Mini-Circuits and Stamps

I recently received a global email from Mini-Circuits CEO, Harvey Kaylie, informing me of a Holiday Season discount. A copy of the email is below:

To our valued friends and customers,

To say thank you for making 2016 a successful year, we’re pleased to announce a special Holiday Season Discount:
All purchases of any quantity of Mini-Circuits catalog models ordered and shipped from our webstore on minicircuits.com from December 1st through December 31st will receive a 10% discount!

The discount will appear for items in your shopping cart on our webstore checkout page at the time of purchase. Please see our website for terms and conditions. This offer expires on December 31st, so don’t miss out!

From all the members of the Mini-Circuits family to all of you, our customers, we wish you a very happy, healthy holiday season!
Warm regards,

Harvey Kaylie
Founder and CEO
Mini-Circuits

I have checked with the UK supplier and I can confirm that the discount is available outside of the USA. Just order what you want as normal through the Mini-Circuits website.

Some of the components I have bought from Mini-Circuits this year

I bought some leads and components a few months ago and have been impressed with the quality of each item. The service from the UK supplier was excellent, especially as I had to change the order part way through the processing. All the components came from the USA, but the delay was minimal.

If you need some new components then get in there quick for the 10% discount.

 

Stamps of Radio Stations by Continents and Countries

At the end of November the SWLing blog had a post about collecting postage stamps with a connection to radio.

I’m by no means a proper stamp collector but the reason I found the blog of interest was because in August I had actually bought some First Day Covers and a Mint set of stamps commemorating 50 years of the BBC on Ascension Island. I had been stationed on Ascension in the 90’s whilst in the RAF and I spent quite a lot of my days off at English Bay beach which is right next to the transmitter site. Plenty of good memories.

The SWLing blog was about a Word document created by Lennart Weirell of Sweden. He has been able to collate a list of all the stamps that has a connection with Broadcast Radio and turn it into a twenty-four page document. It lists the 125 countries that have produced such stamps and the information includes date of issue, the Michael number, value (at issue) and name of the stamp. There are also tick boxes so that you can mark off whether you have these stamps in your collection.

It doesn’t say this in the document but you can however go one step further than the tick boxes. If you have a scanner, just scan your stamps into a picture folder and then create a link to each relevant picture in the Word document. It’s as simple as highlighting the stamp name for example and then clicking on the Hyperlink button in the Insert tab group of Word (you can also use the Control-K shortcut). Just find the picture folder and the scanned image and link them up. As long as you don’t change the image location, each time you go to the Word document, clicking on the link will open it up.

The Word document is €4, but contact Lennart by email first so that he can send you a PayPal invoice. His email address and further information about the document is available on the image above.

The 50 years of the BBC stamps are available from the Ascension Island Post Office website.

A scan of my First Day Cover “50 years of the BBC on Ascension Island” stamps

December Warships International Fleet Review

As I said in my last post, I was expecting there to be a few of my images in the December edition of Warships IFR magazine. This has turned out to be correct.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the images are part of an article on Exercise Joint Warrior 162 written by Phil Rood. Unmanned Warrior was also taking place at the same time (as part of Joint Warrior really) and the article also goes into detail about this too.

The editor of the magazine, Iain Ballantyne, has kindly allowed me to publish extracts from the magazine here.

Another of my images was included as part of a news item on the German navy and their recent order for five new Braunschweig-class corvettes.

Further information on the magazine, including subscription plans, are available on their website – http://www.warshipsifr.com/

Recent published work and photography processes

It’s been a busy six months or so for me with regards to having work published.

My main work has been the continuous analysis of the Russian navy to assist the editor of Fighting Ships, Stephen Saunders, to keep the data in the yearbook as accurate and up to date as possible. This information is also used in the on-line version of the yearbook. The current 2016/2017 edition is now available with plenty of my Russian navy data included, along with photos that I’ve taken.

As you know I stopped selling the yearbooks last year (apart from a large sale at the beginning of this year) and since then IHS have added older titles to their online store. Though not as cheap as I was able to get them, it may be worth taking a look to see if there’s any titles you may need in your collection. Here’s the link to the Fighting Ships page in the store.

