Author Archives: WB4AIO

Liberty Net for Week of March 20-27

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by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO

THE LIBERTY NET for this week was characterized by mostly good propagation and some of the most impassioned discussions heard this year.

There was some intentional interference, but nothing that significantly hampered communications. The Liberty Net is on the air every Saturday night at 10PM Eastern Time on or near (within 10 kHz or so) 3950 kHz.

Listen to or download this week’s Liberty Net”]

Here is just a small sampling of highlights from this week’s edition of the longest-running discussion net in amateur radio:

• There’s a reference to the Liberty Net’s “listeners in Ft. Meade, Maryland,” (location of the so-called National Security Agency) as one station opines that Net participants are the modern-day equivalents of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. (14 minutes)

• Many AM stations — both amateur and broadcast — have quite good audio fidelity. (18 minutes)

• Why is Texas threatening to write Thomas Jefferson out of its history textbooks? (25 minutes)

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Liberty Net for Week of March 13-20

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An early American allegorical engraving, showing Justice personified as a goddess recording the voice of the people guided by light, liberty, and truth. It is a particularly apt symbol for the Liberty Net.

by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO

JUST BEFORE this week’s Liberty Net, a very unusual wind storm in New Jersey — characterized by brief but extremely powerful “micro-gusts” of wind — caused extensive damage and protracted power loss; but N2IRJ’s generator saved the day, and the Net was able to be recorded as usual.

[wpaudio url=”https://3950.net/recordings/LIBERTY%20NET%20%20%202010%20March%2013th,%20Saturday%20%20%205h%2014m%2000s%20%20%20Source%20%20N2IRJ.mp3″ text=”Listen to or download this week’s Liberty Net”]

Here are a few of the highlights:

• The post-storm power situation in Jackson, New Jersey was so bad that the police resorted to robo-calls to, apparently, all citizens, to let them know about the situation. (6 minutes)

• The American Family Association (AFA) has made the bizarre demand that the orca that killed a trainer at Sea World should be “stoned to death” in accordance with “scripture.” (27 minutes)

• An activist going by the name of “Splitting the Sky” attempted to make a citizen’s arrest of George W. Bush for war crimes when the latter crossed into Canada. (29 minutes)

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Liberty Net Now a Household Word

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by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO

WHILE LOOKING for receivers on Ebay the other day (yes, I do dream about setting up an amateur radio station again some day), I noticed a nice Collins R-390A for sale.

Reading the advertiser’s copy, I was pleasantly surprised to see the receiver extolled as “sweet” for listening to “the Liberty Net Saturday evenings on 3950.”

Now that good reception of the Liberty Net is a selling point for receivers on Ebay, what’s next? Mention of Liberty Net capabilities in ads for the Flex 5000 and other transceivers? — mention of nulling and identification of would-be jammers of the Liberty Net in antenna ads in QST?

Seriously, though, the Liberty Net meme has saturated the ham-radiosphere and is making its way via SWL into the society at large. That’s a good thing.

Liberty Net for Week of March 6-13

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by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO

IONOSPHERIC propagation was much better for this week’s Liberty Net — the sunspot numbers are inching up into a more reasonable range — and the discussions were intense and the personal stories gripping.

You can listen online or download the recording right here at 3950.net by clicking the link below.

Listen to or download this week’s Liberty Net”]

Here are just a few examples of what was covered during the Net this week:

• An Oregon man who imports “Airsoft” plastic-BB toy guns found himself attacked — and his business ruined — by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), which made the totally absurd claim that the toys “could be modified” into fully automatic machine guns and that they were “a terrorist threat” to “national security.” (22 minutes)

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Liberty Net for Week of February 27 – March 6

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The upside down flag is an internationally recognized symbol of distress. It is an appropriate symbol for the crisis now engulfing American society. Intelligent amateur radio operators discuss that crisis every Saturday night on the Liberty Net -- within 10 kHz or so of 3950 SSB, starting at 10PM Eastern Time.

by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO

TERRIFIC STORMS knocked out Net Control Station W1WCR’s main antenna system and propagation was poor, but the Liberty Net — amateur radio’s historic free speech net of four decades’ standing — continued as usual with more mind-expanding information than can ever be found on the commercial broadcasting bands. In fact, the Liberty Net alone is enough to justify the effort and expense of purchasing a shortwave radio and setting up an antenna system. And when the criminals in Congress are eventually ordered to shut down or censor the Internet, shortwave radio may well be the only way to freely communicate over wide areas.

Thanks to Marty, N2IRJ, you’re able to listen to the Liberty Net right now on your computer — or download the file and listen on your portable mp3 player. And N2SAG operates a live feed and chat during Net times that lets you make an end run around jammers and a fickle ionosphere.

Listen to or download this week’s Liberty Net”]

Here are just a few of the many subjects of discussion and debate on this week’s Liberty Net recording:

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Out of the Past: WB4AIO on ‘AM-ology’

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by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO

THANKS TO an anonymous listener and the Audio Vault at amfone.net, we now have a audio clip of my AM station, recorded while I was living in Rochester, Minnesota in 1996.

