HD Radio Revisited

Published at 12:41 on 6 January 2012

I’m beginning to suspect my prior (and to some degree, current) experiences are a victim of the Connector Conspiracy. When I made a new antenna cable using parts salvaged from a defunct cell phone headset, I had much better luck receiving HD signals.

It’s still not perfect; reception drops out every so often and stays that way until I reseat the antenna connector. This makes me suspect that JVC deliberately chose to use a somewhat nonstandard 3.5 mm connector, one that fails to mate well with anything but the connectors on their (overpriced) accessory kits.

It is at least a partial fix, one that’s good enough to enable me to receive the BBC static-free on one of the digital channels of a KUOW. That will come in handy on the next big news day (forget about the Internet when a big story breaks; any streaming programming instantly becomes overloaded to the point of uselessness in my past experience).

The King is Dead, Long Live the King

Published at 18:57 on 19 December 2011

Of course I made a point to listen to (and record) Voice of Korea today. The executive summary of the broadcast is given in the title; the “news” pretty much followed that summary to a ‘t’, segueing from an eulogy of the “Great Leader” to praise for the “Great Successor”.

Unwittingly, the station in that land of shortages and hardship for the vast majority of its people also gave Kim Jong-Il a most appropriate send-off, being interrupted twice by power cuts. At least, that’s what I assume they were because both transmitters went off the air simultaneously each time.

The edited (I deleted the static during the total of 11 minutes and 46 seconds of dead air in the two interruptions) audio may be found here. If for some reason you want to hear everything in real-time, breaks in transmission and all, that audio may be found here.

Note that if you’re not that interested in hearing the two praise songs (one to Kim Il-Sung, one to Kim Jong-Il) that start each broadcast, the main “news” broadcast starts about 7 minutes and 50 seconds in.

HD Radio: A Big Disappointment

Published at 21:02 on 7 December 2011

Having noticed how local public radio station KUOW has some interesting-sounding programming on their HD radio subchannels, I did a little Google searching and found an HD tuner (new in the box) being offered for the somewhat astounding sum of $40. I did some research on the seller, and found her to be highly rated, so I decided to order it as a Christmas present for myself.

I was somewhat floored to find a box containing my purchase sitting on my doorstep this afternoon. I had not paid extra for rush shipping, and the quoted delivery time for non-rush shipping was as much as 4 weeks in the future. And it was as described: new, in unopened packaging.

Alas, HD radio itself proved to be as big a disappointment as the vendor who sold it was a pleasant surprise. HD is a subcarrier-based system, so it works basically like stereo FM signals: only the stronger signals present solid stereo reception, and only the stronger signals come in on HD. But, HD is even more fussy than the stereo subcarrier; you need a really solid, strong signal to get HD. Forget any sort of indoor antenna, you need something on the roof.

The only station I could reliably get in HD with an indoor antenna was the one I could care the least about receiving: the local right-wing Christian station. I had no luck getting an HD signal for KUOW, despite being able to get a fairly solid stereo signal on that station with an indoor antenna.

It’s presently not worth my scarce time and money to fuss with erecting an external antenna on the roof, particularly such a steep roof as the house I’m currently residing in as. So much for that experiment; glad I didn’t throw more than $40 at it.

Unidentified Pirate, 0045 UTC, 2011-12-05

Published at 21:34 on 6 December 2011

A few days ago, I went on a brief test “DXpedition” to an area about 1/3 of a mile south from where I live. It’s an open area without many buildings or power lines not far from the summit of Seattle’s highest hill. I thought it might offer better listening conditions. I was right; the noise floor is dramatically lower than it is here.

While there, I ran across this signal (almost certainly a pirate broadcaster, given the frequency and time) on 6925 kHz at about 0045 UTC:

Unidentified signal

Latest Voice of Korea Recording

Published at 20:54 on 6 December 2011

Recorded this evening:

Voice of Korea, 0100 UTC, 2011-12-07

Note that I’m no longer using yourlisten.com to host audio and this blog unfortunately does not stream audio. Hopefully I can get it to do that without much trouble; we’ll see. I will say that I’m probably finished with yourlisten; their advertising has been getting more and more annoying and in-your-face, and their site seems to be getting less reliable as well.

