UVB-76 / MDZhB

VLF World

2012-01-24T03:38:00.000+02:00

It was exceptionally poor reception around here for anything above Long- and Medium Waves, so the only thing to do was to seek, whats happening on the longer wavelenghts.
Since discovering that my magnetic loop antenna works miracles on the VLF region, I find myself now browsing regularly through the very low frequencies, from the 10kHz to 20kHz region on my case. Its a strange world of all sorts of noise, but also with surprisingly large number of signals.

The most exciting discovery from last night was another buzzer-like signal found at around 15kHz. Apparently, this is a keying/sync signal for the chirp sounder. You may have noticed on the waterfall screen of your software radio a passing narrow stripe, what looks like someone is quickly scanning the band with the transmitter. Which is exactly what is happening. The chirp sounding is used for determining the propagation quality and delay of the signals what travel by reflecting off the different layers of the atmosphere. It is pretty common technology and there are many such transmitters all around the world, but I have always been wondering, on what frequency and how the scan cycle starts. Not sure if it has not been there before, or have I just missed it earlier, but here it is - the frequency where the (possibly closest to me) chirp sounder signal starts from:

The buzzer-like signal is clearly visible on the 15.612kHz, followed by the chirp pulse (the slightly diagonal line scanning away from the signal). The horizontal lines are some sort of digital downconverter artifacts and I have yet to figure out where they are coming from. Please also pay attention to the nice submarine communication session ending on 18.2kHz.

It seems that for a reason or another, atmospheric sounders seem to love buzzer-like signals, so may be there are some grounds for UVB-76 and atmospheric research theory. On the other hand, the similarity may also have led to speculations - go figure ..

And as an eye-candy and a proof that the VLF band is worth looking at, here is another picture from the same evening:

I have no idea what is the signal on the left, but does not seem like a random noise to me ..

Sounds from Space

2011-12-24T00:41:00.005+02:00

Hopefully many people visiting this blog enjoy sounds from radio as much as I do, so let me share a wonderful archive of DD1US about the recordings of various spacecrafts, right from the beginning of an era, Sputnik.

http://www.dd1us.de/historical%20sounds%20from%20space.html

The sounds are really spectacular, especially considering how much effort and innovative thinking these simple recordings actually carried at the time and still do!

(Picture courtesy of http://silver-rockets.com/tag/spacecraft/page/2/)

I still find it almost unbelievable, that more than 50 years after, the space programs in both countries starting it all, are on a verge of shutdown ...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/10/us-russia-space-gagarin-idUSTRE73910C20110410

What in heavens sake (pun?) happened to our dreams?! Is it really THAT much more important to let small number of ethically challenged but otherwise ingenious minds experiment with free economy, only to come to conclusion that if you steal and cheat, its not gonna work? And this picture above is only part of, what's it gonna cost to bail it all out ...

Jazzsequence - The Signal, a Pledge

2011-11-27T21:25:00.001+02:00

UVB-76 has been a great deal of inspiration for musicians around the world, resulting many beautiful tracks. If you think there is room for more, please check the link what was just sent to me today by a good old friend Margus, who' s one of the greatest analog synth fans I know and runs a after-life site for old Roland synths (http://www.wolzow.com/)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jazzs3quence/the-signal

Its a pledge by Chris Reynolds (a.k.a. Jazzsequence) for rising $900 for releasing an album inspired from listening to the shortwave and UVB-76 in particular. As far as I understood, the money is going to be spent on couple of cool gizmos helping to make a music in a specific way, but its a reasonable cause nevertheless as far as I can tell :)

SDR MK1.5 'Andrus' Software Radio Design Finished!

2011-11-15T01:38:00.001+02:00

Its done! I have finally finished the SDR MK1.5 design! For those not familiar with what I am talking, here is a little intro.

The Software Defined Radio, or SDR, sometimes also referred as Software Radio, is a new generation of radio receivers what allow the reception of the radio signals with your computer software. The Software Radio is acting like an interface between the antenna and your computer. I have created a more technical overview about Software Radio architectures on SDR MK1 page, but the basic idea is, that the SDR Receiver is receiving the high frequency signal from antenna, makes it a digital signal and does some pre-processing, like frequency downconversion and digital filtering. The processed signal is then fed to the computer (on our case through USB or Network interface) and then visualized, decoded etc. on the computer software.

The long-over-the-schedule radio boards went finally into production last night. It has taken four months longer than originally expected for a very good reason: The first fifteen MK1 units on the field got very warm feedback, but even more suggestions of what and how could be done differently. Therefore getting the design updated was a endless struggle between adding things and making a decision what shall be left out for a reason or another.

Here is a short recap on a design logic the new radio follows.

There are three main areas the radio has evolved from the MK1 design:

- First, it is now just a radio of better quality. The long list of small technical changes (many of which can probably be appreciated only by RF professionals and radio amateurs) will altogether account to a better noise floor and more precise signal reconstruction. While this is not important for an analog transmissions that much, the people working on a shortwave digital domain, DX-ing and signal hunting will

hopefully appreciate it.

- Second, the radio is now having a network interface besides USB and a 32-bit 60MHz clock CPU from Atmel. Both additions will drastically enhance the received signal bandwidth and connectivity: We are now capable to process up to 820kHz bandwidth on single channel through network and get the much desired 192kHz through the audio interface. The added mobility what network interface together with PoE (Power Over Ethernet) extension possibility will give, can allow this radio to be called a "network antenna" adapter!

- Third major change in design logic is that the radio extension capabilities are much re-visited and the MK1.5 can now be treated as a motherboard for a future experimentation, would it be an extension boards by myself or your own creation. This includes the jumpers on few selected places what allow adding the new RF boards to the chain, would it be filters on downconverters, and the I2C, SPI, UART and GPIO connectivity. The radio, although being a diversity shortwave receiver right out of box, is also now also a great general ADC platform for future expansion.

One of the first extension boards the SDR MK1.5 will get to utilize this capacity is the Elonics E4000 based downconverter, what will extend the receiver frequency range up to 1.7GHz!

Here is an updated specifications for the SDR MK1.5

Dual Channel diversity mode shortwave receiver
Receiving Frequency range 500Hz .. 31MHz both channels
USB Audio Interface, 24bit 192kHz
10/100 EThernet interface, with PoE extension possibility
IF bandwidth through USB audio 192kHz
IF bandwidth through Ethernet 820kHz

Aah, and one more thing - I got a suggestion, that the radio is supposed to have a name. Oddly enough, one of the prospects suggested was my own, so here we go - The SDR MK1.5 is hereby named 'Andrus' :)

Our own little Wikileaks (and the story of the dog)!

2011-10-11T13:57:00.000+03:00

So far there have been relatively little material surfaced about what the number stations really look inside. There have been photos of the now-abandoned transmission site at Povarovo, some pictures of antenna fields and some inside stories of the guys serving at the radio units during their military service, all presented on the ever-lasting radioscanner.ru Buzzer thread.

Yesterday, however, the material surfaced at this very same forum what gives us a first-hand glance on the life and work of the UVB-76 station during year 2005!

http://www.radioscanner.ru/forum/topic12415-61.html#msg833346

The published material is what seems to be the logbook of the UVB-76 station at Povarovo covering the period of October 3, 2005 until December 7, 2005.
The guy who posted it to the forum claims, that they found it from the same abandoned building pictured everywhere with the dog in front.
The logbook does not seem to carry any labels of confidentiality or classified stamp (the red marking on front says "SAMPLE" and is meant to show how to fill the log), but that does not make it less interesting for the crowd interested in UVB-76 inside story!

The direct link to the page-by-page archive of this document can be found at:

http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/bydunaika/album/155472/
Talking of dog, there is a entry on page 008, from October 4:

It reads: "18:30 Guard dog has put on place on post 173"

So, it looks like the famous last resident of the UVB-76 Povarovo station, The Dog, has entered the service on October 4, 2005.

(Picture by Desert_Fox from radioscanner.ru forum)

UVB-76 Wired Article

2011-10-11T13:21:00.003+03:00

This is a relatively old news already, but for the sake of completness here be the link to Wired article about UVB-76 and the blog :)

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/09/ff_uvb76/

Great thanx to Peter, Alexa and Cameron for doing all the hard work on Wired side!

The feedback has been very nice and ihe number stations community at Priyom.org has gained a number of new members to welcome. Wish you all lots of intresting findings!

VLF Experience

2011-09-24T14:02:00.000+03:00

Yesterday morning the mistaken frequency field in PRIYOM scheduler made the prijemnik receiver to tune on to 0kHz for a while.

As there was a thunderstorm in progress (quite surprising for mid-September) the result was a beautiful display of EMI scattering, when surplus electrical fields discharged. The sound was more or less like a dolphin song, too bad I did not have a recorder on to provide an audio sample ..

The horizontal line at the bottom of the screen is a lightning strike happening, but please also pay attention to the very clear and neat VLF transmission happening at 18kHz region. This is likely a submarine communication and sounded like any other RTTY modulation.

Surprisingly, my magnetic loop antenna design seems to work very well down to the VLF region, making it a really nice and compact exploration tool as indoor urban antenna. The long aerial outside was absolutely mute below 50kHz and did not display any sign of VLF transmission other than static.

Beta-testing the PRIYOM.org scheduled feed

2011-09-13T00:41:00.000+03:00

It has been for talks too long already, but the live Number Stations Radio is now here! The way it works is, that our number station community at PRIYOM.org has taken a number station broadcast schedules from ENIGMA 2000, their own monitoring results, hints and findings from other places, and created a fantastic Number Stations Google calendar based on this information.

The result is a comprehensive list of daily transmissions, and it is only logical progression to create a live, self-tuning feed based on this information! The main streaming resource is the new prijemnik justin.tv feed at http://justin.tv/prijemnik and unlike its UVB-76 counterpart, this feed comes with the audio. The mp3/shoutcast streaming feed is up and running as well, but as the shoutcast streams have around 20 second lag with most players because of buffering, justin.tv makes more sense this time.

It will still take a while for this feed to make out from the beta phase. Please do not expect it to be up and running all the time in upcoming months, as it is still working from my development desktop and shares the development SDR MK1 radio.

Please also note, that the entries with the duration marked as 555 seconds are actually 1 hour off, so the message is actually going to be transmitted one hour EARLIER than scheduler shows. (The time zone mathematics for the google calendar files are pain to implement and still take some time ..)
[Update 14.09.2011: Scheduler bugs should be more or less fixed now]

Meanwhile, enjoy listening to static and you will get some numbers read to you every once and a while! :)

UVB-76 - Under a different callsign again - 94ZhT

2011-09-09T16:37:00.001+03:00

It was almost exactly a year ago, on September 8, 2011 when UVB-76 (or UZB-76 really, as it was operating then) changed its name to MDZhB. Not sure if there is a system behind it, but today the station broadcasted its messge on 11.30UTC with different callsign once again - 94ZhT.

Here's the clip:

Another outstanding piece of UVB-76 music!

2011-09-02T02:01:00.000+03:00

If for nothing else, then the UVB-76 transmitters have been worth keeping warm for inspiring people. And as the sound is what the transmitter sends, the most popular art form is of course music! :)

I think I absolutely have to create a page of UVB-76 inspired art and music for this site, as there are some pieces what are really spectacular what I have been collecting over time and what have been sent to me.

The latest discovery is the oldschool techno track what is definitely worth the floors some place Ibiza!

17 Moments of Spring

2011-08-30T19:54:00.000+03:00

The year was 1973 when this (probably one of the most famous) Russian series was filmed. To all of us fascinated by number stations, I would consider this to be one of the mandatory films in collection!

It is definitely worth watching the whole episode (and the whole series on that account) to get the feeling of how the life of those, receiveing the number stations broadcasts for living, look like.

For those eager to fast-forward, you can go directly to a 1:01:00 towards the end to see, why this video is relevant here. But whatever you do, do not skip the end title music!

The whole show was recently restored and colored to a very good quality, but this one is having an English subtitles and is a whole first episode, so I will link this for now.

Don' t know how long it will stay in YouTube like this (its not my upload, so there is not much I can do), but please enjoy it meanwhile!

Mibbit and the UVB-76

2011-08-30T16:00:00.001+03:00

Before going any further - If you happened to use the same Name/Password combination any place else than registering your nick in Mibbit UVB-76 chatroom, please change them now!

If you can not access Mibbit with your nickname, see instructions at
http://mibbitblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-to-recover-nickname-and-channel.html

As you may have noticed, the UVB-76 is now linking to a different IRC host for chatbox than earlier.

The chatroom has become a wonderful resource thanx to its users and as far as Shortwave Radio and Number Stations information goes, it probably has the set of best people available in the whole world. Well, the ones who talk, anyway.

For the reasons outlined below, the community has decided to migrate from Mibbit chat channel #uvb-76 to a Freenode channel #priyom. This is pity, as Mibbit web client is way better quality then Freenode client, but at least temporarily, Mibbit has lost its credibility among users. Therefore the chatbox is now pointing to new chatroom.

The #uvb-76 channel is kept, however, up and running, as it has much better look and feel and it does also asupport embedded justin.tv window. This is mostly important as I will be launching a new service, benefiting from having the justin.tv screen and chat running next to each-other. More about this later this week.

Now the details of, what has happened.

What happened two weeks ago is that Mibbit, the company/server hosting the chat, got hacked. The details can be found here: http://mibbitblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/update-at-risk-nickserv-nicknames.html

The short version is that Mibbit kept some old copy of users password database in one of the development machines and as is the case too often with development environment, this was not secured enough. Albeit, the passwords file got stolen.

It would not have been a problem, if it would not been a standard showcase of many DO NOT' s. First, the database was (or seem to have been) a plain-text. This is something what you never do these days, as you will severely compromize your users security. People often use same passwords all over the places and if something like this gets loose, it may cost someone his entire entity in cyberspace. (Beware - if any service is able to send you your password after registration, they are keeping the passwords the way they shouldnt. Passwords shall ONLY be stored in hashed form, what prevents them to be reverse-engineered from password file.

The second mistake Mibbit did was not to warn its chatroom owners that something like this has happened. The absent communication effectively prevented for any timely damage control to happen.

SDR MK1 Firmware V1.1 Released

2011-07-01T01:34:00.000+03:00

The SDR MK1 Firmware V1.1 is released and can be downloaded from http://sdr-mk1.googlecode.com/
The source code is also available for downloading should anyone be interested of what is really happening inside.

I am strongly recommending for everybody to go through upgrading procedure as indicated in googlecode page, as the update will make quite a difference!

The major difference is in dynamic range, what was crippled with original (0.7b) firmware. Instead of the original 40dB, the radio has now, depending on working mode, the dynamic range from 82dB to 110dB with noise floors on -100dB and -70dB respecivly (measured with pure s1.9MHz sine wave feed into RF input).

The second channel is now also working with 12kHz bandwidth, but more importantly, the second channel can now be used for the noise canceling, i.e. the radio now has true diversity mode!

As finding the dynamic range bug took about a month worth of head-banging, the ExtIO DLL work has been delayed, but I am now able to get back to it!

Alexanderson Day on July, 3'rd!

2011-06-27T14:27:00.002+03:00

For all of us loving the odd transmissions, one important date to mark in your calendars is July 3'rd 2011, the Alexanderson Day, where worlds only intact and working alternator type radio transmitter, Alexanderson Alternator (SAQ) is once again switched on at 9:00 UTC and 12:00 UTC, transmitting CW on 17.2kHz.

(picture linked from Wikipedia page)

The transmitter at Grimeton, Sweden, is a spectacular piece of equipment representing a true (and still working!) heritage of the very early days of radio. Its first transmission took place in October, 1924 and it has been air-worthy ever since. After the WWII the transmitter was becoming obsolete because of HF communications equipment taking over, but was put in use as VLF transmitter for submarine communication for Swedish forces. It was finally decommissioned in 1995 and although operating flawlessly, destined for scrapping, no matter that it was the only remaining working piece of its kind in the entire world. The small group of enthusiasts were able to save this fantastic landmark and we have now an opportunity to participate in its annual celebration.

For those equipped with SDR radios extending to VLF range, the exercise is as straightforward as receiving any other station.
For those not having VLF capable receivers in their possession, the following link may be a good starting point: http://www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/speclab/vlf_rcvr.htm

Basically, your favorite SDR software, such as HDSDR, Winrad etc. will do by just connecting a small piece of circuitry in your sound card input. I am not sure if just a long piece of wire (and may be a 17.2kHz bandpass filter) in your microphone input would do it from around the world, but there are reports that it has been working.

[EDIT: In whatever reason, I misposted the SAQ frequency in original post as being 17.9kHz. Now idea where this came from, but the correct one is 17.2kHz as the text now sais. Sorry for the mistake and thanx to IRC user jarod for pointing this out]

SDR MK1 Radio has now Diversity Mode working!

2011-06-18T03:12:00.001+03:00

I had people asking me over and over again, why is there no diversity mode for the SDR MK1, if I am using the diversity receiver chipset as the core of the radio ..?!
To be honest ... the idea just did not occur to me! I was so fond of the idea having two radio frontends, that the whole usefulness of diversity mode in urban area did not come to me :)

So, by a popular demand, SDR MK1 is now supporting diversity mode!

For those not familiar with the concept, diversity mode means, that you can use one channel of the radio with your ordinary antenna, while the other channel can be equipped with something receiving a background noise, would it be your own laptop power supply or neighbours plasma TV. The radio then subtracting the noise from useful signal, and you will get noise canceling.

In reality, it looks like that:

(The LO frequency is actually 4.625MHz, the display is just not in sync).

As you see, there is a clear distinction where the diversity mode was switched on and off. The noise is coming from the halogen kitchen light power supplies in the apartment. The useful signal is received with magnetic loop in the apartment, the noise is received with short telescopic antenna borrowed from ICom scanner.

Please note, that this is not a universal remedy to receive anything from far away - it is not improving any gain, it is just a useful feature to cancel strong local interference sources.

Happy Birthday, Repeater!

2011-06-08T14:44:00.000+03:00

It just occurred to me, that UVB-76 Temporary Internet Repeater has a one-year birthday today!
While the first tests were made already on 6'th, the 8'th of June is the date since the repeater has been up and running more or less non-stop.

It has been a rewarding time in every sense and I would like to thank all of you who have gathered around the repeater during this year - you are the best audience one web project could ever wish!

Repeater temporarily down

2011-05-05T14:50:00.000+03:00

Yesterday noon the internet connection got lost and ISP has not been able to restore it since.
I am trying to get the backup over the 3G mobile network up and running tonight, but if worse comes worse then we do not have the repeater untill tomorrow morning, as technicians are scheduled to replace the ADSL modem then.

I will start working on a decent 3G backup connection now, seems that every two months there is a need one way or another for it.

25 Years from Chernobyl

2011-04-26T13:03:00.000+03:00

Early morning 25 years ago, on April 26, 1986 the accident at Chernobyl power plant rendered the large area in Ukraine (part of the USSR back then) a nuclear wasteland.

From radio communications perspective, this location has also another outstanding object of interest - the notorious "Russian Woodpecker", located within 30km evacuation zone of the plant.

(Picture from http://www.blankheads.com/)

Happy Cosmonautics Day!

2011-04-12T10:47:00.000+03:00

This is what Russian leading radio magazine "Radio" cover did look like in May, 1961 after man in space. If we could go back in time to April 12, 1961, we should turn our radions on 143.625MHz VHF and possibly on 20.006MHz shortwave.
The somewhat naive representation of the space vehicle is not something the editor has put there for fun. The actual appearance of the Vostok-1 spacecraft was not revealed until the year later. The excellent article about the secrecy around the early space flights can be found Here.

And here is an absolute fantastic piece of music from Finnish band Milioonasade to celebrate this great achievement 50 years ago

For voices from space, an excellent archive of the recordins of various space vehicles: http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/sounds/sounds.htm

Happy Cosmonautics Day!

SDR MK1 Shortwave Radio Receiver Alive and Kicking!

2011-03-31T12:32:00.001+03:00

After almost memorizing the National Semiconductol LM97593 chip datasheet and getting intimate with the DSP registers setup inside, the SDR MK1 is now working!

NB! There are some minor changes to the schematic and layout on the SDR project page, I will post errata and new files in next few days together with software developed so far.

This is what it looks like when assembled :)

It has two channels, both equipped with 32MHz lowpass filter, so two different antennas can be connected to the reciver. Replacing the filter with the bandpass, any 30MHz frequency region between 5kHz and up to 300MHz can be acessed, as the rest of the chip is capable of handling this range. The power connector is only needed if your USB connector is not able to supply 500mA of power, what most of the USB ports will, but some dont. In that case you will need external 6V adapter.

Normally, the board is connected only through the USB what is supplying power to the SDR and is used to transmit audio feeds and control information.

Technical specs so far:

5kHz to 30MHz frequency range
0.02Hz tuning resolution
123dB total dynamic range
64MHz internal sampling rate
User Programmable AGC (automatic gain control) with enhanced Power Detector
48kHz/16-bit output sample rate (upgradable to at least 96kHz/16bit in near future)
Compatible with most free SDR software, such as SDR-Radio, HDSDR, PowerSDR, Winrad etc.
Possibility for tuning and setup using serial port console screen
Powered from USB port or external adapter
2x BNC Antenna connectors (Mfg: Rosenberger)
Max current consumption 470mA
Open software and hardware design for DIY development, filter upgrades etc.

