Re: [IRCA] KiwiSDR's / other remote receivers, comments welcomed

["Paul B. Walker, Jr." <walkerbroadcasting@xxxxxxxxx>]

I am no longer in Alaska, as obviously noted.. but If i am ever somewhere
that i can host a radio and antenna for a websdr and people are interested
in it, i'll do it if someone provides such gear.

As for how I use WebSDRs, I check UTwente Daily.. it gives me a relative
idea how conditions are and a guide of what to expect on my radio


On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 1:02 AM, 'Mark Connelly' via NRC-AM <
nrc-am@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> For over 10 years now, online receivers, like station webstreams, have
> been a useful tool in getting a clearer listen to stations you get at home
> or on DXpedition in scratchier harder-to-analyze form.  It's a good way to
> get a better feel for announcer voices, jingles, local place names in news
> or advertising, and the sound of different languages (and English dialects).
>
> Online receivers also offer the advantage of showing what propagation is
> doing at another location.  That, I feel, is the most valuable contribution
> of this resource.  Hams like to use these to see how their own transmitted
> signal is "getting out" to intended target areas and to compare the
> performance of different transmitting antennas so they'll have the best
> set-up selected the next time they try to crack a big pile-up.
>
> Hearing how one's locals sound at a great distance is always interesting.
> I've had the opportunity to do that myself in person on trips taken to
> Ireland, Newfoundland, Florida, and Texas.  Online tuners can do this and
> save you the airfare.
>
> DXTuners / Global Tuners was among the first networks of online
> receivers.    Way back in 2006, I used a DXTuners online receiver in
> Ilfracombe, Cornwall, SE England to listen to one of my Boston locals
> during a reasonable TA opening.  A demo mp3, at "
> http://www.qsl.net/wa1ion/audio1/WWZN-1510_home_v_uk_tuner_20060222.mp3 "
> exhibits a WWZN-1510 reception on (UTC) 22 FEB 2006 in stereo: left channel
> = audio from Drake R8A at Billerica, MA and right channel = audio from the
> UK online receiver.  Delay of web is about 9 sec. relative to live Drake
> R8A.
>
> At one time there was even a site "Five Below" that hosted complete SDR
> band capture files for download.  These were from an interesting variety of
> worldwide sites.  Most were medium wave though there was also some tropical
> band and shortwave available.  That site is no longer active.
>
> The online receiver in the Netherlands (Univ. of Twente) has been around
> several years and is quite useful for checking out what's going on in
> western Europe.
>
> A more recent development has been the KiwiSDR network.  This is
> accessible via " http://sdr.hu/ ".  I have extracted a representative
> list of receivers.  It is posted at " http://www.qsl.net/wa1ion/
> doc1/kiwisdr_list_20171001.txt ".
>
> One thing that must be remembered is that the interests of the different
> receiver hosts are quite varied.  Some are VHF / UHF oriented (copying air
> traffic etc.).  Many are aimed at good HF ham band reception.  There are
> some that are competent on medium wave and lower but, since those parts of
> the spectrum are more "niche" interests and also harder for the attainment
> of high gain / low noise / no spurious images performance, you find that
> many of the receivers don't "cut the mustard" for MW DX.  Some are as deaf
> as a post.  The KiwiSDR in Iceland does not hear UK 909, 1089, 1215 etc. as
> well as I can hear them in MA at the same time.  The one in the Canary
> Islands can barely find Algeria 549 when it's knocking the house down on
> this end.  A South Africa one is rather deaf, barely delivering locals -
> nothing at all like the recent DXpedition report from there with zillions
> of Brazilians.
>
> Receivers at some "drool-worthy" locations are simply spoiled by doggy
> antennas and bad local noise.  These are probably fine for copying aircraft
> comms or other stuff above 30 MHz.  MW ... not so much.
>
> There are some decent receivers on there though.  They aren't always at
> the best coastal sites for pulling in real long-haul DX however.  The ones
> in Sea Girt, NJ and South Dennis, MA should be DX monsters.  They aren't.
> Cuba 670 that you can get on your teeth here barely makes it over the
> noise.  On the other hand, a couple of ones in VA and the Mt. Airy, MD one
> seem good in terms of overall sensitivity and lack of noise.  There's also
> one in Indiana that's supposed to be optimized for MW and LW reception.
> Those radios aren't close enough to the coast to do much in foreign DX
