6 MONITORING TIMES October 2007

Tom Kneitel ndash The Write Stuff In this October issue we have the rare honor of an article by the legendary Tom Knei-tel W4XAA inspired by a QSL card he copied to Bob Grove in an email While Tom writes to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first earth-orbiting satellite we thought it an appro-priate time to commemorate ldquoTommyrdquo himself The following are personal testimonies to the influence of this passionate radio hobbyist by three career writers each of whom has his own sphere of influence Maybe this section should have been titled ldquoMaking Wavesrdquo the ripples continue to spread

MemoriesBob Grove W8JHD As the fall colors begin to overtake the green of summer itrsquos natural to look back re-flectively and many of us look back to what got us all started in the world of radio monitoring With me it was the miracle of hearing radio signals from great distances then talking to them when I got my ham radio license at age 13 That was quickly followed by the intrigue of intercepting and identifying those mysteri-ous signals outside of the broadcasting and amateur radio bands But early influences include people for many of us radio old-timers perhaps none as much as Tom Kneitel whose poignant prose filled pages of many magazines most notably and recently Popular Communications and previously CB Magazine Tomrsquos loves were the sensational ndash pirate broadcasters spies UFOs embassies FBI RF and the hu-man body death rays ldquosecretrdquo frequencies His best-selling Top Secret Registry of government radio frequencies was the inspiration for my

own sequential volumes of the Confidential Frequency List the Federal Frequency Direc-tory and ultimately my Shortwave Frequency Directory Writing articles for technical magazines gave me the confidence to publish the first issue of Monitoring Times followed shortly by CQ Magazinersquos release of Popular Communica-tions ndash and Tom was at the helm Readers were sure that he and I were mortal enemies in fact nothing could be further from the truth Tom and I always had a warmth and respect for one another exchanging kind comments as well as Christmas cards Tomrsquos writings influenced the radio hobby establishing precedents and standards and Irsquom grateful to have had the pleasure of knowing him maturing in my own fields of interest at his side Thanks Tom for sending the Sputnik QSL which started this trip down memory lane

ndash Bob Grove

Tomrsquos ldquoThe ManrdquoLarry Van Horn N5FPW Back in my early days of the radio hobby (circa 1964 and after) I had a lot of guiding influences that led me through the waters of the radio hobby world Looking in my file cabinet at articles published in Electron-ics Illustrated and Popular Electronics by such notables as C M Stanbury Harry Helms Steve Handler Ron Lu-machi-WB2CQM Len Buckwalter-K1ODHKBA4480 Jim White-W5LET Russ Alexan-der-W6IEL and Herb Friedman-W2ZLF it brought back fond memories of the days when we called fre-quencies ldquokilocyclesrdquo and ldquomegacyclesrdquo But one name in my opinion stands a little taller than all the rest ndash Tom Kneitel While I have never met Tom in person after more than 40 years of reading his writings I feel like I know him very well In fact I will never forget our first conversation on the phone No I donlsquot remember what we talked about but heck I was talking to the ldquomanrdquo ndash Tom Kneitel What did Tom write about that had such an impact on a teenager just getting into the radio hobby He wrote about the intrigue and mysteries that surrounded the radio communi-cations of the era Tom could spin a good tale pass along a neat frequency and send his read-

ers running for the radio dial Each of Tomrsquos articles took you on an adventure It made you want to fire off your Knight Kit Star Roamer or Hallicrafters 5-band shortwave and see if you could get in on the action too Topics like Radio SwanAmericas the Voice of the Purple Pumpkin and many more were the beat that Mr Kneitel pounded It was an era in the radio hobby I will never forget and almost single handedly Tom made that all possible So for those of you who remember here are some of the legends of an era gone by the Heathkits Knight kits Hallicrafters Lafayette radios EI Popular Electronics and one of the biggest legends of all ndash my friend Tom Kneitel A snappy salute to you and ldquoAlicerdquo Thank you for all you did for our radio hobby

Give lsquoem FlowersTJ Skip Arey I think it was Ken Keasey who once said something about flowers ldquoGive lsquoem while they can still smell lsquoemrdquo Too many flowers show up after the people are no longer with us to appreciate them Now I never figured Tom Kneitel to be big on flowers but I am going to do the next best thing I am going to tell him how I feel while I still can When I first became curious about this thing called radio I started reading a magazine in my school library called ldquoElectronics Il-lustratedrdquo A number of folks were regular columnists including such notables as the well known Wayne Green founder of 73 Magazine They were great role models but when the new issue of EI showed up on the shelves I always turned first to ldquoUncle Tomrsquos Cabinrdquo where Tom Kneitel gave his advice and sardonic wit to the readers If you expressed a problem and asked ldquoWhy Merdquo more often than not Tom would return the answer ldquoWhy not yourdquo But in amongst the barbs I learned a great deal about the radio hobby and just as impor-tantly a great deal about how to write about radio Faithfully reading ldquoUncle Tomrsquos Cabinrdquo as well as his feature pieces I began to get a sense that you could teach people about radio and have a whole lot of fun doing it I followed Tomrsquos writing through magazines such as S9 and on into the venture Popular Communica-tions Tom never ceased to please As I began to write about radio myself