Internals:

Two channel digital downconverter (DDC) with integrated 12-bit
analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and automatic gain control
Double DVGA (digitally controlled variable gain) front end amplifiers with +36dB maximum gain and 600MHz bandwidth
RF filters: 7-pole Chebyshev lowpass filters
Channel Filters (DSP): Fourth Order CIC followed by 21-tap and 63-tap Symmetric FIRs

How well does it deliver? Well, the two receivers I am intending to compete with are Perseus from Microtelecom and SDR-IQ from RFSPACE.

Both are top of the class and share the same arhitecture as SDR MK1. I havent been able to play around with neither of them myself, but looking at the screenshots in the web, the MK1 measures up quite well, especially considering that the screenshot below is made with the very first set of DSP chain parameters what are not totally off, but are still far from optimal values.

This is what the UVB-76 looks on screen when received with SDR MK1

The screenshot taken last night is somewhat special, as it shows two signals visible next to buzzer. The top one is an encrypted voice traffic, referred as "Sailors Cry". The bottom signal is the Russian USB (open) voice traffic on 4627kHz what was very active last night and was part of the of massive commcheck around different radio posts in the region. The two may be related or may be not, but they seem to share exactly the same frequency.

Further left is the Tallinn Volmet and some new "jet" type of transmission, what has appeared lately, harrassing it.

There is still some software work ahead on firmware to get the SDR audio output to at least 96kHz/16bit and possibly 192kHz/8bit. While I am now investigating if the 96/16 ispossible to achieve with AT90USB1287 processor with the standard Windows USB 1.0 audio drivers, both look doable with proprietary driver.

UVB-76 on RADIAATOR Festival

2011-03-20T00:29:00.001+02:00

Here are some pictures of the setup at the festival bar :) The radio is of course the R-250 with the power supply sitting on top of it. I took the liberty of borrowing one of the Karl's original forum logo versions and printed a small banner of it as well.

The strange hat with goggles in front is the ancient Russian vehicle driver gen1 night vision helmet brought just for a amusement and for headphones' sake. However, as the goggles are actually working (off the 9volt battery, in fact!), they got some quite heavy use :)

As an aftermath, dragging the radio to the site was worth every bit of effort! The reception was exceptionally good using the magnetic loop antenna exactly as described in the blog. It made surprisingly good 61m (4750-5060 kHz), 49m (5900-6200 kHz) and 41m (7200-7450 kHz) shortwave broadcast band antenna (another good reason for building it!) and also picked up buzzer crystal clear without any tuning of the antenna needed.

The overall amusement from the fact that anything such shortwave even exists, together with excitement of all the broadcasts received made it a nice conversation piece and reminded several people that once in the highschool they wanted to be radio amateurs, but have ever since forgot about that dream! The radio was also the ambience sound of the bar most of the time.

For everybody dialing through the wilderness of shortwave bands, here is a piece of recording I made at the festival. The group is called "Eesti Elekter" (Estonian Electricity) and the gig at the festival consisted of stage full of samplers, loopers, filters and whatever else, all fed by different transistor radios and processed live!

The result, I shall say, is stunningly close what we hear on a daily basis, so next time the noise you are picking up starts feeling like if someone has composed it, it actually may be! :)

UVB-76 featured in RADIAATOR Festival in Tallinn

2011-03-17T15:39:00.000+02:00

Just to let you know, that UVB-76 and its genre is represented in RADIAATOR Radio Art Festival in Tallinn today and tomorrow, at the Estonian Museum of Modern Arts.

The old faithful R-250 receiver is set up for overall amusement and shortwave listening experience at the festival bar room.

Three tracks what have been sent to me over time by different forum members, all featuring and inspired by the UVB-76 buzzer, are also played on the festival local radio show (broadcasted from the local umm.. semi-legal FM transmitter) and somewhere on the floor.

Just to have this collection available to everybody here, please find the tracks below. I think I have all the authors permissions to distribute, let me know if there are updated versions or additional tracks!

Madtone - Calling Live on Channel (http://soundcloud.com/one-deck-madtone)

Allerian - Tchaikovsky Meets UVB-76

SG - UVB-76 Forever

Enjoy!

Condolences to Everybody in Japan

2011-03-15T14:12:00.001+02:00

As the situation around the Fukushima power plant develops on the edge of possible meltdown, we can all only imagine what have the past few days have looked like for the nuclear engineers working on and off the site .. :(

Here is the piece fit to listen at the moment ..

The consequences of this disaster to the overall nuclear power developments are huge. Yet, do not forget that these reactors are ancient, all from the seventies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Reactor_data

They have been designed at the time when majority of the industrial control was relays and majority of the radios run on vacuum tubes.. Certainly, their control systems have been upgraded several times since, but the reactors itself have more or less been running perpetually ever since.

Not being especially pro or contra of nuclear energy, I do sincerely believe the nuclear fusion reactors to be the future of the energy, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER.
The fact that electrical plant designed some 20 years after the first nuclear bomb test has gone out of hands after biggest ever in history earthquake has hit it, should not put the entire industry back in stone age.

However, I am afraid it does for a while ..

SDR MK1 Shortwave Radio Boards Arrived

2011-03-08T18:44:00.002+02:00

To balance out the mishap with the cable, the first batch of the PCB´s for the SDR just arrived!

Somehow it did not look all that complicated when I was looking at the layout on the screen! :)

99% of the components have also arrived with the exceptions of some exotic parts like CPClare solid state relays and Minicircuits RF transformers (both are on its way tho).

One can guess three times what I am doing over the weekend ...

Temporary Outage of the UVB-76 Internet Repeater

2011-03-08T10:23:00.001+02:00

And this is basically why:

The nearby construction site diged the copper out for some erratic rationale. Telco did a quick patch pronto, but today it will be another couple of hours down when they apply a proper fix.

SDR MK1 Shortwave Radio Shematic and Layout Update

2011-02-25T15:31:00.000+02:00

The SDR MK1 project page has been updated with new schematic (v1.02) and has now also a layout with some explanations about what and how.

The PCB-s went already to production and I expect the boards and components arrive some time next week, so the moment of truth is quite near :) (Although the software will likely take several more weeks t polish).

As a sidenote, I just realized that having the dual channel shortwave software radio may be a nice thing, but having another channel tuned on utility frequency range would make it even nicer tool locally. With appropriate bandpass filter, we can nicely tune from 144MHz amateur band up to the 174MHz TV ch.7 with our 30MHz spectrum width, so it covers most of the open utility channels.

Guess I have to start designing a filter boad! :)

First version of the layout ready

2011-02-23T02:29:00.000+02:00

Just for your amusement, this is what the PCB layout for SDR MK1 looks like! I will update the project page later on (new revision of the schematic etc.), this is just a quick glimpse.
The design is done to fit the milled housing, so its only 106x78mm in size ;)

Justin.tv ads

2011-02-15T19:30:00.000+02:00

Please receive my apologies for the audio-visual ads you receive every time the front page is loading. Justin.tv has recently decided to cash in and while I have no objection of them doing so, it is extremely annoying to have such thing happening on a blog front page.

It will take some time (weeks, rather than months tho) to configure my own video streaming server up and running stable (I have tried at least 5 different webcam services, none of which are really suitable for unattended video streaming), so please try to cope with the situation meanwhile ..

SDR MK1 Housing

2011-02-15T19:09:00.000+02:00

SDR MK1 housing just arrived! Big thanx to my brother, who did the CAD drawings and organized the manufacturing!

As a result, SDR MK1 is going to live inside 110x80mm solid milled aluminum block! It costs 70EUR to manufacture, but somehow it feels like money well spent! :)

It seems, that the SDR MK1 is more and more becoming an open source product of a sort, where one can build it totally on his own, order a bare PCB, order a PCB with some (difficult to assemble) components mounted and rest in a anti-static bag, order an populated board without an housing or have a complete radio delivered.

However, first I have to get the prototype running! Currently the PCB component placement is done and about 70% of routing is finished. I am still working with only two layers, so there is hope, but at least one area looks really tough at the moment (thank you National Semiconductor, for positioning three different power buses and internal analog filter caps all at the same side of the 128pin housing!!!), so it may end up with four layer board instead.

Here are some pictures of the housing. Note, that it still has to go through glass-balling and anodizing to get this satin Apple-like look. At the moment it is as it came from the milling.

SDR MK1 Preliminary Schematic

2011-02-06T00:32:00.002+02:00

After several weeks in making, the first version of the SDR Mark1 schematic is finally here. Look at the SDR Project page, click "Schematic" at the index on left.

It may be a right time to apologise for the statements made earlier as "simple", "easy" etc! :))

While in fact its not too complicated considering what it is about, I ended up with way more components than initially planned.

On the other hand, it has no cut-backs anywhere, so I can state that it is as good as my current knowledge of SDR design allows me to create.

Now to the PCB layout and then we shall see if it performs as supposed to!

USB for everyone!

2011-01-31T01:53:00.001+02:00

Over the weekend, I was playing around with the USB interfacing for the SDR Mk1. And, to a great surprise, Monday, 1:30am I ended up with functional setup consisting of two serial ports and one 192kHz audio recording interface, all embedded inside one composite USB device living inside AT90USB1287!
What makes it really useful is, that it works under Windows7 without the need of any special driver - it manages with the internal ones.

It is unbelievable what Atmel with its AT90USB line and Dean Camera with his LUFA framework have done to USB world! Creating a working HD audio and two serial ports by totally USB-illiterate person with one weekend is a living proof that Dean is a genius and Atmel knows how to make chips!

Thank you, one step closer to a working SDR :)

Working on the Atmel USB for SDR ...

2011-01-27T00:42:00.000+02:00

Assembling the AT90USB1287 prototype board, listening to the fresh episode of the podcast meanwhile .. Life is beautiful! :) Thank you guys for another excellent podcast!

SDR MK1 Progress - Cypress vs. Atmel

2011-01-23T16:27:00.005+02:00

As most of the work is going on at the SDR project right now, I guess I will start posting the status updates here in blog and do not litter the project page with my thoughts about the life, universe and everything.

Anyway, much-awaited Cypress EX-USB FX2LP kit arrived couple of days ago.

After playing around with it for two full days, I put it in my drawer and re-designed the schematic for using Atmel AT90USB1287 chip instead.

Dont get me wrong - its a nice little $29 development kit and does what its supposed to. It works allright with Cypress development tools. CY7C68013 chipset has been used in many different products all around the world (including several SDR designs commercially available) and I havent heard bad words about it. But ... Cypress EZ-USB FX2LP platform its tad too sophisticated for something I am doing here.

