Jingle Bells, Santa Smells, Surgery's on its Way........

 .......Oh what fun it is to ride in a beat up Chevrolet!

All right.  This afternoon I was over at the specialist for a couple of hours.  I came home a bit woozy and it wore off an hour or so ago.  The surgery will occur in 2 to 3 weeks, pending approval from Evil Private Insurance Company.  Once Evil Private Insurance Company approves it, we set it up, and I go in.

I will be out of commission for the day of the surgery and the day after.  But it won't be over.  I have to go in again for another surgery, which I'm sure Evil Private Insurance Company will approve.  My co-pay on this one will be a few bills, maybe $500, and Evil Private Insurance Company will pick up most of it.  I don't know why this company is evil, but the prevailing narrative is private insurance is evil.

OK, I have my issues with them from time to time, but I want to stick with Evil Private Insurance Company.  I know, I'm evil.  I have private insurance from Evil Private Insurance Company and I have been known to shop at Evil Walmart from time to time.  I'm sure I was born that way.  

In other news, most of all else is well.  I am somewhat concerned over a few people leaving my employer.  I don't think it's the business outlook.  Funding from the customer on my project has slowed down, but I see this as temporary.  They are now popping some money for some special testing that we want to do, and the official position six months ago was that this testing wasn't going to happen.  I figured back then it would be, because part of this design doesn't have flight heritage.  Developing flight hardware isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world to do.  Materials have to survive all sorts of cosmic radiation, varying pressures and temperatures, in addition to being shot up there on a rocket.  We have to know that it will work before we fly.

That is going to be it this evening.  Life is busy these days.

It's what I get for being evil.

Remaining Positive When Some Don't Want You To

 There has been quite a bit to digest over these past few weeks.  I feel like I'm in some sort of alternate universe, watching theater that Tom Clancy himself couldn't have imagined putting into one of his novels, and wondering what's next.  I can guess at what's next but again, I am not in the prediction business, even if I might have a better batting average than Sylvia Browne did.

Casting all of that aside, I have been concentrating on my blessings.  Many are the times when Sheila and I are upstairs laying on the bed, and mentioning how blessed we are.  We've had an expensive plumbing repair here.  I will be needing some surgery soon for one issue, and I'll know more about that in a few days.  And we are extensively blessed!

My job is going well.  I'm more entrenched into the quasi-management position of Lead Test Engineer.  My direct report is to program management and the program chief engineer.  I know that they're glad that I am on board, but I can't take that for granted.  Every day I have to do something to make them glad they hired me.  Every day I have to go to bed a little bit less ignorant.  Right now I have a hot project, but I also have help with it. 

What has changed is that we're no longer putting in overtime, and I have spare time again.  I've been spending it on ham radio, listening to distant AM stations at night, listening to air traffic on my 2 meter handheld (it can also function as a scanner) and I've been doing some reading as well.  

I also have been doing some cooking.  I have a weakness for curry dishes and there is more than one type of dish that I do.  Sometimes it's a golden curry from scratch and other times it's based on a red Thai curry paste, or butter chicken, or korma curry.  I also do chili from scratch, which always manages to taste better on the next day.  

As for COVID, we're getting a spike here in Arizona.  To my knowledge the curfew has been extended but I haven't seen anything on the local news that says it has.  I am remaining home to the extent that cabin fever will allow and even if I do go out I don't go out far.  I personally know people who have been exposed to it and I already know a fatality.  Uncle Joe's going to need all the luck he can get on this one.  

That's pretty much it.  I have no complaints.  Yes, I could invent a few, but today won't be the day for that.

Numbers Stations on Shortwave, Part 2

 This post assumes that you read the article that I linked in my previous post.  I re-read that article again last night, and I want to address some points in that article (which is still very fascinating to me).

First, why did the author call it SS/YL?  And whatever happened to the Cuban lady?  Is she still going on?  What have we learned about it?

When I was active in shortwave clubs, the bulletins used a lot of abbreviations.  The English language ws EE.  Spanish?  SS.  One club used EG and SP, but the two other major clubs stuck with EE and SS.  I can't tell you why one club did it their own way.  YL?  Young lady.  Ham radio operators, regardless of age, are either OM (Old Man) or YL (Young Lady).  Married YLs become XYLs (ex-Young Ladies).  At the time the article was written, this numbers station didn't have a name.  Thus the author coined SS/YL.

