Tom's Tech and History Blog

amateur radio, living history, military history, New York, Radio Communications, Shortwave, Signal Corps, U.S. Navy, Uncategorized, us army, World War II

Memorial Day is next weekend, and I’ll be displaying some Cold War communications equipment at the FDR Home and Library in Hyde Park, NY sponsored by my friends and fellow historians with The Duffle Bag & Associates. I’ve done this event since I moved back East, save for when it was cancelled due to COVID.

I previously set up static displays. This year will be different as I’ll have a military shortwave receiver listening to broadcasts, and I’ll be in on the air. I’ll have a Part 15 FM broadcast station, “WFDR,” on 99.5 MHz., and a 6 Meter Amateur Radio station on 51.0 MHz. FM with my PRC-25. Hopefully the band will be open. A couple of my fellow ham operators and historians will be on HF. Callsigns and frequencies will be posted on my Facebook feed.

If you’re within driving distance of FDR come visit. My fellow historians do an excellent job of putting this event together. We’re going to have the Big Band Sound Jazz Orchestra playing on Sunday, and other family events over the course of the weekend.

militaria collecting, military history, military insignia, New York

Patterson, NY Militaria Show April 22, 2023

Posted on April 15, 2023 by Tom Filecco

Spending part of the day finishing my packing for my friends’ militaria show next weekend. I’ve got an excess of stuff, so I’ll have my usual corner table next to the bleachers.

So far I’ve got three Sterlites full of stuff. I’ll have some French & Indian and Revolutionary War books, military TMs, military electronics, and other items Here’s a sneak peak:

Patterson Militaria Show
APRIL 22, 2023

Militaria, & Knife Collector’s Show
SHOW HOURS 9AM-3PM

Admission: $7.00 at the door.
(Children under 12 admitted free with paid adult).

Join the Duffle Bag Saturday, APRIL 22, for its annual Militaria, & Knife Collector’s Show at the Patterson Recreation Center.
Children under 12 admitted FREE with paid adult, so bring the entire family for a good old fashioned militaria show. Come and find vendors covering a broad range of vintage militaria for sale. Choose from military surplus, insignia, vintage clothing, custom knives, edged weapons, and firearm accessories.
Bring your military treasures and have Brian Benedict of the Duffle Bag appraise them for you.

The Patterson Recreation Center is a beautiful facility located in the rustic town of Patterson NY. FREE PARKING adjacent to the building in the well lit Metro-North
Railroad parking lot. The Patterson Recreation Center is one block from the Patterson Metro-North Railroad station. An easy drive from Interstates 84 and 684.
https://www.thedufflebaginc.com/militaria-show

living history, military history, New York, Signal Corps, U.S. Navy, Uncategorized, us army, World War II

Memorial Day 2022

Posted on June 25, 2022 by Tom Filecco

I missed the past two years for Memorial Day at FDR because of COVID. Things settled down enough this year that the National Archives and the National Park Service opened it up for my associates and I this year. This time around I planned for an even bigger display than in 2019.

A line of rain and thunderstorms came through Saturday, making that day a wash (no pun intended) for the most part. Sunday was much better. I didn’t make it Saturday because of the weather, but got there early Sunday morning and set my display up.

This year I displayed three tables of radio communications and electronics test equipment covering a time span from World War II to the Cold War eras. I also set up a Part 15 FM radio station, “WFDR,” on 99.5 MHz. that played some 1940s era music for a short while.

In this picture there is a Cold War era Soviet R-105m VHF transceiver, a PRC-25, PRC-75, PRC-74, WW2 Navy/Marine Corps TBY, WW2 R-156 sonobouy receiver, and WW2 BC-1000/SCR-300.

This picture shows an early WW2 Amateur Radio station consisting of a Hallicrafters SX-25 (which did see military use during WW2) and a Utah Junior HF CW transmitter, along with a reproduction foxhole radio using an old “blue blade” safety razor blade. Unfortunately I didn’t have the space to set up a decent antenna to run the foxhole radio. Two of next years’s goals include getting reception for the foxhole radio and getting a vintage Amateur Radio station on the air.

The bottom right shows a small collection of electronic test equipment. We have a radar IFF test set, oscilliscope, VOM meter, and RF SWR/power meter.

Uncategorized

Posted on June 20, 2022July 10, 2022 by Tom Filecco

Two weekends ago was the local radio and communications museum’s swap meet. This is one of my regular events because I’m a member of the museum, and it’s only a 30 minute drive away on a Saturday morning. More often than not I’m also tailgating, which I did this past time. It was a good meet, although I did more trading than selling. Still though, I came home with less stuff than I arrived with, and a little more cash. The major acquisitions were a couple of WW2 aircraft command set radios which I have been getting into as of late, a 150 MHz. Tektronix 454 oscilloscope, and a WW2 vintage ABA-1 IFF transmitter/receiver which I discovered will go down into the 70cm ham band for AM and CW operation. The best part of the swap comes at the end of the day when the museum gives away whatever is left on their tables before dumpstering it. Going through the various boxes there were a few transformers and junk radio chassis that I gutted for some nice variable capacitors, and inductors. Not a bad haul.

Managed to get the workshop/lab a little more cleaned up and organized over the weekend. Put a little HF and VHF (6m and 2m) ham station on a table in the corner, but still need to put up antennas. I’ll be doing mostly CW on the old HF Novice sub-bands, and weak-signal on VHF. There are also a couple 2 meter FM simplex frequencies that see local use in addition to 146.52 MHz.

The Novice class ham license is a thing of the past with Technician being the new entry-level license for Amateur Radio. The Tech ticket is mostly VHF+ which in reality means the VHF/UHF bands at 1.2 GHz. and below. There is no off-the-shelf gear above 1.2 GHz., and I don’t think the average newly-minted Tech is going to homebrew any microwave weak signal gear despite being allowed to operate up there. Tech class ticket holders however do have some HF privileges. They can run sideband on 10 Meters between 28.300-28.500 MHz, and they can run CW on small portions of 80, 40, 15, and 10 Meters. Back in the analog TV days, a lot of hams would scrounge the 3.579 MHz. colorburst crystal out of an old TV set and set up on 80 Meters. There are still a few hams that do this today, the informal CW OP group called the Color Burst Liberation Army (CBLA).

