It .. Talks!

Just received a link to an excellent resource on UVB-76 voice messages history at http://sites.google.com/site/stationuvb76/oct2002 (Thank you, Robert!). I have no idea how this has been collected, but at first glance the content seems plausable. 

The site also has some in-deep technical details about the station, http://sites.google.com/site/stationuvb76/january-2009 what seems to be a translation and modification from old geocities archive page in russian of unknown origin. This information at the last link looks most credible to me so far (I do speak russian, therefore I can assure that this is mostly the same data as seen on the January-2009 link above), but I havent been able to track it down to any other source in Russia. 

However, there is a very nice gallery of UVB-76 station antenna set at http://kspzel.livejournal.com/11908.html and http://alex-odn.livejournal.com/12148.html These pictures, however, do have slight credibility problem, as the setup looks decommissioned at the time when station is definitely transmitting, so either the location of the picture is off or the station has moved .. or this really looks like that ... no idea. Also, the antenna configuration is different (or dipoles have been removed from towers):

Horizontal dipole VGDSh (ВГДШ if you want to google in russian) as by description:

Antenna configuration as deemed present by photos:

Waterfall Analysis of the signal

Discovered an excellent program called Ham Radio Deluxe tonight. One word - Superb! As I was playing around with it and the reception was excellent, here is the waterfall analysis of the signal. As it appears, it is much more structured than just a random buzz!

If you have a shortwave receiver and soundcard, the software is definitely worth checking out.

The (not so successful) Antenna Upgrade

It was a little more than a week ago when listening station received its new resonant Magnetic Loop Antenna. So far so good, however, the coupling toroid (see the yet-to-be-published design of the antenna :) ) was of low frequency type (Russian M1000HM to be exact) starting to cut off at about 1MHz accordint to datasheet. The replacement toroid, T80-2 runs well above 5MHz and looks to serve as proper replacement. 

The result, however, was disappointing to say the least. Todays antenna tests with various configurations ruined several hours of broadcast, but the signal with new toroid remained noisy. It was also almost impossible to tune the antenna (or tuning to have any effect), so the old toroid is back and so is the signal. Back to the drawingboard.

Radio Sweden International

With an old antenna, there was sometimes a commercial radio breaking in (no, it was NOT the open mike at the UVB-76). One day I was just monitoring the stream, where all of the sudden the background signal got louder and louder, ending up with quite clear broadcast in swedish. Took a little while to find out the intermediate signature sound, but here it is: Radio Sweden International

It turns out, that they are broadcasting from Stockholm on 9.360Mhz, so it shall be their second lower harmonics what is radiating on 4.680MHz and somehow finds its way in here. I havent observed this with the new antenna, so may be ..

Other piece of informaion about Radio Sweden is, that they are shutting down their shortwave broadcasting since October 2010, going solely internet-based. Another shortwave station going RIP unfortunately :(

To listen while you still can, here is a nice Shortwave Radio Broadcast Frequency List

And if you want to know how their signatures sound, look at the Interval Signals Database

New Antenna!

This listening post has been much more popular than I could have ever expected. So far it has been grat educational project of how to create a Internet Radio, but it has also given a good reason to spend much more time on the project! So, for two days now, the scanner has been equipped with nice 140cm diameter Magnetic Resonance Loop antenna.

For those initiated, some words about it below:

The radio was initially equipped with just a 10meters long aerial. It had some coupling (3meter long wire for counterweight, for example etc.), but did not have any tuning. Neither wa sit with any sufficient length. As the frequency we are receiveing is 4.625MHz, it will make the wavelength of 71m, which makes any decent antenna on that frequency at least 71/2=35.5 meters long.

The other problem was noise. The signal received was not that bad, but it was overcrowded with all sorts of urban noise (worst of it radiating from plasma TV back to the mains cord!).

I spent about a week with my three shortwave antenna books, and finally decided to give a try on magnetic loop, before I start climbing on the neighbours roof.

The result - two nights of building and ... the result is really amazing. It is not that much more sensitive han the long wire was, but it has two stunning propoerties: First - it has almost no noise, as it is tuned to exactly the right frequency. Second -it has excellent directional characteristics. Which is of course why these types of antennas were used for directinal radio navigation for ships and military all the way until mid-80s.

I will post the details for the antenna here later. This antenna is not suitable for random shortwave hopping, as you have to tune it and turn it for the exact bearing and frequency to make it work.

However, if you know the frequency and know what direction it is, I would definitely recommend building one! I can not imagine anything else for 80m band fitting in your room and giving even remotely the same result!

UVB-76 - Down or Not Down?

June 6, 2010 - My newsticker passed the news from slashdot, that mysterious radio station with the name UVB-76 has cheased to exist. Little did I know about this station, neither had I any glue why was it of any importance that it has shut down.

As one shall always check out what one does not know but wants to, I was reading the article. Later that night, I turned my icom IC-R20 to a 4.625MHz and heard a sound best described as old 8-pin matrix printer... over and over and over again ...

As everyone was more or less convinced that the station is silent, I discarded the sound as a noise of some sort. However, checking the internet samples the next day revealed, that the station is alive and well. Googleing around for some more information, the speculations at abovetopsecret.com about the station being on or off the air gave me idea to put it online. Little bit of work, and .. got myself my first Internet radiostation! http://uk3-pn.mixstream.net/8026.m3u