LETTERSto the Editor

October 2007 MONITORING TIMES 7

LL ii ss tteenniinngg iiss oonnllyy hhaall ff tthhee ffuunn PPOOPPUULLAARRCCOOMMMMUUNNIICCAATTIIOONNSS

ii ss tthhee ootthheerr hhaall ff If you enjoy radio communications in all its variety yoursquoll love

POPULAR COMMUNICAPOPULAR COMMUNICATIONSTIONSSince 1982 PoprsquoComm has delivered thousands of pages of great reading forboth the radio enthusiast and the professional communicatorEvery month PoprsquoComm is crammed with scanner frequencies shortwavelistings broadcast and utility loggings radio nostalgia and technicalinformation Plus yoursquoll find great features on amateur radio public servicecommunications DXing pirates clandestines and much much more

USA CanadaMexico Foreign

1 Year 3295 4295 52952 Years 5895 7895 98953 Years 8595 11595 14595

Popular Communications 25 Newbridge Road Hicksville NY11801 bull Phone 516-681-2922 bull Fax 516-681-2926Visit our web site wwwpopular-communicationscom

Name _______________________________________________________

Address______________________________________________________

City _______________________________Sate _________Zip _________

Check MasterCard VISA AMEX Discover

Card No _____________________________________Expires _________

Signature ____________________________________________________

YES Enter my subscription to Popular Communications today

whenever I got stuck for ideas I would reread old copies of EI and Tomrsquos other magazines for inspiration As I began to have a bit of a name of my own in radio journalism I took on the persona of ldquoUncle Skiprdquo in honor of all that ldquoUncle Tomrdquo had taught me over the years In retirement Tom may not be writing much for his many fans in the future But I would just like to say to folks that if you have enjoyed what I have had to say over the years about radio donrsquot thank me thank Uncle Tom Kneitel Hersquos the reason why I am here with my words Peace on you Tom You will always be my hero

Serious about Satellites ldquoI have worked in electronics since the late lsquo50s That consisted of 2-way radio TV avionics and assorted other areas One of the areas I did not work in is satellite communica-tions ldquoThat brings me to my questions I re-cently switched from DISH to DIRECT satel-lite The DISH antenna is still attached to the house I want to use the setup to receive free TV that is being broadcast ldquoWill this set-up do it for me I obviously would have to reposition the antenna ldquoHow does one find the new transmis-sions There were some articles in recent MT concerning this but left me with questions ldquoAre there resources on WWW to get more informationrdquo ndash Tom Humes

Thanks for your excellent question which will be of interest to all MT readers Herersquos a quick check list of the differences between DBS satellites (such as DirecTV or DISH Net-work) and broadcast satellites that carry the MPEGII FTA channels you want to watch1) DBS satellite signals are circularly polar-

ized broadcast satellite signals are linearly polarized

2) DBS satellites are all Ku band broadcast satellites use both C and Ku-band frequen-cies

3) DBS satellites use different Ku band frequencies than broadcast satellites

4) DBS power output is about 10 times as great as those of broadcast satellites

What this all means is that to receive broadcast satellites on a DirecTV or DISH Network dish you would first have to replace the LNBF but then you would also have to replace the reflector because the 18-inch DirecTV dish is too small to capture enough signal from a broadcast satellite to be useful So your best bet if you want to watch MPEGII FTA signals is to find a nice 3-foot diameter dish and put a standard Ku-band LNBF on the feed Even after doing all this you would need to buy an MPEGII FTA receiver because the DirecTV and DISH Network receivers are designed to receive only their signals There are several sources for this type of dish and receiver First go to wwwskyvisioncom and check out their FTA and Ku-Band equipment pages The cheapest and most useful is to buy a GlobecastTV system from wwwglobecast-

worldtvcom and find your way to the US (English) section These are complete systems which cost under $200 I like them because theyrsquore very well made easy to install and have the advantage of having a ldquosmart cardrdquo which will let you subscribe to world TV channels on Galaxy 25 Read my Beginnerrsquos Corner columns in the June and July issues of MT for full details You may actually be able to use the roof mount of your old DirecTV system and the cable which will save you some time and effort but thatrsquos all yoursquoll be able to salvage Hope this helps Let me know how it goes and keep in touch ndash Ken Reitz

ldquoI read with interest [Bob Groversquos] ar-ticle in Monitoring Times on Inmarsat The Inmarsat B terminals use digital voice modula-tion Inmarsat uses the same IMBE Vocoder for its B terminals as APCO-25 uses for its digital voice communications The Inmarsat B voice terminals use QPSK and are APC coded The AOR ARD25 supports QPSK modulation I have the confirmation from AOR Japan I have no idea how to solve the problem with the APC coding If you have any idea please let me knowrdquo ndash Eric Van den Bulcke

