Shortwave "Discone" Antenna, Former AT&T High Seas Radio Site, Ocean Gate, NJ, 2009.
All the pixels, somewhat obsolete, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4141766569/
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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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Ships on the high seas occasionally currently make some use of shortwave radio, but its importance has greatly diminished in the last few decades. The Coast Guard still maintains a "watch" on emergency shortwave frequencies, listening for distress calls, but most transoceanic ships are now equipped with more modern, higher-bandwidth satellite communications systems.
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There’s no equivalent SWL library I know of to record the sounds of various shortwave tech as it passes away never to be heard from again, e.g. Loran A signals on 1.85/1.95 MHz. Same for ships at sea.
@[email protected] There are some archives out there, but they're scattered and largely poorly indexed.
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I meant, library equivalent to the Internet Archive. Well, I imagine the NSA has one, but…
Thanks!
ps, I ran across the Radio South Africa sign-off on YouTube a while back. It seemed very exotic to me as a kid listening on my radio in Washington State.
https://youtu.be/2JZ8N_gk9SY?si=SNmyoGM02R7sVaJe
@wa7iut @mattblaze There's the Signal ID wiki: https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/LORAN
@kyhwana @mattblaze
Thanks! LORAN A sounded a lot different. It operated around 1.8 MHz. It was more of a droning, like a piston engine airpland cruising along. LORAN C operates at 100 kHz and sounds more impulse or digital to me. I was actively listening in the late 1960s and LORAN A went away in favor of LORAN C in the early 70s. Soundtrack of my youth, along with WWV😂
@wa7iut @kyhwana That's also my recollection of what LORAN-A sounded like. More of a buzz than a pulse (which is how LORAN-C sounds).
The Russian Woodpecker (which was actually Ukrainian!) is another of the sounds I won't forget but that are almost lost to history.
@[email protected] @[email protected] And don't get me started about WGU-20...