Latest Voice of Korea Recording

Published at 21:58 on 17 November 2011

Is here. It’s a few days old; didn’t get around to editing and uploading the audio until tonight.

Also, a recording of the final 40 or so minutes of the shortwave pirate station Northern Relay Service (recorded tonight) may be found here.

Ferrite Beads Work Wonders for RFI

Published at 23:12 on 16 November 2011

Ferrite bead as installed on thermostat wires.
Ferrite bead as installed on thermostat wires.

It never ceases to amaze me how something so simple can be so brutally effective at muzzling the worst radio frequency interference (RFI) sources. The above picture shows the one I installed on the thermostat wires of the new furnace (whose fan motor controller was using those wires as an antenna to spew RFI). It took multiple turns through the core, but I did end up mostly driving the RFI from the new furnace into the local noise floor.

Some Internet searching reveals that some individuals go inside the furnace to install beads on wires. I didn’t want to open it up, because it’s not mine, and I don’t want to void the warranty. I reasoned (correctly) that since it has a grounded metal case, it’s essentially a Faraday cage already and I could address the issue it by dealing with the wires that exit it.

Haven’t gotten around to those two lower yellow wires yet. Was going to put that bead around both sets of wires, but experimentation revealed that the thermostat wires were by far the worst offenders (to the point where I needed to wrap as many turns of them as possible through the bead), and the lower wires (which control the condensate pump) don’t have a very long run outside the furnace anyhow.

Why Shortwave Still Matters

Published at 11:03 on 8 November 2011

OK, you’ve just seen (in my last post) how much better than shortwave Internet audio quality can be. One might be tempted to conclude that demonstrates shortwave broadcasting is now obsolete. Not so fast.

First, this is an example where shortwave fares unusually poorly, even by its own standards. The signal paths between India and the USA are so difficult that India has never even tried to target the USA for their shortwave broadcasts. Even though I’ve been lucking out with a strong signal and low local interference the past two mornings, the signal still ends up seriously degraded by being forced to take a multi-hop path over the polar regions. That’s why it has such a fluttery character to it.

If India were to rent time on a transmitter in Eastern Canada or the Caribbean, for example, my audio recording would have had significantly better quality. It still wouldn’t have been as good as the Internet download, of course, but the newscast would have been completely intelligible instead of only partly so.

Second, the US Government does not particularly care if I listen to news broadcasts from India or not. So the government is not blocking my ability to download podcasts of their news bulletins, or requiring ISPs to report the names of their customers that attempt to do so. The Chinese are not so fortunate. If they want to hear news that has not been subject to their government’s censors, the Internet is of little or no use to them. On shortwave, they often end up in cat-and-mouse games with jamming transmitters, but in such games sometimes the mouse wins.

Basically, any communications medium that requires either payment for access and/or third-party (beyond the producer and consumer, that is) infrastructure is extremely vulnerable to censorship. Governments can track or block payments, or pressure the third parties into not carrying the offensive material. Pretty much any satellite or Internet-based means of delivering information ends up falling onto this category.

Direct-broadcast satellites could theoretically provide a real alternative, once there are free (to the consumer) options and they get to the point where there are a large number of such options under a wide diversity of ownership. Those latter points are critical, and current satellite broadcast options do not satisfy either one.

Therefore, shortwave is still really the only option for getting information into an area against the will of the government which controls it. Crappy audio quality beats no audio any day.

Actually, The Internet Is Now an Option for AIR

Published at 10:25 on 8 November 2011

I just discovered today that All India Radio news broadcasts actually are available on line. It’s just that AIR has done a very good job of hiding them, by hosting the audio files on a completely separate site from their main site.

It’s actually a good thing for me, as while the diction of their announcers is pretty good, it is still accented English, and when one adds the degradation of a long propagation path to the signal, it turns what was a perfectly intelligible news bulletin into something only partly intelligible.

To see what I mean, compare what I recorded over the air (note that this contains a minute or two of the music that aired prior to the news bulletin) to what I downloaded from their web site.

All India Radio

Published at 11:56 on 7 November 2011

I ran across All India Radio’s Bengaluru transmitter on 9425 kHz quite by chance late this morning, coming in with a very strong signal considering the distance. A recording of a brief musical interlude, followed by some announcements in Hindi then the news in English may be found here.

This is another of those stations where the Internet is still not an option.