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  • in reply to: I suspect [username] is the Police #1249726
    General Lighting
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      I only use this mostly for monitoring the UHF pager signal (along with the pager itself) as there are two others on the same frequency, but the set will eventually be used as a backup comms system for work in case of a Internet and/or mobile network failure (which is not that uncommon!)

      it has the coiled acoustic earpiece bit as well (any tips on how to keep the think from falling out of your lughole whilst riding?)

      31820568782_286833938a_b.jpg

      amazing how many people suddently start obeying all the traffic laws when they see me on my bike with this and the pager clipped to my jacket (some pagers are still used by special service units)

      31851860521_6463d62326_b.jpg

      in reply to: More retro coding…. #1279351
      General Lighting
      Moderator

        that would make sense for infant/junior school level – at my junior school there was a single BBC micro that only used cassette tapes

        my high school was well equipped ; it had 12 BBC micros + 4 master 128s and Econet server + hard drive; I will get round eventually to writing the whole saga about the RAT but it will be long and I’ve got to remember stuff from 30 years ago

        the A3000 was a powerful machine but would actually have been a bit dated by the time you were in high school. Todays Raspbery PI is 6-10 times more powerful- you can run RISCOS on it and I did give it a try but had forgotten the path structure. its all reversed compared to todays computers; I couldn’t work out how to get networking active or link to Linux/Windows systems – alas, it was now a bit too much for an older chaps brain…

        in reply to: More retro coding…. #1279350
        General Lighting
        Moderator

          the acorn electron was a cut down cheaper version of the 6502 based BBC (I had one at home)|. your age group is more likely to have used the A3000 at high school which is an ARM based machine but had many similarities to the BBC and could run BBC BASIC on RISCOS.

          in reply to: Cheap radio monitoring equipment part 1 #1279332
          General Lighting
          Moderator

            his is the RTL-SDR in action (monitoring a cheap Chinese mini transmitter of the sort sold in supermarkets for listening to MP3 players in older cars that only have VHF/FM receivers). These transmitters are always slightly off frequency – apparently because a cheaper quartz (also widely used in other computer equipment) can be used in the PLL circuit instead of one cut for a specialised frequency.

            There since appears to be someone else using 87,5 Mhz in the area with a stronger signal (and hopefully better equipment!) – in case Ofcom happen to be watching that is nothing to do with me!

            That said if I’d known they were planning to be on air tonight (when I checked earlier the frequency was clear) I’d have picked another test frequency rather than cut across the pirate as I used to do the same stuff back in the day (many years ago!) so have some respect for them – they have at least picked a frequency which is less likely to cause problems to other VHF transmissions (there is a lot of maritime and aviation comms round here) or make things awkward for the community broadcasters at the other end of Band II (105-108 MHz)

            I was only making this video to show how the RTL-USB SDR setup works – pager transmissions don’t sound quite as pleasant and are too short in duration to show the pretty colours on the display…

            in reply to: NL : Stentor pirate radio TX from 1980s #1279339
            General Lighting
            Moderator

              recently built model in action in NL

              in reply to: Soundcloud embeds #1279296
              General Lighting
              Moderator

                Soundcloud changed around their external links policy. Probably to get people to look at ads or something silly.

                This time round I hadn’t had time to fix the “wrong” link although Waldo isn’t doing anything wrong (which I explained in the reply)

                in reply to: Massie @ HSS Germany special christmas podcast #1279295
                General Lighting
                Moderator

                  Groetjes massie; ik heb de “foute” link bewerkte (het was geen foutje dat jouw heeft gedaan, maar het gevolg van diverse acties bij Soundcloud.)

                  Helaas heeft soundcloud haar beleid over externe links naar andere sites te plaatsen toch veranderd.

