Wireless Waffle - A whole spectrum of radio related rubbish

Antipodean Gainsignal strength
Friday 1 April, 2016, 10:03 - Radio Randomness
Posted by Administrator
Despite it being a well-known phenomena amongst radio fanatics around the World, there is little written on the internet concerning a strange effect known as 'Antipodean Gain' and for that reason Wireless Waffle has decided to take it upon ourselves to enlighten anyone who is not familiar with it.

Antipodean Gain can impact any radio wave capable of traversing the globe and therefore mainly applies to short-wave radio signals but in theory could be valid for medium-wave and long-wave signals too if the radio propagation conditions are right. The idea is a relatively simple one: if two stations wishing to communicate are at antipodal points, which put in laymans' terms means that they are exactly on the opposite sides of the planet from each other, it does not matter which way you direct a radio signal from either point, it will be aiming directly at the opposing point.

santiago xian mapTake, for example, Santiago in Chile (70.7W 33.5S), and Xi'an in China (108.9E 34.3N). To within 100 km (60 miles), these two metropoles lie exactly opposite each other on the globe. Thus, no matter which direction you face when standing in Xi'an, Santiago ise around 20,000 km away and the same is true in the reverse direction. If you think about this from the perspective of radio signals: whilst signals normally spread out as they travel away from the transmitting antenna, with antipodeal metropoles the signals re-converge. Therefore any signal leaving the transmitter site will be directed to the receiving site and although they may have originally been spread out, the re-focussing of the signals will mean they add back together and the path between the two will have far less path loss than one which is of a similar length but is not antipodean.

The map to the right shows the World from the perspective of someone standing in Santiago. China is the circle which is in every direction you look, and the very edge of this is the city of Xi'an (the outer circle coloured in red), and so no matter in which direction you look, you will be looking towards Xi'an. The same would be true of someone standing in Xi'an: no matter which way they looked, they would be facing Santiago.

If this is still too complicated, just think of the North and South poles. It doesn't matter which way you face at the North pole, you will always be looking directly towards the South pole (and vice versa). And thus, an omni-directional antenna, which transmits in every direction, when used to communicate with a city on the opposite side of the Earth would effectively be a highly directional antenna, with all of its radiation focused on that city. Signals that would otherwise have spread out would be re-focused into a tight beam.

juan and xinIf this sounds all too unrealistic, work out which country is at the antipodal point of your current location and tune in to a short-wave radio station that is transmitted from that location. For the UK, this is pretty much New Zealand (although strictly speaking, New Zealand is antipodeal to Spain). For the USA and Canada, you are largely out of luck, as the opposite side of the planet mostly comprises the wide, open and empty expanses of the Pacific Ocean.

So now you know. And to help you calculate where your antipodeal point is, just enter your latitude and longitude (in decimal degrees) into the Wireless Waffle Antipodal Point Calculator below, and press 'antipodate me' and we'll do the maths for you. You can then click on the globe to the right and see the your location and that of your antipodal location on Google maps. As they say in France, 'Voila!', or as they say in China, 'Zhèli shì'!

Wireless Waffle Antipodal Point Calculator
Your Latitude (e.g. 33.9N)your location
Your Longitude (e.g. 108.9E)
Antipodal Latitudeantipodal location
Antipodal Longitude

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CBGB (Citizens Band Great Britain)signal strength
Friday 11 March, 2016, 13:34 - Radio Randomness
Posted by Administrator
dukesofhazzardWireless Waffle has been contacted by Will Hogan who is putting together a book entitled 'CBGB' which will celebrate the culture of CB radios across Great Britain in the 1980s. To let Will take over the commentary:
Inspired by the amazing artwork of Eyeball cards, we aim to interview enthusiasts to get a real insight from the people that made it happen, and explore the cards themselves.

We already have a bank of cards from Suffolk, and a few interviewees, but we really need more to show the national scope of CB culture at this time. I'll be working with award-winning photographer, David Titlow who specialises in portraits (his work can be seen at the National Gallery as he's the latest recipient of the Taylor Wessing portrait prize).

