UK Wildfires

The north west of England finally got some rain last night, but the fire crews are still out and about fighting wild fires - sadly most of them set deliberately.

Image courtesy BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-13240499

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-13323564

People who commit arson, especially in the wild should face harsh punishment.

Anyway - radio wise, the comms from the tenders back to control are done on Airwave or "firelink" as the Fire and Rescue Services call it, however the fireground channels are still analogue, and hopefully will be for some time.  This isn't just for us monitors, but it has been shown in other countries that digital does not work well for fireground comms.

Set up a search from 457.000 to 458.000 in 12.5kHz steps and you will find their channels.  A hint:
457.0375 is Channel 1.

Most tenders have the ability to set up a repeater channel using Ch2, and some big places like shopping malls (the Trafford Centre is one) have a fire repeater in the building.

Google will also probably give you a channel listing if you don't want to search.

And remember:  PLEASE spare a thought for these guys, a lot of whom are retained fire fighters which means they are basically volunteers.  They're risking their lives on a daily basis for us, and usually thanks to idiots who get a kick out of starting fires.

There are so many charities begging for our money lately, but if you feel like it, please give a little:
http://www.firefighterscharity.org.uk/

and while you're at it, no less deserving are the volunteers of the RNLI:
http://www.rnli.org.uk/

Kenwood Trio R2000 SDR / software defined radio, Part II

Judging by my page stats, one of the most popular posts is my entry on converting my Kenwood R2000 into the front end for a software defined radio (or SDR).

If this proves to be popular I will take pictures of my very badly done IF-tap as well as the BNC socket mounting point.

I am by no means an electronics expert, but 10-15 minutes pouring over the service manual and you will find the tap point I used.

An update to this will be a 1:1 buffer amplifier to take some of the strain off the R2000.  The Z10000 amplifier seems good, or if I felt so inclined I'd make my own.

So, do you folks want a proper write up with pics of my Kenwood R2000 SDR / software defined radio conversion and IF tap?

Audio recording...

I always stop in at the 'Cash Generator' type shops when out and about - most towns in the UK have at least one, if not three such places.

They're always full of goodies - I have rarely seen any scanners or receivers (except a nice Sangean ATS-909 for £90).  I suppose the days of criminals and other people offloading their 'police scanners' are gone.

Anyway - I'm always on the look out for a bargain, and I have been in the market for a solid state 'dictaphone' or audio recorder.  The one I want has to have an external input for radios/microphones etc.  Today, I struck lucky.  I got an immaculate Sony ICD-P520.  It's a 256MB internal storage (sounds bad I know) recorder with a mono mic input, VOX and other goodies.  More importantly it lets you download to your computer.

It was listed at £39.99, but a quick "any chance of a deal?" got the price down to £17.   Always worth asking!

I also re-visited a shop I'd seen a nice Creative X-FI USB sound card in - these are ideal for software defined radio with a high sample rate and good quality...ness.  Anyway, when I went in again, it had gone :(

So, the moral of the story here is:
Always check the pawn shops.
Always be cheeky and ask for some money off.
Don't leave it too late - most of them allow you to 'put money down today' and reserve the item.
Keep an open mind on what can be used for radio/monitoring/scanning/covert ops, depending on your line of work/hobbies!

US Navy Boeing E-6B Mercury TACAMO UK Update

The US Navy Boeing E-6B [or is it an E-6A?  I have been calling it a B all week] TACAMO that has been circling the UK for the past week or so has finally had something to do!




"FMCNL" in the Nederlands intercepted callsign DARK SKY working ARBY 01 and ARBY 02 (B2 Stealths) with coded messages on 4MHz.

The B2's call up using SKYMASTER (or SKY MASTER) before the E-6 comes back with its tactical callsign (WIRE ROPE has also been noted in use).  Seems to be a 20 minute 'ops normal' check.

