The below text is quoted from the Sace Weather Prediction Center at http://www.spaceweather.gov/wwv
On 06 September 2011 the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) will discontinue the broadcast of its synoptic Geo-Alert products on the WWV and WWVH radio stations starting with the 12 UTC products. These products are operationally available via the following two other mechanisms:
SWPC's Product Subscription Service at https://pss.swpc.noaa.gov. The WWV product can be found under the "Forecast and Summaries" section.
Randy Poffo, AKA "Macho Man", "Macho King" Randy Savage was not a radio personality, he was not a licensed radio amateur, never partook of anything radio that we are aware of, but he WAS a good friend of the Owner / Chief Editor of Shortwave America.
Randy Poffo was a man of honor and class. Going between face and heel, Intercontinental Champion, and WWE Heavyweight Champ, behind the scenes...Randy was a down to earth person who honored his family first. Randy was a caring, giving, man. As a wrestler and showman, Randy was best known for his high flying acrobatics.
Behind closed doors, Randy Poffo knew how to have fun and could make almost anyone laugh. He was also very intelligent. A conversation with Randy was always a memorable time. Shortwave America wishes to give condolences to the Poffo family, as well as Randy's past and present colleagues who were so treasured by him.
A FACEBOOK MEMORIAL GROUP has gone viral today over the past many hours. No information is available at this time regarding funeral/public memorial services for Randy.
Since the inception of Shortwave America, one of the purposes was to cover VHF and UHF frequencies from a practical perspective while presenting a useful technical reference. After all this time, the best choice seems to be someone who spends a great deal of time on Railroad and Marine monitoring.
In thinking about this at great length, why should Aviation communications be left out?
Andy was first licensed on Jan 21st, 1997 as a Technician while he was a freshman in High School. In fall of 99, Andy earned his General Class License with a 13wpm code test, and finally got his Extra Class license in the early 2000s. Andy has traveled the world extensively and has practiced radio monitoring in his travels since his early twenties.
Since around 1996 or 1997, he has been an upstanding member of the North Shore Radio Club (NS9RC). Besides radio monitoring, Andy is an avid DX chaser and makes HF contacts almost daily. Andy will be using his vast knowledge at Shortwave America to specialize in writing about Railroad, Marine, and some Aeronautical communications.
Besides radio communications, Andy brings to the table a working knowledge of world culture learned from his real life experiences, also fostered by his love of radio. When Andy isn't chasing DX or monitoring, he is oftentimes reading about different radio technical subjects and using his radio equipment to help him observe what he reads about. In that sense, Andy is also an experimenter who makes useful observations.
Shortwave America welcomes Andy, and we hope you will welcome him warmly as well.
Well PCJ will have a contest to make this happen. We are giving away 3 Tecsun DR920, and a grand prize a new Sangean ATS909X.
How will this work?
1. Beginning on the May 28th edition with Media Network Plus there will be a small that id asking a question will be played in the show (very easy question). This ID will also be used on Happy Station, Nash Holos, & Switzerland In Sound. All you need to do is answer the question and give details on where you heard the show either FM/AM/Shortwave or internet.
2. There are 3 Tecsun DR920 that we are giving away in June, July and August. Everyone that enters will be entered into the draw to win a new Sangean ATS909X. Winners will be announced in Media Network Plus. The grand prize of the Sangean ATS909 will be announced in the September edition on Media Network Plus.
3. Just make sure when you enter that you also give some program details.
4. Those who enter by snail mail will also receive a small thank you gift. The address to enter for winning one of the 3 Tecsun's and the final grand prize is: PCJ Radio, 8FL, No. 47, Lane 31, Section 1, Sanmin Road, Banciao, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC 22070 Or email: ats909x@gmail.com
Also let us know that you read this on the SHORTWAVE AMERICA BLOG!
Unfortunately, some places are not so much better than others; especially when people have to resort to dumpster diving. WATCH IT HERE.
Apparently this is a crime in the Netherlands, even though the food was discarded and from a logical point of view, cannot realistically be said to belong to anyone. Hopefully a time will come when no one will have to do this.
Over the last twenty four hours, this publication has reached a total count of just over twenty thousand unique readers! Thank you to everyone over the last two years who have chosen to be a part of Shortwave America! The 2011 developments spoken of months ago are being implemented although slowly.
Shortwave America has some really awesome plans for the future to come. These plans will be announced once they are cemented into place. Shortwave America would like to say a word of thanks to the following people who have been integral to the growth of this publication: The readers, Keith Perron & Paulette MacQuarrie, WRN, everyone who links over here, and all of the various people who give this place good mentions or featured headlines at different discussion groups & their moderators, and RadioReference for helping out with some items here and there.
Here's to many more years of publishing at Shortwave America!
As promised, the nationwide Amateur Radio Listening Gallery is now up and functional! Also as promised, it was posted with some work remaining to be done so readers can see what the offerings will be and get some idea what is being done to have the most useful information in one central place.
Go ahead! Please, enjoy this newest feature of Shortwave America and feel free to leave behind any of your thoughts.
It has recently been discovered that "The Poet" has a blog for TCS (The Crystal Ship). On it, Poet gives us an honest peek into why he does pirate radio. Confessions Of A Pirate is perhaps the BEST statement made against the powers that be in American radio, perhaps even worldwide since all of these people hold each others hands to begin with.
The first TCS blog post was on 7 August, 2010 and the newest post came on 7 May 2011. From all appearances at this present time in pirate radio, a war seems to be occurring between TCS and Radio Jamba International. Shortwave America will contact The Poet and ask for an interview on what The Crystal Ship is focusing on today, future plans, and the war with Radio Jamba.