                  Ik weet niet waarom (misschien SC krijgt wat klagen over het auteursrecht?)

                  dus werkt de tag [sc] niet meer bij ons – nu alleen de [soundcloud] tag kan gebruikt worden Ook kan een mixje nu niet meer op partyvibe “embedded” worden; maar een link naar soundcloud.com 🙁

                  General Lighting
                  Moderator

                    @Gylfi Guðbjörnsson 703750 wrote:

                    A few, I dare say ‘a few’ ore like some bloody time ago, there was a fantastic pirate station in the home country area, 87.5fm, everything from old school garage/bass line, techno, house etc. And it just went to bæ….in a word.had many good nights to that station. Do miss it really, but since I’ve tried to remove myself from THAT world, I’ve come to smile upon yesteryear so to say.

                    may well be the same one I listened to when I lived in Reading about 10 years ago – I vaguely remember someone telling me that either 87.5 was used by two different crews in similar areas of SE England; or the same lot had to close it down and regroup (moving the transmitter site to somewhere slightly different but with similar coverage) as Ofcom had been getting wise to where it may be.

                    Any decent pirate radio transmitters are usually built by engineers whose day job involves legitimately installing various other kinds of wireless communication equipment; but in recent years many companies have not taken on as many such staff and/or they want clean CRB checks/security vetting (due these systems being safety and business critical) and are aware of the safety/reputation risks of unauthorised things on towers as well as paranoia over terrorists.

                    There are also way too many urban/dance music DJ’s around ( some who TBH are old enough to know better) who seem to genuinely want to make the suburban UK town they live in into a ghetto area of London and/or the USA or other nations where young men go around shooting each other for wearing the wrong colour underpants that day; not realising that the rest of the people in these towns left those areas to get away from all of it.

                    It is also not that simple to get radio transmitters to work well, about 3-5 times as difficult as complex computer systems (even with these wireless LANs do a lot of the complex stuff automatically); and often under-appreciated even in business environments when the equipment is s vital part of the organisation – so its hardly surprising that people with more than one brain cell who want to use their tech skills for something positive don’t get as involved with UK pirate radio as they once might have.

                    in reply to: How to find pictures from raves? #1279282
                    General Lighting
                    Moderator

                      @kibritt 703738 wrote:

                      I went to Freaky Deaky on Halloween and got my phone stolen so the only group picture of my fam was taken by a professional on Day 1 and I’m having a hard time finding it.

                      try contacting the folk you got the ticket for the event from or the promoters? I’m showing my age a bit but most events of this nature were promoted using paper flyers often left in shops selling vinyl records; often you could ask the record shop staff and they would know the promoters or there were telephone numbers for ticket agents.

                      General Lighting
                      Moderator

                        link is below (soundcloud have changed some stuff around and it is for some reason not possible to embed the mix here)

                        https://soundcloud.com/dj-massie/massie-classic-destruction-back-to-oldskool-12-dec-2015

                        in reply to: Newbie Lookin for some info on how to build a rig #1279262
                        General Lighting
                        Moderator

                          try here (this crew, although they have unfortunately not been so active recently are also Scottish) 😉

                          https://www.partyvibe.com/forums/sound-engineering/26685-sound-system-how.html

                          General Lighting
                          Moderator

                            @General Lighting 703495 wrote:

                            Last week I had to take a prescription to a doctors surgery 420m away from my house and uphill. Out of curiosity, I put the transmitter high up in a corner of my room (the same upstairs room I was listening to NL radio today). As I was using the same pager frequency for work I left it on the low power of +11dBm (11 mW) – which will work all across my house.

                            The TX unit can however go to +18dBm (63 mW) and I do not need a site license from Ofcom until it is over +27 dBm (500 mW).

                            [/quote]

                            a quick addition to this; the device attracted the attention of a Dutch radioamateur, who wanted to know if it can also work at 2400bps (it does) and if it can send more power (it can do that as well, in fact to +20dBm or 100mW)

                            I double checked the Ofcom rules as to whether I could use the stronger power on the usual pager frequency (as changing the receive frequency has to be done using the 4 buttons on the pager and wipes out the date/time settings).

                            the same frequencies are shared with some telemetry equipment and radio controlled models). Ofcom’s document is not 100% clear and repeats the allocation 3 times with different powers..

                            22683257790_7a44a76d4c_b.jpg

                            However, I am genuinely building a PIR trigger to monitor the movements of a “circle of cats” that enter my garden; and deter them from pestering the ornamental fish my mum decided to put in the pond (in spite of me warning her the whole street is full of cats). Eventually a similar device will be tested at my work to check for wandering people in some areas.

                            Coincidentally this one actually encourages/teaches all the others to follow it into the garden – at least 5 others; including a very old cat, the young one shows the old cat where the easier gaps/entry points are.

                            22871256335_4fe6e9be1c_b.jpg

                            This will use an 868 Mhz trigger device (which I already have) so I do not yet need to put a big hole through the outside wall for cables; but alarm PIRs open a loop rather than close it – so I also need to build a safeguard circuit to the 868 MHz TX otherwise the cats might claw the loop wire apart and the 868 MHz would be stuck in TX until the batteries ran down; and before that it may overheat and transmit a square wave; that could annoy a lot of people.

                            it would also serve as a check if 868 MHz is being cut across by the new 4G mobile phones that are on nearby frequencies…

                            When I get more time I will use the PIR trigger to send pager messages if cats (or other creatures) get into certain areas; activate one or more cameras, and trigger other devices such as LED lamps pointed towards other bits of the garden (so the cats chase them instead of bothering the fish).

                            If this all works well I can build a larger scale one for work – as this will give the older people freedom to wander yet remain protected.

                            This should under IR2030 UK count as a “medical and biological application” [other than the bird trackers Ofcom do not specifiy what species are covered by each allocation 😉

                            these were some of the +20dBM test messages (after all I was encouraged to do this by the Dutch) :laugh_at:

                            22882396601_5cdd1eaa38_o.png

                            I have since set the power at +14dBM which is just about within the regs for everything (that is the output power of the chip, some is lost in the antenna wire and other inefficiencies)

                            in reply to: Want to go party..but no car #1279141
                            General Lighting
                            Moderator

                              @JT7 703256 wrote:

                              [Bring your teddy [/quote]

                              last time I did it only scared the bouncers and I was stuck outside with cops and environment ministry having to confirm her correct CITES import status :laugh_at:

                              3956233624_1ff6b21bde.jpg

                              in reply to: Want to go party..but no car #1279140
                              General Lighting
                              Moderator

                                @e-babes from when I last saw you I wouldn’t say you were exactly unfit. If you still live in Reading it is possible to ride a push bike to West London in 2 hours; and if you are in Newbury the whole of the Ridgeway is at your feet/pedals.

                                E-bikes are way cheaper nowadays if you want to save your knees. Both are cheaper to run than cars and cops never bother you unless you are riding blatantly dangerously I got to all the Reading parties and even Wycombe, Basingstoke and Wantage this way.

                                General Lighting
                                Moderator

                                  adieu Lopik (I had considered making a similar video myself but even in NL there was loads of interference; I suspect KPN had been turning down the power anyway)

                                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WBort3yKNg

                                  in reply to: Hey what’s up!? #1279132
                                  General Lighting
                                  Moderator

                                    @JT7 703227 wrote:

                                    3. Try to FREQUENCY NETWORK with walkie talkies! In OVERTLY HUGE EVENTS you will get lost. Meetups on drugs is a SERIOUS HASSLE. Just ask people in line…..”who has a walkie talkie….what frequency….etc. etc”. You get to meet more people that way. Stay away from the ones that don’t share frequencies (really bad people…TRUST ME…..usually its because they cant handle their drugs…..even WEED…its funny).

                                    trying to “hide” these frequencies is very silly anyway as most of the portable sets which do not require a license from FCC / Industrie Canada (or the national equivalent wherever the event is happening) use clear analogue speech (or very basic scramblers which anyone can easily defeat).

                                    if these folk are also operating illegally out of band (which may seem tempting when Chinese equipment that can communicate with anything from ships to aircrafts is surprisingly cheap) that is even more silly as they are attracting more attention to themselves; especially if they don’t know 100% what they are doing or what the local frequency allocations are – as they are much more likely to accidentally cut across the comms of the event organisers, end up upsetting the sound engineers by transmitting across radio microphones or worse, even interfere with the public safety organisations often present at these events.

                                    BTW for the USA all the frequencies the more commonly found handhelds are normally set to are in the link below (your own radio set may or may not not have a frequency display).

                                    I am based in Europe where we have similar radio equipment but it uses different frequencies (446 MHz without a license) so am not 100% sure which ones are more prevalent at EDM events but suspect it would be the FRS ones as the lower permitted power means the sets are more likely to use “normal” batteries/accus. it would also be unusual for an open repeater with talkthrough active for public use to be on site unless its something like Burning Man or a festival aimed predominantly at techies/hackers.

