When I was a kid I was fascinated by pirate radio stations. Occasionally we would hear a pirate station or two on the FM broadcast band playing odd music and going by fun DJ nicknames. Later when I got to college the trend continued. However, the stations seemed to be more interested in talk of politics and media censorship than playing any music. The media censorship argument was simply that the pirates felt they had no way to disseminate local information they decided was not being covered by large broadcast networks. They typically defined "local" to mean a few city blocks/square miles. Eventually the FCC addressed this need by creating the Low Power FM (LPFM) Service.

In the 90's you could be certain that everyone had access to a television and an AM/FM radio receiver but little more. Today a very large percentage of people have cells, laptops, and desktops with access to WIFI. A pirate today might use a wireless access point without an Internet connection to forward all http requests to a broadcast server web page. The computer would serve useful local information with a link to receive streaming audio (Shoutcast). The audio stream could either be pre-recorded or live with interesting local content. The station might even use familiar SSID's (102.1FM) to encourage listeners to log on. The size and coverage of the pirate radio network could be expanded considerably by adding more access points. The pirate radio network could even support multiple stations for different categories of listeners. It seems to me that in many areas a concept like this might be very popular.

I have a reached an interesting milestone with the Internet Remote Amateur Radio Station this morning.  Over the holidays I purchased a new HTC Touch Pro cell phone and switched service providers to Sprint. More important was that my new plan has unlimited data and that the HTC Touch Pro uses Windows Mobile 6.1.  Unfortunately, the Skype mobile application does not work on my HTC Touch Pro and HTC support does not seem to be a high priority. Luckily I found Fring. Fring is an alternative Skype client that is interoperable with Skype! This morning I installed the Fring voip application and connected to the Internet Remote.

At 12:15AM EST I contacted WA4TXE over a local repeater. I was pleased to hear that my audio was intelligible and that this might be a great alternative to using a HT!
 

The TLV320AIC3254 is a great new product from TI. At the price this would be an excellent design choice for an AF section in an AM/FM/SSB radio. Interesting to have limited DSP capabilities in the CODEC itself.

Over the past few years I have had a lot of fun with the MSP430 series microcontrollers and Chipcon single-chip radio ICs.  I was excited to hear that TI has decided to combine my two favorite IC choices from their product lines into a single  package.  If you have not seen the CC430 yet, it is definitely worth a few minutes. The package includes a MSP430F5x MCU and the CC1101.

We could use this platform on 70cm as an alternative to APRS. The CC1101 even supports a K=3 convolutional encoder and a nice data scrambler. How cool would it be to buy an APRS-like radio for $20 that could be the size of a quarter?

If anyone is interested in this concept, let me know. 

This is an interesting experiment performed by W1UJR on the coast of Maine.

I am very impressed with this elegant example of GA. This example should be in every Intro to Genetic Algoritms textbook. Read Roger's blog for more information.

I first noticed the Gravia on Ecogeek in February. I immediately ruled it out as unrealizable and moved on. I later found that the concept was created by a fellow Virginia Tech graduate & became interested. Virginia Tech even recognized this design on their website. While the Gravia has a fun kinematic element to the design, the forces don't add up.

Let's add a little math to the Gravia.

The falling weight is 50 lbs (22.68kg) and is designed to fall 58" (1.47m).

gravitational potential energy = mass*acceleration of gravity*height

326.72J = 22.68kg X 9.8m/(s^2) X 1.47m

Now if we consider that 1J = 1 watt-second, and ignore real world losses & LED inefficiencies, the Gravia will support a one watt LED for 326.72s (5.44m).

       The Gravia claims:

       ...light output will be 600-800 lumens - roughly equal to a 40-watt incandescent bulb over a period of 4 hours.

Obviously this claim is impossible even with an ideal unrealizable LED. I commend the graduate on developing an entertaining kinematic device that I am sure he can find other uses for.

Assuming the Gravia generates 326.72 watt seconds (ideal) he could power a small circuit with an average consumption of 22.688mW for 4 hours.

From time to time "Numbers Stations", as they are often called, can be found on HF. Numbers Stations have a long history of HF operation over the last 50+ years. When I came across this signal in January I couldn't resist recording a sample. For more information on these dinosaurs check out the Wiki.

Who doesn't love winding coils on an egg-beater?  

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