Uncategorized

Revised Short Story – B.A.S.I.C.

Posted on May 28, 2022July 10, 2022 by Tom Filecco

B.A.S.I.C.
by Tom Filecco
tf@sdf.org
Copyright 2022

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

READY
_

The cursor stayed there, blinking on the screen. It did not display a request for a username/password. There was no display of tiny graphic icons arranged in neat rows. It was just a blinking underline below a single word, telling him the machine was good to go. Johnny stared at it for a little while, and thought “So this is how it all begins…” He had found the box on the shelf in a dusty antique/junk shop in a twentieth century vintage strip mall that had seen better days. It was a black and silver wedge-shaped keyboard, a black rectangular power supply, and a couple of books. The price was right. The shop owner was happy to finally be rid of it. Johnny asked if there was anything else for it. The shop owner disappeared in the back, and came out with a couple of smaller peripherals, cables with strange connectors at either end, some flat black plastic flexible squares, and a few more books. It was all covered with enough dust to show that the entire lot had not been touched by human hands in some time. Johnny took it all, bungee-corded it to his bicycle rack, and covered it with a surplus army poncho. As he rode home, he felt rather fortunate that there was a place within bike-riding distance where he could find neat stuff cheap. Little did he know he was about to embark on a small adventure.

Johnny rode home. He unpacked everything, and cleaned off the dust. The instructions in the manual were clear enough. They mentioned something about a “TV modulator”. Johnny goes into the basement, and finds it. The old TV set is a big, heavy, glass and plastic thing labeled “RCA XL100.” It belonged to his grandparents. He hopes it still works. Johnny hooks up all the cables, plugs everything into a wall outlet, and turns on the switch. It all works just fine. He is rewarded with a single word, and a blinking underline.
READY
_

Johnny wondered if this was how it all began, back in the early heady days of computer hacking. He uses computing devices in school. They are safely locked down, “secure” against the threat of cyber-terror. They even worked more often than not. What, however, if you wanted to take a peek at the man behind the curtain? That was forbidden. A schoolmate of his once showed him this thing called “Linux” before said schoolmate’s parents confiscated it. “Open Source” meant it was wide open for terrorists and pedophiles to get into, and the online consumption experience needed to be safe for the children. There he was, cursor blinking at him, and despite the fact that this old computer was over twice his age, he realized the enormity that it all was waiting for his command, and that no one or nothing was standing between him and the capability to create whatever at will. The whole magilla hit him like a ton of bricks delivered with the force of a freight train, and it was all he could do to stand up, walk away from the thing, and go ponder over it all with a walk in the woods.

The woods were former, now grown in, farmland on the back end of his family’s property. He wandered the woods for the greater part of an afternoon, eventually coming to one of his favorite places, the one he called “Engine Rock.” It was a giant boulder, a remnant of the glaciers. It was about six feet high, with a flat top where one could climb up and sit. A small metal scrap pile laid nearby from when there was once a farm here. Its most prominent feature was a rusty old engine block from a truck or maybe a tractor. He climbed up onto the boulder, taking in the clear blue sky and the scent of the trees. High overhead, a jet plane laid a white contrail over the wild blue yonder, persisting for a few minutes before being dispersed by the wind currents. Johnny had a moment of Zen, contemplating the experience he just had. He asked the Universe for, well, something. A sign. He climbs down off the boulder, and spots something next to the engine block. It is a shiny, square, angular, metallic-looking rock. He recognizes it as a piece of Galena. He remembers something his grandfather showed him. A “crystal radio” it was called. You made it with a piece of Galena, and an oatmeal box with wire wrapped around it. He still has the headphones from when he last built one with his grandfather. They had to be “high impedance” or something like that. He pockets the Galena and heads home.

He walks inside, and remembers how his family and him finished a box of oatmeal this morning. The empty box is still in the recycling bin. He recovers the discarded box, and goes to the garage. He finds a spool of bell wire, some scrap wood, and a half-inch copper pipe cap. He is ready to proceed. Johnny wraps 100 turns of bell wire around the box, scraping the insulation off the wire in a line where the top of the coil will be. He screws the pipe cap into the block of wood, and wedges the Galena into the pipe cap with some Aluminum foil. The coil is wired across his Galena detector. Johnny finds some more wire, and strings it from his bedroom window to a nearby tree. Next comes the ground. He thinks the baseboard heater in his bedroom should work. He remembers that crystal radios work best at night. Johnny decides he will wait until after dinner. He hopes he remembered how to put it all together correctly.

Dinner is filled with conversation as usual, but Johnny remains mostly quiet this evening. He is thinking about his new computer, and how his dad might react. Johnny and his sister both have Chromebooks they use for school, but those are more tools than toys. His parents have a computer they use for the family business, but Johnny stays off of it. Johnny knows his dad used to work with computers, but doesn’t talk about it. Johnny has always had the feeling that his dad’s old job was a forbidden topic for some reason, and doesn’t ask.

Johnny’s parents are both hardcore NPR listeners, and a part of dinnertime discussion involves what they heard on the news. The parents of Johnny’s friend who had the Linux CD confiscated would have called them “a bunch of fucking flaming liberals.” The rest of their discussion is about how their day went. Johnny normally has a lot to say, he’s usually a busy kid, His parents sense his unusual reticence this evening, but don’t comment. After a sausage and broccoli penne that would rival any restaurant in Little Italy and equally good cheesecake desert, Johnny excuses himself. It’s time for him to consult the aether.

