Short Wave Listening at N6CC

Early Short Wave Listening, Numbers Stations, The Woodpecker etc

As with many Hams I started out young as a Short Wave Listener “SWL”. Even today, long after I earned my Ham license I still spend a lot more time listening (to everything) than I ever did talking with other Hams. I also learned a lot about “the world” in the process.

It started out with the family’s All American Five table radio that also had some portion of the short wave broadcast bands accessible via a rear-panel band switch. Not this one:

What’s going on here? Governments using Short Wave radio broadcasting to influence international public opinion in their favor – since the 1930’s. Sounds familiar…. These days they use “social media” to program the Smart Phone Zombies.

“When you control the information you control the people.” Nazi Reichsminister of Propaganda Josef Google (er, Goebbels).

With the rise of the Internet and “cable” most broadcasting has moved off radio over to various web-based services. With few exceptions there is not much international news and information on short wave radio these days. However there is still plenty of other interesting stuff on the HF radio spectrum not controlled by the corporate media.

At age 9-10, I knew that I needed to set up a proper “Listening Post” with the radio. That I did, in the back of a small clothes closet, complete with my microscope and chemistry set. The wall was adorned with a few SWBC QSL cards. The back yard trees were full of wires, the “basement shack” was wired with multiple knife switches to select each one.

Then came a Heathkit CR-1 Crystal Radio my dad built for me while I was in the 5th Grade. See: http://www.n6cc.com/crystal-radios-it-started-here

That was closely followed by a sadly broken Zenith Transoceanic 8G005 portable given to me by uncle Dan to “play with”. As a curious 10 year-old, I disassembled it!!! OH THE PAIN!!! (but I still have all the Loctal tubes 60 years later.)

Then came the Hallicafters S-120 Receiver:  I received one as a gift from my parents for Christmas in 1963.  Priced at $69.95 I am sure that was the better part of my parents combined weekly pay. Thanks again Mom and Dad!

It replaced the old “AA5” table radio in my Listening Post. A life long buddy would often come over and we would both marvel at what “radio” was and what it could do.  That bug bit both of us pretty hard!

This S-120 is a recent addition – I had given away to a local kid the original S-120 which was my first “real” shortwave radio when I was a kid. The “informative” slide rule dial even told you where to tune to receive “Paris”, “China” and other exotic locales. Plus – Aviation!

Even by 1960’s standards it’s pretty (very) marginal but I didn’t know any better back then. I logged lots of DX with it and it still sounds pretty good on SWBC. I can (barely) copy CW and SSB with it, but stability is another adventure.  Medium wave AM broadcast is OK, actually pretty good.

Behind that stylish front panel the S-120 has only 4 tubes; no RF amplifier stage, so it was pretty deaf well into the higher short wave bands. The circuit is nearly identical to the early S-38 sets but they used Octal tubes versus the 7-pin miniatures of the S-120.  The S-120 also replaced the S-38’s rectifier tube with a selenium stack in the half-wave bridge power supply.  1940’s Tech.

The Ameco PCL-P 2-Nuvistor cascode preamp helps considerably!

The preamp adds the critical RF stage plus tuned preselection to reduce image response..

The Hallicrafters S-120 ad from 1961. Politically Incorrect these days (but still accurate) . Yes, I heard him. Comrade Castro: When the “cure” is vastly worse than the “disease”. I listened/en to it all go down, from various sources, in real time. “IT’S THE EMBARGO!” Ummm, no.

Reports included Fidel Castro and Che “Up Against the Wall!” Guevara as they then tried in vain to export “The Revolution” to southern Africa, Central and South America.  Then of course Castro’s cheerleaders like Vladimir Posner of Radio Moscow and later “Ed Newman” of Radio Havana Cuba with their sadly laughable propaganda successfully manipulating Lenin’s “Useful Fools” and those who profit from them.  But I digress.

I often listened to the BBC and VOA’s “Daybreak Africa” program and heard the strange sounding (to me) names of the various African leaders at the time.  People like Kasa-Vubu, Patrice Lamumba, Moise Tshombe, Kwame Nkrumah, Habib Bourgiba and of course Nasser etc. Those names sound somehow familiar to me even today, buried deep in my wetware..

Back in the early 1960’s Ham radio communications was still largely Amplitude Modulation – voice. I listened to Hams for hours, wondering who they were, how they were able to use a radio (like mine?) to talk to each other and what the heck they were even talking about. Ladder line, 1625’s, VFO’s, D-104’s, QSL’s, Homebrew etc. Didn’t know what it was but I wanted some! Then my uncle Paul gave me a Heathkit catalog.

One fond memory as a thirteen year-old during the S-120 days was listening to lots of interesting non-voice and “Utilities” signals that crowded the bands back then – and wondering what they were. Those included WWV time signals which ID’d in those days by Morse Code, the first Morse letters W W V I knew by sound.

