By age 12, he had taught himself the basics of vacuum tube theory.
#Radyo independans license
Paul Litwinovich is a shortwave listener, amateur radio operator and holds a commercial FCC license as well here’s his bio, taken from the WSHU website: Vacuum in a Tube Enabled Sound from a Box.Sounds good, looks great: Radio Cabinetry.A Radio for the Great Depression, Part II.
If you would like to start at the beginning of the series, go to the bottom of the list first, then work your way up:
Here are links to each article written thus far in the Vintage Radio series.
#Radyo independans series
Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Richard Cuff, for pointing out a brilliant series of articles called Vintage Radio by WSHU Chief Engineer, Paul Litwinovich. It’s during these little mistakes that numbers stations inadvertently tell us who they are (Radio Havana Cuba content has accidentally been played before on Cuban numbers stations). I imagine spies huddled around their radios, cursing at the interruptions and frustrated they had to listen for an additional hour and I imagine the confusion at the broadcast site as they tried to diagnose the problem in a live broadcast. Here’s the recording:Įvidently, this message had some important content–otherwise they wouldn’t have re-broadcast the entire set the following hour, 105 kHz up from the original frequency (most likely protocol after technical difficulties). And this time, the numbers set sounds cleaner, with fewer problems. You’ll hear the audio drop I scan for a few seconds, then return to 11,635, and HM01 comes back. This broadcast audio also begins a little awkwardly. Via a little band scanning, I discovered that HM01 had unexpectedly migrated 105 kHz higher, to 11,635 kHz. Since it was near the top of the hour, and HM01 broadcasts only tend to last one hour, I didn’t expect to hear the broadcast repeat–and it didn’t, at least on 11,530. The five-number sets continue for about a minute, then the carrier unexpectedly drops: Then, close to the top of the hour, HM01 audio dropped for a minute or so, then switched back to five-number sets with no digital bursts between though I wasn’t copying the message, I suspected that someone in the studio intentionally, perhaps in frustration–or else accidentally–started the broadcast from the beginning again.Īt this point, I started recording. Several times during the HM01 broadcast, I heard the audio (not the AM carrier) drop in the middle of numbers sets and digital bursts. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard hiccups on HM01 ( see this post from last year, for example), so I wasn’t terribly surprised. Nonetheless, I kept it playing in the background as I tooled around the radio room Sunday afternoon, putting away supplies from my recent three week road trip. It’s always intriguing to hear shortwave numbers stations, but I prefer those that stick to pure vocal number strings HM01 has numbers with digital bursts between number sets, which is a more fatiguing listening experience. While band scanning last Sunday (September 8, 2014) I stumbled upon the Cuban numbers station HM01 on 11,530 kHz at 17:30 UTC.