It is dark now. He connects his headphones across the Galena detector. Moves the tuning wiper across the coil. A station comes in loud and clear. It sounds like a debate on a talk radio program. There is an author named Corey Doctrow talking about the “war on general purpose computing,” how people don’t truly own things they can’t take apart and fix, and why this is bad for society and civil liberties in general. Jimmy writes down the author’s name. The opposing voice and show host accuse him of being a supporter of terrorists and child molesters. The boy has has heard enough. He removes the headphones from his ears, his decision made. He sits back down at the old computer. “Where do I start?” he asks himself. One of the books is titled BASIC Programming. He opens it, turns to the first page, “Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.” He starts to read. The book gives him a programming example to try on the computer. He types it in.
10 PRINT “HELLO WORLD.”
20 END

Johnny finishes his first ever computer program, and types “RUN.” He is rewarded with “HELLO WORLD.” displayed on the screen. He reads a little more and adds another line.
15 GOTO 10

Now “HELLO WORLD.” is printed over and over again on the screen in what Johnny later finds out is known as an “idiot loop.” Wanting the feelings of accomplishment of elation to last, he keeps on hacking. It was a Saturday night, and Johnny didn’t have anything to do early on Sunday morning. He had Googled Corey Doctrow, BASIC computer programming language, and the model of his computer. Johnny had bought, for an incredible bargain he discovered, a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. The machine was powerful for its day, but something of an outlier and not as popular as other machines of the era. Nevertheless, he was having a blast playing around with the old piece of computing iron. He had put his crystal set’s headphones back on. He tuned around a bit, and found this crazy talk show called Coast To Coast AM where the host was talking about UFOs and other high weirdness. Johnny thought it was the perfect accompaniment to his newly-found love of what he learned was called “retro computing.” The reception wasn’t perfect. Whenever he ran a program on the TI-99/4A is would make noises on the crystal set, but he could still hear the show.

John Senior, Johnny’s dad, had just sat down for his evening indulgence. When everything is shut down and settled in for the night, he grabs a cup of decaf coffee in his old chipped and stained AT&T coffee mug he has had since graduating college, sits in his favorite Boston Rocker, and listens to Coast to Coast AM. John became hooked on the show decades ago when he was a young software developer right out of college working late at night to make sure a project was completed on time. Over the years he became disillusioned with the industry, despite the fact that it paid well. He put in his time, and retired early enough in life to be able to do something else. Now he has a wood working shop, a thriving business making heirloom grade furniture, and the ability to work on his own schedule and listen to his favorite show at night. It’s Saturday night, and nothing is going on the next day.

The one thing about coffee, decaf or otherwise, is that you can only borrow it. Sure enough, after a while John has to go return his evening beverage. Walking up the stairs to the bathroom, he goes past his son’s bedroom. It’s summer time and a Saturday night to boot, so the kids don’t have a bed time. What catches his ear is the distinct staccato clicks of what can only be an old-school keyboard coming from his son’s room. He pauses. “Yep.” He thinks to himself. “That’s an old-school keyboard.” He knocks on the door. No response. He knocks again. Still no response. The keyboard clicks continue. John quietly chuckles to himself. “Sounds like me back when I cranking out code for a living.” John opens the door, and sees why his son didn’t hear him. Johnny’s back is to the door, and he’s wearing headphones. He’s sitting on front of the old TV in the basement, typing on a keyboard. John recognizes BASIC code on the screen, and knows a hacking session when he sees one. He sure enough participated in plenty of them. Johnny’s Chromebook is open to a website, “99er.net.” The ceiling light in Johnny’s bedroom is off. John flicks it on and off quickly to get his son’s attention.

Johnny was deep into messing with the TI’s graphics capability and trying to figure out some basic collision detection. The guest on Coast To Coast AM was talking about space aliens on Long Island in New York, and while to Johnny it sounded like a load of bullshit it was still entertaining listening. The station he was picking up was about 200 miles away which only added to the atmosphere. He was so into it, that he nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw the lights flicker. He turned around, and there was his dad. Nervousness gripped him. His dad caught him with the computer. He takes his headphones off, and starts stuttering. “Dad, I uh-uh-uh.” His dad walks over to the computer, a look of amazement on his face. “Where did you get this?!” his asks in a tone of incredulity and surprise. Johnny replies, “I got it at the junk shop.” His dad laughs. “No shit? Heh heh. How much did you pay for it?” Johnny pauses for a moment. He’s not sure where this conversation is going. He decides that it’s probably best to be totally truthful in this instance. “I paid Twenty Dollars for it.” His dad laughs again. “That’s all? They cost a lot more back when my parents bought me one.” John pauses for a second. “That’s a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, and it was my first computer in Middle School. I think my parents sold it at a yard sale when I went off to college. Why didn’t you tell me you bought an old computer?” A wave of relief washed over Johnny as he replied. “I know you used to work with computers, and quit. I thought you didn’t like them.” John laughed. “I was a computer programmer for 25 years, and retired when it stopped being fun. It wasn’t the computers I hated, it was the way the computer business turned out.” Not wanting to sour his kid away from hacking, John changes the subject. “I see you got grandpa’s old ham radio headphones, and you built a crystal set. What were you listening to?” John asks. “It’s this crazy show about UFOs and stuff called…” John and his son both say “Coast to Coast AM” at the same time. John gets thoughtful for a moment. “Hang on a second son.” John goes back downstairs and brings up his little portable radio. He turns it on to George interviewing some time traveler about Montauk Point. “So, tell me what you’re working on.” John gestures to the screen. Johnny replies, “I’m trying to get collision detection working.” John glances at the code. “You need to add an extra subroutine after that IF THEN line…”

John was a little rusty not having messed with TI personal computer graphics since the 1980s, but it all started coming back to him. He looked at the clock, realized it was 2:30 in the morning, and that the both of them should probably catch some sleep. They both woke up a little later than usual the next day. John’s wife was wondering why he came to bed so late the night before. He explained what happened during their morning coffee ritual. His wife snorted trying not to laugh out loud. “He’s a computer hacker just like his father was.” John just nodded and said “I guess it runs in the family.” Johnny came down all bleary eyed a little later. They all sat down for breakfast. Johnny’s mother opened the conversation. “Your father said the two of you had a late night hacking session. What did you learn?” Johnny gushed, “I found out we both have the same favorite radio show! And dad taught me how to program computer games!” Johnny’s sister rolled her eyes at her brother’s and dad’s geek-ness. She wanted to become a veterinarian like her mother.