I lived about a mile from Mitchel Air Force Base on Long Island in the 1950’s – 1960’s. As a young kid I could identify dozens of different USAF aircraft by sound alone as they flew nearly over our house on approach to Runway Three-Zero. So….

There was a peculiar, distinctive signal at many points on the S-120 dial. Sort of like a continuous, droning, guttural “Grrrrrrrr” sound. It sounded just like a four engined B-17 bomber in flight. (Que the sound track from “12 O’Clock High”)  I just KNEW that’s what I was listening to on the radio. I also thought it might be JAMMERS!

It wasn’t until later in life when I was in the U.S. Navy that I learned what those (and many other) signals actually were. Four-channel multiplexed radio teletype transmitters.

What I was hearing was probably the Navy’s AN/FGC-5 or AN/UGC-1 four channel HF Teletype systems in operation on the east coast and LANT Fleet Op areas.

Hmmmmm, The B-17’s had four Wright Cyclone R-1820 radial engines running asynchronously. Four independent asynchronous Baudot RATT signals. Nine cylinders per engine. At at 5 bits each character plus a start and stop pulse (7 bits total). Acoustically / spectrally speaking, a pretty close match! No wonder I was fooled! The East Coast of the U.S. had lots of that kind of military traffic going on back then…

There were the big Press Wireless and several other ship-to-shore radio stations on Long Island and the east coast to copy with my ARC-5 receiver, dynamotor humming away.

Then there are the so-called “Numbers Stations“. I copied a lot of 5 number/letter Morse Code cypher groups from them. They were excellent code practice as I studied for my various ham license tests. They are a favorite topic on the Interwebs.

Below: Putting the CIA’s RS-6 Spy Radio to work on numbers stations. Spying on spies; and keeping your coffee warm while on a late-night, candle lit Op.

The “Secrets” of DUGA: Another signal I couldn’t avoid hearing with my trusty S-120 and my HA-350 was the Soviet дуга Over The Horizon Radar that they had built near Chernobyl in Ukraine.

More on The Woodpecker https://www.n6cc.com/the-russian-woodpecker-revisited/ and numbers stations here: https://www.n6cc.com/numbers-stations-the-woodpecker-etc/

“Arc” in Russian, its signal was plenty loud in the U.S. at the time with its massive effective radiated power. Arc probably indicating its over-the-horizon mission.

In the early 1980’s I was building equipment to work amateur radio teletype stations. I was using a Yaesu FT-101E, a DIY converter, an AEA CP-1 Computer Patch, an Early IBM PC running a DOS 2.0 terminal emulator and an Epson dot matrix printer all serviced by simple dipole antennas.

I made my first RTTY contact with Chip N7CPC near Seattle, one of the original Pacific Northwest Clatternet guys on 30DEC83.

My home made “Under Ground Communications -1” TTY Converter – now interfacing with a PRC-47/CV-2455 as a Loop-To-RS-232 converter weekly on Clattenet II.

North Korean Radioteletype! While SWL-ing, I was tuning around with my FRG-7700 and found the North Korean KCNA station in Pyongyang transmitting English language propaganda via Radio TELETYPE! Huh? They had a pretty strong signal into the west coast on 13580 kc running 60 WPM Baudot.

Maybe they were forwarding program material to Radio Havana. It often included quotes from prominent american Democrats who were also cheered from Havana.

The teletype broadcasts were pure Communist fantasy land extolling the Godlike Personality and Immortal Feats of Great Leader Kim Il Sung as he battled Koreans and reality.

A common theme was the nightly re-retelling of the “courageous capture of the Imperialist running dog capitalist’s heavily armed battleship USS Pueblo by the Glorious Peoples Navy” [sic] over (then) 15 years ago, etc. Yada yada. Another common theme was sending “Congratulatory Greetings” to other Marxist-Stalinist hell holes upon the “reelection” of THEIR Glorious Leaders.

In addition to the S-120, I’ve had many different receivers over the years.. These include several cheap AM/FM/LW/SW portables, S-38, IC-SW7600, FRG-7700, BC-348R, Command Set receivers, TCS sets and a couple of hand-cranked AM/FM/SW “emergency” radios.

As a life long CW operator I also have an R-390A, the King of them all. Its performance and sound is much preferable to me over any “modern” KenYaeIc gear. Those receivers using Digital Signal Processing become quite fatiguing to listen to rather quickly. No thanks.

SKY KING SKY KING – DO NOT ANSWER…..

When I was in Saudi Arabia we had rental cars that all had dash-mounted (Blaupunkt?) AM/FM entertainment radios that included SW broadcast bands as standard equipment. How cool!

We heard the BBC etc. plus many Arabic/Farsi language stations being jammed by the 7th Century Iranian Mullahs, even in the medium wave AM Broadcast bands. Iran used the Soviet-style Stepped Tones jamming signal. Much to be learned from all this.

In the pursuit of this “hobby” I learned a whole lot of electronics but also the importance of “all source” information monitoring.

Keep your antennas UP!

Under Construction – More to Follow.

AR