|
Info Central
Top
Prize Winner by Harold Ort, N2RLL, Editor |
Pop’Comm’s 20th Anniversary Contest Grand Prize Winner, Dave Cameron of New Jersey, with all those brand new radio goodies. |
||
|
|
Editor’s Note: Welcome to InfoCentral, the little corner of Popular Communications where you’ll find all sorts of radio news, photos, and tidbits that…well…don’t have a good home elsewhere in these pages. This is where you’ll find those short takes every month.
Once again, a special congratulations to the four prize winners of our 20th Anniversary Contest—they’re are all enjoying their prizes! We heard from Bill Miner of Sacramento, California: “My subscription has started…the third prize, the Optoelectronics Digital Scout was delivered by UPS today. This is a very nice prize and a great addition to my radio shack.” Bill says he’ll be sending a photo. Please do, Bill! In the meantime, we also heard from the Grand Prize winner, Dave Cameron of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. Dave sent along his photo with all those new radio goodies: the AOR AR-8600 Mark II, Ten-Tec RX-320 PC Radio, MFJ Enterprises, Inc., Deluxe Noise Canceling Signal Enhancer and Heavy Duty Coax Antenna Switch. Our 30th Anniversary Contest is only about 3,500 days away! Who’s On First—And Who’s Just Plain On?
Perhaps it’s a little too early to tell just
what’s going on with those international shortwave broadcasters, but with
the Iraqi war only a week old as of this writing, some of the goings-on
across the bands are unusual, to say the least. Take, for example, the
Skyking message we heard on 11244 about 45 minutes before all TV networks
went live with news of the invasion. Well, the fact is, while Skyking
messages are of the highest priority notifications you’ll hear on the
military HF system, there’s no way to tell. Let’s just say I’ll remember
it for a long, long time. Sometimes, especially during a war such as this one, everything isn’t always as it seems—or at least as it’s scheduled. Take, for example, the regular English broadcast at 1800 UTC from Radio Kuwait on 11990. We’ve listened every day since the bombs began falling and have only heard Arabic. Anyone hearing anything different on another frequency?
Then, of course, there’s the usual fare of
anti-American signals. Radio Jordan, Amman, was heard in English at 1605
on March 20 on their usual 11690 frequency. And let’s not forget Baghdad,
where their faithful 11785 frequency (typically varies to 11787) has been
reported having everything from a low-power carrier with no modulation to
a fairly strong carrier with background chatter. At our monitoring post,
we’ve heard nothing but the first—a very, very weak carrier and nothing
more. In case you’re wondering why the station hasn’t been taken out, it
probably won’t be. In the “rebuilding” of the country, its infrastructure
(like radio stations, highways, bridges, and communications facilities)
will be crucial to a new Iraq, whenever that officially happens. |
||