IRON 18 [GOTO FMS] is the front end callsign of the E-6 and he is currently on his second trip around the UK (2253Z) as evident by looking at FlightRadar24.com


ANDREWS HFGCS station has also been very busy transmitting 32 character PU**** EAMs all night, with one EAM repeated at least five times - as well as a SKYKING SKYKING DO NOT ANSWER message.

All mysterious stuff.

Seal of the US Navy (used here non-commercially).

This blog post complies with OPSEC and no-one was harmed during the making of it.

Weird signal on 10MHz...

20 kHz wide signal - OTHR.

Now identified thanks to UDXF as OTHR (Over The Horizon Radar) from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus - transmitted via an antenna array known as PLUTO-II (Pluto 2)

I was sent some info from Leif via UDXF:
Some additional info related to the radar can be found
here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2078518/

And also:

Pluto is in fact not the name of the radar, it's just
the name of the transmit antennas. Pluto-II is the new
transmit antenna array that was erected a few years back
in the salt marshes of Akrotiri (see attached image taken
from Panoramio/Google Earth). The radar's three large
receive arrays are located near Agios Nikolaos
(grid: 35°5'5.80"N 33°54'10.47"E)

Thank you Leif, I appreciate it.

Hopefully this post will help someone like me who googled for PLUTO-II (Pluto 2) and got no results.

Anyway this is what it looks like on a spectrum scope.

Kenwood R-2000 as a front end to a Software Defined Radio

As I hinted at last night, I modified my Kenwood R-2000 to act as a front end to my SDR.

[Update: Someone else did something similar, but used a DRM conversion board and tapped the 3rd IF - this is fine if you don't have an SDR that will cover 9-10MHz like mine:
http://kihwal.fayoly.net/proj/r2000sdr.html]

The SDR in question is a Cross Country Wireless SDR from Chris, G4HYG.  It was originally bought from a radio rally back in 2010 and was the 40/30m version (7 and 10MHz, for those not into hamradio).  It had two crystal oscillators on board, which allowed you to 'see' around 50kHz of spectrum around their centre frequencies.  All fine and dandy, but I knew what I wanted to use it for - an IF panadaptor.

So I set about working out how to achieve this.  I thought about getting a crystal cut for 42.8MHz (ish) to allow me to feed in one of my V/UHF radios, using its 10.7MHz IF.  But then I figured why not just buy an Si570 based VFO (variable frequency oscillator).  I decided on a Team QRP2000 VFO, from SDR-Kits.  This comes as a kit, and is 90% surface mount.  I had a few problems with those tiny little surface mount capacitors, and a few idiotic things like soldering the electrolytics the wrong way round - in my defence, I was never any good at kit building.

Well after a few trials and tribulations, it works.  I had a few problems with the SDR though, and required me to unsolder the crystal oscillators - I was getting interaction with them from the VFO's output - this didn't solve the problem entirely, so an email to Chris 'HYG sorted me out.

Now I modified the Kenwood R2000 - this was pretty easy - there's a device just before the 2nd IF filter that is perfect for a tap.  I decoupled it with a small capacitor and fed it to a BNC socket. There's a handy steel panel on the back that is designed to be removed when fitting the VHF convertor - this is perfect for popping for a BNC socket.

I think I need to de-couple the circuit a little better though, as there's some drop in sensitivity when switching the SDR on - something to investigate at another date.

Anyway - tuning around takes some getting used to, but I've worked out the 'sweet spot' for tuning the SDR to.  It is 9860.130kHz.  When tuning to 5600kHz on the R2000, this is what the SDR's display looks like.

I've annotated the display - as you can see, 5598 is on the far left of the screen, 5616 a few kHz further up, and 5649 just right of the centre.  Personally I think this is amazing.  I can see well over 100kHz of spectrum (minus the tiny 'dip' in the centre) and aside from some 'cross talk' which I can fix with the skew calibration, all seems well.

