This is my radio history ! [and non]

(total text revision on 19)

This is my history in radio ,radio communications and other related aspects The text below was normally prepared to be used for Pop Comm for 1990  however it was never sent to them !

 

Using my fathers'  Morse tutor , at an age of 6 months only!

 

 

• 1962 :I was only half a year  when my father, before going as a ship radio telegraphist, left in our house a Morse tutor. I liked to play with it! After some years when I was 6-8 I liked to use our old tube radio (with SW bandf) and  playing with its buttons. The continuous trips my father with the ship. in the USA , Cuba and Japan and the records he bought from those far-away places, aroused my feelings about everything Japanese . At same time I enjoyed learning 'strange' languages such as Japanese. Litte more can be found on the interests webpage  (be careful long page )
  

• 70 During high school , after buying my first SW radio type SILVER RT430 I enjoyed listening to AM and SW radio stations. I liked normally to listen to Radio Moscow's Chinese service because I liled to listen to Chinse language Very soon I used this radio to listen to strange music listening as e.g. Chinese, Hilife (afropop),  Arab, Turkish etc. This was after 1972. 

• 75-78  I continued listening to SW radio during my high school studies and on 1976-8 I got connected with a Chinese friend working in the chinese pavilion  in the Thesslaoniki trade Fair. He was a Greek philosophy student in the nearby University. This caused me an admiration in everything Chinese. At the same time with the co-operation of my French language  teacher we prepared my first letter to R Beijing for my top frequency 7935kHz for awarding a QSL card . R Beijing as well as CNR 1/2 of the time ere my music partner when i read my school  lessons.
• 1980 I sent letters to R Pyongyang R Korea and to other Asian stations At the Same time started learning the English language in the while I was learning marketing studies . .However due to much QRM from RTTY stations in 7935, I was looking for ideas to reject the QRM, so I was a regular buyer of '73 Magazine ' from a local bookstore. Satellite systems  attracted my interest and started sending letters to companies involved . it was a big disappoint to me that time that 20 m dishes were required
• 1984 One of these companies added me to their magazine in "Satellite Orbit" magazine, international edition, received every month for many years. A public research was made in the marketing studies class asking around 35 people in a two page questionnaire

 

This  was the company's  business card in between 80s to 90s All sensitive data are removed.

 

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• 1985-6 started  designing and selling satellite antennas with a cousin. We were the first satellite antennas producer in Greece .The first reception on 85 was very successful in receiving Raduga’s OIRT channel little before the Chernobyl disaster. Systems were sold to many customers
• 1985-6 my parents  bought  for me  from Sharjah/ UAE the SONY ICF7600 D radio after  a business trip in a exhibition of Greek products . I used this radio very much afterwards
• 1988-89 The mayor of our city  was the fist in Greece relaying news feeds from satellite programs as CW and BBC by a TVRO  ordered from our company. Many other stations  followed this idea by ordering satellite systems. One of these stations still continues to air  not only the greek news feed from VoA but long music feeds from VoA’s music now! as program filler.
• In the same time the committee managing  the municipality radio was under a cat and mouse chase with police controlled by the Socialist Government due to their unofficial  and irregular TV transmissions. Quite later , on 1989  they ordered a full terrestrial relay system of satellite  TV for 5 satellite TV channels.
• This  action made many more  mayors to invest in such systems especially in N Greece. In less then one year we installed three more systems at a big cost. The demand for home satellite system was dropped to nearly zero. Most antennas used for that time were still 3 meters in diameter to receive Hotbird or any other satellite
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   (1982-1989) All that time was focused in the satelute bsiness  stopping shortwaves  
• 1990 still  Following an interest in utility stations I bought a small RTTY and a fax decoder from England for Spectrum a micro computer bought on early 80s. Tanjug was my top RTTY station with Xinhua as second.
• The trip on 89 in the SEA raised my interest for listening to VoMalaysia in shortwaves on 15295 . That period VoM has good signals with two nearby powerhouses (±5KHz ) from Russia and France causing excessive interference in most times. The most important is that their program was consisted with music for more than 80% if its airing time
• 1992/3 IN a two months leisure and satellite TV installation trip  in N Nigeria  I used my fellow's ICOM 530 transceiver ,a Yaesu transceiver and an old analog Sharp radio tape recorder for DXing . Sharp was then used primarily for recording music from the Vo Malaysia and Yaesu for logs . All the logged stations have been sent by letter  to Mr Garry Dexter in behalf of Pop Comm magazine. This was my first DX-pedition ever !