It was also known in the shortwave circles as the "Atención station" due to its callup, and later on a numbers monitoring group gave it the designator V2.  V for voice, and 2 to identify it as a specific voice station.  Later on it was re-designated V2A due to a format change with a minor variant in.....was it 1986?

The callup became something like "Atención!  Tres siete cuatro....cero uno" several times, and then for three times something like "cero uno.....cuatro cinco"....which in this example is 01-45, where 45 is the group count.  I sometimes would notice double messages.  Let's say 926-05-00, then a 05-78 message, followed by a 00-95 message......78 groups followed by 95 groups.  Why there were two messages is anybody's guess.  

I wasn't active in shortwave listening for a long while, but I knew the numbers stations kept going even after the end of the Cold War.  The V2 station was one of them, and no evidence as to their purpose surfaced until the late 90s.  In 1998 a spy ring was broken up, and it emerged that those involved got their instructions via shortwave radio, and yes, it was from V2.  Evidence of the one time pads for decryption was presented, and the perps were convicted and served time.  What was never made clear was if the messages were in English or in Spanish, but it was proven that yes indeed, the station was transmitting messages to spies.

Now it stands to reason that not all of the messages were for spy traffic.  There's no doubt in my mind that a percentage of this had to be dummy traffic, so that NSA resources would be used for trying to decode them.  Other messages might have been for training purposes.  This is speculation on my part, but I'd be comfortable betting money on this.

So where is V2 today?

Still in commission, but now it's designated HM01.  I tuned in yesterday to hear a transmission.  A voice callup is still used, but instead of group counts, the station now sends out data bursts which are in computer file format.  I looked at a decode of one message and saw both Japanese and Chinese characters in the decode.  From what I could tell, it was random.  So are the spies now using new tools?

I'm not sure.  My thinking is that the message traffic is now intended for military and embassy operations.  The messages continue for several weeks on end without changing.  The transmissions are also nowhere near as frequent, though still daily, and still on a fixed schedule.

There is still a fascination within one segment of the shortwave radio listening hobbyists about these mysterious numbers stations.  There were many others, some no longer active.  A search engine will yield several hits where you can learn more.

You also don't need to buy a shortwave radio to get in on the fun.  Look up Kiwi SDR, and take it from there. 

Numbers Stations on Shortwave

 Many years ago when I was in college and more active in shortwave listening than I am now, I would on occasion come across a transmission of numbers.  These numbers were being transmitted in groups of five, with a female voice, and were on frequencies outside of the international broadcast bands as well as the amateur radio bands.  Their spots on the dial weren't really meant to be easily found by the casual listener.  For the most part, the operation took care never to operate on frequencies used by the Coast Guard or aircraft (there is one known exception to that).  If a casual listener found the transmission, that listener was left with a mystery.  What was it?  Loggings of this nature, when they found their way into shortwave club bulletins, were written of as a "spy numbers" transmission and that was that.

One Wednesday evening in March of 1979 I came across, again, that lady reading the numbers.  I had seen mention of a "mystery numbers" transmissions in a magazine and these were credited to Cuba.  That made sense, as that the propagation pattern closely matched that of Radio Habana Cuba.  The article mentioned that in 1975 some listeners heard audio from Radio Habana Cuba, and some months later I stumbled upon a major on-air slipup.......Radio Habana Cuba on some frequency well outside the broadcast bands, signing off their English program, and then the start of a numbers transmission.  

Anyway, the following Wednesday evening I was again tuning around the bands, and guess what?  I came across that numbers broadcast again!  I noted that it was on the same frequency as the Wednesday before, same time slot, and it was then that it occurred to me that this operation followed a pattern.  If I could spend enough time chasing that station around the dial, I could figure out their schedule, and then be listening in on the same time that whoever that spy was.  The signals were very strong, indicating that they were beamed to North America, and that somewhere over here we've got an intended recipient who is getting some instructions of one kind or another.  All of that figured out, there was still a lot that I didn't know but would end up learning.  But here is what I learned in that timeframe.

One, the transmission would always start at the top of the hour.  I synced by watch to WWV (time station) and learned that they were precise in that.  Before transmitting, there would be a strong carrier, sometimes ten minutes before show time, but the curtain would always rise at the top of the hour.