As with all things involved with data analysis, looking into one thing generally off-shoots into another. From the OSINT work that I generally do for Fighting Ships, I normally have to take notes and data which would also fit into some of the other yearbooks. Some of this data has been sent to the various editors of the C4ISR yearbooks, which I hope will also be included in future publications. And there’s also photographs of radars, weapons and other systems that I’ve been taking over the last few years that hopefully will also be of use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The OSINT work also brought me to the attention of one of the IHS magazines, Jane’s Intelligence Review. Since May I have worked on three articles for this magazine, two in conjunction with other writers, and one on my own. I am currently working on two more pieces for them, but at this time I can’t divulge on the subject matter.

The work has been very interesting indeed, and has brought me a couple of new acquaintances and friends from it. I’m hoping that that I can carry on with other articles for them once the two I’m working on now are complete.

 
Another magazine by IHS, Jane’s Navy International, has used a couple of my photos in recent months with hopefully more to follow. The magazines can be subscribed to from the IHS magazine online store.

It’s good work editing images for magazines, but its certainly a lot harder than it used to be – in general for less money than what you used to receive. The advent of digital photography has reduced the prices one gets for inclusion in magazines, mainly due to the fact that so many people now do it and so the editors have a plethora of images available to them. The silly thing is that in the old days you used to only take the photo, normally on slide film (Kodachrome 64), with no further editing by yourself (unless you happened to process the images in your own darkroom – I didn’t!). You’d send away the film to Kodak who would process it for you, and then you’d check over the slides after they’d been returned, deciding on which ones to send away. The only real work needed was to annotate the slide with basic information, and include a letter with further notes and where to post the cheque payment if used. Of course, you’d never see the slide again, and so if you wanted to have a copy for yourself then you’d need to take two photos – it was costly business using slide hence the payments you received being greater than they are now for far less work (one trip to the USA cost me more in Kodachrome 64 than it did in flights!!).

These days, the full photo process takes much longer.

Take the recent Joint Warrior (JW) exercise that I photographed. For this exercise I set aside two days for the actual photography. I then needed a further four days to carry out the actual editing of the photos for various publications! With current copyright laws, and the fact that most publishers are aware that photographers send away the very same image for inclusion in different magazines, the publishers now insist on exclusivity with an image (including publication online). Because of this, as a photographer you have to think ahead about who you are taking photos for. With JW I was thinking of three main possible targets – Fighting Ships, Jane’s Navy International and Warships IFR. As well as these I also had to think about the various other yearbooks by IHS (C4ISR and Weapons). So, if one ship comes along I need to take at least three images of it, maybe milliseconds apart, to cover the three main publications. Multiply that by a few hundred and you can see that there is a lot of images to go through once back home.

Back home then, I now need to process the images myself – no longer do they go away to Kodak for initial processing, and the publication no longer fine tunes the image for what ever use they may have. You need to trim it, get the exposure and colours right and make sure it’s sharp. Not only do you need to edit each image, you also have to include additional information for each one. This needs to be a title, your name, copyrights, what the subject is, when and where you took it and any other information you may think is needed for the publisher. With over 400 photos to go through for this JW it took a lot of time to carry out the whole process – 4 days as I’ve already said. From the 400 or more images that I took, I sent away around 70. How many of those will finally end up being published is unknown but I hope that it is around half of them.

Saying all that, it really is good fun and I still enjoy seeing my photos in any publication, be it book or magazine. I recently bought a new gadget for my GoPro, a time-lapse timer that moves the camera, and I decided to test it out whilst editing one of the images taken at Joint Warrior. The result of that test is below:
 

 

Talking of having things published in Warships IFR, I have actually had quite a good amount put into print for this magazine recently. And I believe there is to be a good spread in the December edition with images taken from the Joint Warrior exercise that I have mentioned above. I also hope to start writing the occasional piece for the magazine.

I’ll keep you informed.

PlaneBaseNG

I promised the owners of PlaneBaseNG that I’d add something about their aviation database to my blog about a year and a half ago, but due to personal issues and renovating my house I never got round to it. As it is though, I’m glad I didn’t because the database has changed so much since then I’d have had to have done blog updates practically every month since.

But, as it’s nearing the two year anniversary of it’s conception I thought now would be the right time.