First and foremost, its compiler of choice for C/C++ is uVision2, what is included inside development package in its demo form, allowing only 4Kbytes of code maximum. Not only is it a very severe limitation, but the uVision2 tools provided are also two generations behind the current breed of uVision. The the default demo for uVision4 downloaded from their site is further limited to only 2Kbytes of code, so it is practically useless for production. And the full version costs $2-$3K. As I have noone else to write that bill than to myself, this is no go. The alternative is the freeware SDCC compiler for 8051 CPU, but I have seen mixed reports about the usage of it for FX2LP.

Second, equally severe, problem is the examples provided with the development tools. Yes, they did compile allright. Yes they did load on the $29 development board. Yes, I got USB devices appearing on my computer. But ... what devices? Is it too difficult to provide at least one meaningful example of the USB device what would appear as keyboard or mouse on windows?? Instead, the example folder is littered with all sorts of hardcore stuff about the block transfers and different I/O methods on CPU and whatever else. Very clever, I assume, but not too useful for somebody who wants to implement simple composite USB device consisting of USB audio and virtual serial port.

Cypress EZ-USB was one of the very first chips on the market capable of USB2.0 and very fast transfers, but its support and toolsets have not been updated much since. If I would have someone I could bill the hours working on it, I would probably consider it more seriously. At the moment its 1:0 to the Atmel.

Atmel has recently produced many chips natively capable for USB connection in its 8-bit AVR line. More importantly, they have gained a user community support for implementing the USB devices (and hosts) using these chips.

The tool of choice for me is a framework named LUFA (Lightweight USB Framework for AVRs, formerly known as MyUSB), created by Dean Camera. It has all the essential devices, like USB serial, audio in and audio out implemented in its examples folder, and the toolset it uses is Atmel mainstream tools, AVR Studio 4 and WinAVR.

So you need to install these two (you dont need to install AVR toolchain, as GCC tools usage by LUFA are better compatible with WinAVR), download the LUFA and here we go!

Fortunately, the 64-pin AT90USB1287 is relatively pin-compatible with Atmega325 what I use in many designs, so I am able to mount it on already existing board I have and should not worry about the development kit. Chips are supposed to be arriving on Tuesday ..

All archive files are now online

2011-01-18T10:44:00.001+02:00

Yes, it took 2 whole weeks non-stop to upload these, but all the UVB-76 Temporary Internet Repeater USB archives are now online!

The old ones are using GMT+2+1(daylight time) timestamp and really old ones are actually from AM feed, but this is what I've got from these days.
I am not sure, but this may as well be the largest shortwave radio recording archive ever published! :)

Although Hostgator (bless them!), where it is all hosted, has said that they do not have problem with 100Gbyte space usage as far as traffic is not too high, I would not like to push it too far, so at some point I will likely take some of this offline. However, I am trying to keep entire archive on hard disks here, so if you miss some specific recording, just let me know.

Sample chips for SDR arriving from National Semiconductor

2011-01-10T16:34:00.009+02:00

THAT. WAS. FAST. Amazing! I got e-mail from National Semiconductor on January 7'th saying that they cant ship samples on their own expense and I have to pay for the courier service. It was expensive as hell, but still much cheaper than ordering the same number of chips from DigiKey, so I decided to give it a go. I got confirmation from Singapore warehouse, that the order was shipped on January 8. I got a call from local UPS office today, January 10 at 13:24 asking if I am at the office! Thats less than 48 hours from me making the shipping payment to NSC till doorbell!

Guess I have to start designing now! :)

DIY Magnetic Loop Antenna for UVB-76 frequency (4.625MHz)

2010-12-24T00:32:00.001+02:00

Here be finally the drawings for magnetic loop antenna suitable for triangulation and general reception of UVB-76!

It uses somewhat unorthodox approach for matching the feeder, using coaxial cable shield as a tuned antenna element and internal connector as matching transformer secondary winding, so all the comments and improvements about the design are very welcome!

[edit] Playing around with the antenna (works nice!) tonight, I realized that using the long cable to connect to radio inevitably needs the antenna cable shield teminated with ferrite cores. It means, that you either have to go for a short 1-2m wire to your radio, or you have to find ferrite cores and wrap your antenna cable 5-6 turns around it at the antenna side. Longer cable starts to act as an antenna if no ferrites are added and antenna itself goes nuts as a result.

The PDF with building instructions can be found here.

'pip' Feed is Back

2010-12-23T01:22:00.002+02:00

Apparently, as the voice transmissions are more routine on UVB-76 frequency these days, another Russian number station, the 'pip', has also woken up and started talking on 3.756MHz nighttime / 5.448MHz daytime.

Danix111 has caught one of the messages, please check at http://danix111.cba.pl/ns/the-pip-message-021210-2010-utc-cleared.mp3

Therefore the 'pip' feed is now put back on air from the repeater, please check the link on top of the page.

Please note tho, that it is using the testing feed of the repeater and is aired from my auxiliary scanner (Icom R-20 as always), so it will not be as stable broadcast as other feeds because time to time I will use the scanner and the feed for other purposes. However, if nothing else is going on, I will keep 'pip' on 3.756MHz running. This also means that as I dont have automatic frequency switchover, the feed is silent daytime, when its transmitted on 5.448MHz.

Triangulation Call!

2010-12-20T00:19:00.005+02:00

There has been an ongoing debate about the location of the UVB-76 transmitter. Many pictures have been posted on .ru forums about the buildings in Povarovo what suggest the station is not located there any more.

Therefore, I will call everybody with the SW receiver in their hands to post the direction to the signal from their location to the uvb76.repeater gmail address (as found in contact details of this blog page).

Please mark down the following details:

Your location (coordinates are the best, give as precisely as you dare), but country and city/village will do as well.
Bearing of the received the signal. 0 degrees means exactly to the north, 90degrees means exactly in the east etc. and clockwise from there on.
Time you did the triangulation. As atmospheric conditions change and most of you will be getting the signal from the strathosphere reflection rather than direct, I would suggest doing it several times at different (night)times.
Signal strenght. If you do not have S-meter, just describe it in plain english (barely audible .. ok .. strong .. very strong ... etc.).
[edit] For sake of general interest, please also describe the gear and antenna used, it will be interesting to see what everybody are using out there.

I will collect the data and will put it on the map. I will NOT publish it before I have gotten enough data so it corellates to some specific spot, so given the relatively low precision we are getting here, it will take about 5 submissions before it starts making sense.

For those wanting to build a magnetic loop antenna for getting the direction exact, I will publish a drawings of my magnetic loop antenna in next couple of days.

Giftshop is Now Open!

2010-11-26T12:40:00.000+02:00

As of the result of random conversation on IRC "I wan to buy something UVB-76 labeled for Christmas!", uvb-76.net now has a Giftshop! :)) Please check the link on top of the blog page!

Archive Engine and 24h Waterfall Now Works!

2010-11-21T23:32:00.001+02:00

Finally, after almost a month, the archiving system is working as it's supposed to! Blessed be anybody who have anything to do with developing CURL, especially Günter Knauf for maintaining it for Win32!
Thanx to that, the latest archive on the list is actually almost real-time snapshot, lagging less than a minute behind the actual stream, as its getting updated every 30 seconds.

Other improvement is the WinradHD 24h waterfall capture: it is now uploaded every 15 minutes, so if you want to check if the buzzer has been active, just look at the waterfall and you will see how it looks from the streamer perspective!

Both buttons are at the top of the screen, just below the UVB-76 banner, if you haven't noticed yet! :)

Why had the buzzer go to maintenance .. ?

2010-11-08T03:16:00.004+02:00

As some of you may have already noticed, there are some archives published at the page what you get when pressing the 'test' tab on top of this page.

The reason I havent announced it yet is, that having just 200Mb audio files downloadable is sort of semi-useful solution, so I have been wrestling around to get them visualized somehow and link that to online player of a sort.

If one thinks the utilities for performing FFT (fast fourier transformation) analysis on 1Gb+ audio files (as some of the UVB-76 Repeater archives are) are readily available from the internet, one has to reconsider .. and write such utilities from scratch! :)

And so I did. Only to realize, 10 minutes ago, that I should have had done something like that already ages ago!

The first decent output generated by my new tool (call it a MP3toJPG or whatever :)) was so revealing, that I thought I will share it!

The picture below is a spectral analysis of the archive from August 28, 2010 and displays about 80 hours worth of audio (MP3 file size was 850Mb):

(Click on image to view/download)

The timeline goes from left to right and the frequency goes from bottom to top, i.e. lower frequency is at the bottom of the image and higher frequency (4000Hz) is at the top. The file is over 7000 pixels wide, so beware! :)

The bright markers are where the UVB-76 buzzer is transmitting, although you will se about every 10'th or so buzz there (the total "length" of this picture is 80 hours, remember).

However, what you clearly see is that the buzzer what is supposed to be transmitting more or less consistent signal, is drifting up and down in frequency as it pleases!

Its not the analysis software, as you can see sometimes a morse signal kicking in and having no deviation whatsoever.

Two possibilities - either the buzzer was meant to move around like that because of the desired functionality of the signal, or the equipment neded some serious maintenance. Considering that the signal disappeared shortly after for several weeks, I would assume the latter ...

IRC Channel Change

2010-11-01T03:21:00.000+02:00

There has been a lack of operators for some time now at the #UVB76 channel, mainly for the reason that channel owner (not me) has completely disappeared form the scene two months ago. While I sincerely hope everything is well with him, the IRC client links are now pointing to the new channel #UVB-76, so please update your records if you are using other IRC clients than Mibbit.

I have also promoted few regular users to AOP status, so hopefully they are able to regain control quickly if things get out of hands!

Mibbit IRC client video waterfall embedding works!

2010-10-05T00:46:00.002+03:00

For all of you using the Mibbit client for IRC chatting (not the widget on a blog page, but the one what you get when pressing the "Clock for New Window" link above the widget) the news is, that you are now able to get the WinradHD waterfall window embedded inside the Mibbit client window!

In order to do that, just type the address "http://justin.tv/uvb76repeater" on a IRC chat window, and it will automatically convert it to a nice icon of monkey with a camera. Click on that icon, and voila!

This is how it looks:

Thats another one for using the Mibbit for IRC, besides its fascinating cross-browser compatibility and absence of flash nor java whatsoever (ok, the video part is flash, but thats inevitable with justinTV).

Some words about the waterfall streaming in general: Audio streaming seems to be lightyears ahead from the video streaming. It took me less than a hour to set up the audio feed and it has more or less worked ever since.

The WinradHD screen broadcast has taken two different streaming providers (after careful selection from about 10) and at least three different software setups after I can announce, that it is now theoretically stable (with an exception that it has a 2-second pause on every full hour when it is having a forced restart to work around of yet another bug).

What makes an unattended video streaming so difficult is associated with the fact that most, if not all, video broadcast services are aimed towards average Jane and Joe using their webcams. It has to be as simple and straightforward as possible and therefore all the streaming sites use flash plugins for broadcasting as default.

