School Of The Air is still broadcasting on Shortwave apparently, someone's just sent me a frequency guide so I'll take a listen.
According to the information I've just received, School Of The Air are planning to use a mode of DRM on shortwave, now that will be interesting. On 20/12/2011, at 7:35 AM, Martin McCormick wrote: > Dane Trethowan writes: >> I purchased a Sangean ATS909X "World Band" receiver quite some time ago >> and I'm now only putting the set through its paces. >> >> I could write pages and pages about this unit and I'll do that on my blog >> in the future I'm sure but I do feel that this set deserves praise for >> its SSB reception. >> >> Tuning round the 8-9MHZ frequency range this morning I was able to listen >> to the "Flying Doctors" service, the reception wasn't brilliant but I was >> able to identify the organisation and "Julia Creek", that's a town in >> Central Australia. >> >> Now I've never received this before and - whilst Its obviously possible >> to receive the service as I proved - I always thought you'd need a bigger >> aerial than I was using, I just used the built-in telescopic whip of the >> radio which is around 6 feet long. > > A bigger antenna would bring in more signals, but sometimes, you > run up against the issue of front-end overload where the > receiver is overwhelmed by the level of the signals that the > outdoor antenna brings in and any active stages in the front end > begin to act like mixers which is not what they are supposed to > do. > >> Perhaps what makes things different these days is the absence of a lot of >> traffic from the SW bands. >> >> For those interested in this radio I recommend it as it is one of the few >> these days to offer both dual conversion circuitry and a variable RF-gain >> control across all frequencies from 100-29999KHZ. > > That's very good. You should hear the ten-meter amateur > band and probably a lot of illegal CB pirates from North > America. The only thing I can say about CB pirates is that > they are not on the amateur bands. They know better or at least > most of them aren't that stupid. > >> The set also comes equipped with a very nice "DSP" which brings the radio >> alive! when listening to medium-wave broadcasts where a strong signal is >> next to a waker one, the DSP allows the weaker signal to be heard >> intelligibly. > > With the increasing Solar activity, the Sun is making > the frequencies between 20 and 30 MHZ come to life again after > several years of nothing but cosmic hiss and static so you > should enjoy a lot of good listening. > > You mentioned the Flying Doctor Service. I read about > that some when I was in college as it was the platform that > supported the School of the Air for kids who lived in the > Outback. This was in the late seventies when I was studying > about this topic so I think it was still in operation then. I > think the School of the Air now uses satellite terminals which > gives them a much better level of service than the short wave > radios did, but what the Royal Flying Doctor Service did back > then was pure genius. > > Martin > > ======================================= > > The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus > and worm-free > > To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web > pages located at > http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat > > You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at > either of the following websites: > > http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html > > Or: > <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> > you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: > <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> > > --------------------------------------- ======================================= The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> ---------------------------------------