So what is PlaneBaseNG? In the words of its owners “PlaneBaseNG is a fully featured product that manages all your aircraft sighting logging and reporting needs” and I’m not going to say otherwise. It is a great aircraft database, much better than any others around at the moment. It is simple to use, the search features are great and it has the easiest logging features I’ve seen. And most importantly it’s free – though you can donate money to help with its development if you wish, it’s totally optional.

PlaneBaseNG (or PB from now on) was developed after a few people got fed up with other databases out there. In particular, there was one that hadn’t changed for quite some time. I used this (unnamed) database and can vouch that it was good at first but very quickly went out of date in its development and style. Not only that, despite saying they would listen to their customers and add features where possible, this just never happened. In my opinion, though not proven, I think that the owners of the (unnamed) database used the funds from the subscribers to travel the world planespotting. The initial purchase wasn’t cheap (currently £130), and there were yearly subscription fees for the weekly updates – I mean, they even charged the poor data inputters the yearly subscription fees despite having to spend hours updating the data. Yep, I know this because I was a data inputter for them for a (very) short while. Handily enough all the fixed “books” for trips, created from search features, happened to be of the favourite trip locations of the owners. Requests for user created “books” fell on deaf ears.

I soon realised they weren’t for listening to anyone when I gave them some advice on making the data input easier. There were countless errors in Operator names, or should I say countless different versions of names for the same Operator – Delta Airlines/Delta Air Lines etc. This was because each editor had a crib sheet instead of having a much more useful sub-database containing the definitive list of Operators that could be chosen from a drop down list. It was easy to implement but it wasn’t and I got frustrated – as a user, searches were a nightmare as the data was quite often wrong. So I left editing but carried on with the database as there were no other options out there – except creating your own (which I had done and it was much better than this (unnamed) database, but as a single data-inputter going through Aviation Letter each month was very time consuming and so I had had to give up).

I was pleased to hear, about two years ago, that there was a new database coming out; and I was lucky enough to be one of the early users as I knew a few of the guys involved, some of which had also left the other database. PB changed very quickly in the early days, with almost daily updates to the actual software and features. This has slowed down now but that is because it is features packed, and I don’t know if there’s anything else PB can produce or think of that’s needed. Just some of the features included are:
Search facilities for Reg, Manufacturer, Type, Operator, Mode-S hexcodes, SelCal, Base, ICAO Operator codes
Multiple User creatable Reports
Wordbook (to create a handy needlist when travelling)
Adding photos to records
Flight logs

And much more – full information of all the features are on their website and in the extensive manual (something else the (unnamed) database fell short with, being four to five years out of date when I last saw it).

The database isn’t just for “spotters”, it can be used by anyone that is interested in aviation. For instance the SelCal search is useful to those that listen to HF regularly and need to check on what they’ve possibly heard. The same goes for checking details on Operators or Squadron details – the searches are endless really. Updates to the database occur twice a week, with a full update on a Tuesday and an additional Airliner/Execs update on Fridays. The database itself contains well over a million entries in categories of Airliners, Executive Jets and Propliners, Military (fighter/transports/Helis etc), Helicopters, Russians and GA types – you name it, they’re in there – even gliders. And if there’s something that’s not in there, a quick email and I’m sure it wouldn’t be long before it was.

Now on to PB’s sidekick – PBLink. This feature is for those that use either SBS or PlanePlotter virtual radars. It is a separate download that adds a background link to PB so that when you get an unknown Hexcode appearing on your radar a check is made with the main database and the details filled out in the SQB file for the radar. Before hand I had to use the Gatwick Aviation Societies (GAS) data, but that required access to the internet. The great thing about PBLink is that an on-line connection isn’t needed, making it possible to go fully mobile with your SBS. I tried it out last year at LAX, from the back of my hire-car and it worked perfectly, along with being able to log what I saw. There’s even the possibility to download a fully populated SQB file (overwriting your current one) which means you don’t need PB installed at all. I don’t bother with that as there’s no real point if you use PB as well (plus I use specific flags and file names for these which would get wiped out I think). As it’s linked to your database it also shows whether you’ve seen the aircraft before and if so, where and when.

Again, there’s plenty more details on the website and in the PBLink manual. It’s pointless me saying anymore, I’d only repeat what is in it and probably in not as much detail.

Finally, the last manifestation of PB is PBLite. This is designed for Windows based tablets and is an almost exact copy of the full PB database. One thing that’s great about this software is that if you use the full version on your PC or laptop, you can copy across your logs/sightings to the tablet. And just to add, this also possible if you have a desktop and a laptop – your loggings can be copied between the two as and when.

