Adventure Rocket Ship

Presumably that's a SCSI drive - I've got a couple of them buried at the base of my evergrowing pile of retired HDD's. Full of voice recording of Weather forecasts from the early nineties, they are - wonder if they'll still spin up?

Y'all might like to read this (http://www.futurismic.com/2006/02/new_fiction_from_mark_ward.html).
- might have to switch to IE to do so though, comes up blank here.

From:

kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com

Something involving petrol and matches?

From:

It seems completely broken for Moz/Firefix and broken but readable in Konqueror.

Yes, SCSI. Jokes have been made here about glueing a USB connector to it and calling it a keyring drive.

Why the weather forecast? (Forties, Cromarty, Dogger: 1001, rising.)

From:

Yes. Viking burial. Or viking flaming footwear rocket attack. Viking midnight drunken trebuchet arson. Something like that.

From:

girfan.livejournal.com

Don't encourage him!
:0

From:

They're out of audiotex equipment (used to provide recorded information over the phone). Probably some cricket commentary on there as well.

Forties, Cromarty, Dogger: 1001, rising - if you find that soothing, you probably need a Navtex setup.

Optimum setup:-

a) Monochrome monitor (preferably green on black), running a TTY program
b) Radio tuned to Navtex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navtex)
c) Decoder software (homebrew, or off the 'net)

Messages scroll in at 100 baud, atmospherics corrupt the occasional character, terse messages of danger at sea.

ZCZC EA02
WZ 1867
FRANCE, NORTH COAST. APPROACHES TO TROUVILLE. UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE
REPORTED 49-24.59N 000-05.55W.

ZCZC AL26
052000 UTC JAN 03
CETACEAN DECAYING (LENGTH 8 M).
PSN : 46 33 N - 002 30 W AT 051600Z JAN
CANCEL THIS MSG AT 071700Z JAN

ZCZC EB38
NITONRADIO
GALE WARNING MONDAY 06 JANUARY 0955GMT

BISCAY
GALE NOW CEASED

SOLE SHANNON ROCKALL
SOUTHEASTERLY GALE FORCE 8 INCREASING SEVERE GALE FORCE 9 SOON

FASTNET
SOUTHEASTERLY GALE FORCE 8 EXPECTED
NNNN

More.. (http://hazeii.livejournal.com/23485.html)

From:

and read perfectly in Safari. Thankyou for the link, much enjoyed etc etc :)

From:

oryctolagus.livejournal.com

Ooooh Viking burial. We've got a viking-style blowing horn that we could bring round and sound over the flames. Or we could all bring a pair or redundant footwear and consign them to the flames in some kind of footwear-related Up Hellya. Or we could float them off down the Frome in a kind of 13th Warriors sort of send off....

'Lo there do I see my footwear, lo there do I see my sandals and my stillettos and my pointy boots of doom.......'

From:

kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com

Ah no. Put petrol in, float them on water, set alight, then push them away from the bank. Very poetic.

From:

I keep meaning to build a navtex receiver after hearing your talk of one. Simple?

From:

steer.livejournal.com

In 1992 I was using an aging Amstrad 1512 which was purchased in '87. It had 512K of memory and a single 360K floppy drive. It also had a whopping 50 bytes of non-volatile ram.

From:

razornet.livejournal.com

bloody luxury. I had a 464.

From:

moral-vacuum.livejournal.com

something spectacular and fitting with my old boots. (Yes, I guess I need to fuck them in some way...)

"Nice boots...".

Oh, you didn't mean literally. As you were.

From:

jarkman.livejournal.com

We could set them into a block of concrete and send them to sleep with the fishes.

From:

It's pretty simple, especially using a PC & sound card for amplication/decoding.

You can always just get a radio capable of receiving 518khz and plug the output into your PC (needs to be one with USB/LSB or a local oscillator for Morse, though). Alternatively, build/buy an LF converter to extend the range of a cheap shortwave radio.

On the other hand, the real fun comes from building the whole radio yourself. At these low frequencies, it's very doable and you get to learn a lot in the process.

The approach I favour is a direct conversion receiver; say a FET amplifier with a loop aerial (I used a few turns of wire around a cardboard box) feeding an SA602 mixer IC (http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/pip/SA602.html) (still available as 8-pin DIP). Then take the SA602 output to the line or mic input of your sound card. You'll need to arrange a local oscillator - if you went for 512Khz (Navtex is at 518Khz so audio output would be at 6Khz) you could easily use any power-of-2 Xtal and divide it the right number of times (e.g. 16 for an 8.192Mhz Xtal).

A quick Google for "LF converter 602" or "LF direct conversion receiver 602" throws up loads of example circuits - if you're in a good signal area you could even try using a circuit like this (http://www.alphalink.com.au/~parkerp/lfconv.gif) - you'd need to change the Xtal through, and the output needs changing for AF rather than RF. Alternatively the top part of this circuit (http://www.qsl.net/ik2pii/lf/dcrx136.htm) - again, I'd be tempted to leave out the AF op-amps and feed the mixer output straight into the sound card.

I use this kind of approach to receive all kinds of LF signals, all the way from the 16Khz military stuff through MSF (and other radio clocks), Loran, Nav beacons, Radio 4 (did you know that carries a data stream?) and so on up to Navtex. I'll scan a relevant circuit or two if you're that interested.