> though.  Domestics pretty much covered TA's and LA's I get here.  I
> couldn't raise Absolute Radio UK 1215 on any of them and that is certainly
> not tough DX.  The Concord, NH one, although reasonably sensitive and
> noise-free, was also short-skip centric: much less Latin American and TA
> activity than here closer to the shore.
>
> In Europe, the western flank of countries are those that are going to have
> the best North American "reverse TA" reception.  The farther south and west
> the country, the lower chance that aurora is going to disable propagation
> from the USA and Canada.  Northern and Central Europe have the most
> receivers.  These can be quite useful for evaluating European, North
> African, and Middle East stations but they often don't show much on typical
> reverse-TA frequencies such as 590 (VOCM), 660 (WFAN), 850 (WEEI), 880
> (WCBS), 930 (CJYQ), 1010 (WINS), and 1130 (WBBR): stations that were not at
> all difficult just before dawn on my unaided Realistic TRF portable at
> sites in western Ireland during my 1977 trip.
>
> Yesterday evening the Carlow, Ireland receiver did produce weak 590 VOCM.
> Not that TA's were that good last night coming the other way either.  A
> Lisbon, Portugal receiver (along with the aforementioned Canary Islands
> one) should have been even better than Ireland for the stateside route but
> not really.  Sensitivity at MW was not DXing grade.  549 Algeria came in OK
> on the Lisbon RX but // 531 was surprisingly weak and noisy.  It should
> have been tearing the roof off the sucker.
>
> What stimulated this latest round of my interest in remote receivers was a
> posting on Facebook about one situated on Bonaire not far from the 800 PJB
> (TWR) site.  The Caribbean is a region which has typically been poorly
> represented in the realm of competent online receivers.  Reception from
> there is very relevant to what I hear at my home QTH here on Cape Cod,
> especially on my south SuperLoop aided by only about a 3 mile / 5 km
> overland run before crossing West Dennis Beach en route to the eastern
> Caribbean and South America.  A quick scan of the band on the Bonaire
> receiver indeed showed a high correlation to what I log on the south loop
> during aurora, maybe over 50% of 10 kHz multiple channel occupants being
> the same in the 530 - 1220 kHz stretch of the band.  Some US stations did
> come in there.  610 WIOD Miami was strongest followed by 940 WINZ, also
> Miami - not exactly surprising.  Some northerly stations including 660 and
> 880 NYC made it too, though with quite a bit of co-channel Cuban + other
> Latin American interference.  700 WLW was the farthest inland US signal
> noted.  It was duking it out with Colombia pretty much as it does here
> around midnight.
>
> There is also a fairly good receiver near Miami, FL.  Interestingly Cubans
> and other Latin Americans didn't seem that much louder or more dominant
> than they usually are here on the south loop.  In fact mainland US
> domestics on some channels were doing better there than here versus Latino
> QRM, possibly because the paths going from those stations to FL were less
> aurorally reduced than the paths from those stations to MA.  That meant
> that some Latin Americans may be missed in FL but heard in New England
> because of the greater suppression of northerly domestics.  Maybe not the
> result you'd initially expect but "it is what it is" as Patriots' coach
> Belichick likes to say.
>
> What I could really use would be receivers in Bermuda, Newfoundland,
> Barbados, north coast Brazil, Azores, Ascension Island, and Falklands (as
> well as having significant performance upgrades made at existing Iceland,
> Portugal, Canary Islands, and South Africa sites).  That upgraded Caribbean
> / Atlantic Basin coverage could answer a lot of "mystery het growl"
> questions.  Sometimes I wonder if weird off frequency carriers are actual
> broadcast activity or just something spurious in/near the house.  Remote
> receivers along with helpful DXers on email lists, Facebook, etc. can get
> to the bottom of such things quickly.
>
> I didn't even begin to explore all the KiwiSDR resources in the Pacific
> area ranging from the western US and Canada to Siberia, Japan, China,
> Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand since they aren't relevant to what
> I can hear.  But I'm sure they're a great resource to the large contingent
> of DXers in OR, WA, BC, etc.
>
> Any comments by others about how they use or have used online receivers
> will be appreciated.  That includes comments by those who host such a
> receiver.
>
> Mark Connelly, WA1ION
> South Yarmouth, MA
>
>
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