                                    TBH in smaller European countries they rarely use a repeater even for the event organisers comms as it requires more effort and licensing to deploy one and the sites aren’t usually large enough to warrant their use.

                                    FRS/GMRS combined channel chart – The RadioReference Wiki

                                    in reply to: Totem presents The Drop – Level-1 Radio : Show Updates #1279084
                                    General Lighting
                                    Moderator

                                      are there recordings available? i keep missing these as I am often at work and recently have been spending a lot of time in such places as meter cupboards where there is no space to safely operate a laptop or larger computer (and I need 100% concentration; or there is a risk of me either getting a strong shock or putting off power elsewhere in the building which is full of vulnerable people).

                                      BTW there is this software (link below) you can use to add track lists, shouts in metadata and other info (including messages repeating every few seconds) to confirm when you are on air..

                                      http://utils.magic-radio.net/UpdateTitle2-9.zip

                                      in reply to: Any Mandarin speaking people who have nice hand wrighting? #1279081
                                      General Lighting
                                      Moderator

                                        its worth doing your research first; a few years ago I had to talk Giantmidget out of getting a tattoo of a “Japanese tiger”. There is no such creature, as it would involve the cat swmming across the South China sea; tigers can swim but like all cats they abhor cold water (and the sea gets colder as you approach Japan/Korea).

                                        Any tigers in Japan are most likely confined to the Zoo and imported from Malaysia (which is incidentally where nearly all “Japanese” hi fi and electronics other than wristwatches is now made).

                                        General Lighting
                                        Moderator

                                          nice one dude – will find some space for that mix on VFR, although I’ve literally just done a new update of the looped tracks 5 minutes before seeing this (the content does get updated every week anyway but publishing the schedules takes longer).

                                          BTW should I put you down in the listings as from UK, DE or Scotland?

                                          for some reason you need the tag {soundcloud} rather than just {sc} or it doesn’t work (I used the wrong brackets deliberately on those two as the correct ones confuse the software)

                                          [soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/sonicrampage/concrete-over-goa-old-school-goa-trance-100-mixed-on-vinyl[/soundcloud]

                                          General Lighting
                                          Moderator

                                            this should be a full size version of the flyer

                                            86753d1440134655-wanna-experience-90s-rave-scene-poster_onlinegebruik.jpg

                                            WORM is a full scale social centre (and worth a thread of its own) – I’ve translated some directions from the link below

                                            Vanaf treinstation Rotterdam Centraal

                                            Tram 7 richting Willemsplein/Nesserdijk naar halte Museumpark
                                            Tram 20 richting Lombardijen naar halte Museumpark

                                            from the trainstation Rotterdam Central you can get two trams (both would take you to the same place)

                                            Tram 7 direction Willemsplein/Nesserdijk to stop Museumpark
                                            Tram 20 direction Lombardijen to stop Museumpark

                                            Vanaf halte Museumpark loop je over de Witte de Withstraat tot aan de Boomgaardsstraat. Aan de linkerkant vindt je de ingang van WORM.

                                            from stop Museumpark walk over de Witte de Withstraat to de Boomgaardsstraat. On the left hand side you will find the entrance to WORM.

                                            bron (NL) : http://www.worm.org/sheets/view/14448

                                            in reply to: Any Mandarin speaking people who have nice hand wrighting? #1279080
                                            General Lighting
                                            Moderator

                                              Unfortunately I understand very little Chinese (my Dad’s side of the family did not teach him the local dialect and school was in English as Malaya was still a colony then) but the folk here do – it might be a bit of a distance for you but closer than Beijing 😉

                                              Lydia presents the Chinese Hour show on our community radio, although she speaks Cantonese on her show (which I don’t understand either)

                                              Contact Us

                                              in reply to: Graphics software for album art #1279058
                                              General Lighting
                                              Moderator

                                                @djilla 702846 wrote:

                                                Hey, any tips on good software for creating graphics stuff like flyers, album art etc? Mostly digital (soundcloud) but might do some print stuff too. All help very much appreciated.