From:

Aye, very interested - building the radio is the fun bit really, didn't realise it was theoretically this simple, we just skimmed RF at A-level really.

From:

This does of course mean that i'll have to get a scope from somewhere.

R4 carries data beyond RDS?

From:

... And that would be terrible. Mine came from Ebay for sixpence.

From:

Relevant circuit? Please do. It's just struck me that I've not done any analogue for twenty years. (and about half way through that I met DHM, who did back-of-envelope hackery with such brio that I felt... But that was the wrong response, really. Still, one grows up and learns, thankfully.)

From:

Yes. Absolutely.

From:

*nyom*.

Got any going spare?

From:

Not locally. Though if you want a B-, C- or D-class machine...

From:

Nah. I've just put a desktop HP9k onto the 'bin it' list along with a few other little bits. No-one wanted it. Or the uV-II (but that's getting binned).

Collection is decreasing slowly.

From:

Today, this (http://hazeii.net/images/2006/navtexdc.gif) plugged into a PC soundcard line-in and some code gave:-

GALE WARNINGS: THAMES

THE GENERAL SITUATION AT MIDDAY

LOW FISHER 980 EXPECTED EAST BALTIC SEA 987 BY MIDDAY TOMORROW.
ATLANTIC HIGH 1025 MOVING STEADILY NORTHEAST, EXPECTED HEBRIDES WITH
LITTLE CHANGE BY SAME TIME

24-HR FORECASTS

THAMES

NORTHWEST 6 TO GALE 8. SHOWERS. MODERATE OR GOOD
DOVER WIGHT PORTLAND PLYMOUTH
NORTHWEST 5 OR 6, VEERING NORTH 4 OR 5. MAINLY FAIR. GOOD

BISCAY

NORTHWEST VEERING NORTHEAST 3 OR 4, OCCASIONALLY 5 AT FIRST. MAINLY
FAIR. MODERATE OR GOOD

SOUTH FITZROY

EAST OR NORTHEAST 4 OR 5, OCCASIONALLY 6 LATER. FAIR. GOOD

NORTH FITZROY SOLE

VARIABLE BECOMING EAST 3 OR 4. MAINLY FAIR. MODERATE OR GOOD

LUNDY FASTNET

NORTHWEST 4 OR 5, VEERING NORTHEAST 3 OR 4. MAINLY FAIR. MODERATE OR
GOOD

OUTLOOK FOLLOWING 24 HOURS:

STRONG WINDS THROUGHOUT IN FITZROY AND AT FIRST IN THAMES AND DOVER.
GALES AT FIRST IN THAMES

ZCZC EA12
WZ 185
ENGLISH CHANNEL. CAP D'ANTIFER NORTHWESTWARDS. WRECK OF FISHING
VESSEL REPORTED 50-02.3N 000-08.8W.

ZCZC EA11
WZ 181
ENGLISH CHANNEL. SELSEY BILL SOUTHWARDS. SPECIAL SPHERICAL LIGHTBUOY
50-27N 000-47W MISSING. CANCEL WZ 1924 (EA21).

ZCZC EA06
WZ 170
ENGLISH CHANNEL CENTRAL PART. WESTERN APPROACHES TO OFF CASQUETS TSS
EASTBOUND LANE. DANGEROUS WRECK 49-43.7N 003-15.4W. AREA MARKED BY
CARDINAL LIGHTBUOYS?
49-44.68N 003-15.59W NORTH CARDINAL
49-43.97N 003-13.77W EAST CARDINAL
49-42.75N 003-14.80W SOUTH CARDINAL
49-43.46N 003-16.70W WEST CARDINAL
DUPLICATE WEST CARDINAL RACON (D) ESTABLISHED CLOSE WEST OF FIRST
WEST CARDINAL.
EXCLUSION ZONE RADIUS ONE MILE CENTRED ON WRECK ESTABLISHED. ALL
VESSELS TO AVOID THIS AREA. CANCEL WZ 166 (EA04).

ZCZC EA85
WZ 106
FRANCE NORTH COAST. GUERNSEY SOUTHWESTWARDS. PLATEAU DES ROCHES
DOUVRES LIGHTHOUSE 49-06.3N 002-48.8W, FOGSIGNAL UNRELIABLE.
ZCZC EA76
WZ 089
ENGLAND SOUTH COAST. ST ALBANS LEDGE SOUTHWESTWARD. UNMARKED
ABANDONED NETS 50-31.2N 002-08.0W

ZCZC EA27
WZ 1942
THAMES ESTUARY. APPROACHES TO THE SWALE. COLUMBINE BUOY 51-24.3N
001-01.3E AND HAM GAT BUOY 51-23.9N 001-00.0E BOTH CHANGED TO
LIGHTBUOYS FLASH GREEN 2 SECONDS. CANCEL WZ 1705 (EA97) (MA68).

----

Same circuit works for R4 on LW (extra-special heard on a home brew radio) and atomic time from Rugby MSF; designed to be buildable without anything other than a soldering iron and a PC (longer-term aim is a web page with appropriate detail, in the short-term questions from anyone building the circuit will be useful for the inevitable FAQ).

From: