World War Two radio continues to pick up vintage broadcasts despite not having any power.

Scottish TV (STV) 04 June 2010 11:57 GMT

The Pye wireless with Marie Paton whose father owned it

A 70-year-old radio at a Scottish heritage center has been picking up vintage broadcasts featuring Winston Churchill and the music of Glen Miller.

A Pye valve wireless at Montrose Air Station, a heritage center that tells the story of the men and women who served there, has no power and is not connected to any source of electricity.

The aerodrome has been a source of paranormal sightings and sounds for almost a century, with reports of ghostly figures, eerie footsteps and door handles turning, but the mysterious wireless broadcasts have had even the most skeptical staff at the station searching for a rational explanation. The vintage radio set is kept in a recreation of a 940s room. Several people have heard Second World War era broadcasts including the big band sound of the Glenn Miller orchestra and speeches by Winston Churchill. The broadcasts come on at random and can last for up to half an hour.

Bob Sutherland, a trustee of the air station heritage center and its treasurer, said: "I have heard it playing Glenn Miller and recognized the song as At Last." The volume was very low but the music was quite identifiable.

Graham Phillip, another volunteer, has heard what he was sure was Winston Churchill and others, including center curator Dan Paton and his wife, have heard it. "I was a wireless operator with the RAF and know a bit about them. We have also had our resident radio expert, Ewan Cameron, look at it. If we had a powerful transmitter in the area the radio might pick up something, but we don't. It is an old Pye radio which would probably explode if it was switched on."

Mr. Phillip went on to say, "We have all heard the footsteps and seen door handles turn but the wireless is something new and unexplainable. It's not just one of us who's heard it - most of us here have. We are talking about highly educated, reliable people. My wife Aileen was with me when we heard the Glenn Miller Orchestra last weekend. She's a physicist and not predisposed to believing in things like this but no-one has an explanation. If there was a transmitter nearby you'd think it might pick up Radio One or something, but I know what we heard. It went on for half an hour on and off. But the aerial is out anyway. We've had the back off and the technicians said there was nothing but cobwebs and spiders."

Volunteer Marie Paton, 67, whose father Jack Stoneman bought the wireless secondhand in 1962 said, "It's a bit scary. I thought someone was playing a prank on us but I heard it myself last Saturday. It plays Glenn Miller, and that's what everyone has heard. It is very faint and you have to put your ear to it, but that's what it's playing. All the experts say it should be impossible."

The wireless broadcasts join a long list of mysteries at the air station, where the heritage center is in the original headquarters building. Visitors have reported strange "energies" around the airfield, phantom footsteps, doors opening and shutting, the sound of aircraft engines, shadowy figures walking in and out of rooms and even the sighting of a pilot in full flying kit. The most notorious were the sightings of Lieutenant Desmond Arthur of the Royal Flying Corps who was killed when his biplane crashed. He is said to have haunted the area until honor was satisfied in 1917, when a government inquiry concluded that he had not been killed by his own foolhardiness but because of poor repairs to his plane.

Peter Davis, 65, the heritage center's secretary, added, "It is most odd and we cannot understand it. The station has a very abnormal presence. Several paranormal groups have been in to investigate various things, but the wireless has everyone including our radio technicians stumped."

The air station was established in 1913 by the Royal Flying Corps as Britain's first operational military airfield.

There are more details about the heritage center at its website.

by Ron Baker WB4HFN

I don't know where all the feedline myths started, but I suspect it had something to do with the do-it-yourself SWR bridges which first became popular back in the early 1950s. Until then, most amateurs didn't even know about standing waves and, if they did, they didn't seem to care. However, SWR bridges soon caught on, and it wasn't too long before getting caught with your SWR up was synonymous with getting caught with your pants down! Some hams dug into the books, but when they discovered that SWR is caused by a mismatched antenna, it only served to reinforce the myth. If a mismatched antenna causes power to be reflected back down the line, they reasoned, this power obviously wasn't radiated by the antenna. Some even suggested that the reflected power got back into the transmitter tank and was dissipated in heat. Others apparently thought that reflected power was lost forever to some great SWR heaven in the sky. A few well informed amateurs tried to nip these absurdities in the bud, but it was hopeless.....the disease spread faster than the cure. Transmission lines are too complex to be covered here, but let's bury the myths.