I like PlaneBaseNG a lot, I use it daily and not just for the spotting side of things. I use it for radio monitoring, and I use it to confirm information when I’m writing my blogs and magazine articles. With over 1000 users already, I’m obviously not the only one that thinks it is a great product.

All I’ll say is, go and take a look at the website for PlaneBaseNG and you’ll see many more features – some I haven’t even tried yet. Meanwhile, over at the (unnamed) database, despite a nice new glitzy website – it’s still the same old database by the look of the screenshots.

NAVTEX

Canon 5D update

Before going any further, just a quick update on the repair to my 5D that I carried out in my last blog

Unfortunately, it only lasted about another 200 shots before the mirror became unstuck. So I decided to purchase a new 5D mk III, but before I did I looked in to how much it would cost to get the current one repaired to either then consider selling on or to give to my girlfriend who is just starting out in photography. I decide to search locally, choosing Glasgow as the nearest biggest place to start. Straight away I found a company called A.J. Johnstone & Co. so I gave them a ring to find out the bad news.

Well, it turns out, all that information I’d previously reported about the cost of repairs was total rubbish. As it’s a known Canon fault the repair is free!! The only cost was for the postage. Well, this was great, no new camera needed. I sent it off the next day by courier adding a note asking to give the sensor a clean; and one of their team rang me the day after that to confirm I’d pay the £38 for the sensor clean plus £10 postage.

Not only did they do the repair and sensor clean, they also replaced the focus screen, updated the firmware and gave the camera a good clean externally. I highly recommend using them if you need to service your camera. The sensor cleaning service is same day with no prior booking required if you’re able to go to their premises. I was without my camera for about 6 days in total, including the postage days.

Their website can be accessed by clicking on the image above.

NAVTEX

With the recent Joint Warrior exercise having taken place here in the UK I thought I’d mention the NAVTEX decoder I use for getting information on where some of the action may be taking place. Why use NAVTEX? Well the Royal Navy, in conjunction with the Queens Harbour Master (Clyde), produce a twice daily warning on Submarine activity off the west coast of Scotland. This is due to a fatal incident in 1990 involving a fishing boat trawler and a dived submarine which unfortunately got snagged up in the trailing net. SUBFACTS, as it is called, is broadcast twice daily on the NAVTEX frequency of 518kHz at 0620 and 1820 UTC and it gives the approximate location of any submarines that are operating within the next 24 hour period. Also included in the broadcast is information on any live firing that is taking place in the danger areas on the coasts and at sea off western Scotland – this is known as GUNFACTS. Further information can be found here

Anyway, back to the software I’ve been using recently. This is the Frisnit NAVTEX Decoder created by Mark Longstaff-Tyrrell and it’s totally free. Not only does it decode NAVTEX messages, if you register the decoder (still free) it means you can upload your receptions to the frisnit server giving them access to anyone. The main aim of this is to provide people at sea with the ability to check NAVTEX messages without the need of having an actual decoder on board. As long as you have access to the internet you can access any uploaded messages. And you don’t need to upload messages yourself either, the messages are freely available to anyone, even if you don’t have the software yourself.

A SUBFACTS message as decoded with frisnit NAVTEX

As you can see from the image above, as well as a raw data view, there’s also a messages view. All the completed messages are stored on your hard-drive giving you the ability to go back through all the messages you have received.

As well as using NAVTEX for getting the submarine information, it’s also a very useful tool for getting accurate weather forecasts, especially if you live right on the coast as I do, and doubly especially if there’s storms brewing out over the Atlantic.

There’s other features available on the frisnit website, so if you’re interested in NAVTEX take a look, and even try the software. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

The Spectrum Monitor article

I’ve recently had another article published in The Spectrum Monitor. The subject of the article is monitoring the Russian Air Force Strategic Bomber networks on CW and USB. It was good fun to write, but also quite complicated as it’s one of those subjects that can be hard to explain. Anyway, I think it has been received well.

The “magazine” is available as a single edition for $3 or why not subscribe for a year for $24 – that’s $2 a month for around 100 pages of great articles. There isn’t another Radio magazine that can offer such great value, especially here in the UK.