Absolutely any help we could get - even looking at Eyeball cards that anyone has - would be amazing. There's no pressure to talk or be quoted, but anyone who would be willing to would be fantastically helpful.

If you could help Will out, please get in touch with him. His telephone number is +44 (0) 7966 072826.
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Pirate radio to go digitalsignal strength
Saturday 23 January, 2016, 11:49 - Broadcasting, Licensed, Pirate/Clandestine, Radio Randomness, Spectrum Management
Posted by Administrator
The number of pirate radio stations on-air in London does not appear to have diminished over the past 10 or more years, despite there now being many legal ways in which stations could reach their audiences, most recently though streaming audio on-line.

brighton dab transmitterOfcom has recently proposed that many local radio stations could be accommodated on 'small scale DAB' transmitters which provide a localised service, and it is conducting a number of trials around the UK of such a service. The idea is to use low cost hardware and software to develop the DAB signals, for example using a USRP software radio, and the various software tools provided by the Open Digital Radio project. Using these, it is possible to put a (very) low power DAB station on-air for less than GBP1000 and with a suitable power amplifier (for example a 30 Watt Mitsubishi amplifier module, or how's about a 1.2 kW amplifier module), a DAB transmitter with reasonable coverage can be built for not that much more. Indeed research conducted for Ofcom suggests that a 100 Watt e.r.p. service using such technology could be provided to broadcasters for around GBP1400 per year (at a bit rate of 160 kbps which is far higher quality than most of the existing UK DAB services!)

An article in spectrum newsletter PolicyTracker entitled, 'Can DAB save us from the pirates?' (note - a subscription is required to read the full article), makes the point that the criteria which the UK has set to begin the digital switch-over of radio services (e.g. the turning off of analogue services in favour of digital) is almost upon us. The criteria is that 50% of UK listening should be on a digital platform (whether DAB, on-line, cable, satellite or other) and the latest figures show this is now up to 43%, though as Wireless Waffle has pointed out before, the proportion of digital listening appears to have stagnated. If the UK does set a date for the winding down of FM radio, one of two things could happen:
  1. pirates may move to digital platforms, in order to be found on the same dial as other stations; or
  2. pirates may take the opportunity of an emptier FM band to choose clearer frequencies, increase their power, or just increase the number of services.

The problem is that in either case there is no guarantee that the pirates would do this in a legal fashion. Pirate radio stations are not renowned for co-operating with each other so why would they pay to be on a DAB platform, rather than buy the equipment themselves and set up digital pirate stations? The answer might come in the form of the reduced number of frequencies available. In the FM band, assuming a station every 300 kHz (which is just about OK from an interference perspective), there is room for 68 stations on the dial. Taking into account the 20 or so legal stations already on-air in London (depending on what you count as London), this leaves a potential for 48 pirates. For DAB radio, which requires 1.4 MHz of spectrum to operate, there is room for just 32 transmissions in any one location. In London 4 of these frequency blocks are in use, leaving 28 'available'.

local dab radio"Ah", you say, "but each DAB multiplex can carry 10 or more stations, so really the number is 280". That is true, but this requires the pirates to club together to buy and operate the equipment and, as already stated, they aren't that good at this. Perhaps the business model they employ could change, and a smaller number of illegal transmitter operators could provide services to multiple pirate stations. Or perhaps a small number of legal transmitter operators could provide the same service. The problem here seems to be that in order to legitimise the pirates, they would have to be invited to 'come in from the cold', and Ofcom would have to have a set of licensing policies that were sufficiently lax to permit 24 stations all playing the same kind of electro-shed, play-house or garage-door music onto the dial. It is almost certain that the existing legitimate stations would object to this on the grounds that it would provide unfair competition. But the fact is that such competition already exists on the FM band, and at least if it were done under a licensed framework, there would be some control over what went on, and thus greater protection of the existing 'big boys'.