Are any readers able to help APC coding appears to be a digital audio processing and compression standard

October 2007 MONITORING TIMES 7

LL ii ss tteenniinngg iiss oonnllyy hhaall ff tthhee ffuunn PPOOPPUULLAARRCCOOMMMMUUNNIICCAATTIIOONNSS

ii ss tthhee ootthheerr hhaall ff If you enjoy radio communications in all its variety yoursquoll love

POPULAR COMMUNICAPOPULAR COMMUNICATIONSTIONSSince 1982 PoprsquoComm has delivered thousands of pages of great reading forboth the radio enthusiast and the professional communicatorEvery month PoprsquoComm is crammed with scanner frequencies shortwavelistings broadcast and utility loggings radio nostalgia and technicalinformation Plus yoursquoll find great features on amateur radio public servicecommunications DXing pirates clandestines and much much more

USA CanadaMexico Foreign

1 Year 3295 4295 52952 Years 5895 7895 98953 Years 8595 11595 14595

Popular Communications 25 Newbridge Road Hicksville NY11801 bull Phone 516-681-2922 bull Fax 516-681-2926Visit our web site wwwpopular-communicationscom

Name _______________________________________________________

Address______________________________________________________

City _______________________________Sate _________Zip _________

Check MasterCard VISA AMEX Discover

Card No _____________________________________Expires _________

Signature ____________________________________________________

YES Enter my subscription to Popular Communications today

whenever I got stuck for ideas I would reread old copies of EI and Tomrsquos other magazines for inspiration As I began to have a bit of a name of my own in radio journalism I took on the persona of ldquoUncle Skiprdquo in honor of all that ldquoUncle Tomrdquo had taught me over the years In retirement Tom may not be writing much for his many fans in the future But I would just like to say to folks that if you have enjoyed what I have had to say over the years about radio donrsquot thank me thank Uncle Tom Kneitel Hersquos the reason why I am here with my words Peace on you Tom You will always be my hero

Serious about Satellites ldquoI have worked in electronics since the late lsquo50s That consisted of 2-way radio TV avionics and assorted other areas One of the areas I did not work in is satellite communica-tions ldquoThat brings me to my questions I re-cently switched from DISH to DIRECT satel-lite The DISH antenna is still attached to the house I want to use the setup to receive free TV that is being broadcast ldquoWill this set-up do it for me I obviously would have to reposition the antenna ldquoHow does one find the new transmis-sions There were some articles in recent MT concerning this but left me with questions ldquoAre there resources on WWW to get more informationrdquo ndash Tom Humes

Thanks for your excellent question which will be of interest to all MT readers Herersquos a quick check list of the differences between DBS satellites (such as DirecTV or DISH Net-work) and broadcast satellites that carry the MPEGII FTA channels you want to watch1) DBS satellite signals are circularly polar-

ized broadcast satellite signals are linearly polarized

2) DBS satellites are all Ku band broadcast satellites use both C and Ku-band frequen-cies

3) DBS satellites use different Ku band frequencies than broadcast satellites

4) DBS power output is about 10 times as great as those of broadcast satellites

What this all means is that to receive broadcast satellites on a DirecTV or DISH Network dish you would first have to replace the LNBF but then you would also have to replace the reflector because the 18-inch DirecTV dish is too small to capture enough signal from a broadcast satellite to be useful So your best bet if you want to watch MPEGII FTA signals is to find a nice 3-foot diameter dish and put a standard Ku-band LNBF on the feed Even after doing all this you would need to buy an MPEGII FTA receiver because the DirecTV and DISH Network receivers are designed to receive only their signals There are several sources for this type of dish and receiver First go to wwwskyvisioncom and check out their FTA and Ku-Band equipment pages The cheapest and most useful is to buy a GlobecastTV system from wwwglobecast-

worldtvcom and find your way to the US (English) section These are complete systems which cost under $200 I like them because theyrsquore very well made easy to install and have the advantage of having a ldquosmart cardrdquo which will let you subscribe to world TV channels on Galaxy 25 Read my Beginnerrsquos Corner columns in the June and July issues of MT for full details You may actually be able to use the roof mount of your old DirecTV system and the cable which will save you some time and effort but thatrsquos all yoursquoll be able to salvage Hope this helps Let me know how it goes and keep in touch ndash Ken Reitz

ldquoI read with interest [Bob Groversquos] ar-ticle in Monitoring Times on Inmarsat The Inmarsat B terminals use digital voice modula-tion Inmarsat uses the same IMBE Vocoder for its B terminals as APCO-25 uses for its digital voice communications The Inmarsat B voice terminals use QPSK and are APC coded The AOR ARD25 supports QPSK modulation I have the confirmation from AOR Japan I have no idea how to solve the problem with the APC coding If you have any idea please let me knowrdquo ndash Eric Van den Bulcke

Are any readers able to help APC coding appears to be a digital audio processing and compression standard