After breakfast was finished, John asked his son to go out to the workshop with him. It was an old red wooden barn that he converted into a woodworking shop. John goes into a corner, pulls an old cardboard box out from under a bench, and starts removing items from it. He pulls out a beige keyboard, monitor, and CPU unit. The CPU unit has the old AT&T “Deathstar” logo on it, and is marked “3B1.” About five minutes later the system is assembled, pluged in, and booting up. John looks at his son and gestures to the machine while saying “BASIC on those old microcomputers is fun, but limited. Let me tell you about Unix.”

writing

Revised Short Story – The Receiver

Posted on May 28, 2022July 10, 2022 by Tom Filecco

The Receiver
by Tom Filecco
tf@sdf.org
Copyright 2022

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

3Z3438
KEY J-38
1 EACH 3272-P-52-02
MCELROY MFG. CORP.
LITTLETON, MASS.
DATE PACKED 9 / 52
METHOD O

The little brown box taunted him from its perch atop the old Hallicrafters at the antique store. He heard stories about them, the aether surfers, communicators from the outer regions who used archaic electromagnetic methods to reach one another outside normal channels. And sitting there right in front of him was a piece of their kit. He wondered what strange signals he might be able to receive from the Outlands, and if he could go all the way and actually participate with them. He pulled the two items off the shelf, brought them to the counter, asked if there was anything else like it in the store. The owner gave him a knowing look, went to a shelf, pulled a thick digest-sized tome from its perch, and handed it to him. ARRL Handbook it said on the cover. He took all three items. The Hallicrafters barely fit on his bike rack. He wrapped it carefully in a camouflage army poncho. The J-38 Key and ARRL Handbook went into his knapsack, another military relic, canvas, circa World War II. He mounted his old Schwin and went home.

His parents were Neo-Luddites, a reactionary movement started in the early 21st Century against the constant digitization and connectivity of humanity in “developed” countries. Some obscure niche writer created it. Their battle cry, if it could be called that, was one simple word: “analog.” They sought out implements and devices that were not equipped with microprocessors, and often preferred the mechanical to the electric. They had no Internet connection, instead preferring to browse used bookstores. Bookshelves lined the walls of their home. An old tube-style RCA TV graced the living room, thin flat black cable snaking out the back and up to the roof where an antenna was pointed at the local PBS station. His family’s only concession to the digital world was a converter box that they had to buy when analog TV broadcasts were discontinued. If there wasn’t a PBS station within reception range, the old TV would have likely became parts in his father’s workshop. His father’s library contained books on microprocessor design from the late 20th Century. They were artifacts from a previous career before finding religion. The boy thinks his new receiver will be a welcome addition to the home.

He gets off his bike, unwraps the poncho from around the radio, and walks in. His father is inside reading the newspaper. He notices the old Hallicrafters, smiles, and starts speaking.

“Your granddad was a ham radio operator. I got into computers instead, went to college, and worked for IBM. Let’s haul that boatanchor inside your room, and get it set up. I think we can find the stuff for an antenna in the shed.”

Despite its age, the address in the book remained unchanged. Two or three weeks later, a thick manila envelope arrived from the Newington, Connecticut. He studied his old ARRL Handbook, and called the contact of his local ham radio club. They would be having a test in a month and a half. He hoped he would have enough time to study. Being home-schooled, his parents added electronics to his curriculum. Knowing full well that it also encompassed such topics as physics and mathematics. The old Hallicrafters was used to enhance his education in social studies and geography.

He arrived that Saturday morning ten minutes before the appointed time. The old gentleman in the safety orange jacket looked at his birth certificate and took his test fee. He sat down at the table among about a half-dozen other geeks, and was given his test. He looks at the test and confusion sets in as only a couple of the questions looked like they were from his book. He flagged the gentleman in the orange jacket over. “Sir,” he started, “None of these questions look like they’re from my book.” He received a look of disbelief. “The questions are all from the test pool.” orange jacket replied. “What book were you studying?” The boy reaches into his backpack and pulls out the old ARRL Handbook. “You studied out of this?” The boy nods in the affirmative. The old-timer looks pensive for a moment. “Give me a minute.” After consulting with his fellow examiners, the old-timer returns with a nostalgic look on his face as he addresses the boy.

“That book is great for teaching you real ham radio, and building radios from scratch. It’s also pretty much useless for helping you pass a ham test. Since my friends and I got our tickets from back when you studied that book to take the test, we’re gonna make an exception for this time. We’re gonna ask you a few questions, and if we like the answers, we’re gonna make like you passed all three tests. Just do us a favor, don’t tell anyone, and learn all the up to date rules so you don’t get in trouble.”

An hour later, the boy walked out of the building with a certificate saying he passed all three Amateur Radio tests, and a more recent copy of the ARRL Handbook. The examiners would fondly recall this particular testing session for the rest of their lives.

There were probably some decided advantages to working with a text that dated back to the LBJ administration. Equipment was definitely more homebrew and DIY back then. Hobbyists were expected to build their own gear and maybe even some test equipment. With a well-written and authoritative text as a guide, there were no worries of self-appointed “experts” telling you that you were doing it wrong. Now the boy was ready to go build himself a transmitter.

Armed with a shopping list of pieces and parts, the boy walked into the old TV repair shop looking to build his first CW transmitter to go with the Hallicrafters. He thought it was amazing that such a place still existed in the age of planned obsolescence throw-away consumption devices, but there it was. He handed the owner his list. The owner looked at it, knitted his brows, and looked at the boy. “Nobody builds or fixes things any more.” the owner said. The boy replied “I do.” The owner led him to the back of the shop to a shelf of old tubes and TV parts. “See what you can find here.” the owner said. “I’ll probably be closed for good in a month of two. You better take anything you think you might need. The cost for your parts is Ten Bucks, cash.” The owner gestured towards the back door of the shop. “There are some empty boxes over there if you need any.” The boy started searching through the shelves, filling boxes full of radio parts and tubes. He came across a radio in a yellow metal case, marked with a red, white, and blue “CD” logo and a badge bearing name Gonset. He asked the owner “How much for the radio?” The owner replied “That’ll be another Ten Bucks.”

