Posted on 07/04/2016 9:24:15 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator
I've heard CW not too awfully long ago, and the local ham shop sells bugs still. I've learned and forgotten Morse twice now. If I got back into radio I'd kind of have to stay with that, because my hearing is damaged to the point where voices are a challenge.
Radio Cairo was interesting, the first day of the war they had wiped out the IAF and were on the outskirts to Tel Aviv. The following days all they played was martial music.
Sounds like the Germans, as the end neared.
I was just a little kid at the time and hadn't even yet heard of shortwave. Listening to Cold War history as it happened on international broadcast stations is something I would have liked to have done.
I dabbled in it, I have a redcurrant interest in it, I’ve always enjoyed doing so. I was a kid during the time of the Six Day War as well. I have never heard anything huge come across shortwave, but even the ordinary can be fun.
During the 90s, I used to listen to some kind of fun, spooky conspiracy theory broadcasts. Good fun.
A lot of the old-timers in the ham clubs in our area still use it. Even though it isn’t required on the tests anymore, when you hang out with these guys you want to learn it.
My husband is studying for his Extra now; I bought him a key set for Christmas.
-JT
I used t live in Detroit. I had just as much fun listening to faraway stations. WBZ was one that I remember. Late night cross country drives are also fun to spin the AM dial.
Detroit had an AM rock and roll station, CKLW. Actually it was Windsor, Ontario that was an absolute blowtorch with a reach of 20 or so states. Many major careers including Elton John and Bob Seger were launched thanks to that station. They were also responsible for integrating white and black audiences to the same music. Motown would never have been as strong as it was if not for CKLW.
Yes; while international broadcasting by governments still exist, most shortwave now is either religious programming or really nutty stuff. I can remember picking up broadcasts from the neo-Nazi William Pierce (author of The Turner Diaries) some ten or twenty years ago (he's dead now, thank G-d).
As I said in the OP, the first thing I picked up on my new radio was some sort of preacher (with what I assumed was a thick African accent) claiming that the Jesuits run the CIA. And of course, Alex Jones is a shortwave radio. I don't know his personal opinions, but I've never heard any anti-Semitism in his broadcasts (granted I've never seen his site). He seems more like someone in the orbit of the Birch Society--which is quite bad enough.
Unlike in the old days when you had respectable stations like HCJB, WYFR, Adventist World Radio, etc., now there are stations that will allow practically anyone to use them, and some of the broadcasts are a tad unconventional. Many years ago I caught an (apparently) Black preacher who seemed to think his church was the only true one in the world. I recall him screaming many times "Ain't NO way right but this!!!"
Most people--especially these days--laugh at such people for their "ignorance." Ignorant they may (or may not) be, but one thing they had that we have lost was a wonderful sense of clarity. We today, beginning with the Lockean reaction to the religious wars of the seventeenth century, are so terrified of religious conflict that even the most "conservative" and "orthodox" people now proclaim that two diametrically opposed positions are both saying the same thing. There isn't even any danger of actual warfare, but that's how terrified we've become of any kind of religious conflict.
It is the simple people of the world, not the "intellectuals," who still have clarity on these matters.
I remembered after the fall of the Soviet Union, Radio Moscow was so desperate for money they lent out their transmitters to anyone.
I remembered one of the groups that broadcast over Radio Moscow, was none other than Aum Shinrikyo, the group that orchestrated the deadly Sarin attack on the Tokyo subway.
You will hear plenty of morse code on the lower end of the ham bands, especially during contest weekends. As for practical use, FEMA recently conducted an exercise simulating a disaster in the pacific northwest, which included ham participation. Part of that was the relay of message traffic to FEMA operations in Washington, DC. During the initial third of the exercise, the short wave radio conditions were poor which prevented the passing of automated digital traffic. Morse code operators picked up the slack relaying the traffic.
Remember the “Woodpecker” noise on the shortwave bands during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s? The Soviet Union or U.S. were using some type of over-the-horizon radar that made a woodpecker like noise across multiple shortwave frequencies. It use to mess up shortwave reception or at least make it difficult to listen to programs as the woodpecker noise faded in and out along with the program.
Indeed. It was entertaining, if nothing else.
Used to hear numbers stations, and the Lincolnshire Poacher. There was all kinds of stuff out there. I’d lie in bed wondering what the numbers broadcasts were saying, who was saying it and to whom.
Had a Heathkit SW-717 receiver, picked up many stations like Radio Prague, BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio Budapest, Radio Australia, HCJB (Quito, Ecuador) etc.
Oh my goodness . . . I had completely forgotten about them!
You'd come up on a frequency where you just heard someone counting . . . just counting. It had to be some sort of code!
Similarly, the NBC television network in the early 70s used to run these bizarre spots on Sat. morning kids' TV which was just a bunch of vowels being sounded out. I was sure that was top secret code as well!
Someone earlier in the thread posted pics of the radar that caused the "woodpecker" sounds and a link to the article on Wikipedia, which has a recording.
To me it sounded more like a helicopter than a woodpecker.
I have an RTL-SDR, fun to play with,
I also have a near mint Zenith 11 Band Transoceanic which I like to listen to from time to time,
I got a QSL Card from Radio Habana, I’m convinced that the CIA has been watching me ever since.
I posted about this earlier in the thread:
Check out the pictures.
I think that's because it was mixed with the WWV signal.
I heard it many times during the 80's, in an otherwise clear band. It was a much sharper impulse noise.
bflr
Bflr
To me it sounded more like a helicopter than a woodpecker.
I think that's because it was mixed with the WWV signal.
I wasn't referring to the sample at Wikipedia but to the sound itself. Even when I used to pick it up I thought it sounded like a helicopter.
And that was WWVH. The voice was female.
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