach Wall, DE)
Daily 0530/1830 - 6070 kHz via Channel 292 (Rohrbach Wall, DE)
Thanks to Channel 292 broadcasting the extra daily repeats of DigiDX, to buy
shortwave time from Channel 292 at very reasonable prices go to
http://www.channel292.de.
If you enjoy DigiDX and find the service useful please consider donating via
Paypal to reports@digidx.uk
or via our Patreon page. Any money donated will go
towards paying for airtime to keep DigiDX on the air to Europe and North
America.
Thanks very much to listeners Oscar Marazzini, Alan Gale, Jordan Heyburn, Fred
Albertson, Mike Stapp, Mark Braunstein and Richard Langley for contributing via
Paypal or to the Patreon campaign.
--- LATEST SHORTWAVE NEWS ---
Voice of Turkey and Turkish coup attempt
The attempted military coup d'etat in Turkey on the 15th and 16th of July lead
to an increased interest in Voice of Turkey’s shortwave broadcasts and any
reactions or changes to the VoT broadcast as parent company TRT’s TV broadcasts
were taken off the air by the
coup plotters.
Voice of Turkey broadcast in English at 2200 to 2300 on 9830 kHz was recorded
earlier which is normal practice from VoT for all broadcasts after 1830 and
therefore had no mention of the attempted coup instead focusing on the reactions
to the terrorist attacks in
Nice. At the same time Voice of Greece on 9935 kHz had been broadcasting
non-stop news about the crisis in its neighbouring country. BBC World Service
also had rolling news about the events in Turkey on several frequencies aimed at
Asia.
The first indications changes to normal programming was on the 0000 UTC
broadcast in Turkish to East Asia on 9735 which broadcast audio from a chaotic
sounding street with the sound of shouting, screaming and gunfire heard in the
background. Sometimes this sounded
like a discussion between presenters and guests but sometimes it sound like a
microphone that had just been left open.
The 9870 kHz 0100 Spanish broadcast seemed to be another recorded programme from
the day before. According to monitoring reports via DXLD, French programming at
0500 was missing from shortwave.
On Saturday the English language programme devoted the entire news section of
the broadcast to news of the coup including reactions from the Turkish
president, prime minister and parliament. However the rest of the programme did
continue as normal.
Some recordings of the first English programme after the coup attempt is
expected to be added to http://shortwavearchive.com/ in the coming days.
Shiokaze Seabreeze on Medium Wave
DigiDX reported at the start of June on tests from Babcock on 1431 kHz broadcast
from the Choybalsan transmitter in Mongolia. It was speculated that this test
was for the BBC who are soon to launch a radio service in Korean to North Korea
however from 1430 to 1500
each day the Japanese clandestine station Shiokaze Seabreeze will use this
frequency.
This suggests the tests were actually for the Japanese station which uses
Babcock for other frequency brokering and not the BBC.
Shiokaze Seabreeze is a station aimed at Japanese people who were abducted by
North Korea in the period of 1977-1983. The number of victims is officially
recognised by the Japanese government to be 19 but it is possible there may be
hundreds of victims.
Unidentified African station on 7750kHz
Since the 26th June there have been reports of a new unidentified African
station broadcasting on 7750 kHz in upper sideband mode. The station has been
heard in Central and Northern Europe around 1700-1930 UTC.
Between 1800-1830 the broadcast relays the BBC Somali broadcast which suggests
that the station is from or is targeted at Somalia or one of the breakaway
countries in the Horn of Africa. Because of the BBC relay the station is likely
to be related to one of these
governments rather than being militant-controlled ( e.g. Al Shabab or Al Qaeda).
Clandestine Radio Adal launches on shortwave
A new clandestine targeted at Eritrea called Radio Adal has started on shortwave
since the 13th of July on 15205 kHz at 1500 UTC on Wednesdays and Saturdays
only.
The first 30 minutes of the programme is Arabic while the 2nd half is in the
Tigrinya language. The broadcast transmitted at 100 kW and is possibly from the
Nauen transmitter in Germany.
The Adal Sultanate or Kingdom of Adal was a medieval Muslim state located in
present day Eritrea.
--- UPCOMING RELAYS AND SPECIAL BROADCASTS ---
VOA Radiogram will be on air this weekend on the following frequencies, for more
information on the modes to be used visit http://voaradiogram.net/
Sat 0930-1000 5745 kHz
Sat 1600-1630 17580 kHz
Sun 0230-0300 5745 kHz
Sun 1930-2000 15670 kHz
All broadcasts are from Greenville, NC.
IBC - Italian Broadcasting Corporation has added a digital mode broadcast to
weekly broadcast via Channel 292 on 6070 kHz.
The entire broadcast is Wednesday 2000 to 2200 UTC, with MFSK32 followed by
Olivia 16-500 at 2030-2100 UTC. The text includes DX and amateur radio news.
*** LAST MINUTE UPDATE ***
On July 19, IBC announced the addition of 5 minutes in MFSK32 (1500 Hz) on their
broadcasts from USA every Friday on 9955 kHz 0125-0130 UTC and every Saturday on
11580 kHz 0155-0200 UTC.
Thank you for listening, please send reports, comments and shortwave related
news or articles to reports@digidx.uk.
Welcome to program 172 of VOA Radiogram from the Voice of
America.
I'm Kim Andrew Elliott in Washington.
Here is the lineup for today's program. All modes centered on
1500 Hz:
1:35 MFSK32: Program preview (now) 3:06 MFSK32: Osmosis to generate electricity*
Battle of the 55 wpm modes ...