First, reflected power is not lost nor does it heat up the tank circuit of your transmitter. Second, if the feedline has low loss, as is in the case on the HF bands, increased loss due to SWR is so small that you can forget about it. Since a 10:1 SWR on 100 feet of RG8U at 4 MHz increases loss by less than 1 db, don't worry about the fact that the SWR rises about 2:1 at the band edges....the station at the other end won't be able to tell the difference. If your transmitter doesn't like to load into a mismatch greater than 2:1, buy or build yourself an antenna tuner and save yourself a lot of grief by forgetting the SWR on the line to the antenna if it's within reasonable limits, say 10:1.

In the current vernacular, one could say that we have a severe SWR hangup! In many instances, from the viewpoint of good engineering, this hangup is inducing us to concentrate our impedance matching efforts at he wrong end of the transmission line. It is ironic that we should be in this situation, because the amateur is generally quite practical when it comes to following theoretical considerations. In this case, though, we have been following the perfect-match theory down the narrow path because many articles have misled us to believe that all reflected power is lost, with never an inkling that, properly controlled, reflections can be turned to our advantage in obtaining increased bandwidth, which we are presently throwing away.

Another accepted Ham antenna expert, Walter H. Anderson, VE3AAZ, writing in HAM RADIO MAGAZINE, says, in part: "A UA9 I worked recently said he was using a Zepp antenna. It occurred to me that at least one generation has passed since the Zepp was, by far, the most popular antenna. We didn't realize it then, but the Zepp's standing wave ratio probably ran as high as a 30:1. However, history shows that the Zepp put out a good signal. Thus, it would seem that the Zepp didn't really have the side-effects we hear attributed to high SWR nowadays....high plate dissipation, radiation loss and all the rest. I don't suggest we dismantle our beams and go back to Zepps. Rather, I propose to show that transmission line theory, properly understood, is free of the contradictions that arise when discussing SWR, reflected power, line losses and other phenomena associated with antennas and feed systems."

Further along, Walter mentioned the transmatch: "It's easy to dispense advice on obtaining low SWR, but it's much more difficult to specify cures for same. If you must live with kinky antenna impedances, then you might consider using an antenna tuner. If air-dielectric capacitors and silver-plated inductors are used, power loss from the tuner will be negligible. An antenna tuner will lower the impedance presented to the transmitter to 50 ohms, and the transmitter will be be satisfied. Such a tuner also pays dividends on receiving.

 

Every once in a while, Laclede Gas company has to replace the gas meter outside (ours is scheduled for next week). That got me thinking about Earthquakes, how much I like our home, and that we really should have an automatic shutoff valve installed on our gas line. So I started researching the issue. I've lived through several mild earthquakes in my lifetime here in St. Louis. It's good to be prepared for such an event, and the bigger one that will probably occur in the near future...

"If you live in Missouri or Illinois, you stand a good chance of experiencing a moderate to severe earthquake in your lifetime. The New Madrid Fault Zone, part of a seven-state network of fault systems, is considered the most active seismic zone east of the Rocky Mountains. It has a 25-40% probability of producing a magnitude 6.0 to 7.5 earthquake at any time during the next 50 years." That's from a publication on the Laclede web site can be found here.

You can also visit the St. Louis University Earthquake Center web site.  By the way, I called Laclede, and they don't provide automatic gas shutoff valves. They have to be purchased separately, and installed by a Plumber, HVAC contractor, etc. 73, Keith Little NØTY

145.33 (KO0A) PL operating use 141.3Hz

We are looking to install a new antenna this spring to complete the upgrading of the system, it's operating very well with great coverage.

146.67 (WB0HSI) PL operating 141.3Hz

The replacement antenna and transmission line is complete, the repeater was returned to operation January 6th. However there is an intermittent problem with the output amplifier. I would suggest minimizing operation on this repeater until the Artic wave passes and the amplifier can be replaced.

On the PL front. Some radios are capable of operation with different transmit and receive PLs. For example you transmit 88Hz and the repeater transmits 141.3. Be aware of this feature when setting up your radio.

In the case of SCARC repeaters, there is no need to transmit a PL tone as the repeaters are "open".  However if the proximity detectors in convenience stores, gas stations, etc cause noise in your receiver,  or you hear intermod from strong 2-ways systems, the PL your receiver. It won't interfere with operation of the repeater, but will silence the receiver in 95% of the cases, for a better radio experience.