It works nicely most of the time, except the fact that the flash plugins universally seem to lack error recovery part on connection loss. Therefore, on first glitch, the broadcast stops. Needless to say, you have to manually click on a "Broadcast" button again to restart it, what is pretty useless running unattended.

The only service apparently having some sort of API available was Justin.TV. They have developed a broadcaster application for Windows what takes VLC media player stream as a source and relays it to the website. Works nicely, but with two exceptions: It still does not have the connection recovery part implemented as of version 0.41 and it has a nasty memory leak what slowly consumes all your memory over time.

Both shortcomings are handled at the moment with restarting the broadcaster automatically on every full hour, what introduces a 2-second interruption on video, but avoids trashing the memory and in case the connection was lost, gets it restored in one hour on worst case scenario.

UVB-76: One Frequency Fits All

2010-10-03T00:53:00.001+03:00

It has now been two weeks since I updated this site, for no other reason than the fact that I had to re-balance my life between UVB-76 and my family and kids! :)

Once again someone decided to pull a plug on Buzzer on September 23, 2010 at 15.48UTC after being in and out during September 21 and 22. This is how it sounded:

However, the frequency has been anything else but dead and digging myself through 15 days worth of archives I have made notes about 13 (!) different transmission types worth noting on 4.625MHz USB as received here. Here's a summary, not in a order of appearance but as I made the notes:

1. All over the mos distinctive transmission type has been the male and female voice transmissions carrying MDZhB signature:

It has been already disputed that UVB-76 may have changed to that callsign permanently, but please bear in mind two things (following is originating from discussions at http://www.radioscanner.ru/forum/topic12415-35.html):

- As far as communication dispatches seem to be built up, the transmission site (and the frequency associated) is a separate entity from the party what actually airs the "content". Therefore in any moment can someone decide that particular transmission site will now service another "content provider" and so will be. In that context, MDZhB is now simply using the same transmission unit as UVB-76.

- UVB-76 has not been very active with voice messages throughout its lifetime, so the fact that there has not been any lately is not really giving any information if its more or less in good health than always.

2. A around September 27, the background voice transmissions started to happen what are almost impossible to translate, but sound like a number callsign following by word "prijom" (Russian equivalent to "over"). They seem to be made rapidly with several callsigns, so it may be a commcheck of some sort. They sound little bit pitch-shifted on USB from their AM modulated counterparts, so they are slightly off from the 4.625MHz.

3. Something what sounds like a digital packet transmission has started to appear more frequently:

4. Lot of 50Hz noise is audible on the 4.625MHz. This is not a local problem at the UVB-76 Internet Repeater, as the same line noise is received by Russian amateurs.

5. There is a morse transmission happening regularly. I will not get into speculating what it is and where its coming from, but here's the sample:

6. Another type of morse sounds like "tapping". This is just a regular CW transmission which is very close to 4.625MHz, so it is not getting audible properly.

7. Heavy static is appering on the UVB-76 frequency and there have been some speculations that it is some sort of jamming attempt. It does not seem to be an interference, as it starts and stops abruptly.

8. With summer giving way to fall and no heatwave around, the shortwave propagation gets better and better. The 70m antenna I am having is picking up all sorts of signals and sometimes overloads the radio module entirely, so there are commercial stations audible what have nothing to do with UVB-76 and are not even close to the frequency. If this keeps happening, I have to build an attenuator what switches on for the nighttime and off for day.

9. A sine wave has appeared regularly on the broadcast what does not seem to be a separate carrier frequency but is actually transmitted on 4.625MHz. This is an example what makes one think so:

10. Random voice transmissons and commchecks

11. RTTY teletype transmissions

(Seemed ordinary enough, but could not find a sample when I started to look for one ..)

12. Some sort of interference what I can only describe as "BuRRer"

13. And besides all that, there are just strange sounds appearing, what are not interferences but seem to be actual transmissions of a sort. Two examples here:

Some of it may be artifacts of the other stations bleeding in etc., but some of them seem to originate from whatever transmits on 4.625.

It seems that if one wants to listen to the magics of shortwave radio, you will only need to tune in on a single frequency and it delivers! :)

And for a record, here is a chronological list of transmissions I have found from last two weeks of archives. As the individual track count is quite large, here are the links to the daily sets at SoundCloud:

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/october-2-2010-transmissions

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/october-1-2010-transmissions

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/september-30-2010-transmissions

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/september-29-2010-transmissions

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/september-28-2010-transmissions

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/september-27-2010-transmissions

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/september-26-2010-transmissions

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/september-24-2010-transmissions

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/september-23-2010-transmissions

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/september-22-2010-transmissions

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/september-19-2010-transmissions

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/september-18-2010-transmissions

http://soundcloud.com/uvb76repeater/sets/september-17-2010-transmissions

UVB-76 - Back Again

2010-09-15T02:56:00.012+03:00

The blog headlines are getting sort of monotonous - back/not back/silent/buzzing.. If it (forbid) goes mute again, I shall come up with more glamorous statement!
However, exactly on September 14, 2010 on 11:16am UTC someone took a plug and put it whenever the UVB-76 sound is coming from, as you can listen from the recording below. The first buzz was emitted at 11:16.02.

The WinradHD screen from the last 24h before the buzzer return shows nothing much out of ordinary, but let it be included for a reference:

As the station did actually function without the buzzer sound, as has been the case for past weeks, here are the sound clips of the latest voice transmissions, latest of which did happen only 25 minutes before the activation of the buzzer.

UVB-76 - No buzzer but voice

2010-09-12T04:10:00.002+03:00

Since the UVB-76 lost its buzzer sound on Sptember 9'th there have been hardly any audible tests on 4.625MHz. However, the station has not become extinct, as several voice transmissions have happened since. The latest was today, September 11 at 13.53UTC.

The transmissions yesterday night were somehow related to the phone line communication, up to the point where russian internet forums started to speculate that UVB-76 is hardwired somehow to a phone exchange. Considering the amount of clicks, pops, line noise, and the fact that in voice transmissions recordings people are responding to the call with "allo", which is pretty much the same meaning as "hello" in western phone communication (and never is used in radio transmissions in Russia nor anywhere else), this theory has some grounds.

These are the recordings of the possible phone conversations

And these are the other voice messages transmitted meanwhile

How to pick Your First Shortwave Receiver

2010-09-11T02:54:00.001+03:00

As the signal from this feed is only capable to provide what UVB-76 does, the broadcast has been more static lately than anything else. It is still good for one thing, and this is to have people exploring further in shortwave mystiques.

As the first and only genuine thing is to buy your own receiver, I am now writing a short survival guide in radio receivers world, so that one would be able to end up with more or less satisfying purchase.

At the beginning there are some technical aspects to consider, the most important of which is "what do I want to listen at".

While the spectrum is full of all sorts of signals starting from about 30kHz and ending up above 20GHz today, the most rewarding was and is shortwave. The higher frequency bands are fun if you know what to do, but if you are reading this tutorial you might seriously consider starting from shortwave, get accoustomed with basics and only then move on to higher bands.

The first aspect to consider at the receiver is what frequency band it covers. For shortwave work you shall aim at least with the receiver with the coverage from 510kHz (low end of the commercial midwave (MW) broadcasting) and ending at 28MHz (upper end of the Citizen Band (CB) free shortwave frequency). Below and above is nice to have but not mandatory.

You shall also check, especially on a cheaper "travel" or "world band" receiver type of radios (the ones what resemble ordinary pocket- or clock radio but have more frequency bands on them), that they will not have gaps between band selections. Many of them have blind spots between different shortwave bands and you will be disappointed if everybody will be talking about the station you will not be able to pick up as it "falls between" your frequency selection.

Choose one with contignous coverage from at least 510kHz to 28MHz.

Second important aspect is the modulation what you want to receive. On shortwave band two modulation methods are dominating: AM (amplitude modulation) and SSB (single side band). Check the links, it will explain in detail the technical background.

Most of the commercial broadcasts are transmitted in AM modulation, and there is a pitfall you may find yourself from, if you have acquired el cheapo clock radio with shortwave capabilities. It is likely oriented towards commercial radio stations and does not support SSB.

What you are interested of is "all the other stuff" besides commercial broadcasts and this is predominantly happening SSB mode. SSB itself divides USB and LSB (Upper Side Band and Lower Side Band) and you are going to need both. There are some stations on a shortwave band operating on FM (frequency modulation) and DRM (digital), but this is still marginal today.

Some of the more advanced radios also have a special mode for morse code, named CW. While this makes reception of the morse code more effective from interference and morse perspective, it does not mean that you can not receve morse in AM or SSB mode. You can, but it is just not that clear signal (there are lot of other aspects regarding morse and digital transmissions, but this takes another article).

Choose one which as at least AM and SSB demodulation.

Now that you have your basics, we can start choosing the receiver.

As far as shortwave goes, you have five types of receivers to consider:

- "travel", "world band" etc. small radio receivers what are intended for listening to the commercial shortwave broadcasts at household or while traveling.

- Professional, semi-professional and amateur communication receivers and scanners

- Vintage Shortwave receivers

- Software Defined Radio (SDR) receivers meant to be used in combination with your computer and soundcard

- Internet sites offering remote access to radios of others around the world.

This blog entry will get too long if I go in-deep with these, so I will cover all except internet radios briefly and make a separate article about the internet listening and SDR.

There will also be a separate article about the antennas, so lets just stick with te long 10+m/30+ft wire before that.

"Travel" and "World Band" radios

These are the most simplistic (and inexpensive) variety of receivers. While the brand names like Sony and Grundig are making some, the eBay is crowded with all sorts of more or less noname types. I havent tested any of them, but looking at the eBay now there are several what satisfy the initial selection category we had above. TECSUN PL-300WT $45.99; Sangean ATS-505 for $AU169; Sony ICFSW7600GR $185 (expensive, but brand costs); ANJAN DTS-10 $112.99; just to name first four what popped up.

It is hard to tell what is good and what is not as they are all rather basic. External antenna connector would be nice, but if not, you can fetch a long (more than 10m/30ft) wire, drag it somewhere (preferably outside the house and as high as possible (above 3m from ground minimum)) and wrap the other end around the telescopic antenna the radio has. Recording output would be nice, but absence is not the end of the world.

Be sure tho that it would work from something other than batteries as well - monitoring some frequency means that you will have the receiver on and tuned 24/7, so it is useful to have it take its power from mains

outlet.

Professional, semi-professional and amateur communication receivers and scanners

These we can divide further as portable/desktop and as receivers/trancievers. Transiever means, that it has also a transmitter built in, what you are going to need only if you want to beome a true radio amateur.
The basic selection criteria stands for these as well - I have seen radios what do not do SSB ans still call themselves a scanner.