·        I continued sending reports to Mr Dexter also from my  home in Thessaloniki until 93

·        IN behalf of a local journalist and a transmitter technician  we started a TV channel in Katerini, a city 60 km  South  of Thessaloniki, called TV Pieria. Katerini is a city of 80000 inhabitants .This channel supposedly had  great success in the city and nearby places, with a  reception distance of  50 km In contrast to other local stations which only shown movies or sat relays TV Pieria used blend of local news home productions movies and music. Plase  visit the link above to read the whole story.
The experiment was unsuccessful . In just 8 months the channel was closed.

 

• 92/93 Same time one reader of Pop Comm from my town Thessaloniki (!!!) and SWLer read my name in Mr Dexter's column and contacted me when iw was in N Nigeria  .His name  is Daniel  and after this strange case we became good  friends .Our houses  were only 300 m far .......
• Jan 93 I Daniel poposed me to become a member  of World DX club.
• Mid 93 Been again active in RTTY DX ing for abt 2 months with all the DX material being sent to Bob Margolis of 73 Mag and some news snippets to a local radio station . SPECTRUM was later of order, so I returned to SWLing and clandestine hunting .
• start of 94 I started sending recption reports to radio stations (more than 100 SWBC stations , 60 utes - and 4 clandestines. and two folow ups ) resulting in a  collection  of 200QSL cards ..Signal from Malaysia got quite poor those times but the new Lowe HF150 did not helped either . Fortunately  RRI#3 jakarta was transmitting for a short time on 9680 using a 500 kW transmitter with great signal. A few months later  they were reverting to a 50 kW transmitter with poor signals. I was using the Lowe receiver connected with a pair of Sony Walkman mini speakers for better audio amd music .

• 94 An MFJ 462 TTY reader bought directly from the company. There were many non technical troubles with them .   It operated well in baudot modes, worse in CW, and even worse in ARQ and FEC modes:(
• While the Lowe HF150 was used mainly for Utility DXing the Sony was used solely for radio monitoring
• early 95 M first connection to Internet via a BBS for business purposes and news from Malaysia (berita-l) and later for shortwaves
• Abt March 95: changed my ISP to Compulink.  Pegasus (Winpmail) was my mail manager and Free Agent as the newsgroups manager.
• In the mid 95 (Sep) I joined the following internet radio lists

rec.radio.shortwave

swl$l a special mailing list which is mirrored also in the r.r.s

hard core dx list

Cumbre ( after Obtober 95 )

WUN a special list for utes with nearly 700 -800 members from all over the world - the only ute list

DX Window (recently )

Gat flash! 

• 95 iw as more active in DXing, especially to hard core Dxing and tropical bands. Many new stations started that year especially after June 
• In May 96 I have bought the HF propagation handbook of Jacobs from which I have learnt many interesting things. A little later installed some propagation programs in my computer with VOACAP  the best of all these.
• 1997 passed with DX activity  as I was focused in business and computing. From Sept same yers I was again logging for the DX lists . BY a way i joined the WWDXC  by sending also to them  my loggings . The mailing list  arisen to 86  recipients. Latest DX book is the LA DXing#6. 
• Oh, on 97  i won a special QSL from a Greek pirate  Eroticos

 

 

My shack in the parents house on mid to end 90s . From left to right: Philips 2395 digital radio (over a storage heater) above X magaines . handmade TATU, ld degen 7600D over he Lowe HF150 with its remote control  MFJ TTY reader below a walkman and a mini stereo radio. WRTH  -TBL - and  Utility hand  book On the shelter many tapes  with SW  recs or from VoMalaysia . The monitor on the rack was used for the TV Pieria

 

 

 

UPDATE 2001

 after marriage  and  change of house !

98 and 99 were  nearly calm  years for DX reports  , instead of it being more active for the  online newsletters (mostly) .Very minimal correspondence    has been made , mostly on clandestines  and European pirates. After wedding mid 98  i have left my parents house on the center of the city for living into a mountainous  place with much quieter radio environment  , A nearby 150 kV  distribution electricity tower  nearby the house, affects reception a bit .

The usage of new equipment/accessories  from MFJ  bought at end 98  assisted in better  reception It consisted of an MFJ ATU , a preselector, a phsing unit with tweo antennas and a audio filter

The dual  antenna phaser ha a minimal success on removing local noises and needs surgical process to do the best.  Many other people from the distribution list possibly remember that 1999 was also the year of the update of the greek pirate list. It included more than 120 pirates  from the North Greek region On 98  two small 3 and 6 m antennas were used over the small courtyard with very good reception On 99  they were replaced by with a slightly tilted 16m  wire antenna between two buildings that did an even ‘better job‘

2000: ICOM replaces HF150.HF 150  is used as auxiliary

WRTH 98 and 99 and 2000 were the new book additions. Also Ferrel’s utility book was added together with Klingenfuss and Schimel’s on spy stations> Schimmels was fond in a local bookstore.

ILG data were hardcopied into a book binder for easy updating.The same was made with Cumvre WWDXC DX Widow and EDXP

Email listing added by Eramo’s   Conexion digital  and Taranto DX

• 2001 Added computer interface  to R75 at the end of year ,but seldomly used afterwards , and only in special cases of signal monitoring for logs  . Two Hardware Computer upgrades!  I was contributor to R Pakistan , CCBS radio Tapei Intl and EWTN with visual FTDM analysis  (spectrum analysis )
• Dario Monferini  and Roberto Pavanelo was visited our city in Thessaloniki for few days . we invited them in our house for an unofficial  DX summit One picture was uploaded long ago in Facebook . it was their second visit in our town. Their first time was on August 1995 afaik when  we – myself and Daniel  met him for the first time!
• 2002  Big  upgrade to computer  RTTY modes. Bought the full version of RadioRaft   3.2 together with the interface  from Pervisell, which worked very well. The PC was very clear from interfering R75
• This is the year I  started working in the University
• Tested one thin wire dipole antenna  of 13+ 14 meters  with good results and much lower noise level over the main antenna  for a couple of days.
• Direct  computer connection   from the R75 for making  recordings ( into MP3) from SW or for signal monitoring ( fading analysis ) .
• Made a inverted V of 2x 16m with the hel[p of a technician who installed a motorized satellite TV antenna of 1.2 m  .
• Upgraded computer printout with Fine Print,
• Added a few professional MP3 processing  programs  such as MP3 trim and MP3 Surgeon. Still my favorites
• On end of December  made a special article on  clandestines stations via satellite whilch is hosted in cladestineradio.com.
• Bought a digital camera Olympus C220 used in my trips to Lefkada and Litohoron  for making simple DTP works in a friend's computer. This was one of the  early stage of DSP cameras
• Several e-booklets  have already been uploaded to my site. MY collection of Heavy metal records  was converted into MP3  and vinyl records  sold for buying the first DVD player. Most of my other cassettes have been ripped previously starting on around 2000
• 2003 : Made a  survey on communications transmissions. Some 20+ years flashback into satellite antennas . A local power line noise destroyed  my ability to listen to  low power signals. It was very posile that the nearby powerlines caused it
• 2004 : Transferred  my account into OTENET the Greek National Telephony after the older company stopped abruptly witot notifying anoyone  . 2  crashes of my computer due to networking module anomalies, one later  due to  unknown hard disk crash and  another  causing Win98 to modify the FAT .
• Added  Degen DE1102  to my radio collection making great logs

• 2005 :  Under continuous communication with Degen/Tecsun I added DE1103 , PL200 ,  DE808  models to my collection A further  2 copies of DE1102  have been  given to beloved persons for  better FM listening of several difficult FM stations. Also  regained an interest  in leaning more  on SEA history.  
• 2006  . On June , the purchase of a Nikon D50  has  helped me very much in making great photos , so that C220 camera  has been used just for random use 
  On October i joined the blog site  Multiply  that  was   my main  blog site since then. This was a proposal from a German friend weho has connextions with Indo people   .Due to its architecture   the radio logs were posted into the blog part, audio clips and  malay music samples were posted in the audio part. Reviews part consisted with gadget  and mp3 tech reviews.
• On Nov of same year  the analogue telephone line was upgraded into DSL with speeds up to 768 kbps
• 2007  My parents have  joined a Odeum in Litochoron , I was their  'official' photographer  and cameraman. The Odeum welcame  MR Vasilis Lekkas  a   known non-mainstream singer  and a second class actor .Both  is a friend of Mr   Saltas  the odium manager.
• Part of  the internet hobby  is also news clipping and gathering. One of the subgroups includes and a technology bundle (with  news breakthroughs in technology, software and other related).
• ON JOn to aug 2007 i have made a special research  for HDFM the American digital radio format
• 2008  I joined Facebook . Several well known DXers  have been found there and i connected with them .Also started using Blogspot.
  With the odium  we visited Athens  for 3 days .
  The news clipping added a new group with news from the file sharing area although I m against it! DSL speed has been upgraded from 768 to 1 Mbps
• 2009 :New DSL upgrade  to 2mB.
• New photo camera is used as photo and video camera togetherafter the collapse of the previous , However 2008 and 2009  are mostly gadgets years. 
• Our baby was born on March 1^st..
• Much free time is used for internet radio listening mostly to radio Malaysia's stations But suddenly in end of Aug most capital stations  stopped their service ...
• 2010  Radio listening  goes quite below  the usual , as free time  due to the baby  is going shorter and shorter  so that only do some interne basics.
  An e reader replaces  printing and reading. Some  of the online time is also used for  listening to RTM 
• 2011: Replaced my ISP into Forthnet, the oldest provider in Greece who also offers Nova the fist TV subscription service in Greece . The  eBook become defunct twice and replaced with  a new, called Mebook, bought   via an Amazon  seller.
• 2012 and then. After two delays on 2012 Multiply suspended its operations on Jan 13 . two weeks were quite enough to transfer the material into Blogspot. Around 1 GB  of data.
• End of 2013  My first tablet from the local market with some minor problems  on the start .
• The same time  new radios have been bought De1126 (mostly for audio recording) PL380  (for easy DXing ) DE108 (for on road listening ) and PL600 (for DXpedition ) Most of them later sold or given as i kept only the PL380
• ON 2014 late August i started using a tablet to listen  in clear the Malaysian music and news from various sources  including RTM Sarwak The tablet  stopped operating in les than 6 months but the company immediately replaced it with a newer model as it was in its warrantee .
• Turbulences in the university   made more than 800 people get fired as the  contractor left the Uni. That happened in mid12. I was also one of them but still was on the city servicing my old parents and dong some selfwork in the Uni together .  My wife’s work also ended later on May 14. An interesting book with remixed tales inspired me to make some remixes of the classical tales and add newer ideas as time passed. A few of the first stories  were posted in  their  earliest  form in zliangas.blogspot One of these stories was later reformed into a long series

• ON end of Dec 2014  I have made a new e-book related  to Malaysia radio and music  25 years of research,  that has been published on end of Jan 2015 posted on Scribd but later removed due to very low demand. It is a hard copy of all postings on the older Multiply com site. This hard copy included many updates in all parts and new articles for a total 120 pages. A new update has been made on 2019 yielding to 190 pages. 2015 . Global  tuners and Web sdr added to my ‘reception equipment ‘

 

• 2016-2019  :ON April 19 in a sudden a dll program from the tablet was damaged itself by unknown error (RAM problem?)and shown a recurring message each time after pressing OK . Fortunately I solved the problem after a few  restarts and keeping it indefinitely in hibernation and charging for around 5 months. It was used for 5+ years. The battery could last for around 2. Hours
• More interest was using remote kiwi SDRs since 16 but more active on 19: better monitoring of remote signals   or listening stations not even heard in my area
• Got very active in Instagram posting more than 2500  photos in 18 months! 
• In the meantime i sold most of my radio gear . I kept only the 1103 the PL380 and the ICOM R75. Tested a friends  Tivdio 115 a few days for  a review with poor results and gave to her .  A new 115 has been bought on 2019 but the  efficiency  was even worse Instead the  Q3 recorder I bought in 16 for SW recordings and stream recs was much better . Useful for Malay music in radio. Another interesting was a ICR110 that is then sold to another friend.
• Mid-19  After very long time of thinking  and collecting the necessary  money - around 12 months - i decided to replace the nearly dead tablet into a Lenovo i5 laptop. An  RSP1a SDR was also added in the list together with some necessary accessories via ebay plus a few additions : 10 m extension to the dipole antenna and one  VHF rhombic loop , made by wire. The programs  added for using with RSP are SDR uno , HDSDR and Sharp. SDRConsole  is my favorite and is  updated regularly.  Sigmira and Spectravue are also used in special occasions 
• 2020s : added  Airspy HF+Discovery which is much better on lower frequencies There weer a few min e-publications It as also sad that my father passed away after long stroke problem There was also a minimal trade with audio gear  fdor fist test and then giving At the end of the yer my father died from 3 years stroke. In a blitz-time i moved the goo-sites into blogspot for easier authoring. 
  