The boy walked out of the old TV shop with enough parts to build at least two shortwave transmitters, and with a radio that he could use for talking on the local nets. He knew some of the old time ham radio operators still used Gooney Boxes to talk among themselves at night. He had so much stuff he couldn’t fit it on his bike and needed to call his dad to pick him up. As it turned out, it only took him a year to go through his parts stash, and he quickly gained the status as the youngest ham in the county who home-brewed his station.

Uncategorized

Wherever You Go, There You Are

Posted on May 20, 2022July 14, 2022 by Tom Filecco

Wherever You Go, There You Are
by Mr. Icom

This article originally appeared in the AUTUMN 2021 issue of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly.

It was the early 1980s when you started seeing personal “microcomputers” in Radio Shack and in department stores such as Sears, Caldor, and Service Merchandise. The stores fiendishly placed demonstrator models in their consumer electronics departments so unsuspecting children, such as the author, could get hooked on the digital gateway drug known as Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC). You start typing, and if you are of a certain ilk, the whole magilla hits you like a ton of bricks and you realize that you have the power to do almost anything with sequences of ones and zeros, and all you have to do is learn the language. It was 1982 when I received my first computer, and I got my first modem in late 1983. I quickly found Private Sector BBS, and from there learned about 2600 Magazine. I had already become familiar with the terms “hacker” and “hacking” from reading Steve Levy’s book, and from there realized two things. One did not need a computer or modem to hack, and that there was an actual word for what I had been doing ever since conscious memory. Getting notions, asking questions like “What is this?” and “How does this work?,” doing research, exploring, and experimenting. You get the idea.

One of my first, and probably least successful at the time, notions was noticing a rail line, now known as the “Old Put” that ended at the lumber store where my parents used to shop, and deciding it would be a neat thing to explore. This was in the 1970s and I was about 4 or 5 at the time. This was about 10 years before I learned from reading Steve Levy’s book that the original hackers at MIT in the 1960s started with model railroads, and used surplus telephone equipment to do switching. A book I have on the “Old Put” showed it was abandoned a few years before I discovered it, and later I remember the railroad pulling the tracks up. The old right of way remained mostly intact for a number of years, and I explored it thoroughly looking for something I still can’t quite put words to. These days it’s a rail trail and much more accessible than it was in the 1980s. What’s interesting about these former rail lines is that telecommunications infrastructure was and in many cases still is often run underground along the same right of way. One active rail line in my area has still has standing utility poles marked “WUT” (Western Union Telegraph). Another former right of way turned rail trail has AT&T underground cable signs every few hundred yards or so. The underground cable markings all have fairly recent dates on them, and they are often near manholes.

My next notion involved the phone system. Keep in mind this was still during the late 1970s and early 1980s when one had to pay for any calls outside those of your local area. Running up the parents’ phone bill was an ill-advised course of action, as was doing anything on a line traceable to you, but around town were these public phones that recently started providing you with a dial-tone without having to put a dime in first. You still had to pay for most calls, except for 800 numbers. It was right around this time that personal microcomputers began showing up at places where mundane parents would normally shop, and I discovered them along with modems. Then one day my friend Jim, who moved to a neighboring school district a few years earlier, introduced me to his friend Jason who was a hacker and told me about the late TAP magazine and this new one called 2600.

Playing around in BASIC and early 8-bit assembly language was fun, but for me, hacking was more about networks, the lines of communications and travel that connect everything together. Computers and modems were simply tools to learn about the network, and I discovered that learning about networks whatever they may be, was and still is more about the journey than it is the destination. The destinations can be cool (and often are), but the fun was in getting there. You can start this journey without leaving home, because where you live is at the terminus of least one network you can explore, and may be along the lines of communications of a few others. As a bonus, most of your initial exploratory efforts can be passive and/or legal. The former is good because passive exploration generates no signature for the most part. The latter is good because you don’t want to get your ass in a sling and have to hire a lawyer to get you undone.

Go outside for a minute, and take a look at the utility pole in front of your home. It should look something like what you see in the picture. The two sets of wires labeled 1A and 1B are electric. Number 1A is the primary at 10,000+ volts in the US. From there it goes through a transformer which is the can below the primary wires to a nominal 240/120 volt feed to your house, labeled 1B. Don’t fuck with those, because they will kill you in a painful and demonstrative manner. Number 2 is the feed from the Cable TV (CATV) company. It probably looks silver in color. That’s a radio frequency feed, and probably the most interesting of the lot due to the bandwidth that’s coming down to your house if you have the service. It potentially has both broadcast audio/video and internet service on it. Number 3 is belongs to the phone company. It’s probably black in color. In most places it’s a bundle copper wire pairs, or maybe a fiber optic line. It used to be that you could get a dialtone off it, but it’s just as likely to be a digital VDSL signal instead, with the dialtone provided by your VDSL modem instead of Telco switching equipment at the CO or RT.

Now look on your roof. Back in the days before CATV was ubiquitous, people put antennas on the roofs of their homes to receive broadcast TV signals. This is now called “Over The Air” (OTA) TV, and is still a thing among some people because it is free. Last time I looked at OTA signals I was in Central Wyoming, one of the most remote places in the continental USA, and still managed to find 15 OTA channels with little more than a hunk of coat-hanger wire stuck above the roof line of a ranch house, maybe 10-15 feet off the ground. If you have an antenna on the roof, there is still probably some feedline going down into your home somewhere, and there still might be a working directional rotor system that lets you aim the antenna in different directions. Note this for later because that TV antenna probably has a frequency coverage range of about 50-900 MHz. and may useful in future explorations.