The choice between portable and desktop is yours to make. I do have portable ICom R20 and I am very satisfied with that. However, I also possess vintage Russian R-250 tube shortwave receiver from year 1952 what weights 60 kilos and has more than 20 tubes in it. And this has given me some best moments on a shortwave.
The rule of thumb is, that all other parameters equal, desktop is better. The reason is, that it has more room for all sorts of tuning components (capacitors, coils, filters etc.) as well as for physical layout, therefore the design can be more straightforward and effective.

You should expect to spend around $200 to $1000 plus the shipping of the 6-10 kilo item.

Looking at the moment in eBay there is not much choice at the "by it now section", with the exception of two lots of ICom R71E for $180/$185 (good pick!).

Don't know if the fellow readers of this blog and forum have already been raiding the eBay, but the choice seems very limited at the moment. The things to look for would be Kenwood R-1000, Yaesu FRG100 and likes. Search strings to us would be "communications receiver", "Yaesu FRG", "Kenwood R", "Icom R". If you need one today, go for the ICom R71E, it will make you happy!

A word of caution tho - desktop receivers may time to time (well .. once after 5-10 years that is) need some internal tuning and calibration, so befor buying one try to figure out if someone deals with that stuff in your area. It is not that the radio goes mute otherwise, but the extra bit of sensitivity and signal quality can be lost over time.

Vintage Shortwave receivers

Like said, my vintage R-250 is a wondeful piece of equipment! There is something about the tubes what makes the feeling of the "signal really getting to you" a different experience for me. If you have some radio skills, try to find one what would work (repairing one takes a qualified radio technician, but even operating one needs some skills) and go for it.
Note, that some older Kenwood and Yaesu solid state receivers are today advertised as Vintage in eBay, but I would not consider them a "true Vintage" although some of them are 30 years old.

If your first shortwave receiver is a tube one, you will fall in love with it even if its a regular commercial broadcast radio from 50-s. There is not much technical suggestions about it - military ones have better frequency coverage and do have SSB, however, the regular old household radios will be equally daring, although unsuitable for number stations work (for the lack of SSB and having large gaps between tuning bands)

Software Defined Radio (SDR) receivers

These are meant to be used in combination of your computer and soundcard. Some, like ICom R100 and likes, can be used without the computer as well.

SDR principle is, that radio signal is not fully demodulated to audio in the receiver, but the signal is fed into computer half-way and all the audio processing is done in the software.

The UVB-76 Repeater is using SDR radios what cost $18 as a kit. If you know how to use these you will get amazing results, but only if you know what you do. The advantage of using the SDR is the flexibility of the signal processing - you can tweak with the decoder parameters much better than most of the desktop receivers allow.

Important thing is that you will get he visual control over the tuning of the receiver with the SDR! As you all have been getting familiar with the WinradHD screen captures and little waterfall window the uvb-76.net has, you will get the idea. If you like messing around with the computers on every occasion, this is for you. But more of it in the next article.

Something to listen waiting for UVB-76

2010-09-09T17:10:00.000+03:00

As the UVB-76 keeps doing what it has been doing for past week, Allerian has composed a wonderful ambient tune inspired from the station, called Tchaikovsky Meets UVB-76!

The fullrange MP3 can be downloaded here
The video clip with little less fidelity here

Something to listen at in front of an empty Winrad screen! :)

UVB-76 Temporary Internet Repeater QSL Cards mailed

2010-09-09T04:49:00.000+03:00

First batch of the brand new Temporary Internet Repeater QSL cards were mailed today! I think I made it to the post office early enough, that they will carry todays stamp date, so you are going to have a little reminder about the date when the buzzer was resurrected :)
I want to thank sincerely everyone who donated on the name of everybody using this site, forum, chatbox and IRC! I would also like to thank Ben from desync.com and Javier from globaldjbroadcast.net for setting up the stream relays and offering a generous bandwidth for audio streaming! Without them this site would have been able to service 6x less listeners than it actually did at peak moments!
The whole last week this site has been like a reality-show-control-room-meeting-CNN, and with the 450+ listeners on the stream and 3Gbyte+ download rate from file area this started to get way bigger than any of the service providers would like to see on their free services chart!

With your help we were able to run like a real newssite!

Thank you!

UVB-76 Back On Air

2010-09-09T04:27:00.001+03:00

At a convenient time of 16.20 UTC the UVB-76 finally reappeared on air with stronger signal than many have ever seen after being down almost exactly one week. With the good propagation conditions supporting it, the UK amateurs are able to receive it at amazing level (S9+10dB for those initiated), while Russian hams are picking it up at magnificient S9+40dB (This is VERY STRONG SIGNAL, everybody).
Russian amateurs report the buzzer signal components being audible at strong levels on 4.667 (S9+5dB), 4.709 (S9), 4.751 (S8).

There were several voice transmissions, pops, clicks, and line noise occasions preceeding the buzzer reappearance earlier on September 8, but considering the current transmissions and quite coherent receiveing pattern from Europe to Russia, the current transmission looks plausable as UVB-76, although with unusually high signal level.

The voice messages transmitted have, however, rised the question of the callsign change for UVB-76, as several voice broadcasts on September 8 have been starting with the callsign MDZhB. While this remains an open question at the moment, lets summarize the last weeks events once agin, as this has been, as both, the Russian radio scanner forum and our own UVB-76 form have concluded, a week-long real life episode from LOST!

So, here's the chronology:

- September 1, 2010 4.05UTC the UVB-76 cheased to transmit anything. The absence of the signal was apparent, when no buzzer could be heard from the Internet feeds after the 4pm UTC, when something should have been audible under any circumstances.

- September 1, 22.19UTC the first supposed service acivities were observed. The faint carrier signal reappeared first on 4.626MHz and got adjusted to the 4.625MHz. However, no modulated signal was transmitted of any kind. With 450+ listeners on all Temporary Internet Repeater streams simultaneously and more than 3.5Gbytes daily outbound traffic from file store, the UVB-76 gained unprecedented attention and fanclub since the voice transmission on August 23 voice transmission. However, what we did not have was a UVB-76 signal of any kind.

- September 1, 22.25UTC the UVB-76 started to play a audio sequence, what consisted of the piece from the "Swan's Lake" and 10 buzzer sounds. The pattern was repeated throughout the next 12 hours. Although put in doubt later because of various frequency hijacking attempts, it has been deemed an original transmission from UVB-76, as it was simultaneously received at the Temporary Internet Repeater and Russian amateurs much closer to the station.

- September 2..5 a large amount of CW and voice messages were observed. While ths UVB-76 carrier was missing most of the time, it appeared and re-appeared constantly.
At the same time the first confirmed pirate transmissions were observed by European amateurs. Which traffic from that period was genuine and what was a result of piracy remains unknown (except on some explict cases where forum members were addressed directly and on ome particular shortwave graffiti case found below)

- September 5..7 revealed a prank on the Winrad waterfall screen, codenamed XYN. The first ever shortwawe graffity was born and public. As the prank went on for quite some time, an official warning was announced that the frequency hijacking attempts will be reported to the repeater home country local communication authorities. The frequency went mute and stayed this way for the most part of the September 6 and 7, with occasional carrier frequency appearing and disappearing on 4.625MHz.

- September 8 the occasional carrier appeared and disappeared, with three buzzer tests. At 10.29am UTC the carrier was appearing about 500Hz above the 4.625MHz and USB voice transmission was given by female voice. The transmission was cut off abruptly in the moddle. However, the latter suggests that two transmitters were active simultaneously, as a female voice received on 4.625MHz USB did not have any noticeable pitch shift. The voice messages reappeared together with buzer tests on 16.00UTC (female), 16.13UTC (male) and 16.18 (female). The UVB-76 got finally back on air at 16.20 UTC sometimes faint and unstable signal first, then switcing over to the very high transmission power after which the signal has been stable.

10:28 Female Voice, 500Hz carrier drift
16:00 Female Voice, Cut Short
16:13 Male counting 1-10
16:18 Female Voice and Buzzer Returns

There is also a WinradHD screenshot available what displays the frequency spectrum for 22 hours starting from September 7, 20.30 UTC

One can check the details of the last week events also Here!

The original recordings of the UVB-76 Temporary Internet Repeater can be found here:

UVB-76 Temporary Internet Repeater AM Feed Archive
UVB-76 Temporary Internet Repeater USB Feed Archive

(The file times are UTC+3)

The good public archive recording by one stream listener with the recordings split to smaller pieces can be found here.

Now Streaming the S30 "pip" (3.756MHz USB)

2010-09-08T02:05:00.000+03:00

With the UVB-76 off the air, theres time to provide some other listening besides. As told, I am trying to put up a "Weekly Live Number Station" show here and the most obvious candidate for the buzzer companion feed was the "pip". Here is why.

As the the case with UVB-76, the "pip" is transmitting a continuous channel marker. Instead of buzzing, the sound "pip" is used .. well, thus the name. And exactly as on UVB-76 case, it transmits voice messages every once and a while. One example can be found here. (Sample reference: http://hfsurfing.blogspot.com/2007/03/why-pip-named-s30.html)

The "pip" is a little bit more complicated to monitor tho. Namely, it is transmitting on two different frequency: 5.448MHz on nighttime and 3.756MHz on daytime. When I can quite clearly receive the nighttime feed, the daytime still needs some antenna work, so far I haven't been able to get any signal from 5.448 in some reason.

So, what is it then? If you browse the internet archives, the document here describing the UVB-76 also mentions the "pip". It is considered by this source as part of the military network, "North-Caucasus military district, Rostov/Don". As the document is a translation from similar russian booklet found here,
A nice reference about the "pip" can be found at Here.

The link is at the top of the page, labeled "new". Note, that this station is farther away than the buzzer was, so one can receive it only here during the nighttime at the moment!

Probably the First Ever in History - Graffiti on Shortwave!

2010-09-06T20:43:00.001+03:00

There are pranks, there are pulling someones leg. And there are pranks of epic proportions! There has been a lot of swearing and cursing towards pirates occupying 4.625MHz, but this one is golden!

This is what Repeater Winrad screen looked today when I went checking after my auxiliary radio (the former workhorse on feed, Icom R20) was emitting strange sounds on USB...

For those not too familiar with russian, yes, it spells "d*ck". However, in russian culture the usage of this word has literally hundreds of meanings dependent on context. If I come up with a good translation of particular context, I will post it, meanwhile just consider, that this message is actually not that much of an insult towards anybody...

[EDIT! vvvvv]

Apparently, This has been going on already since yesterday, I just did not connect dots about the XYN and this phenomena.

WHOEVER IS DOING IT, PLEASE READ:

I am pretty sure it is not a russian amateurs work, as russia has never been a country one will broadcast with 1kW transmitter (wat it takes to reach my antenna with that signal level at broad daylight from closest russian town) at frequeny not allocated for him, especially if it is allocated with russian military. The guys would have had a visit by FSB by now.