At the time I was running my highly modified Kenwood TS-440s on 75 meters into an Alpha 77D at about 300 Watts into a 150′ inverted L antenna that just barely fit into my small city lot. (All that gear is now gone — stolen from me along with nearly everything else I owned.)

The signal isn’t bad considering that it was presumably heard a thousand miles away on the East Coast. You can hear the recordist adjusting the bandwidth (sounds much better in the wide mode) during the segment. I’m discoursing on ‘AM-ology,’ a field which certainly deserves further study!

Listen to WB4AIO on ‘AM-ology’ (1996 from Rochester MN)”]

Birdsong Radio

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by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO

YEARS AGO I joked that the next niche radio format to be attempted would be continuous bird calls. I never imagined that it could actually happen, but it has, and the results are quite pleasant.

Apparently one of the Digital Audio Broadcast channels in Great Britain (yes, they have real over-the-air digital radio in the UK, not the dysfunctional “HD Radio” that the media moguls forced on this country) started broadcasting ambient bird calls and other natural forest sounds about a year ago, and it developed quite a following. (I have no idea if the station’s creator, Quentin Howard, ever heard of my decades-old suggestion or not.)

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Liberty Net for Week of February 20-27

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by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO

IONOSPHERIC PROPAGATION was wildly inconsistent this week and there was some receiver overload from a nearby CW contester, but the weekly Liberty Net current events discussion was as free-spirited and informative as always. The jammers that plagued the Net last week, probably disappointed by their inability to disrupt the proceedings, seem to have given up. Here are a just a few of the many topics brought up on the latest Liberty Net:

Listen to or download this week’s Liberty Net”]

• The tragic intentional plane crash by Andrew Stack, a victim of the IRS, is just the tip of the iceberg — many good, hard-working, honest Americans have committed suicide because of abuse by the IRS. There are hundreds of other, more honest, less intrusive ways of financing needed public functions. It’s time to abolish the income tax. (22 minutes)

• What was the motivation of the Ohio man who, besieged by banks and creditors and tax collectors, decided to bulldoze his own beautiful house? (37 minutes)

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The AM-864U Broadcast Limiter

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The AM-864/U broadcast peak limiter

by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO

THE AM-864/U broadcast peak limiter, which I purchased “new surplus” from John Meshna and Company in about 1974, was my first foray into true broadcast audio processing for amateur radio. Like my TCS transmitter purchase from them, the unit was beautiful and flawless out of the box. It cost me $35. I sold it in the 90s (probably a mistake) for about $100. It now has acquired a “reputation” in the recording industry, and good ones sell for over a thousand dollars.

It’s 600 ohms transformer-coupled balanced in and out, with a simple all-vacuum-tube and all-balanced audio amplifier and peak rectification and gain reduction circuit. It was built in the 1950s by the Federal Television Corporation (some were built by other contractors, I am told) for use in AM and shortwave transmitters run by AFRTS, the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. It came with a manual, the most hilarious aspect of which was its instructions on how to destroy it (“use axes, knives, machetes, flamethrowers, incendiary grenades” etc.) in case it fell into “enemy hands.”

AM-864/U destruction instructions, from the operator's manual (click for the full-size image). And yes, the "enemy us" typo is in the original!

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Liberty Net for Week of February 13-20

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by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO

THE LIBERTY NET was attacked by multiple jammers this week — stations purposely transmitting sound effects and unidentified rude remarks and obscenities — but, despite all the efforts of the would-be censors, the Net participants brought off one of the most interesting and thought-provoking discussions yet.

Listen to or download this week’s Liberty Net”]

Jammers are less effective than ever, because listeners have multiple ways of hearing the Net these days: They can listen on their own receivers, or, by logging in to N2SAG’s Stickam site, listen to N2SAG’s or KC0OW’s receivers (or others that are sometimes available), or tune in via N2IRJ’s feed which is also recorded and archived here. With multiple receivers hundreds of miles apart — some with steerable-null antenna arrays — it’s possible to minimize any intentional interference. Furthermore, N2SAG is building an e-list of monitoring stations which he’ll be coordinating when the jammers are on the air. Using triangulation and propagation clues, along with the technical and behavior “signatures” of the jammers, many will be identified and removed from the air. Listen to the Net for more details.

The Liberty Net is the longest-running current events discussion net on amateur radio, and is one of the most venerable gatherings of amateurs on the air. It’s a bastion of free speech and free inquiry. Here are just a few of the topics discussed this week:

• It’s crazy for people to state, as some media “conservatives” have, that they “miss Bush.” Obama is just Bush on steroids. You can’t cure out-of-control spending and borrowing with more out-of-control spending and borrowing. (21 minutes)

• The SPLC probably won’t be making an anti-White cause celebre out of the shooter at the University of Alabama: she is Jewish and the SPLC, though it pretends otherwise, is not objective in such matters. Gun bans at universities, by the way, make it almost impossible to stop such crazies. (27 minutes)

• Goldman Sachs has colluded with corrupt elements in the Greek government to conceal the true extent of that government’s debt, in a scam that could devastate the European Union. (47 minutes)

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