What I’ve just pointed out to you are a few avenues of exploration that don’t require you to do anything but observe and pay attention to what you discover, and take notes. This passive observation is undetectable, and for the most part totally legal. Finally, it shows you first-hand how things work in the real world. Let’s start at the bottom, and take a look at the phone line coming in your house. If your dialtone is provided by the black box hooked up to a VDSL or FiOS line, then there probably isn’t much you can do. If, however, you still have a POTS local loop going to a SLC or RT down the road, or perhaps all the way to the CO, there is an opportunity to hear all sorts of interesting things while your phone is on-hook. The condition of your cable pair might be poor enough that you can hear crosstalk. You might hear a technician borrowing your line to make a phone call. You will also be able to hear any testing going on with your phone line, and anyone who decides to “beige box” off your pair.

The easiest and safest (for your equipment) way to do this is to build a telephone recording interface as shown here. This schematic will allow low-level AC (audio) to pass through to the recording device, while blocking the nominal 48V and 90V line and ring voltages. A low enough DC resistance on the line will cause it to go off-hook, and the ring voltage might damage any experimental equipment you have connected to the line. For under $50 you can buy a voice-activated digital recorder that’ll give you over 60 hours of recording time, or you can feed it into your soundcard input for recording to your PC. Software and stand-alone electronic devices exist that will allow you to decode DTMF tones. Recording your telecom experimentation (provided you’re not otherwise breaking the law) and monitoring your line for service trouble is generally legal within certain guidelines that vary state to state. Decoding the DTMF data that’s being sent on a phone line your pay for is also legal. Recording someone else’s phone conversations is generally not legal.

Going further up the pole, the CATV feed gets more interesting. That coaxial cable feed coming into your residence contains RF signals from 7 MHz. – 1 GHz. The frequency range from 54 MHz. – 1 GHz. Is the downstream side going from the head-end to your residence, and 7-50 MHz. is the upstream side for signals going back to the head-end. Depending on the CATV system, the signals on the feed may be analog, digital, or a combination of both. Also, depending on the level of CATV service your residence subscribes to, there may be filters on the CATV feed to block certain frequency ranges used by services/channels that are not in your subscription. If you don’t have any service, the CATV provider may have installed a filter that blocks all RF from coming down your coax feed. Depending on the weather or how busy the tech was that particular day, a filter may not have been installed after service was discontinued. Filters such as these were mostly a thing back in the days of analog television when you could just hook a TV up to your CATV feed and get a nominal level of service. CATV service providers who are up to date are all digital and fully encrypted. They rely on the encryption to prevent theft of service. In this case your mileage may vary, and the only way to find out is to plug into the system and give it a look.

I purchased a Wavetek SAM (Signal Analysis Meter) at a hamfest (amateur radio swap meet) a few years ago for $20. This receiver was used by TV technicians to check the signal strength at a customer’s residence when installing a feed and troubleshoot system problems. My SAM has a frequency range of 0-300 MHz., but some go up to 890 MHz. for UHF over-the-air television. When TV went digital, the older analog SAMs started getting sold for pennies on the dollar. These days, the Older SAM units are popular with FM broadcast band radio enthusiasts. I hooked mine up to a disconnected Comcast CATV feed to discover what I could hear. The only things I heard were a couple local AM broadcast band stations, and the digital buzz of the TV channel signals. The latter was to be expected, and I’m guessing the former was due to the length of the coaxial cable feed from the pole acting as an antenna. A TV receiver was then attached to the system, and not surprisingly I discovered that the system was 100% encrypted. Regardless of the outcome, you don’t know what you might find on a communications cable feed unless you explore and go look. I’m an old-school analog hardware hacker type, and prefer gear like the Wavetek SAM that I can easily take apart, work on, and modify if I so desire. Getting that kind of gear involves visiting places like hamfests and surplus stores looking for older gear cheap. If this is not for you right now, you can duplicate the previous exercise with an RTL-SDR. You will likely need an RF adapter to connect the male F-connector on your CATV coax to whatever your RTL-SDR is using, probably either a SMA or BNC female.

So far you’ve looked at the terminus of two different communications networks that feed into your home. Depending on the age of your telecom and CATV infrastructures, you might have discovered some interesting things or nothing at all. Whatever you found, you were still limited by the bandwidth of the media and the equipment on the other end. Now you get to expand your each into the aether. Earlier in this article, I asked you to look on the roof of your residence to see if an OTA TV antenna was still there from the days before CATV. You should check even if you live in an apartment building complex. When I moved out of my parents house in the mid 1990s, my first apartment had a TV antenna feed despite also being wired for CATV. Twenty-five years later I checked Google street view, and there is still an antenna on the roof of the building. If you have a modern (digital) TV, plug it into the cable coming down from the antenna, and do a channel scan. See what OTA channels you can receive, and research the location of the stations’ transmitter sites on the FCC web page. If the antenna and cabling to it is still serviceable, you should be able to pick up something. OTA TV might be interesting for a little while if you can get PBS or an independent station that’s not affiliated with the big-4 (ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox), but if the OTA feed is working you should connect an RTL-SDR to it and see what else is out there. If the antenna system has a rotor on it (many home systems did), you will want to find the controller, hook it up, and see if the rotor still works. Point the antenna in different directions and note how the reception changes. Start by pointing it in the directions where the horizon is lowest, and then try pointing it at the highest elevation on the horizon. Enter in your location at http://www.heywhatsthat.com/ to find these.

When investigating the airwaves, you will find a host of signals across the spectrum that your RTL-SDR covers. You will discover analog and digital voice signals that are easily demodulated and decoded if unencrypted. You will also discover data signals. Some data signals will be easy to decode, others may be proprietary and little more difficult, and a few might be encrypted. You will also notice what are known as non-communications emitters. You will initially have no idea what these are, but you can still investigate them and find out what they belong to. CPU frequencies from the lowly 33 MHz. Intel 486 to the 1+ GHz. Intel Core models are worth noting for future reference while checking out the airwaves. RF exploring, aka aether surfing, is a subject worthy of its own article, and I’ll talk about it in detail in my next one.