Maybe Ofcom could take a leaf out of the book of the Lebanese regulator (the TRA) who offered all unlicensed FM operators (which was a large proportion of the country's stations at the time), a licence, if they came forward and provided the necessary details of their transmitting facilities (power, frequency, antenna height and so on). Most stations did this, wishing to gain legitimacy for their service. As soon as they did, however, the TRA could begin to change frequencies, powers and so on to bring the stations in-line, through a proper legal framework that allowed them to inflict penalties if people refused.

pirate surrenderAnother model might be for Ofcom to licence small-scale DAB operators, but not to set any criteria over which stations are carried on the multiplex, other than their normal broadcasting code which is designed, for example, to stop politically motivated stations from using the airwaves in an partial way. Other than a bit of swearing here and there, most pirate stations would probably already meet most of the rules. This is not dissimilar to the way in which Ofcom licenses digital television, with multiplexes being awarded to companies who are then largely at liberty to select which programmes they include.

In either of the above cases, whether the idea that Ofcom could have an 'amnesty' for pirates, if they agreed to go onto small DAB multiplexes, or if the operation of the DAB multiplexes were made flexible enough to accommodate pirate stations being on them, there might be a sufficient increase the listening to DAB services such that the necessary 50% switch-over threshold is reached sooner rather than later. A 'win-win' situation?
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How Not To Install A Satellite Dish (Part I)signal strength
Tuesday 31 March, 2015, 04:51 - Radio Randomness, Satellites, Much Ado About Nothing
Posted by Administrator
It's been a long while since anyone at Wireless Waffle installed any satellite dishes, however as part of a project to improve language skills, it was decided that the WW HQ would be fitted with the kit needed to receive German television. This is the sad story of the trials and tribulations of what should have been a simple job in the hope that it may help others trying the same thing not to fall into the same traps that befell our attempts!

Firstly, a visit to Lyngsat and a browse through the dozens of satellites that cover Europe quickly yielded the fact that the channels that were wanted could be found on various Astra 1 satellites at an orbital position of 19.2 degrees East (19.2E). As a ready reckoner, the following orbital positions are the 'hot-slots' for various European languages:
  • English - 28.2E
  • French - 5W
  • German - 19.2E
  • Italian - 5W or 13E
  • Polish - 13E

astra 1m footprintThe next thing to do is find out what size of dish is needed to receive the satellite that's of interest. This is more complex as it requires a knowledge of the satellite's footprint and the strength of signal at a particular location. For 19.2E in the UK, even a 55cm dish should be fine pretty much everywhere, so a Triax 54cm dish was duly purchased together with a suitable wall bracket and an Inverto LNB.

The mounting of the dish on the wall was relatively straightforward, having made sure that there were no obstructions in the line-of-sight from the dish to the satellite (such as trees or other buildings). With the dish on the wall, the next step is to align it so that it is pointing at the satellite. In general a rough idea of the right direction can be gathered if you know your latitude and longitude and the satellite you wish to receive through many online tools (such as dishpointer.com).

Getting the dish pointing in roughly the right direction is not too difficult, but even a small dish needs to be pointing with an accuracy of better than plus or minus 1 degree (bigger dishes have to be even more accurately aligned) and so some form of fine tuning is needed.

In analogue days gone past, by far the best way to align a dish was to connect it to a satellite receiver, and connect the satellite receiver to a television, and put the whole lot in a place where the TV could be seen from the dish. With the satellite receiver tuned to a channel on the appropriate satellite, it was then just a matter of moving the dish about until a signal could be seen on the TV. Once the signal was found, gently moving the dish from side-to-side and up-and-down to a point where the quality of the picture was maximised was all that was needed. Of course the same method can still be used today, but there has to be a less crude way, right? Right...

slx satfinderThe SLX Satellite Finder costs less than a few metres of CT-100 coax, and provides both a visual indication of signal strength (using the in-built meter) and an audible indication (using the in-built buzzer). All that is then required to use this to align a dish is a 'patch lead' so that the dish can be connected to a socket on the meter and then a lead coming from the (indoor) satellite receiver connected to the other socket on the meter to supply power. So far, so good.