                                                inkscape is free and can do both vector and bitmap graphics. Use vector art wherever possible and high res photos as they scale better for printing. You can always export a vector project as a bitmap of any size but the other way round can result in jaggies if the source bitmap does not have high enough DPI.

                                                https://inkscape.org/en/

                                                in reply to: Meat #1279022
                                                General Lighting
                                                Moderator

                                                  I agree with the overall ethos of what you are saying; (as apparently I am one of the original “cyberpunk veterans” having first used the Internet in 1991/2 – just before it was officially released in my country!) but am curious as to what the distinction between private and public bulletin boards is.

                                                  This is probably because I am British / European; in the 1980s a public bulletin board was what you’d get on viewdata terminals in the library. The Council provided the content and had things like info about schools; buses and trains, when the rubbish (trash) would be collected in your street; you could also use it to search for where books were in the libraries for a region (rather than card indexes).

                                                  There were also ones which you could send messages with but the equipment and cost of calling them was way expensive in the UK; in Germany and France the telephone company was still the nationalised PTT and subsidised these services; they did indeed get used for sharing rave info especially in France.

                                                  Private bulletin boards (at least for us Europeans) meant those ones where you had to know the correct phone number and login. Forums like this evolved out of these (this site was around a year before Google). Although all of it is on the public internet there is still a difference; we are not interested in harvesting every bit of data about your lifestyle; nor who your friends are and then selling it to the highest bidder like the corporate social networks are doing.

                                                  I was thinking just now that the so-called “free resources” on the large networks like youtube; facebook etc have actually disrupted a lot of underground communities in Europe. they’ve made everyone feel entitled to getting anything for near zero effort (including real life friendships and relationships) – and are also extremely quick when anything is controversial to hand over the data straight to feds/law enforcement (or set it out in such a way any donut muncher can mine it without needing a login).

                                                  in reply to: New gabber? #1279036
                                                  General Lighting
                                                  Moderator

                                                    @!sinner69! 702741 wrote:

                                                    The hardcore or gabber…sometimes I cant tell the difference,

                                                    that is exactly what I find; although thinking back to 1990s when me and a friend started setting up a music/multimedia studio based around gabber-culture in SE England/London (which is how rtn VFRmedia originated). it was definitely more of a lifestyle than simply a music genre.

                                                    This is not easy to explain; it is like explaining gezelligheid / hygge / Gemütlichkeit in English. Coincidentally gezelligheid comes from an old Dutch word gezel which also means friend (the English term “geezer” may be related).

                                                    For us it was very much linked to squatting buildings and not just using them for parties but also for art installations; music production (we would sample anything that would make a noise; including banging heavy objects together) and random tech experiments/hacker stuff; the loud music and consumption of much cheap booze and other stuff may also be a way of keeping active and warm in buildings that were very much affected by North European weather and where the heating was often defective or non existent.

                                                    As I have been looking after my mind and body better in recent weeks I decided to get some beer for tonight; unfortunately I could not find any Grolsch so had to make do with the 0,650 l Heineken bottle which is on special offer at the local supermarket (and has a correct NL barcode; in the UK you have to be careful when buying pilsener from any foreign brand or you get stitched up with “Engelse kattepis”).

                                                    Proost / Prost / Skål / L’chaim!

                                                    in reply to: New gabber? #1279035
                                                    General Lighting
                                                    Moderator

                                                      PS: gabber isn’t actually a genre as such ; its slang in an ancient Amsterdam dialect for “mate / friend” which is actually borrowed from Yiddish and was more to do with a lifestyle about DIY culture; squatparties etc. The way we call this music “gabber” in English is a bit like calling pilsener beer “lager” when that is actually what the beer is stored in rather than the drink itself.

                                                      what also happened since the 90s is the term “gabber/gabba” got a bad reputation in NL as it was briefly hijacked by hard right wing (same as how skinhead culture was in UK in 1970s/1980s) although the real gabber / underground scene is of course very multicultural and tolerant. I think the music still exists but it is to some extent rebranded as “hard tekno”. Another factor is in NL it has been diluted a bit by more commercialised hard dance / hardcore.

                                                    Viewing 25 posts - 1 through 25 (of 7,822 total)