No matter wherever you go, you will find opportunities for hacking. You just need to look for them, and you can start where you are right now. It doesn’t matter what you find, if anything, because this is really more about the journey than the destination, and what you learn in the process. I can recall, during my early hacking days in the 1980s, reading on BBSes about the exploits of other hackers who lived in more populated areas than I, and finding that a lot of it either didn’t apply to me in the suburbs. I did however discover equally interesting things when I started looking around and observing where I was, and tailored my experimentation accordingly. You may find yourself in a similar situation. Don’t be afraid to wing it, and just start hacking with what you have and can find.

Uncategorized

Posted on May 20, 2022July 10, 2022 by Tom Filecco

When I started hacking in 1983, it was with a Timex Sinclair 1000 and one of the electronics projects kits from Radio Shack. My first books were Getting Started In Electronics by Forrest Mims, a copy of Basic BASIC by James S. Coan that was already five years old when I started learning how to program, and a couple books from the TI/Sams Understanding series that you could buy at Radio Shack.

The hobby has changed since then. Radio Shack is no longer the massive electronic hobbyist store chain it was back in the 1980s, and BASIC has been supplanted by other beginner languages. Online ordering can have pretty much anything sent to your door, and it’s less expensive. My 1983 $100 2K Z80 computer is now a 2022 $100 Raspberry Pi4 that’s a lot more capable. Python now seems to be the beginner’s language of choice, and I found it to be as easy to learn as BASIC. Getting Started In Electronics is still in print. Velleman and Elenco still make the same style of project kits/labs that you could buy at Radio Shack.

The Electronics Playground kits are old-school. For those of you with a more modern digital bent there are vendors that will sell you a Raspberry Pi package that includes a prototyping breadboard and components. At some time you’ll find yourself wanting both.

amateur radio, military history, Shortwave

The Hallicrafters SX-25 In World War II Service

Posted on May 7, 2022May 22, 2022 by Tom Filecco

On Memorial Day, 2019 I was volunteering as a living historian for the American Veterans Historical Museum during their annual display at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Home and Library in Hyde Park, New York. I specialize in World War II to Cold War era military communications electronics and test equipment, and curates a small collection of artifacts, ephemera, and memorabilia during events throughout the year. On that day, I was approached by a visitor who wished to make a donation for my displays. The visitor was the daughter of a U.S. Army Signal Corps officer who served in the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, better known historically as “The Ghost Army.” The Ghost Army was tasked during the Second World War with tactical deception operations in the European Theater of Operations. The lady donated a small assortment of ephemera that belonged to her late father during his time in military service.

Among the ephemera donated was a 1941 dated photograph of a radio communications receiver identified as a Hallicrafters model SX-25. The SX-25 was first manufactured in 1940 just before the United States entry into the war and was considered state-of-the-art equipment at the time. It was unknown if this receiver was a personally owned item, or military issue.

Among historians, in particular living historians attempting to portray an individual from a particular timeframe, or historians assembling a display from a particular timeframe, accuracy is essential to provide as realistic a depiction of the timeframe in question. Historians also strive to include donated artifacts in their displays as a means of thanking the donors and showing their appreciation for the gift. In the case of this donation, the donor’s late father was a member of a historically significant military unit from the Second World War, and an artifact from said donation provided a piece of data for which I was unable to find any evidence of prior research. Those two facts alone would be enough impetus for a historian to start working in order to accurately and realistically incorporate the donation into a future display.

In a conversation with historian Bob Allison of the Vintage Radio and Communications Museum of Connecticut, Mr. Allison mentioned how during the Second World War many military officers purchased communications receivers for personal use (Allison Interview). This is confirmed, albeit almost 50 years later, by my own experiences. When I was on active duty during the beginning of Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990, I purchased a shortwave radio receiver in order to stay apprised of current affairs when domestic news coverage was found to be lacking. Regardless of the SX-25’s official status, two facts are certain. The first is that it is apparent that the receiver was significant enough to the officer that it warranted being photographed. The second is that the receiver appears in some historical context, however small, related to the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the Second World War, and is therefore a worthy topic of research.

Hallicrafters was one of the first defense manufacturers of the Second World War, and their contribution to the war effort in the production of communications equipment is well documented. What is not well documented is the status of the Hallicrafters SX-25 as a military issue item. I posit that despite the lack of official documentation, the Hallicrafters SX-25 saw military service during the Second World War in a secondary or auxiliary role.

The role of Hallicrafters and the use of their products by the United States military during the Second World War is beyond dispute. Historian Chuck Dachis, the radio hobby’s recognized expert on the company and its products, wrote that “There was a shortage of military radio equipment and tremendous government demand for electronic equipment of all types. Many of the existing Hallicrafters products and designs were pressed into military service” (Dachis 9). During the war, Hallicrafters advertised their status as a manufacturer of radio communications equipment for the U.S. military and solicited service members to write about their experiences working with Hallicrafters military equipment (Radio). The Hallicrafters SX-25 was introduced in 1940 and produced until 1945 (Dachis 40). That places the production period of the receiver right at the time of U.S. involvement in the war. With the years of introduction and production coinciding closely with the year of entry into the war, combined with the early wartime stop-gap issuance of any suitable receiver design into military service, there is a strong argument towards the use of the SX-25 into military service. Further evidence however is still required for one to be certain.

One of the earliest pieces of potential evidence I encountered regarding the SX-25’s service as a military radio is a film. The United States Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit produced a training film, Resisting Enemy Interrogation, directed by Robert B. Sinclair. The SX-25 makes a cameo in the film as a prop used by the antagonists in the film (Sinclair). The film provides evidence that the SX-25 was procured by at least one element of the United States military, but still leaves the question of whether it was a general issue item. The United States Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit had a specialized function, and as a result would have been able to procure items outside regular channels in order to accomplish their mission.

The SX-25 did not just appear on the big screen. During the Second World War the U.S. Army Signal Corps used an image of a Hallicrafters SX-25 as an element in a recruiting advertisement, shown in Illustration 2 (U.S. Army). This advertisement was aimed at young men who possessed knowledge in radio and electronics. The SX-25’s presence as a prop in an official recruiting advertisement lends further credence to the SX-25’s status as a military-issue radio.