Now, turn on the satellite receiver and return to the dish. In theory, the meter should only register a signal if the dish is pointing at a satellite. However, the modern Inverto LNB was obviously doing a far better job of receiving than the systems that the crusty SLX meter was being designed to work with resulting in a full-scale meter deflection (and an annoying beep that could not be turned off) almost regardless of the position of the dish. No amount of experimentation yielded anything other than full-strength or nothing, and the full-strength indication happened across a wide arc of the sky and with the elevation angle of the dish anything within 10 degrees of that which should have been right. In a word, beeping useless!

sf 95dr satfinderNot to be defeated, and rather than cart the TV and receiver outdoors, a second, seemingly more modern meter was purchased, the SF-95DR Satellite Finder. This proved to be marginally better, but having the dish within 'a few' degrees of the right position still yielded a full-scale signal. At least the beep could be turned off.

An old trick from the analogue days to reduce the signal to make fine tuning the position of the dish easier if the signal was very strong, was to cover the dish in a damp tea-towel. The water in the towel will attenuate the signal making the signal weaker and thus the dish easier to align. This trick was tried using the SF-95DR but alas, only resulted in the need to keep picking up a damp tea-towel from the floor, every time the wind blew it off.

Eventually, more through luck than skill, a point was found where the meter indicated a peak that was within a degree or so of nothingness in nearby directions, suggesting that the dish was aligned to a satellite. An excited scan of the receiver revealed some signals but alas, from the wrong satellite (13 East instead of 19.2 East). Of course the meter would no more know which satellite it was pointing at than an amoeba would know the difference between a car and a lorry, just that both seem pretty big. More fiddling, and a slightly damper tea-towel and a second 'peak' was found. Another tune of the receiver and 'Allelujah!' channels that were being transmitted from 19.2 East were found. But only from one transponder...

dish alignment girlWhat could this mean? Was it that the dish was roughly aligned but that only the very strongest signal was being received? Was it that the LNB was faulty? Was there a fault in the cable from the dish to the receiver indoors? Any (or all) of these could be the problem and with nothing more to go on, it seemed that the only way to resolve the issue was to resort to carting the TV and receiver outdoors so that the screen could be seen from the location of the dish. Doing this would mean that the 'signal strength' and 'quality' bars on the receiver's on-screen menu display could be used to point the dish more accurately.

A new patch lead from the dish to the receiver was fitted with F-connectors (thereby ruling out any problem with the coax feeding indoors). Power up... And the receiver is showing 100% signal strength (very good!) but a signal quality of only 60% (OK but not brilliant). No amount of dish repositioning would yield any improvement and still just the one transponder was receiveable. Before giving up and ordering a new LNB, and with an increasing level of suspicion building up, the meter was taken out of line so that the dish was connected directly to the receiver without the meter in circuit.

Hey presto...! Now the receiver was showing 100% signal and 80% quality and, wait for it, all of the transponders on the satellite could be received. A final fine-tune of the dish position and the quality of reception was increased to 90% - not a bad result at all. Moving the TV and receiver back indoors to the other end of the original run of coax and this excellent result was maintained. It seems that the meter may have been overloaded by the signal from the satellite and was somehow distorting the signal (possibly it was generating harmonics or intermodulation products).

So the lessons from this cautionary tale are:
  • Don't use cheap 'satellite finder' meters to help align dishes, they cause more problems than they solve.
  • Stick to the tried and tested methods and just move a TV and receiver to a place where they can be seen from the dish and use the receiver's signal meter for alignment.
  • Damp tea-towels should be used for wiping down surfaces in kitchens and not for the setting-up of sensitive electronic equipment.

At this point you're probably thinking that this is the end of this cautionary tale, but you'd be wrong... there's more to come! Stay tuned to Wireless Waffle for our next extremely uninspiring episode of: HOW NOT TO INSTALL A DISH.
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