Fest Forums 2015 (Tentative, still subject to change) Friday, 27 February 2015
Fri. 0830 Radio on the Road 3 Janice Laws Janice recently returned from Haiti and will have some updated material, and some old classic recordings, along with pictures of her travels and radio listening while there and elsewhere around the world in this third installment of her very popular “Radio on the Road” series. Fri. 0945 The Year in Pirate Radio George Zeller Your host informs that, among the events during this sitting, will be the announcement of the 2015 inductees into the Pirate Radio Hall of Fame and a robust discussion about recent trends in “the only growth area of SW broadcasting”. He also vows not to go across the street to the Mexican restaurant before the session as he did last year. Fri. 1100 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 travelled to exotic Pacific and Indian Ocean locations with SDRs to capture the local medium and shortwave spectrum and enable others to experience a listening session in a location to which they may never physically travel. Thomas and Mark will 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 be available for attendees to copy! 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.] Fri. 1330 Coast to Coast - Geographically Enhanced Mediumwave Reception Bill Whitaker 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! Fri. 1445 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 SWLs who, with small inexpensive radios, are using just the built-in ferrite or telescoping antenna and are getting impressive performance. This talk with introduce the attendee to the SWL niche knows as Ultralight Radio (ULR) and discuss some amazing reception records obtained with these pocket-sized receivers. Fri. 1600 Crisis Radio Michael 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. Fri. 1900* (tentative – still awaiting confirmation) Remote Receiver DXing Bruce Churchill Fri. 2015 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. Fri. 2130 - ? The Annual Spectacular Shortwave Shindig with David Goren! Saturday, 28 February 2015 Sat. 0830 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. Sat. 0945 Scanner Session Tom Swisher (Further information forthcoming….maybe.) Sat. 1100 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. Sat. 1330 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. Sat. 1445 Digital Sounds of HF - Recognizing Digital HF Signals: Eyes and Ears Mike 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. _______________________________________________ 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
