2015 Winter SWL Fest Program (Final—as far as we can tell)
(All Times EST. All Forum Sessions and The Shortwave Shindig in Chestnut A/B unless otherwise indicated.) Thursday, 26 February 2015 1900 – Presidential Suite Hospitality Room Opens (or perhaps earlier) 2100 -- Registration Table Opens (in Hospitality Room until 2200) 2400 – Hospitality Room Closes (earlier or later depending on use) Friday, 27 February 2015 0800 -- Exhibit Room Opens in Chestnut C (including, among other activities, demos , club tables and sales, and Radio HF radio/accessories/book store.) Registration Table (in Exhibit Room until 1030, reopening 1300) 0830 -- Forum 1 Radio on the Road 3 Janice Laws Janice recentlyon the Road” series. 0945 – Forum 2 The Year in Pirate Radio George Zeller Your hostgo across the street to the Mexican restaurant before the session as he did last year. 1100 – Forum 3 Time Travel, Teleportation & Spectrum Hoarding for the Contemporary DXer Thomas Witherspoon & Mark Fahey Software-defined radios (SDR) have revolutionized radio monitoring providing DXers with receiving options that were only theoretically possible a few years ago. Mark has travelledwill demonstrate and present the recording techniques used and the plans to record spectrum further afield in the coming year. [N.B.: A library of spectrum files will Bring your own NTFS formatted USB drive (typically each file is 50GB or greater) and you will experience how the bands sound in China, New Zealand, Tasmania and both very remote and city locations in Australia. They will play on a Windows PC with commercial (but free-of-charge) software.] 1200- 1330 Lunch Break (on your own) Hospitality Room Open 1300 – Registration Table (in Exhibit Room until 1500) 1330 – Forum 4 Coast to Coast - Geographically Enhanced Mediumwave Reception Bill Whitacre Things learned from experiencing DXpeditions to Grayland, WA and Lubec, ME over the past 5 years. An overview, not initially technical in nature, but could become so if such questions come up. Sound sample included! 1445 – Forum 5 Ultralight Mediumwave DXing Gary Donnelly It sure helps to have a great antenna farm and an expensive radio that dims the lights in the neighborhood when turned on. But there is a group of DXerss who, with small inexpensive radios, are using just the built-in ferrite or telescoping antenna and getting impressive performance. This talk will introduce the attendee to the DXing niche known as Ultralight Radio (ULR) and discuss some amazing reception records obtained with these pocket-sized receivers. 1600 – Forum 6 Crisis Radio Michael Pool a/k/a The Radio Professor This forum will focus on radio as it sounds locally during crises--including recordings and airchecks captured during natural disasters, terrorist attacks. civil unrest, and the like. They are intriguing as they offer a snapshot of immediate human emotions and opinion, fresh and occasionally naïve, regarding some really serious stuff that the reporters and presenters have really had no time on which to reflect. 1700 Dinner Break (on your own) Exhibit Room Closes 1830 Hospitality Room Reopens Exhibit Room Reopens Swap Meet (Ongoing) 1900 – Forum 7 Radio and Today's Teenagers Anthony Messina With cell phones and Internet radio technologies, how do teens think of radio today? From the perspective of an 18 year old, Anthony will discuss how he got into shortwave radio and DX'ing in the age of internet and smartphones. No, we're not here with the stereotypical "radio is dead!" message. You just might be surprised of what the teens today think about radio, even AM and Shortwave! 2015 – Forum 8 Kicking It Old School - A Return to Regenerative Receivers Skip Arey A radio design at the very roots of RF Technology is experiencing a resurgence. Learn about this classic circuit and how to use it to bring new excitement to your SW listening. 2130 – “The Wee Hours” The Annual Spectacular Shortwave Shindig with David Goren! Including a live, hour-long broadcast over WRMI, Radio Miami International, on 7570 kHz. from 0300-0400 GMT/UTC (Saturday), 2200-2300 EST (Friday) beamed 315 degrees from Okeechobee, Florida. 2400 Exhibit Room Closes (Possibly Earlier) Hospitality Room Closes (Earlier or Later Depending on Use) Saturday, 28 February 2015 0800 -- Exhibit Room Opens in Chestnut C (including, among other activities, demos, club tables and sales, and Radio HF radio/accessories/book store.) Registration Table (in Exhibit Room until 1000) 0830 – Forum 9 The View from Europe Risto Vahakainu Reporting on the state of the hobby in Europe and in Finland. The impact of SDRs will be noted as will the “Irish church listening” that is now popular in Finland, the decreasing number of European MW stations, the statistics of stations heard in Finland from NA, Asia, Pacific and other continents, along with a look at the fantastic remote DX sites and “shacks” of northern Finland. 0945 – Forum 10 “UFOs, Gliders and Planes, Oh My!” Tom Swisher UFOs and gliders, planes, trains and automobiles, boats, ships and barges. . . what to monitor with your trusty old scanner when the local cops go digital. 1000 SILENT AUCTION Begins (Spruce Room) 1100 – Forum 11 Monitoring Dusty War Zones and Tropical Paradises - Being a Broadcast Anthropologist Mark Fahey Mark presents a tour of his monitoring station, where 100's of thousands of digital audio and video channels arrive into his home. He can listen to domestic radio or watch the domestic television from most parts of the world. Want to watch breakfast television from Tibet, or maybe the nightly news from Wallis and Futuna - then it’s available in perfect studio quality. The presentation also includes visits to remote broadcasters and examples of rare and unedited video sent by journalists that capture the tragedies and joy served up by our planet. 1200-1330 Lunch (on your own) Hospitality Room Open 1330 – Forum 12 The Keeping of Time Mark Phillips With the ever-constant transfer of our hobby to digital modes, the keeping of accurate time becomes crucial to preserve both audio quality and network connectivity. Topics covered will include an explanation of the difference between all the usual time sources and why they are different, why you need an accurate time base in the studio and why broadcasters need accurate time within their broadcast networks. 1445 – Forum 13 Recognizing Digital HF Signals: Eyes and Ears Michael Chace-Ortiz There are hundreds of different digital signals that you can encounter during any scan through the HF bands. While you can spend thousands of dollars on software that might identify a particular mode you are hearing, there’s still an awful lot you can do with just your eyes and ears. We’ll take an interactive audio-visual tour around shortwave and get acquainted with many different modem signals, Over The Horizon RADARs, ionospheric sounders, ocean sensing systems and various other digital oddities that can be heard today. 1600 SILENT AUCTION Ends (Please promptly collect your winnings and pay your bids.) Exhibit Room Closes Hospitality Room Reopens (closes 1700, reopens 1900) 1730 – Cocktail Half-Hour (This is the “formal” part. Many of you will have already started or will take this into several hours anyway.) 1800 – BANQUET (Chestnut B/C) – Keynote, not yet determined. (Those not holding banquet tickets are cordially invited to rejoin the group after dinner around 2000 or so to take part in after dinner activities.) 2100 – LE GRANDE RAFFLE (Your Host: Harold “Dr. DX” Cones. The management promises to try and do this in record time… record least time, that is…Be forewarned, however. We’ve managed to break this promise every single year.) 2400 – PANCHO’S “MIDNIGHT RIDE” (if one were to know…) _______________________________________________ Swlfest mailing list Swlfest@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swlfest To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to swlfest-requ...@hard-core-dx.com?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above. For more information on the Fest, visit: http://www.swlfest.com http://swlfest.blogspot.com