A quick update & Roland Proesch Radio Monitoring books 2018

Firstly, a quick update on what’s been going on with me.

In the world of radios, ships, photos and Russians – not a lot!! No blog since September 2017 wasn’t what I had planned that’s for sure. Much of my writing time has gone to Jane’s, which has been great. This has meant I had to prioritise any free time available to them, having to put my blog on the back burner. Overall I’ve written or carried out analysis for around 10 Jane’s magazine articles since September 2017, as well as my continual fleet analysis on the Russian navy for Fighting Ships.

One of my articles from the November 2017 edition of Jane’s Intelligence Review

With regards to any radio monitoring, that also had to go on a back burner. When the shack was rebuilt as part of the house renovations I installed all the coaxial in temporary locations, drilled through the outer wall and coming into the shack through a large 50cm by 30cm hole in the interior plasterboard wall. This was in April 2015!! Hardly temporary!!

Due to the pretty crap weather we get here, and the fact that I needed at least 5 days of continuous good weather to be able to do all the connections outside, it has taken until the last week – 3 years later – to finally get the sunny days I needed at the same time as being off work.

Over the last year, the temporary connections had become worse and worse, with lots of noise causing interference. Nothing was earthed correctly either. Other factors such as the neighbours installing dreaded solar panels really screwed up everything, totally wiping out the main Russian navy day frequency they use for CW.

Not only that, with the hole in the interior wall being the size it is, it gets very cold in the room during the Winter – and the rest of the year for that matter – with a large draft blowing in most of the time.

Anyway, new outside connections are complete, in nice new waterproof boxes. Now the exterior part is done, I’m not weather dependant on the rest of it and hopefully I’ll be back up and running in the next month or so. I’ll do a full blog on the new setup once it’s complete.

Roland Proesch Radio Monitoring books 2018

For 2018, Roland Proesch has updated two of the five books he creates in his Technical handbook range.

The first is Signal Analysis for Radio Monitoring Edition 2018. This has nearly 60 new pages of information on how to analyse various waveforms, including a new section on Satellite signals – useful if you’ve already purchased his Technical handbook for satellite monitoring 2017. There’s also a section on describing how to analyse RADAR signals. Other things such as useful software tools and PC calibration is also included. Here’s a PDF of the contents with new information highlighted in yellow.

The other book is Frequency Handbook for Radio Monitoring Edition 2018. Whilst many people would say a book containing information on frequencies used by various utility stations, armed forces and other agencies is dated and old school, I tend to disagree. There is so much useless information out there online, I prefer using a book for looking things up that I may have found on the HF bands. Granted, a book does go out of date – normally as it’s being printed – but you can quite easily add your own entries in the right places if needed.

This update has several hundred changes of new, deleted and updated frequencies ranging from 0Hz to 30000kHz, and contains a section dedicated to ALE frequencies and idents.

Both books, along with the ones released last year in one of my previous blogs, are available from his website. As usual, he has his bundle offers which makes the books cheaper if you buy two or more at the same time.

I’ve used his books for years and highly recommend them.

Propliner Annual 2017

Just a quick post to inform you that this years Propliner Annual is now available to purchase.

Going on from last years successful year book, the 2017 edition is 108 pages of fantastic articles and photographs – many of which are in full colour (though the black and white images of days gone by are also great to see).

As well as a run down of what has been happening in the Propliner world over the last year or so, the year book contains 16 articles, including the following:

The history of the Avro 748 with VARIG in Brazil
The Barkley-Grow T8P-1 operations in Canada
A tour around Austria on Austrian Airlines Avro 748s in 1969
The aviation enterprises of John Gaul
BOAC’s fleet of early Lockheed L-049 Constellations
Flying on a Wilderness Seaplanes Grumman Goose in British Columbia
NASA’s Super Guppy
A tour of the ramp at Opa Locka
A tour of airfields in southern California and Arizona
The history of a Douglas DC-6A delivered new to Canadian Pacific Air Lines in 1958 which is still operational in Alaska with Everts Air Cargo.
Lockheed Electras flown by Cathay Pacific
Polynesian Airlines Percival Princes operations
Airlines of South Australia Douglas DC-3s operations
The early history of TACA in Central America

At just £11 in the UK including p&p this is a bargain. Prices outside of the UK are a little bit more at £13 for Europe and £15 for the rest of the World, but this is marginal for such a high quality publication.

If you’re interested in buying a copy then head over to the dedicated page on the Propliner website, where you can pay by PayPal.

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.

Propliner is back

Around 11 months ago I reported the sad end of Propliner magazine in my article “End of an era”.

I’m very pleased to say that due to requests to the editor that Propliner be kept in some form or other, he has decided to try out whether it could succeed in an annual format.

In his words “Within days of announcing my decision to suspend publication of Propliner as a quarterly journal, I became aware of the enormous sentiment surrounding the magazine, and that there were a large number of disappointed readers.”

He continues ” Having remained in touch with many of the regular contributors and having canvassed their opinions, I have decided to go ahead and publish a Propliner Annual in April 2016″.

A brief outline of what is intended in the first (and hopefully not last annual) was also given – 96 pages full of features and photographs, as well as news on the past years events. Further information is on the advert to the right.

Amazingly, the annual is still going to be priced very reasonably indeed. For those in the UK, it is to be priced at £11 including delivery, with Europe at £13. The rest of the World is still only £15 for air mail delivery.

The target publication date is April 17th and orders can be placed at the Propliner website

PlaneBaseNG Update

Another bit of aviation news is a new update to the PlaneBaseNG database software. I ran a review of the database just over a year ago if you’d like to look back at what I wrote. Otherwise, head over to the website for more information, screenshots etc.