Zero… Zero…

Whilst slowly tuning my way through the HF bands about a year and a half ago I stumbled upon a voice that was repeating three numbers followed by “oblique zero zero”. I wondered what it was that I’d found so I looked up the frequency. After some investigation it turned out I’d found one of the many Spy stations that still utilises HF to send messages to their agents – I’d found what is unofficially designated E11, a “Numbers Station”

I was immediately interested in this – countries still send messages to their spies around the world?? Brilliant

I started looking through the internet to see if there was more information about all this and I found Enigma2000, a website dedicated to Numbers Stations. From this site I was able to get hold of the prediction charts for the next months worth of messages; and more importantly the Enigma Control list. This list describes all the Numbers Stations that have been discovered, all the differences between them, and most importantly the format of the messages. It has been compiled over the years by enthusiasts that are just as interested as me on the subject, and there’s a huge amount of knowledge and experience amongst the group.

I felt I was too much of an amateur to join the group so I sat back for a year and just did my own thing, logging what I could and learning from the Newsletters that came out every two months. I have now joined the group, but I soon discovered there was still plenty to learn

The E11 message I’d found was a “Null” message. The three numbers was the recipient (Spy, Agent – whatever you want to call them). The message lasted about 3 minutes in this case, but full messages last a lot longer. There was an E11 message today for instance:

460/38
Attention
07661 48564 90468 42455 12863
02541 31669 31104 59935 49005
36935 61200 65354 53072 11155
68041 98936 67578 19211 44903
72651 11808 00403 66319 03546
31707 31614 98436 74902 91728
50149 18927 08581 43616 17548
81125 41627 62584

This lasted for 10 minutes. The first three or four minutes is a repetition of the “agent number” (460) and the number of groups that there will be in the message (38). This is followed by each group of numbers being said twice until the end, then the whole message is repeated with each group only being said once. This is how E11 sends messages; other stations send them differently

The designation “E11” came about from the E2K group needing to standardize and identify the different stations. In this case E stands for English, 11 being the eleventh station discovered. There’s other languages too, G for German, S for Slovak (Russian included) and M for Morse Code (CW). There’s even different ways in which the foreign stations using the same language say the numbers; and the E2K group have compiled a list of these too

So, what do the numbers mean? Only the sender and recipient will know. The system uses One-Time Pads(OTP), a mathematically unbreakable encryption method used for sending messages. Used extensively during WW2 and the Cold War, they are still popular with Government Intelligence Agencies and Military to send secure messages to people or groups around the world, in the safe knowledge they cannot be decrypted.

The other bonus with OTPs is that the receiver cannot really be traced, not without a lot of hard work (or luck). In modern days things like Emails, texts etc can be tracked by agencies, and tied down to a specific person, computer or phone. With a broadcasted message that can be picked up by anyone with just a basic radio that can receive shortwave, it is a lot harder to trace the exact target, if not impossible. Also, in times of a war, the Internet, Satellites and such like can just be switched off making it difficult to send messages to agents or military personnel in the field. Radio cannot, and it will remain a method of getting important messages out for the forseable future

There are specific rules for One-Time pads to work correctly, one of which is the key is used only once and that the sender and recipient destroys the key after its use. For more information on One-Time pads visit the website of Dirk Rijmenant, but put aside a bit of time as it has a lot of information, with lots of links to even more – including a a website where you can create your own coded messages

So that you can hear what one sounds like I’ve made a recording of a message sent by S06s recently. The message is as follows:
427
901 5
11171 64385 82707 06123 22438
901 5 00000

The image is a screenshot of the recording and shows it was a very strong signal, transmitted on 7410kHz. It is in Slovak and can be heard here. I’ve removed the first four minutes where 427 is repeated and gone straight to the message

You may see more about Numbers Stations soon, in fact in the USA there is already a growing interest. FX is currently showing a new TV series – The Americans – set in the 1980s, about two Russian KGB officers who are sent to the USA as spies acting as a married American couple

It’s been given a second season and should be in the UK in the next few months. I’m looking forward to seeing it

And there’s a new film – The Numbers Station

There are some fundemantal flaws in the film from what I can see, the use of only four figures in the numbers groups for a start, but we’ll see what it’s like here in the UK soon

There’s no doubt the two of them will bring added interest to a widely unknown fact – the Spies are getting messages every day and anyone can hear them