• 2021  there was a more interest in audio reviewing , testing a few cheap IEM models That is earphones with cable above the ear.  SDR listening was standard as before . For family reasons we moved to Gods village Litohoron.  After Goo  Sites was upgraded a few pictures were lost from the site. Bspot updated a bit with more blogs for the radio reviews.Parts of other sub-pages as the main at zliangas ar regularly updated with new stories, series in their respective pages    . Wordpress is now used for DX logs.    Also Instagram exceeded 4000 pictures! I also carried out a few publications that never been publicized. Several DTP  files have been made related to  visual DXing esp with kiwi radios as the 2022 Christmas card. Reception ion the village is very disappointing as there is a huge noise even in remote areas. As tested on Jan 2022 in a power outage the noise still existed! Tested a new radio PL330 and a few very cheap IEMs ie  earbuds used by musicians and singers in stage. 
  
• 2022 a one day alone in the mountain QTH made my first logs of SDR data file reports.  in general i continue to be as nomad between in-laws, mother and family . Finally  I have made an successful copy of the famous Youloop antenna  which has been then drift to the junk after testing in the mom s house and while waiting a very special appointment for more than 30 days. The loop though directive had huge problem with SDR reception.  For this reason i bought the original and the commercial copy of the Youloop antenna with pending comparative test.Some modifications are in mind as I think that the mini boxes offered in the original Yoloop are prone to break.
  The RUKR war increased everything in the country with gas getting from around 1.9Eu in the start of the year to 2.3 in May and electricity bill in the GOds village resulted into 3100 EU for only 800 EU of real electricity price (1900 Eu is the inflation fee )
• The experiments continued by buying various sets of cables and Youloop hardware (balun and T) with more favorite use of  the  clone hardware set together with a 2 pieces of 1,5m cables SMA-SMA plus a 10 m lead wire to connect to the SDR - mostly the Airspy as the SDRplay  shown lower levels of reception. In a result the total sets are twin 1/ 1.5 and 2 m cables for antenna   and  6/10 m  cables for lead plus genuine and clone hardware set. All this bundle is kept in a hardpaper box set with the Airspy and its cables!  Here is  a PDF where i put all my research with these antennas although for the moment the info is made for the 2x1.5 silver
  
• As Thessaloniki city offers some high noise levels  which cant be killed ever by this antenna. many times I still   prefer  to use the twin 10/15 m wires with the home made 9:1 balun which in a way decreases part of the noise . Fiber system also helped  to further decrease noise on the SW bands although i still  discover much nose in the band.  Fiber was introduced in the building around mid 22 

• Another point of interest was a cooperation with Bill Tilford to provide him a Greek music program for  his Greek Music Refuge (GMR) project , a project tha ended after 1 year of music programs transmission on 5130 kHz on 0230-0300 Just before the end of the year i started a second music program called Dangdut and Beyond with Malay and Indonesian music. Dangdut is a music style starting after the traditional malay that was mixed with Hindi  sounds but then mitigated with various local music  styles that included Javanese and Sunda  mixed with koplo rock heavy metal pop jazz,  and later adapted into trance or  house ad is still the favorite music style in Indonesia . this is also one of my fav music styles

• mid 23 and the Console SDR crashed after long usage . Many installations and dis-installation followed with no results. A new upgrade was made after installing SDR Connect for SDRUno    with all other programs using its EXT/IO no working anymore ... (Sharper / Sodira / SDR++  /Sigmira)  WTF?  New smartphone is used after the mobile ISP  upgraded  my mobile program and started again offering better and cleaner photos on Instagram.Added also Viber and Kindle! The GMR/ dangdut and beyond stopped abruptly on June 23 due to very high transmission costs
  
• 2024 : since October 23 i was also involved with AI and image generation.  Used Leonardo  and later ideogram in paid basis  for making stunning pictures with sometimes using also tengr.Ai for free basis while stopping civitai  which was the fist web app for making pictures . I downused also NightCafe This shrinked the interest in watching movies . ON April a special research  was made for Wai FM  and their irregular transmission times ! The radios are used mostly for FM than SW. a very interesting web program was added for  transcribing discussions  via shortwaves and simplenote  replaces evernote (non-formatted text only)  And finally started making some reyalty free music using again AI which is show in my community people only.the addition of a [paid] slideshow   program  helped me check some AI gens for IR and promote the geereated music.