Two, each transmission would be repeated.  Some repeats were at the bottom of the hour, as in 30 minutes past the top.  Others would repeat five minutes or so after the end of the first, and almost always on a different frequency.  I quickly figured out which frequency ranges to tune in to, and I got them several more times.

Three, the format was easily figured out.  For example, if the transmission started out with "Atención!  Cinco ocho tres:  seis dos" (repeated several times before going into the message), it meant that 62 groups of five digit numbers were in the message.  In this example, I am considering the 583 to be the header and 62 the group count.  I noticed in my monitoring that group counts were usually a number divisible by 5, but that wasn't always the case.  

There was more that I was going to learn.  My interest in this station fell off for a few years, but was rekindled in 1984 when I came across an article in the August 1984 Popular Communications magazine.  The link is below, and you'll have to scroll down to page 16 of the magazine.

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Popular-Communications/80s/Popular-Communications-1984-08.pdf

I'll come back to this topic again in my next post.

And Here We Are With a Curfew

 In an emergency session this past week Tucson mayor Regina Romero convened an emergency meeting of the Tucson City Council, and they voted in her mandatory curfew unanimously, only making one change.  She wanted it to start at 8:00 PM and end at 5:00 AM.  The council modified this to start at 10:00 PM, and it went into effect this past Friday.

There is no doubt a lot of science behind this.  The Democrats, the champions of science, know some things that the rest of us don't.  This new curfew has some interesting language in it, and I'm very sure that science played a large part in this.  Let's look at the science.

With the curfew being between the hours of 10:00 PM and 5:00 AM, this tells us that COVID cannot possibly be transmitted outside of these hours.  When we first had lockdowns we didn't know this.  We thought that the virus didn't care what time of day it was.  Now we know better.  It's very dangerous after 10:00 PM, and you'd better not leave your house until 5:00 AM.

What's really interesting is that these hours are not reflective of sunrise and sunset times local to Tucson at this time of year.  Our earliest possible sunset is 5:17 PM and change, and that passed us a few days ago.  Our latest possible sunrise comes in around 7:30 AM (I'll have to check that again) and that happens next month.  Now if we look at this in terms of astronomical twilight this does narrow the nighttime hours some, but still it's significant to note that the virus needs about 4 or 5 hours of darkness before it can activate.

There is another interesting fact about the virus.  It absolutely, positively can not be transmitted to or from anyone who's homeless.  How do I know that?  The homeless are exempt from the curfew.  I understand that there will be the argument that we can't really round them up and take them off the street, but if we can lock down the economy and force everyone to stay home, then why can't we round up the homeless and house them somewhere?  

Now the first responders are exempt too.  On this one there's some logic that's easier to understand.  Crime does not observe the curfew and neither do medical emergencies, so in this instance we don't need science to justify their exemption.  Other language in this ordinance allows exceptions for going to get medicine for a family member or a pet, to flee a dangerous situation, or if you're going to/from work.  Of course, those exemptions are not based on science.

All of that said, the curfew is set to expire on the 23rd of this month.  It may be extended.  Or maybe the virus will decided to wake up earlier, say at 8:00 PM.  The virus might also decide to stay up later.  As far as I know science hasn't yet figured out what makes a virus come off of a graveyard shift and work either day or swing, but I'm very sure that the scientists who are studying this will inform our mayor and city council accordingly.  

And of course, our city leaders know what's best for us, and if they say we can't eat out but they themselves get to, there has to be some science behind this that the rest of us are not capable of understanding.

The Good and the Bad

 The good news here is that I had my first performance review with my present employer.  I knew I was doing well, but I didn't know that it was that well.  I think I know what it was that got me that rating.

When I reported to work there, I realized that I had an opportunity.  I am working local and I am working in manned spaceflight development (again).  This time I'm doing it locally and I'm doing it for a company that has an excellent reputation.  I figured I had best figure out how to keep this opportunity going, and I came up with something.

I decided that two things were going to happen each day at work.  One, I would give them a reason to make them glad that they hired me.  Two, I would go to bed each night a little bit less ignorant than I was when I got up that morning.

The second is easier than the first, as that the opportunity to become less ignorant is always there in front of you each day, meaning that you don't have to go out and look for it, though on some days you might have to.  The first, well that's something that you do have to go out and look for, though there will be the day every now and then that hands you that opportunity.  