This picture shows me receiving Kinloss ARCC on 5680kHz - you obviously have to work out what frequency he's on by 'doing the math'.  I know if I'm tuned to 5600kHz (or any multiple of 100) then the "9820" marker is the band bottom, and "9900" is 80kHz.  If I wanted I could "shuffle" the Si570 oscillator down a few kHz and have the band edge right at the edge of the screen, but its nice to be able to see below it without have to retune anything.  Lots of scope of experimentation and playing around.





Just for fun, here's a screen shot of some Link-11, or TADIL-A.  I think looking at this that it must be in double side-band mode.  What do you reckon?  By the way, that's 5450kHz on the left of the screen (RAF Volmet).

LF reception on a Kenwood R2000

Tonight I tapped the 9.8MHz IF of my Kenwood R2000 (also known as the Trio R2000).  A little poking around with an oscilloscope probe and my SDR told me I needed to tap it at the emitter of Q8, just before the 2nd IF filter.

Well, it works - I can now view nearly 100kHz of spectrum around a centre frequency.  There is a slight disadvantage in doing this.  At the 2nd IF, the receiver only tunes in 50kHz steps.  So, if you're not on a 50kHz multiple, your centre frequency may or may not be in the passband of your SDR.

The reason for this is that the 2nd IF is very wide at this point (500kHz?), its possible to tune your SDR around 'inside' the IF of the receiver by altering the local oscillator frequency of your SDR (in my case, an Si570).

So, its a little tricky, but hey, it cost me a lot less than an RFSpace SDR-IQ (which by the way I would love to own).

Anyway, back to my original point - the lower limit of the R2000 is 100kHz.  You can't tune any lower, the synthesiser just stops at 100.  Ah-hah thinks I, but I can tune my SDR inside the passband of the IF, so lets see what is below 100kHz... lo and behold, the radio receives down there.

I've annotated the picture for those non-LF geeks.  I've tuned the SDR to exactly 9.9427MHz, which puts MSF 60kHz right on a marker (zoom in).  You can count up to 70kHz and this is how I ID'd HBG and thence DCF 77.5. (Wags will note I goofed on the frequency of HBG... This is what I get for doing this at nearly 1am...).







There's not much under 60kHz that my R2000 can see, but you can also see the synth noise at 100kHz.

Just as an aside, I listened to some NDBs with my Kenwood R2000 and SDR combination, at around 400kHz.






That's all for now - the Kenwood / Trio R2000 service manual is easily found via Google.  There's a handy panel on the back of the radio to drill for a BNC socket - that's assuming you don't have the VHF converter.

I haven't tried decoding DRM yet, but that's next.  You can do it without a downconverter, as the SDR / WRPlus will do that for you.

Any questions, just leave me a comment.

Updates: More E-6B Mercury // Air France 447 Flight Data Recorder (FDR) is found.

Picture courtesy FlightRadar24.com

 US Navy E-6B Mercury still 'patrolling' the UK:

The US Navy are still flying long, long missions around the UK in their Boeing E-6B Mercury TACAMO aircraft.  Still nothing heard by any fellow monitors on HF or VHF/UHF.

You're probably wondering why the Boeing E-6 is flying round the UK... Common consensus amongst the collective is this is just a crew currency mission.  The aircrew seem more concerned with staying airborne as long as possible rather than flying any specific mission profile.

311.000 is one of the well published STRATCOM channels and is supposedly where you hear the E6 transmitting, but I have yet to witness this myself.  The E-6B is easily tracked using commonly available online tools, such as http://www.flightradar24.com since the E-6 is fully Mode S/ADS-B equipped (which basically means it will track with a lat/long position on radar screens, including the SBS-1 and other ADS-B receivers).




Air France flight 447 - Flight Data Recorder (FDR) recovered:

Picture Credit: BEA.

In other news, BEA (The French Air Accident Investigation Branch) have managed to recover the Fight Data Recorder (FDR, or as the media love to call it, the Black Box) from ill fated Air France flight 447 (AF447 / F-GZCP).  The flight went down off South America with the loss of all on board during extreme storm activity.  The recovery of the FDR goes a long way to hopefully discovering what went wrong, and hopefully giving some sort of closure to relatives.  For more information, visit the BEA Website.