After looking at the blog for Radio Jamba, it needs to be said that the ability to spell correctly, use good grammar, and construct sentences properly is paramount to running a publication just for starters. Posting your own SINPO reports from FRN is not good practice! Do something original! Seriously, Jamba! Here's a screenshot of Jamba's lameness:
BTW, that bowling alley sign photo, if real, is a great way for the FCC to find you....universally stupid! Why? Because it tells them about the area your sigs are possibly coming out of. We doubt you know anything about using photoshop. Shortwave America won't even give the link to Jamba for fear of insulting the entire radio community. Another thing Jamba, clean up your signal! Audio doesn't count when the signal is so bad!
Poet, if you're reading this....you run a great station! Keep up the good work! Salute!
VK1OD and some others have taken to other means in order that they may freely speak out. That is to say they have left Fred Lloyd's QRZ.com. A relatively new thread at the reference speaks about continued management problems, favoritism, cronyism, and general double standards at the garbage fill known as the zed.
The linked post at the reference is quite accurate about what goes on over there and is quite honest about the fact being that only the callsign look-up is worth anything there. Anyone who has been around for any period of time knows that this is not anything new. What goes on at the zed is a circus of the worst sort for Fred and his friends who are no better than the people who occupy certain portions of bandwidth across the HF bands.
Truth be told, Fred doesn't care at all what happens so long as people keep buying ad space from him. QRZ is a business and the folks there are simply filling empty space, giving him the best thing he can have...FREE advertising! When you use Fred's site, and you go tell others about it, you give him free business! Free for him, but advertisers pay.
The same products marketed by Fred can be found on the net for free and also compiled privately by way of simple copy & paste onto a word doc if someone thinks the information is useful enough to them. There are a million callsign look up's out here...why use Fred's? You get the same information you would get there! Heck, if you wanna see geo coordinates you can go use Google Earth! You can use any other geo location service out here, as many of them are free.
Fred Lloyd has perpetrated the best laid scam ever! Don't you get it? You who hang around the zed are his puppets and he laughs at you! He gets rich while all of you create the downfall of the amateur radio community! The public is watching! Fred has succeeded in making fools of all of you.
The zed has archives for the public to see. Anyone can at anytime, go see the current state of the zed as well as the archives! Some of you may say, "but the zed has a logbook feature"...so what? There are logbooks out there for free or for minimal cost! I have yet to see a logbook that has an extravagant cost attached to it!
If you need help with learning something or using a new piece of equipment...there are amateur radio clubs all over the country! Go congregate with them and make some friends! Most amateur clubs are more than willing to give help to a fellow amateur with the understanding that the person give help to others when they know enough.
All the things provided at the zed can be found elsewhere and you don't risk getting flamed, insulted, harassed, bullied, or banned! Shortwave America readers will notice that there is NO LINK here to the zed...there is a reason for that! QRZ is not a family friendly site and the readers here do not want to click on a link that may provide objectionable content.
The zed is a horrible example of how amateur radio ops act in the real world for the most part.
Here's K1OIK's video which was really about QRZ more than amateur ops in the real world with a few exceptions. Please note that there may be some rude, objectionable remarks made at the video and feel free to ignore the comments section if you need to....Burt does! In real life, Burt is an intelligent man who is kind and a lot of fun to be around. Shortwave America presents this without any endorsement in one direction or another.
However, it seems that there is some bad news attached to this: (Quote from Southgate)
"Recently, RNW management announced that it intended to speed up the process of replacing shortwave with other distribution platforms, including the closure of its relay stations in Bonaire and Madagascar. The Bonaire facility is scheduled for closure at the end of October 2012, but no closure date has yet been decided for Madagascar."
Of all the stations in the world, no one would have ever guessed that Radio Netherlands would even consider losing shortwave in favor of other media platforms. Thank God PCJ Radio has decided to keep shortwave radio alive with the new world service! If stations keep taking their shortwave operations off the air, all there will be left are pirates and although pirates aren't all bad, they risk getting raided by their respective broadcast licensing authorities if they operate too regularly as to become predictable.
Andy Sennitt at Radio Netherlands reported the following sad news at 1514UTC:
"I’m sorry to report that I have just learned via our Programme Distribution Department that Håkan Widenstedt of the Teracom shortwave station in Hörby, Sweden, passed away on 21 March 2011."
Beginning May 15th, 2011 Foundation For Democracy Of Vietnam will broadcast a daily program from 1430UTC to 1500UTC on 1503khz. This time slot had been used by the BBC Vietnamese Service until it was vacated because of the restructuring measures that have been taken by the BBC World Service. The 600kw transmitter and directional antenna azimuth of 247deg is located in Fangliao, South Taiwan (Pingtung County). This site is also used by Radio France International in Khmer, Radio Chan Troi Moi (New Horizon Radio) in Vietnamese, Family Radio in Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese and English.
Those of us who are TRAINED severe weather / tornado spotters know that you NEVER get up cloe and personal with a Tornado. We also know that our training tells us that when observing a tornado, we need to be at the opposite angle from where the tornado is moving, so we can SAFELY help the National Weather Service to get advance warning out and report on the behavior of the tornado.
The two goofballs you are about to see in this video make us all look bad, they get it all wrong and almost end up dead. The two not-so-bright people you will see in this video got themselves caught in the recent deadly tornado outbreak in Alabama. They have the radio on and the station is warning everyone listening to seek shelter immediately, and they do exactly the opposite!
What does this have to do with radio, you ask? These Darwin Award contestants have no communication with anyone! IF they were properly trained and had their amateur radio licenses, they would be able to actually be of some help to the community and possibly help save a few lives! In scenarios like this, communication with your local NWS and Emergency Management Agency makes all the difference!
The men and women of the United States Armed Forces have done well in their mission, accomplished it with excellence, and are now world-wide heroes for putting the minds of millions at ease.
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