If today's review is any indication, there is evidence that doing these two things daily is a big help.  I probably ought to add a third thing to that list of daily goals, and I intend to think about that some over the approaching weekend.

Now for the bad.

I'm going to open up about the election.

I don't think this one was on the up and up.  I cannot believe that someone who stayed closeted in a basement the way that Biden did could be capable of winning.  He wasn't the early on favorite of Organized Media.  Over 70 million people out there think he doesn't have all his marbles.  Telling off Cornpop and bragging about how children love rubbing your hairy legs isn't Presidential.  And then he picks a running mate who was first to drop out of the primaries.

And I'm supposed to buy this result?  There are lots of articles about ballot harvesting, dead people voting, fraud, irregularities........yes it's natural for these to arise from the losing side, but why doesn't the winning side ask for an investigation here?  If Russian collusion can be investigated, then why can't this election?

There are the legal challenges, and I have no problem with them.  Al Gore opened up that bottle and let the genie out and it shouldn't be a surprise that getting that genie back in that bottle is a whole other matter.  As to the merits of those challenges, I can't answer that.  I'm not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV.  

The whole thing stinks, and I'm wondering if I should continue being a voter.  

It goes back to something Joe Stalin once said.

It doesn't matter who votes.  What matters is who counts the votes.

One more thought.

The question isn't whether or not Joe Biden will be in office come the end of January 20th.  

The question is whether or not he will be in office come the end of July 20th.

Traveling the World by Radio (but a Computer is Involved)

 As I am typing this, I am listening to Radio Argentina.  If I were down there I would have a radio tuned to 570 kHz to do this.  Radio is still involved, except that I am listening via an internet connection to a remote receiver somewhere near Buenos Aires.  The link to the connection is:

http://lu4eec.ddns.net:8073/

Once I connected, I was able to tune the radio to the frequency I desired, and I've spent this evening tuning around, like I did last night.  Last night I learned that the David Lee Roth song "Just a Gigolo" was big down there at one time as that I heard a station play it.  When I tuned to 570, I discovered Radio Argentina, and I am finding the music from them (and from Radio Rivadavia) to be interesting to listen to.  Radio Rivadavia went heavily into the Argentine tangos, as has some other stations down there.  

Had this been a few decades ago, I'd be doing this the hard way:  a good shortwave receiver, a good antenna, and hoping for good propagation.  I have heard Radio Argentina via the shortwave before (and they were beaming an English broadcast to North America), and they were proudly playing their tangos.  I knew that other shortwave listeners were getting Radio Rivadavia, and they (along with me) were tuning the "tropical bands" to search for them as well as the Colombian and Venezuelan stations.

And here we are, years later, and the world is even closer to our fingertips.  I could connect to some (most?) of these Argentine stations by using the net itself without the remote receiver.  I've listened to the Falkland Islands this way.  I might tune the remote receiver to see how well their signal is making it to the remote receiver.  

So why am I doing this?

In one way, it's an extension of a hobby that I have had for many years.  If I wasn't trying to make contact with someone in a different continent, I was listening to signals from different continents.  The listening aspect of it would tell me what propagation was doing, but there was something else that was happening:  I was learning about the world.  I was becoming informed of world events.  

There's another reason.  If I'm tuning in to Argentina, then I'm being relaxed.  I can read books to relax and I do, but I like to vary what I do for relaxation.  Later on I'm going to disconnect from that remote receiver and I'm going to go upstairs and continue my re-read of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  And after that, maybe I'll pickup a real radio and see if I can get that one station in Gallup, New Mexico, which mixes country & western with Navajo music.  

Is this like going out to try a different kind of food?  Like going out for Peruvian, or Indian, or Polish food?  I think it is.  I suffer from the theory that if one widens the variety of what they expose themselves to, or tries different things, then it can be good for your mental health......but up to a certain point.

Not all of what's out there is good for you.  If you go out in the wild and harvest some mushrooms, you are risking a fatal mistake.  If you fill yourself with listening to hate speech of any kind or you spend too much time reading about how wrong the world is, odds are it ain't doing you very much in the way of good.

All of that said......I find the tuning in of distant radio stations, either via my own radio here in Tucson or using a remote receiver in Buenos Aires to be an enjoyable experience.  

That is my simple pleasure for this evening.  It's also taking my mind off of current events, which I don't feel very much like discussing right now.