11:33 BPSK63F: "Snowline" around new star
15:04 MFSK16: Fuel-saving cars may pollute more
18:36 Olivia 8-1000: "Frankenstein" galaxy detected
21:30 MFSK32: Image and intro to Flmsg
23:52 MFSK32: VOA Radiogram schedule in html via Flmsg**
27:03 MFSK32: Closing announcements
Please send reception reports to radiogram@voanews.com.
And visit voaradiogram.net.
Twitter: @VOARadiogram
VOA NEWS
Osmosis - the Next Big Step for Clean Energy?
Kevin Enochs
July 13, 2016
Solar Power is becoming increasingly inexpensive, and efficient.
The same goes for wind power, but a natural limitation of both
systems is that on some days the sun doesn't shine, and on some
days, the wind doesn't blow.
But researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
(EPFL) say they have found a simple way to produce a lot of
energy, anywhere a river meets the sea.
Their work is being published in the journal Nature and it's an
incredibly simple and straightforward idea that uses osmosis to
create energy.
Osmosis occurs when salty water hits fresh water across a
permeable membrane. Salt ions (atom with an electrical charge)
will pass through the membrane until the amount of salt is equal
on both sides. Pretty simple.
Catch a charge
The researchers wondered if they could figure out how to capture
that electrical charge as it moved across the membrane separating
the fresh and salty water. They did it by creating two tiny
membranes, just three atoms thick, made of molybdenum disulfide,
which is plentiful and easy to produce. Then they made a tiny
hole in the membranes and let osmosis take over and push the
electrically charged salt ions through this nanopore.
What makes this unique is that the nanopore lets positively
charged ions through, while keeping out most of the negatively
charged ions. A generator attached to the membrane collects this
energy. It sounds simple, but the researchers say it just seems
that way.
"We had to first fabricate and then investigate the optimal size
of the nanopore. If it's too big, negative ions can pass through
and the resulting voltage would be too low. If it's too small,
not enough ions can pass through and the current would be too
weak," said Jiandong Feng, lead author of the research. Getting
that nanopore just right is the big news.
Pure energy
The researchers say a one meter square membrane with nanopores
across about 30 percent of its space could produce one megawatt
of energy, enough to light 50,000 standard energy efficient light
bulbs.
But it isn't easy to drill a nanopore in a three atom thick
membrane, and standardizing that process is going to take much
more work.
"We can control with sub-nanometer precision pore size when we
work with the single nanopore," Aleksandra Radenovic, one of the
researchers told VOA. "To scale the process and have millions or
trillions of pores, that would require a different nanopore
fabrication process."
But according to Radenovic that's exactly what they're working on
now. If they can standardize the process of creating these
nanopore filled membranes it just might be possible to create
huge amounts of energy all the time, wherever salty and fresh
water mix.
Image: Screen capture from the EPFL video accompanying this story
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Sending Pic:253x155C;
This is VOA Radiogram from the Voice of America.
Please send reception reports to radiogram@voanews.com.
BATTLE OF THE 55 WPM MODES
VOA Radiogram listener Mark Hirst in the UK suggests an
experiment with the BPSK63F mode. His interest was generated by
an article in the August QST comparing the various "flavors" of
PSK.
In some of the early editions of VOA Radiogram, we transmitted
BPSK63F. With its forward error correction, it performed well. On
today's program, we will compare three modes with speeds of about
55 words per minute. First will be BPSK63F, followed by MFSK16,
then Olivia 8-1000. All will be centered on 1500 Hz.
The RSID for each mode will be transmitted. That will be followed
by a 15-second tuning signal in case you need to change the mode
manually.
For the first time, astronomers have been able to get a glimpse
of a water "snowline" in a protoplanetary disk, which is the
material surrounding a new star that may later form into planets.
This water "snowline" marks the point within these left overs of
star formation where the temperature and pressure drop to a point
to allow water ice to form.
These "snowlines" usually form closer to a star whose light
overwhelms any possible observation.
In this case it was formed farther out than normal from the star,
identified as V883 Orionis, so astronomers were able to image it
with the ALMA radio telescope in Chile.
It's believed that a sudden and significant increase in the
brightness of the star is what pushed the "snowline" out to where
it could be seen.
The astronomers say that this phenomenon is about 6 billion
kilometers from the star, comparable to the orbit of Pluto in our
solar system.
Many drivers today prefer vehicles that use less petrol and cost
less to operate.
But a new Canadian study suggests that although fuel-efficient
technologies may provide more miles per gallon, some of these new
gas saving internal combustion engines could actually contribute
to climate change.
To provide their customers with vehicles that offer high
performance, while using less gas, automakers have been turning
to a small new type of fuel-efficient engine known as the
gasoline direct injection, or GDI engine.
The study found that that while GDI engines emit less carbon
dioxide, they also produce higher levels of the climate-warming
pollutant black carbon than traditional engines.
The researchers suggest installing more effective filters in GDI
engines, at the risk of slightly lower fuel-efficiency, but
preserving the technology's net benefit for the environment.
VOA Radiogram now changes to Olivia 8-1000 ...
RSID: <<2016-07-16T16:18Z
OL 8-1K @ 17580000+1500>>
This is VOA Radiogram in Olivia 8-1000 ...
Frankenstein Galaxy Detected
Lying some 250 million light years away, in what is described as
a quiet and unexceptional section of the universe, astronomers
have discovered a gigantic and quite unusual galaxy.
What makes UGC 1382 such an oddity is that they believe it was
formed from the parts of other galaxies.
So they've nicknamed it the Frankenstein Galaxy, after the
fictional monster made from body parts taken from various
corpses.
At first this mammoth galaxy was thought to be just a tiny, old
and normal galaxy.
But after sifting through data gathered by a couple of NASA's
space telescopes, along with several ground based telescopes, the
astronomers realized that the galaxy was a rotating disk of
low-density gas that's seven times wider than the Milky Way.