Picture Credit: BEA

May's Monitoring Matters

 Monitoring Matters magazine has uploaded May's issue to the website.

Aside from yours truly discussing various covert scanning techniques, Pat covers the Joint Warrior naval exercise, Scott Caldwell talks about MF/HF broadcasting and Andy Lyass deals with Civil aviation.  There's much more besides too and definitely something for everyone.

Subscriptions are only £20 a year which frankly, for 12 issues is almost nothing.  Go on, subscribe, you know you want to ;)

NWM.

Magic blue smoke...

is what makes electronics work... if you release it they fail to work any more.

Your columnist did just that this evening while trying to tap his Icom PCR-100's IF.  There was a flash, and some of the MBS.  Radio fails to work.

Ahem.

So if anyone would like the guts (and possible the case?) from an Icom PCR-100 with the view to possibly doing a resurrection, get in touch.  Cheap as chips!  Erm, pardon the pun.

Take Charge and Move Out...

Image credit: US Navy.

Currently flying around the UK's airspace (according to the folks on Fighter Control ) is a US E-6B Mercury, or TACAMO.  This beasty is a platform to send EAMs (Emergency Action Messages) to deployed submarines and other assets around the world, in the event of 'the big blue flash'.

To quote Wikipedia (I know, not the best source):

It does this by maintaining the ability to communicate on virtually every radio frequency band from very low frequency (VLF) up through super high frequency (SHF) using a variety of modulations, encryptions and networks. This airborne communications capability largely replaced the land based Extremely Low Frequencies (ELF) broadcast sites that became vulnerable to nuclear strike.

What this means is it's stuffed full of exciting comms gear (as well as the mission specialists to use it all) and can basically transmit anywhere, any time with as much power as possible to get the job done.

They also have a 26,000ft long trailing wire antenna for VLF communications with Nuclear submarines - some very old technology - and alongside this they also use VOIP (Voice over IP) to communicate to presumably 'the folks back home'.  Very sexy bit of kit.

There are plenty of frequencies out there on Google that the TACAMO bird has used in the past, but most of your scanners/radios will have a search button (230-400MHz is a good start) so get searching!  As well as UHF, get searching on HF - although my fellow monitors have had no real luck finding any downlinks or comms from the E-6 aside from air traffic control.

Maybe you'll have more luck - let me know.

Japanese Air Self Defence Force (ASDF) in QRA action

Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Marine Cpl. Ashleigh Bryant

Thanks to David Cenciotti for the heads up on this story.


Apparently in 2010 the ASDF launched 386 Quick Reaction Alert sorties against Chinese and Russian aircraft.




The Daily Yomiuri reports:

The number of Air Self-Defense Force sorties to intercept foreign aircraft flying near Japanese airspace jumped to 386 last fiscal year, up 29 percent from fiscal 2009, according to the Defense Ministry.
In the past two decades, the 2010 figure was the second-largest after the 488 sorties in fiscal 1991.

ASDF jets were scrambled to ward off planes from China 96 times, an increase of about 2.5 times from the previous fiscal year, and Russian aircraft on 264 occasions, an increase of 30 percent.

This probably explains a lot of the Russian Military Naval Aviation morse nets that get reported on UDXF so frequently.

