Short Wave Received - Controlled from your PC

stigggeh said:
Are you a 'G'..... as if your legendary status could get any better...:p
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I am, yup. Although as a G6 some would argue that it's just half a licence but I really have never had any interest in HF and have never got excited about it even since we were given full access a few years back. I was able to operate on HF with my brothers station (he's a G4) but it just never caught my interest at all. My callsign was my sig on here for a few years ;)

RadoX said:
whats the range of this ?
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Depending on the frequency and the time of day it's potentially world wide.
 
Feek said:
I am, yup. Although as a G6 some would argue that it's just half a licence but I really have never had any interest in HF and have never got excited about it even since we were given full access a few years back. I was able to operate on HF with my brothers station (he's a G4) but it just never caught my interest at all. My callsign was my sig on here for a few years ;)


Depending on the frequency and the time of day it's potentially world wide.[/font]
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dont get this, its before my time. wiki link or something please ?
 
There used to be just two classes of licence, A and B. A licencees had sat the 12WPM morse test and had access to all frequencies and class B licencees didn't have to do the CW and were limited to operating above 30MHz. My G6 call was a class B licence as I didn't do the morse.

Now there seem to be all kinds of licences, some given away with cornflakes packets ;) :D

/edit - You can see the differences by looking at the old BR68 booklet I've found online here.
 
Biohazard said:
far too many odd sounds out there..
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I know and i love it, it takes me back to when i was little and messed about with my dad's short wave radio, you would hear all sort of freaky things like this and it was fun pretending it was aliens talking to each other. To be honest with all the data flying about lord knows if some it the signals are outside of our world. it would be impossible to track every frequancy 24/7
 
A guy at 1844.33 kHz has been calling out 'Hotel America 3 Osen Victoria, Hotel Alfa 3 Oscar Victoria contact' for about five minutes..no answer seemingly.
 
robgmun said:
I know and i love it, it takes me back to when i was little and messed about with my dad's short wave radio, you would hear all sort of freaky things like this and it was fun pretending it was aliens talking to each other. To be honest with all the data flying about lord knows if some it the signals are outside of our world. it would be impossible to track every frequancy 24/7
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most of it sounds like aliens talking to each other!

i want a radio to play with now..
 
fini said:
A guy at 1844.33 kHz has been calling out 'Hotel America 3 Ocean Victoria, Hotel Alfa 3 Oscar Victoria contest' for about five minutes..no answer seemingly.
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Corrected for you :) - He's calling CQ contest (see further up the thread) and has just worked an irish station.
 
I wrote a guide to VHF contesting for another forum a short while ago, it's quite long and detailed but here it is in the entirety.

There are a couple of ways to operate in a contest, we tend to find a frequency and sit and call and wait for replies, the other way is to tune up and down through the band and listen for people doing what we do and then call them, this is the search and pounce method. We'll tune off of our spot a couple of times during the contest and pick up more people.

The exchange consists of callsign, signal strength, serial number and location. The planet is divided into a number of unique squares - More details of the system we use is here and you can have a play here to see how they work.

A typical contest contact would be like this...

[The initial call]
CQ CQ CQ contest, CQ contest, G0PKT golf zero papa kilo tango, contest

[The reply]
Golf one hotel charlie tango

[First part of exchange]
golf one hotel charlie tango, thank you, you are five nine, zero two six, juliet oscar zero one mike tango, qsl?

[Response]
qsl, you are five seven, zero zero two, india oscar nine three charlie whiskey, roger?

[Close]
roger, thank you, seven three and qrz contest


So we've exchanged callsigns (G0PKT and G1HCT), signal reports, I gave 5-9 and he gave me 5-7. I gave him 026 serial number and he gave me 002, these increment for each contact and locators, ours is JO01MT and his was IO93CW. qsl? and qsl are part of the international q code in this context used as 'did you get that?' and 'yup' respectively. 73 is a ham term for best wishes and qrz is 'who is calling me' which gives anyone who is waiting the cue to leap in for the next contact.

These details are all logged, usually on computer now although up until fairly recently it was all done by pen and paper and then they are submitted to the contest adjudicator.

When it comes to checking the logs, if a single detail doesn't match up between the two stations then no points are given to either station for the contact so it's vital that all details are exchanged. When stations are weak with a signal report of something like 5-2 (technically the 5 means perfectly readable but even on a signal that is so weak it's practically unreadable it's very unusual to exchange anything other than a 5 although we do use 4 sometimes) it's not uncommon to have multiple exchanges to confirm details.

Not all signals are nice and strong. We get a lot of noise when our aerials are pointing directly over a nearby pub and that causes us big problems when we beam that way and there is a phenomenon called qsb which is effectively signal fading due to conditions. This can be quite bad, someone can call who is a good 5-9 signal but ten seconds later they've dropped to a 4-1 signal and then they may come back out of the noise.

Scoring is worked out as one point per kilometre all added together then multiplied by the number of squares spoken to, that's the larger main squares such as JO01 or IO93 as mentioned above in the example contact. We generally manage 18-20 squares per contest.
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The exchange on HF contests (as you're hearing on the receiver here) is generally a bit quicker without the locator square.
 
Is short wave radios what the 'numbers' stations use? I remember watching an episode of spooks and then checking wikipedia about it as it was quite interesting. The numbers stations just constantly repeat a set of numbers or words or even a piece of music that due to frequency can be tuned in on worldwide. Supposedly they are part of a spy network that allows spies to tune in on the numbers stations and if something different from the standard repetition comes up, it is a code for something.

Or is shortwave radio something different? Because if it is what I'm thinking then it would be interesting to listen to some of the different numbers stations.
 
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