The most compelling piece of positive evidence collected by the author is an official U.S. Army photograph of a Signal Corps repair depot in Iceland during World War 2. This photograph, shown in Illustration appeared in the December 1943 issue of Radio magazine and identifies the repair depot’s radio receiver as a Hallicrafters SX-25 “used for the reception of vital information at the depot” (Radio 50). While a documented official photograph helps support an argument towards its status in military service, there should also be further supporting documentation that would define a particular item as official military issue.

The preceding evidence, despite its compelling nature, is actually of secondary veracity, and does nothing to decisively cement the status of the Hallicrafters as an official piece of military issue equipment. The receiver’s appearance among the personal effects in the living quarters of a soldier belonging to a specialized unit, its appearance in a training film, its use in an advertisement, and even its appearance in an official US Army Signal Corps photograph leave out one piece of data that is considered the primary source of authority on all things military issue.

There is a singular piece of data that will without a shadow of a doubt prove an electronic communication device’s status as official military issue. That item is a designation in the Joint Army-Navy Nomenclature System (JAN), now known as the Joint Electronics Type Designation System. Under this system, an item is giving a unique designator for identification (Mote). Once a piece of equipment is given a designator, an entire logistics chain is attached to the equipment/designator combination. Among other items in the chain is the creation of official operation and maintenance documentation for said piece of equipment. The existence of a JAN designator and operation/maintenance documentation would be the definitive evidence of a receiver’s status as an official issue item.

Hallicrafters was known for producing official issue items that were given a JAN designator in World War II. Among receivers, the Hallicrafters SX-28A, introduced in 1944, was adopted by the US Military and given the JAN designator of AN/GRR-2 (Dachis 42). The SX-25, if it were official issue, would have been given a similar designator starting with “AN/GRR.” Technical manuals would be written detailing the proper operation and maintenance for the soldiers responsible for working with and on a particular piece of equipment. Other technical manuals would be written cataloging the equipment being used by military forces. This documentation would further cement the status of a piece of equipment as an item of official issue.

I first consulted a World War II vintage War Department Technical Manual that would have provided evidence of the SX-25 receiver’s status as an official issue item. The 1944 TM 11-227 Signal Communication Equipment Directory – Radio Communication Equipment is “a condensation and compilation of data pertaining to Signal Corps radio communication equipment” (War Dept. preface). TM 11-227 documents the existence of electronic communications equipment in service as of the date of its publication. After consulting TM 11-227, I was unable to locate any mention of the SX-25 in the content of the manual.

I then searched for evidence regarding the status of the SX-25 in the 1945 War Department Field Manual FM 21-6 List Of Publications For Training. This manual was created to “provide a list and index of War Department training publications” (War Dept. 4). As with TM 11-227, I was unable to locate any mention of the SX-25 in the text. It should be noted that I did find other commercial radios manufactured by both Hallicrafters and other companies that were granted a JAN designator and noted as official issue. The civilian identity of these radios was easy to determine, so it stands to reason that the SX-25, if given a JAN designator, would also been easy to locate in the documentation. This lack of evidence argues heavily towards the Hallicrafters SX-25 Communications Receiver not being an official issue item of electronics equipment.

The SX-25 lacks a JAN designator. It also lacks a citation in TM 11-227 and lacks evidence of documentation in FM 21-6. These three items provide compelling evidence that the Hallicrafters SX-25 Communications Receiver was not an official issue military radio during the Second World War. This data, however, does not preclude instances of the Hallicrafters SX-25 being used in military service, in particular by units with a specialized mission. The lack of a JAN designator also does not rule out a particular piece of equipment being used as a stop-gap measure during the early stages of a conflict before the supply chain can provide official issue material.

In addition to documentation showing a Hallicrafters SX-25 in the possession of a Signal Corps officer assigned to the highly specialized 23rd Headquarters Special Troops “Ghost Army”, it also makes three other documented appearances in official US Army media. It makes the appearance in a recruiting advertisement for the US Army Signal Corps. It has a cameo in a film produced United States Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit. It lastly appears as a piece of equipment in an official US Army Signal Corps photo of a repair depot, and is specifically mention by name. Given this evidence, despite the lack of official documentation, the Hallicrafters SX-25 saw military service during the Second World War in a secondary or auxiliary role.

While the Hallicrafters SX-25 saw military service during the Second World War in a secondary or auxiliary role, this may not have been the case regarding the artifact that prompted this paper. The particular SX-25 shown in the illustration appears to be situated between two bunks. That places it in a barracks or junior officers living quarters. When this item of data is combined with the 1941 year of the picture, the 1940 year of introduction for this model, and the historical fact that the United States did not enter World War II until late in the year on December 8^th, 1941, I believe that this particular SX-25 was a personal radio belonging to the officer.

One universal task of all historians, professional or amateur, is to properly document and preserve the past so it may be used as a learning tool for future generations. To achieve this end, the historian often engages in research. This research may be in regard to a minor, seemingly unimportant, but previously untouched matter such as a seemingly mundane artifact. Whatever the research might be, it helps fill in one more piece of the puzzle that is the past. If said research enables the historian to assemble an informative and educational presentation, then all the more to help the historian educate and perhaps enlighten the public. As a result of this research, I will be displaying the ephemera along with a collection of related artifacts at the Franklin D. Roosevelt home and library on Memorial Day, 2022. A Hallicrafters SX-25 will be the centerpiece of that display.

Works Cited

Allison, Bob. Personal interview. 2 Apr. 2022.

Dachis, Chuck. Radios by Hallicrafters®. Schiffer Publishing, 1999.

Hallicrafters. Advertisment. Radio, Dec. 1943, pg. 4.

Meuleman, M L. “This Month.” Radio, Dec. 1943, pp. 50–50.

Mote, Ray. “World War Two Nomenclature Systems.” Wayback Machine, Electric Radio Magazine, 6 Jan. 1994, http://web.archive.org/web/20160303174230/www.hypertools.com/nomenclature.html.

Sinclair, Robert B., director. Resisting Enemy Interrogation. Youtube, US Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit, 1944.