If, starting from now, I will see anything on my waterfall, would it be unusual morse or windows sound scheme, I will file an official complaint about somebody jamming a frequency. Considering whom the frequency belongs to, I am sure the Communications Control Board will give it quite a high priority here.

UVB-76 - Do Not Believe Everything You Hear!

2010-09-05T17:53:00.000+03:00

UVB-76 has been recently become a part of the pop culture. And as with every new thing, it attracts two sorts of people like flower attracts bugs - conspiracy theorists and the ones that do not know better that just want to spoil it for whatever its worth.

So has happened, that internet forums are getting busy with doomsday posts about how UVB-76 is related to aliens, nukes, conspiracy etc. Up to the recent post what pretty much copied the "[Agent] SALT" storyboard 1:1.

The other activity is much more annoying - some people with shortwave radio transmitters in their hands have been starting to transmit at the UVB-76 frequency, thinking its a good prank. There have been music transmissions, morse code with personal messages towards chat users nicnames etc. Most of it has not been originating from the listening site here, but has been affecting the people listening to their own radios locally.

However, I have now strong grounds to believe, that some of the todays transmissions what have been broadcasted through the Repeater are not genuine UVB-76 transmissions. Their signal-to noise ratio and broadcast level does not match the general pattern of shortwave propagation and UVB-76 supposed 10kW transmission power.

I have been thinking, what to do about it. Shall I publish such recordings, will I fuel the pirate's and troller's activity with this, or shall I discard them as phony?

Then it hit me, that I have a disclaimer at the header of this website, what states that Temporary Internet Repeater will broadcast the received signal "as is", unaltered and without the attitude towards content. And so be it.

Please find todays recordings below. What is genuine and what is not, is yours to decide.

http://www.opendrive.com/files/7067827_H8lN4_bf8d/Female_1..9_September_5_12.30pmUTC.mp3
http://www.opendrive.com/files/7067844_qj1B2_ab5c/Mobile(GSM)_phone_September_5_12.38pmUTC.mp3
http://www.opendrive.com/files/7067965_b7vb5_1aaf/Windows_Sound_September_5_12.59pmUTC.mp3
http://www.opendrive.com/files/7067791_Md5Dm_d39c/Strings_September_5_13.22UTC.mp3
http://www.opendrive.com/files/7067956_XqsVp_b372/Voice_Transmission_PREGRADA_September_5_13.39UTC.mp3

About the strange noise listening to USB feed

2010-09-04T22:12:00.000+03:00

First, feeds are OK and the noise visible on spectrum analyzer is not a local interference from receiving site. I will not post the possible explanation whats going on with UVB-76 here in the blog, as this is only a theory at best, but those interested about my speculation, please check the forum at http://uvb76.freeforums.org/new-format-of-uvb-76-transmission-t56.html

The first real "Blog Post" - What to do, when UVB-76 is off the air?

2010-09-04T14:16:00.000+03:00

With UVB-76 still silent (although the RF part of the transmitter is sending strong carrier, so it cannot be called as off the air), there is still something to listen at other than static. The occasional morse burts on 4.626MHz and 4.628MHz have been making lot of people downoading decoders and wrestiling with morse charts and the packet data transmissions on upper and lower sideband of UVB-76 signal have so far been undecoded, but I am sure some day someone figures it out (I am planning to do, at least).
However, with no comfortable buzzing around, it does not mean, that all you have to listen to is static and youtube. The shortwave band is much more than I am broadcasting from here, so I am encouraging all of you to dial in and explore!

Some words of nostalgy - I was a kid way before the internet and WWW became widely available. I am not too old (37), but I had the shortwave receiver since I remember (well, my family radio did have 3 SW bands), and spent hours dialing left and right on it. Shortwave was crowded with signals then as it is today. The mystery about it was there back then as it is today.

Look at this as an early youtube - someone, somewhere, is transmitting something all over the world. Its a real thing - imagine somebody with the morse key or reel-to-reel tape deck in the middle of Namibia desert, runing its shortwave transmitter off the diesel generator and sending a music or messages towards ionosphere. Does not get any spiritual than that in the middle of the night!

While the buzzer is on its resurrection process, there is what to consider meanwhile:

- First, and possibly most rewarding solution, is to aquire a shortwave receiver of your own. You can get a decent one from eBay for about $30. The $10 pricetag from garage sale will get you going as well, be sure that it works tho. I will write a longer article about selecting the receiver later. Those legal to drink are encouraged to take a glass with your favorite liquor with you. Turn off the lights and start exploring. I assure you, its worth it!

- My Conet Radio feed was not the most popular one, as seemingly not many like to listen to a mystery in a yar. So I kill the feed. What I replace it with, is a "weekly special" of the radio stations possible to receive here. I would not limit it to shortwave as there is plenty of options out there starting from fancy satellite repeater transmissions, meteorological maps received through the air, lightning strikes (yes, you can listen to them with radio!) etc. I promise I will try being creative.

- Surprisingly, internet is also providing some nice resources for shortwave listening. The one I like most, is located at WebSDR.org. It is a portal to the growing list of various radios around the world. While each of them is giving you ony a certain frequency span on shortwave amateur band, it is possibly as good as it gets in the web by concept! The best equipped is the site at the University of Twente, Nethrlands, aparently at the lab of the Pieter-Tjerk de Boer (PA3FWM), the guy who has created the whole concept in a first place.

And of course there is Globaltuners with its receivers around the world.
Word of caution - Hamsphere.com IS NOT an online shortwave listening station. It is good if you want to become (or are) a radio amateur and fancy using internet instead of actual trancievers and antenna. It simulates the shortwave interferences and stations quite convincingly, but it has no connection to real world whatsoever. It is sort of "Second Life of radio bands".

So, lets hope the UVB-76 will return soon, I will meanwhile set up something else to listen at!

Video stream offline for next 8 hours

2010-09-04T03:11:00.000+03:00

The video window has run for 12 hours now and seems to behave nicely. However, without further testing, I will not probably have a good night sleep when I am not sure its 100% stable and does not attempt anything funny meanwhile, so I will take it down for a night and put back tomorrow morning.

Streamer WinradHD screen now online

2010-09-03T17:27:00.002+03:00

The faithful ICom R-20 has been replaced with Soft66Lite SDR for quite some time, so is now the picture at the blog.

Thanks to Mat, who gave me an hint about ManyCam, the WirdahHD screen is now live!

It broadcasts through Stickam and does not have a smoothest video response one could wish, but if you click and zoom in, it will give you quite nice overview of what is going on at and near the UVB-76 spectrum.

One thing tho - the shouthcast is buffering about a minute worth of audio in order to guarantee skip-less playback of the audio. Therefore the streams are 1 minute behind the WinradHD screen. You are _receiveing_ the signal almost realtime, but your player is playing from the buffer. There are hacks around to disable this buffer, but they are really complicated.

Then again - if you see morse or anything else interesting passing by on the video, you have this 60 seconds to start your recorder! :)

Maintenance still ongoing

2010-09-02T20:50:00.000+03:00

Apparently the maintenance is still in progress. As the guys are working hard there, some of the intercom has gone on UVB-76 frequency. Here is a recording made earlier by one of stream listeners (I havent confirmed it yet, but sounds genuine). It translates word by word: "[I am] on site, working, but she is weak".
The Little Swans Dance has returned as well, so the calibration seems to be in progress.

All the best wishes to the maintenance crew!

UVB-76 playing MUSIC!

2010-09-02T01:49:00.005+03:00

Everybody please switch to USB feed now! The maintenance guys have style - it plays Swan's Lake before each test run! Please find the recording here.

Maintenance going on at UVB-76

2010-09-02T01:47:00.001+03:00

It really seems that the 8.05am Moscow time shutdown was because of long day of maintenance works ahead at the station! It came back live on 22.20UTC with almost inaudible signal, but 1kHz off the usual frequency, on 4626kHz. Then it adjusted frequency twice in 500Hz increments - see the picture of the WinradHD screen about the last change after which it is on its normal frequency.

No UVB-76 transmission can be received

2010-09-01T18:59:00.003+03:00

UPDATE: So, its true - UVB-76 has stopped the transmission on September 1, 2010 4.05amUTC just like that - last buzz and all static after that. Pease find the archive recording here.

If this is the end of it or will the UVB-76 return to its regular transmissions is difficult to speculate. It is clear however, that it is not an atmospheric or propagation issue at the moment.

[OLD POSTING: The buzzing has been absent for quite some time now. Report sais, that on August 31, 23.27UTC the carrier switched off and has not re-appeared since.

Currently there is no sign of any carrier frequency on WinradHD screen. On this time of day the atmospheric conditions should allow reception even with the very bad propagation conditions, so it is highly unusual to not have any signal.

I will seek it out from archive and post the recording of the signal stopping, lets hope that it will re-appear!]

"Background voices" transmission on August 31, 16:30 UTC

2010-08-31T21:32:00.004+03:00

The talkshow goes on! Stream listeners Jeffrey and Cythelol reported what seems to be the first recorded "background voices" transmision. As both reports were submitting a recording as well, the attached clip by Cythelol can be found here. I will replace it with the one from stream archives when I have identified it! The voices start at about 20 sec. PLEASE DO NOT LINK OR DISTRIBUTE THIS FILE, as it has windows sounds at the beginning and although it has been confirmed by two independent sources, I would not let anything to corculation what has not come off the streamer recording archive!

Also, please be prepared for a short 1-minute break in streaming tonight, as I have to re-start the system to get rid of the 'scattering' artifact.

[EDIT: The scattering has actually had an effect on archive recordings as well, so the one recorded by Cythelol is actually of better quality than mine. I can, however, confirm that the transmission is genuine, as it is present in archive recording and received in USB mode - if it would not have originated from the same frequency, the audio would have had serious pitch shift.]

There is another voice reported on 12:45UTC, but I havent been able to locate it from archive yet.

Repeater QSL Cards

2010-08-31T17:27:00.002+03:00

Running the repeater has been a rewarding internet experiment and last days have been worth every bit of it. The voice message has introduced more than 100K readers for this blog for past couple of days and I cant say I havent multiplied it with $1 each to calculate what it would have been :)
So, I created a 'donate' button!
However, just cashing it in makes it internet-business and looses the whole appeal of mystery, so this is how its going to be: If any of you is deciding to donate anything, please include somewhere on the donation forms your postage address, and I will send you a QSL Card of the Repeater. This is a nice tradition of radio amateurs, and although I have no callsign, the UVB-76 has. As they are not likely mailing out any cards soon, I may as well send it our for them!