An example of what can be heard on HF from the Ruskies:

08107.0 ---: Russian HFDF tracking & intercept net, unid chain station, 0914, A1A, w/short control routine reply to NCS "Gudok", mil unit 34608, GRU tactical coordination centre Podolsk / Klimovsk; "3k", several A1A short blocks of crypto tracking data;"75985 ä 96578k ä ä ä k", at hh:08 and hh:38 short F1B/150 databursts, Remarkable strong signal could indicate RC#210 "Shipun" at Verulantsy / Gatchina, mil unit 41480 (15/MAR/2011)(TJ)


10813.75 ---: Russian HFDF tracking & intercept net, unid northern chain station, 0810, A1A, F1B 81-81 2ch variant, 81/1000 data w/ dfsk morse/500 2 channel control feedback routines to NCS "Gudok", mil unit 34608, GRU tactical coordination centre Podolsk / Klimovsk. After data sending regular but non-scheduled A1A control feedback routines; "3k" on 10814 (15/MAR/2011)(TJ)

(Logs posted by Trond Jacobsen in South Eastern Norway).

Planes and stuff: Project Larry

Planes and stuff: Project Larry: "Larry arrived with me on Tuesday, he is an ex Royal Signals Land Rover 110; and I'm going to turn him into a sort of mobile Comms post and a Camper van "



A fellow radio enthusiast (and air traffic controller) recently acquired an old British Army signals Landrover. I am very jealous. It's begging to be fitted out with an entire radio room's worth of gear and antennas. Check it out.

STS-134 Update...

STS-134 mission scrubbed.

Due to a fault with an APU (aux power unit) heater (the APU runs off hydrazine, which needs constant heating in space to keep it from freezing) Shuttle mission STS-134 has been put back at least 48 hours 72 hours.

Keep checking NASA's twitter or their official website (which surprisingly doesn't have the shuttle on the main page in big letters...).

See the official NASA press release for more info on the APU snag:

Engineers and Managers to Assess APU Issue

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 06:14:11 PM GMT

Shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach stated that Endeavour's launch will be no earlier than Monday at 2:33 p.m. EDT. Engineers need that time to troubleshoot an issue that resulted in today’s launch scrub.

During today’s countdown, engineers detected a failure in one of two heater circuits associated with Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) 1. Heaters are required to keep the APUs’ hydrazine from freezing on orbit. Attempts to activate the heater were not successful and engineers now believe the problem might be associated with a Load Control Assembly, which is a switchbox, located in the aft end of Endeavour, or an electrical short in the wires leading into or out of the switchbox.

Endeavour’s external tank will be drained, technicians will enter Endeavour’s aft compartment overnight and by tomorrow afternoon, will put in a platform to gain access to the avionics bay where the Load Control Assembly is located. Once there, they will assess whether they need to remove and replace the switchbox, or fix an electrical wiring short.

Because of this, Leinbach said there will be a minimum 72-hour scrub turnaround.

Engineers and managers will meet this afternoon to further refine their troubleshooting plan. NASA has scheduled a news conference at 4 p.m. to discuss today’s scrub and the plan.

STS-134. Shuttle Endeavour.

Getting ready for Friday's launch is STS-134, the Shuttle Endeavour.

Image above: Pictured clockwise in the STS-134 crew portrait are NASA astronauts

Mark Kelly (bottom center) commander; Gregory H. Johnson, pilot; Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and European Space Agency’s Roberto Vittori, all mission specialists. 

Image credit: NASA

As reported by pjm on twitter, comms have been heard on 261.575 for the Shuttle support missions.  These forward deploy from Europe to the Shuttle TAL sites. 

On launch day you will hear HERKY callsigns working DoD Cape via SATCOM for radiochecks.  This is usually all you hear on SATCOM before launch, but it's worth keeping an ear out on 261.575 and others.

After launch, keep 259.700 plumbed into your radio, preferably in AM mode.  The shuttle talks to Houston on this channel until they're established on a good trajectory and are able to use S-band to downlink via satellites.  The S-band links are beyond my station's capabilties, but the genius Paul and others on #hearsat have and do decode them.  Check out http://www.uhf-satcom.com for more info on that.

Update :

The guys at Mysteryship have received and recorded some pre-launch TAL activity on the Fleetsatcom-8 transponders, 261.550 and 261.575.  Take a look http://home.tiscali.nl/mysteryship/spaceshuttle/sts134.html for their captures.