If you’re looking for an aviation database then this is definitely the one to have.

End of an era

Sadly today, when the post arrived, it contained the last ever edition of Propliner magazine – number 141.

The magazine started in January 1979 as the dreamchild of Stephen Piercey, when the skies were still full of Propliners; and it continued pretty much every quarter from that time until this final edition. There was a years break following edition 21, after Stephen was killed in a mid-air collision in May 1984. The magazine continued on under Tony Merton-Jones as editor when it started up again. Tony was one of the original founders, along with John Roach, Ian MacFarlane, Tony Eastwood, Colin Ballantine and others.

The first edition of Propliner, in it’s then blue cover. All images at that time were black and white – though due to the nature of the articles many of the photos up until the last edition were in b & w. There were plenty of colour photos too.

The quality of articles, the quality of photographs; and the sheer in-depth research that took place for each quarterly was second to none. The paper quality alone was fantastic, it’s more like a thin cardboard than paper; and the editing was brilliant. I don’t recall ever receiving a duff edition with a blurred photo (from printing) or poor text quality – something that can’t be said for many magazines these days. It started off in black and white, but moved to colour after edition 20.

It was really a non-profit magazine, peaking at 4,250 copies in the mid 90’s. All contributors, including myself in its latter years, never expected a penny for the articles and photographs that we sent in. We were just happy to see the magazine continuing; and happy to read the articles.

And what articles they were.

From stories about Indian Navy Constellations (still in-service in 1983) to the history of BOAC flights after the war. Reading some of the historic articles, it was very easy to picture the moving map with the aircraft in Indiana Jones – the articles gave you that sense of feeling. The research for some of the articles took months, if not years, to be carried out.

Edition 21 was the first in colour, and Stephen’s last. It contained his article on the Indian Navy/Air Force Constellations; one that took three years to organise. By that stage only one remained in service, but the Indian Navy still organised a special flight in it for Steve – for a £9 admin fee

Of course, the articles weren’t all about the historic flights and airlines; Propliners were still in use after all. These days everyone knows about Buffalo Airways thanks to TV shows such as Ice Pilots, but it was really Propliner that opened our eyes to these types of operations. They were almost as mystical as the stories from the past. And I guess it’s why Ice Pilots was such a popular TV programme. There’s just something about the old, smoky aircraft that draws us to them.

In the latter years there were articles to tempt you to go to Russia and fly on some of the propliners still in use there today, thanks to the pen of Steve Kinder and the magical (if not sometimes maniacal) tours he wrote about. And the stories of deepest Canada and the aircraft that still fly there are always a temptation to go to see, thanks to the the writings of the magazines contributors.

Just one of my images featured in Propliner

I’m proud to say I have every edition of Propliner. I wasn’t an early subscriber, but when I discovered the magazine I made it my mission to get every one of them. And I was able to do so, though it wasn’t easy. I can see the magazines becoming collectors items in the future; the early “blue” editions (numbers 1-20) already are. My copies never really leave the house, but if they do I have kept hold of a couple of the cardboard envelopes each quarterly came in to protect them in transit.

I for one will miss Propliner. Like the aircraft it wrote about it has become the victim of the modern day – with the cost of printing, with the cost of postage, with the seemingly poor attitude of some trade customers and their lack of payments – and unfortunately, the cost of falling subscriber numbers as those of us that are interested in these aircraft, ourselves become vintage and go to the scrapyard. I wonder what the kids of today, those who are interested in aircraft, will have to read about in 36 years time – Airbus and Boeing (yawn).

Back issues of Propliner are still available from the Propliner website but if that doesn’t work then fill out the form below and I’ll happily forward on any enquiry to Tony Merton-Jones. You never know, if there’s a lot of interest, it may just bounce back again.

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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.

The Spectrum Monitor articles and the MilCom Forum

I’m pleased to say that I’ve had two articles published in the July edition of e-Mag The Spectrum Monitor

The first article is about the Joint Warrior exercise that took place in March/April this year, and how and what to listen out for when these exercises take place twice a year in the UK. I wasn’t expecting this article to be published until September so this was an added bonus this month

The second article is about how I got into listening to Air Traffic Control and how this then took me down the road to becoming an Air Traffic Controller, an aviation/military photographer and writer, and into monitoring the radios in general – in particular HF

As well as the articles, there’s about 11 photos of mine included alongside. I also provided the cover image.

The magazine is available either to buy individually at $3 each or by subscription for $24 for one year. Either way the magazine is well worth the money

MilCom Forum

About a month ago now, a new forum was created for the Military Monitoring enthusiast – MilCom

The main aim of the forum is bring together those of us that are interested in monitoring Military Communications, be it VHF/UHF, HF, CW, data, SATCOM etc. The posting of radio logs is actively encouraged. In just a month the membership has passed 110 with posts already at 850+; and this is without any real advertising of the forum. One thing you’ll notice if you head over, is that it isn’t just about Aviation. The forum covers all areas of Military Communications – Aviation, Maritime and Land (Space too if you really want to)

As well as the forum area there is a database section which contains information on Military Callsigns, VHF/UHF frequencies, HF frequencies and other things such as common abbreviations and terms used by the Military. There’s also an interactive map. These databases are updated almost daily by a team of us, and can also have anything missing submitted to the team for addition once confirmed. The databases are continually growing, are more accurate than any printed publication (which is generally out of date the day of printing) and more importantly – FREE

The only proviso to this data being available is that members participate in the forum and do not just “lurk”. The membership is continually monitored by the team and trimmed if necessary. That being said, we are a friendly group so don’t let the rules put you off – instead join up and participate.