August 25, 2010 6.54UTC Voice transmission confirmed

2010-08-31T01:53:00.002+03:00

Took a while to exec through the list of all supposed transmissions:
I do have reported transmissons from August 16 and 17 what I am unable to confirm, as I do not have recordings between August 15 and 18.
August 23 was OK and has already been confirmed.
August 24 has three reports for 12:00am EST, 9:25am EST and 12:43pm CST. My search on a recordings does not confirm these three, except that 12:43pm CST is likely a commercial radio station breaking in.
August 25 I have three different reported transmissions: 2:45am EST, 6:54 UTC and 11:53 UTC.
Apparently, all three were the same, happening in real life around 6.50 UTC.
Please find the full recording here.
It is the same transmission, last part of which has already been circling around. It matches perfectly both, the text and static noise spikes, so it has come off from same USB stream at the same time.
August 29 has a report of buzzing stopping briefly around 16:31 UTC, but recording does not confirm that.
August 30 has a report of mumbling voices on background, but once again, stream recording does not confirm that.

HELP request about transmission dates deleted from Wikipedia

2010-08-30T19:49:00.001+03:00

[EDIT: Found the deleted stuff from old revisions, so this is ok. However, I would still appreciate if all of you could send me your observations about transmission times!]

Relay of the relay! desync.com has provided 2x1000 slots!

2010-08-26T11:00:00.001+03:00

The stream has been literally 100% of the time 100% utilized for past 24 hours and many have obviously been on "retry hell" with this, especially Windows Media Player users as this player does not give "stream full" message, but fails with rather strange error. Thank you all for your patience, as I havent received a single hate-mail about this! Instead, lot of supporting e-mails have arrived and some with different offers for help - Thank you David, Ben and Justin!
The most straighforward was Ben-s solution, who did set up a relay with 1000 sockets for both feeds at desync.com! It streams off the original streams, so its the same data as from two main feeds.

August 23, 2010 9:35AM PST Voice transmission confirmed

2010-08-24T23:53:00.003+03:00

I hate to pour more oil on this fire as there are steady 60+ listeners on stream already, but streamer arhive recordings show that the August 23. voice transmission is genuine and has happened! Please find the recording here.
Most received it garbaged, as the transmission was taking place almost entirely on upper sideband (USB), as most of the normal UVB-76 transmissions are. (Although it is not pure USB, as the carrier is present).

Third feed serving UVB-76

2010-08-24T21:04:00.000+03:00

There is a huge interest about the feed for past two days, so both the AM and USB stream capacity has been on its maximum for several hours a day. As the Conet Radio meanwhile serves only one or two listeners max, I have temporarily replaced it with the UVB-76. This is the copy of AM feed, just different streaming address - see the top of the page.

"Backward Music Station" or "Whales" on WebSDR

2010-08-22T04:02:00.000+03:00

Ther is a rare(?) opportunity to listen live to an unearthy phenomena what is described as "Backward Music Station" on a WebSDR. While the WebSDR project is worth a gold star all by itself, the backward music station is nicely located inside an amateur band. Just tune in to frequency 3634kHz with LSB modulation and enjoy!

For those not having shortwave receiver in their posession, the WebSDR is an excellent site to explore! It requires Java to be installed tho, but its worth it.

Mystery Signals of the Short Wave

2010-08-21T15:16:00.000+03:00

The Mystery Signals of the Short Wave website link appears on German Wikipedia UVB-76 page. As I havent seen this before, I thougth it is worth noting here. Nicely set up site by Brian Rogers, with nice snippets about various shortwave oddities as well as about UVB-76.
Definitely a worthwile reading!

Then Again ...

2010-08-18T03:57:00.004+03:00

The scattering sound of UVB-76 yesterday had nothing to do with station itself. After a sleepless night the new system is running hopefully without ugly artifacts. Thanks to everybody who pointed it out for me that the sound is strange and my apologies for interruptions in broadcast tonight because of that same work.

Welcome to the wonderful world of (almost) 24/7 reception

2010-08-17T01:09:00.002+03:00

Things have been quiet lately, and so has been sometimes the stream. Partially because of heatwave what created one steady mass of 35 deg. centigrade air all the way from here to Moscow. Partially because the antennas on my end, however smart, were too small for the task. So, as a result, the listening post has received a total upgrade in all aspects.

This is what has changed:

- First of all, I have managed to squeeze almst 80 meters worth of antenna wire between houses. Considering that I live in a city center, this was quite a challenge. For antenna enthusiasts, this is currently forming a full wave zig-zag dipole. There is definitely some room for improvement, as only one half is working decenly (although both sides connect to radio with 4:1 balun at the moment).
- The streamer has now its own dedicated machine, running off the UPS, as the rest of networking equipment. While this does not keep it up indefinitely on power outages, it will last a good 15-20 minutes so only major outage or planned works will have an effect.
- Receiver is the same Soft66Lite as previously, the soundcard is, however, my old pro STA dsp24 MKII with ADC/DAC2000 external converter. While this does not make much difference, it allows connecting four radios instead of one, so there will be an opportunity monitoring more stations in future..
- The software setup is pretty much the same, running on Windows XP (earlier setup did run on Win 7 and no problems there, I just did not have a spare Win 7 license for a new machine ..). SDR signal is processed by WinradHD, then broadcasted using edcast standalone to mixstream.net. Everything is hooked together with Virtual Audio Cable.
- The most important change in appearance to outside world is, however, that we have now two streams instead of one. The difference between two are, that one is broadcasting the signal as AM demodulated stream, while the other is processing it as USB demodulated. It is getting way technical for most to explain the difference, but generally it meas that AM stream can be heared about half the day and the rest of the time onlu USB demodulated signal can be heard. This does not contain all of the UVB-76 broadcasted signal, but only about 3/4 of it. It also sometimes changes notably in pitch, if there are some maintenance works in progress at UVB-76 itself. It is, however, a good tool to make a "health checks". Both links are now at the top of the page.

Happy listening!

Data bursts near UVB-76 frequency

2010-08-02T01:09:00.001+03:00

There seems to be a lot of different broadcasts trying to allocate the same spectrum as UVB-76, as this would be the only frequency on a shortwave band .. At the moment, I can spot at least 4 additional carrier frequencys distorting the signal!

Two of them are, however, of special interest. Previous posting already covered the morse code, but even more sophisticated transmission is happening on a lower sideband of the signal. Something somewhere is transmitting very dense data bursts on 4.623325MHz, what are audible as scratching sound on UVB-76 signal. It happens once or twice an hour and is never more than about 10sec. long, so it is a telemetry data of sort.

What makes this signal spectacular are three things: First, it has relatively high-speed data rate for a shortwave band. Second, it has chosen its existance at the same frequency spectrum as UVB-76. Although UVB has lower sideband seriously supressed (i.e. most of the signal is radiated above 4.625MHz frequency, as opposed to regular AM signals what radiate equal amount of energy on both, upper and lower the base frequency), it has still a reasonable amount of signal there to give headic to whoever is trying to use it. And third, the signal itself is asymmetric, i.e. upper and lower sidebands are transmitting different data!

This is what the spectrum on WinradHD screen looks like:

Morse on UVB-76

2010-07-25T03:10:00.000+03:00

The signal of the UVB-76 is really crowded with morse code tonight. Looking at the spectrum of the WinradHD screen, it looks like the morse is having its own carrier frequency on 4627.350kHz, so it is likely, that the morse is coming from another source. Go figure .. Anyway, this is what the signal spectrum looks like:

New station! The Conet Radio

2010-07-22T20:50:00.002+03:00

It is my pleasure to announce the birth of the new Internet Radio - The Conet Radio. With kind permission from Irdial, the four CD-s are now on the random playlist and hopefully give some nice background listening while the UVB-76 reception is weak :) Link to listen at is at the top of the page, below UVB-76 link. Or click HERE.

Receiver Upgrade for Listening Station!

2010-07-21T20:23:00.000+03:00

I am glad to announce, that UVB-76 Internet Repeater has now its dedicated SDR (Software Defined Radio). The receiver is called Soft66lite and the improvement is nothing short of spectacular. It looks like this:

I have used to think that Icom IC-R20 what was used so far is pretty good radio receiver, period. The reason for replacing it was just that I wante to have my scanner back and therefore was looking for inexpensive replacement. The $18 soft66lite was pretty much the only alternative found on eBay and I had no problem having it in kit form. As this is fixed center frequency, the component needed was also a crystal with the frequency close to 4.625MHz. Got 4.608MHz from Elfa, which is good enough for tuning in with 48kHz sample rate soundcard.

I was stunned to find out, that the $18 receiver did way better than Icom had ever done with weak receptions! I am running it with ordinary long aerial of about 10 meters and as of 6pm GMT, Icom hears nothing with its magnetic loop, when SDR has audible signal. When I use Icom with aerial, the RF stage overloads from noise.

The station uses WinradHD as SDR software for tuning in and demodulating the signal. Despite some quirks on soundcard handling, it seems to be the most straightforward SDR software today. The screenshot looks like this:

So, as of now, the setup for monitoring station looks like this:

10m aerial antenna -> Soft66lite SDR -> Computer with Behringer BCD3000 -> WinradHD Software -> Virtual Audio Cable -> Edcast Standalone -> uk3-pn.mixstream.net

Happy Listening!

User Count 20->40

2010-07-20T02:25:00.000+03:00

In some reason there has been a steady 15-20 users online from all over the world for the last 4 hours. I have no idea where the stream was advertised, but as I have max user count set to 20 at the moment, I will increase it tomorrow morning just in case.

Streaming is OK again

2010-07-16T01:52:00.000+03:00

If you have any idea how to make it up for a wife who did manage (and agreed to) clearing CMOS on a streaming computer on 1.45am, please let me know and I will try doing it to her!!! Thank you, Katrin! Love you!

Streaming is down until 16'th of July

2010-07-15T10:35:00.000+03:00

And so it happened, that there was a major power outage in the whole town and somehow the streaming server did not restart automatically somehow. I will get the first chance for have somebody re-starting it manually tonight, but please excuse the temporary outage meanwhile.

Streaming is unattended until 18'th of July.

2010-07-11T12:20:00.000+03:00

I will be on a trip next week. Streaming should be able to take care of itself during this time, but my apologies in advance if it will not. I'll be back on 18'th latest.

Twitter: uvb76repeater

2010-07-07T03:59:00.000+03:00

As I have no better idea of how to give up-to-date information about the streaming status (whenever I am changing antennas, update blog etc.), so I opted in to twitter. Just follow uvb76repeater and I will try to update it as soon as there is anything meaningful happening!

Now the proud owner of UVB-76.COM

2010-07-02T12:35:00.000+03:00

My first domain name deal :) Nice doing business with you, Ken!

It .. Talks!

2010-06-30T02:10:00.000+03:00

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

2010-06-29T02:49:00.000+03:00

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

2010-06-27T23:20:00.000+03:00

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

2010-06-17T23:31:00.001+03:00

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!

2010-06-17T23:08:00.000+03:00

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?

2010-06-16T01:28:00.000+03:00

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