Weekend Pirate Radio Logs: 6/29-6/30/14

Weekend Pirate Radio Logs: 6/29-6/30/14

Radio True North: 6940, 6/30, 0430+ Not a lot of audio making it, but pretty good carrier level. Music, but I can't yet hear it well enough to ID songs or entirely ID the genre. My guess is Radio True North, but I guess we'll see what other people log. As of the past 10 min or so, there aren't any logs for this one on HFU. ID break, but couldn't catch it. <Sun Morn> This was RTN, per a couple of West Coast logs on the FRN

Old-Time Radio unid: 6770, 6/30, 0430+ Tough-guy detective show. Excellent signal, either some QRM in the background or weird audio artifacts in the background. Show taking place in Shanghai. Minor playback glitches throughout the broadcast, about every 5-10 seconds. <1130 UTC> Good signal, with what sounds like a detective or mystery OTR show. Really high static levels right now, though.

I missed some good stuff last night, including  Generation Wild 100, YHWH, MAC, Man Cave Radio, & Liquid Radio.

Pirate Radio talk at Hope X convention

Pirate Radio talk at Hope X convention

I need to do another auds'n'ends page soon, but I feel like I should mention and probably recycle this post a time or so in the next month.

Hackers On Planet Earth (H.O.P.E.) have been running biannual conferences since 1994. If your keeping score at home, that's 10 conferences in the past 20 years. The HOPE conferences are huge technological events. Unlike most of the "cons," there are loads of high-tech speakers and a lot of people interested in a variety of high-tech topics. Also, you won't see people dressed up like anime characters.

As always, this years' conference, called  HOPE X, will be held in the Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan, New York City, on July 18-20, 2014. You can find out more about the location here. Some of the approximately 100 conference topics include: Building an Open Source Cellular Network at Burning Man, Can You Patent Software?,Cyber Security in Humanitarian Projects as a Social Justice Issue, Electric Waste Orchestra: Learning and Teaching Music, Electronics, Programming, and Repurposing, Elevator Hacking: From the Pit to the Penthouse,Hacking the Patent System: The Vulnerabilities That Allow for Bad Patents and How to Stop Them, North Korea – Using Social Engineering and Concealed Electronic Devices to Gather Information in the World’s Most Restrictive Nation, and much, much more.

If you know me personally, you'll probably understand that I would much, much rather sit in the background of a public event than be anywhere near the spotlight. But if you read this blog, you know that I have a passion for shortwave and pirate radio listening. As a result, I'll be doing a presentation on pirate radio at Hope X. This conference typically has 3000-5000 in attendance, so I'm excited about conveying some information on the topic to people who might become interested in tuning in.

I've just started playing with using Powerpoint for the first time (ha!). We'll see what I can put together in the next three weeks!

If you're interested in checking out the presentations at HOPE X, you can order tickets here

Pirate Logs: 6/20/14

Pirate Logs: 6/20/14

Orbital Mind-Control Satellite (tentative): 6930U, 6/20, 0120-0122* Just caught the end of the broadcast with some spacey music an announcer talking. We've been in a band of t-storms, so the static crashes have been brutal for the past few days. I think the only word I could copy was "intergalactic." I went back & listened to the recording on headphones & I still couldn't copy more. ID per HFU.

Old-Time Radio Unid: 6770.6, 6/20, 0200+ Listened to one OTR show go off, then into The Mel Blanc Show--an episode in which his girlfriend Betty decides that it'd be better if they'd take a break for a week and start seeing other people. Of course, Porky tries to convince Betty to get back together with Mel, but he hits on her instead. Pretty good signal with heavy static crashes.

OTR Unid: 6/5/14

OTR Unid: 6/5/14

Old-Time Radio unid: 6800, 6/5 0345+ Apparently this same station (and not a copy) is back. S9+ signal here in loud QSB. Can't really copy much of the OTR show tonight. I can tell it's a comedy. I think it's been on for at least four hours tonight, according to HFU logs. Aah, the show was A Day in the Life of Dennis Day, with an ad for Lustre-Creme shampoo, then Dennis Day singing "Danny Boy." In the era of big band music, it kinda surprises me that this style of music would've been so popular.

Non-logs: 6/3/14

Non-logs: 6/3/14

The biggest non-log is that the Old-Time Radio Unid went off 6771.4 sometime last night and hasn't returned. To the best of my knowledge, this station's first broadcast was on May 18 on 6772.6 kHz. It was spotty for a few days, then returned essentially 24 hours/day for about 10 days. I listened to it a few different times yesterday, but checked around 0200 last night & it was gone. Hope all's OK with the station.

The second non-log is outbander SSTV on 27700 kHz. I went for about a month without copying any images there.yesterday, a bunch of strong signals came through, but all had the timing messed up and were just colorful splash of slashed lines. Maybe we'll have another good opening soon.