Awesome sounds of radio (astronomy)

If you're anything like me, you'll be fascinated, and maybe a little bit fearful, of radio astronomy. At first the big dishes make it seem so inaccessible, yet somehow understandable – that big collector bounces so much of those faint, well-travelled signals, to make the audible. After that though, you're left mystified. What's the next bit of the chain? How and what do you listen to?

The more you read up, indeed the more you just listen to the radio, you learn it can be on familiar territory. Jupiter can be heard around 20 MHz – that's shortwave, any old radio can tune there!

And then there's meteor showers. A smear of a distant TV channel, or a snatch of FM radio from the other side of the continent, is at times because (as I understand it) the signals are twisted by the fuzz of ionisation surrounding a meteor as it dashes through the earth's atmosphere at some point in between and above you and that radio station.

But radio astronomers, professional and amateur, can do something more structured.

Have a look at what this guy, Thomas Ashcroft does. This recording is of one of the most well known meteor showers, Geminids, at VHF, and it is compelling. Trust me, this is awesome.

There are two channels of audio, about 20MHz apart, recorded in the narrowest of modes, CW (that's how you get Morse code), and yet they interact.

Poke around that website, there's lots of good stuff – binaural representations of electromagnetic radiation. He also has receivers recording 300KHz apart around 21MHz for Jupiter, and VLF and ELF – that's 0 - 20 KHz.

Review: Roberts Robi DAB/FM adaptor for iPod

I've been trying out an iPod remote control that includes a DAB digital radio and RDS FM radio. It's the Roberts Robi.

I like the Robi. It gives fast, solid DAB and FM reception. On DAB, you can only see the station name, no other text services. It tunes between stations very quickly – using the up and down buttons to scroll through, it changes instantaneously. Note though that I have only used it in Dublin, where there is only one DAB multiplex. The Robi may take a bit longer to tune to different transmitters.

On FM, the RDS is quick and the reception is solid.

For both DAB and FM, the Roberts Robi annihilates the Pure PocketDAB 2000 I've had so much grief from – and what that had an SD socket for playing mp3s, this has your whole iPod!

The size of the Robi is just right, the controls are easy to use, and the cable is a useful length.

Mobile phone pic on the bus:

The negatives:

• the switches are easy to accidentally knock, if you put it in our pocket without hold on: this is an issue if you are in a rainy climate and like to retune or adjust the volume a lot – like me!
• DAB mode drains the iPod battery at a rate of knots. You'll get one afternoon around town, going between iPod, FM and DAB, on a full charge.
• The white cable – maybe this could be black? Most iPods and headphones sold are black or encased in black these days, so the cable seems to draw unnecessary attention.

Other than that, I'm very happy with the Robi. Far happier than my brother was when I gave it to him for Christmas, but hey he returned the favour with a hideous clothes store voucher so all is balanced – we do give the presents we'd like for ourselves, don't we?

Sierra Leone – political radio, UN radio, keeping it under control

This from the current Listening Post on Al Jazeera English

Outfront has been canned.

The CBC has decided to axe Outfront. 

Canada's public state broadcaster has to make huge budget cuts, and Outfront is one of the victims.

In the age of User Generated Content, the CBC thinks it's a reasonable idea to stop a programme that gives professional radio equipment and training to people outside the profession. Outfront gives proper training and production help. The result is strong story-telling that combined a clear documentary, social and historical achievement with engaging, creative radio. 

And it's won a ton of awards. I've only written a couple of reviews, because it is so consistently good, I didn't want to seem like I was just constantly praising one pet show. I won't make that mistake again…

Outfront's daily slot is both a strength and weakness: being there for listeners without their having to figure out the day, or check their watches, or schedule their day around a sot on the dial… doing any less almost seems like putting a mill-stone around a programme's neck, especially one without a regular host to – pun intended– anchor it. 

But being there day in day out also necessitates repeats, weakening the apparent value. 

From this standpoint, it should be obvious that reducing Outfront to one day a week would free up 15 minutes for more affordable music or phone-in sequences; cut the number of admin/assistance hours needed for automation, compliance, etc; and probably leave a few people out of a job. 

A huge saving? Not really. You'd save more money by dropping the whole show. 

But the other costs of axing Outfront outweigh the financial savings. 

I know cuts really can be tough for management as well as the production teams. But on this on, seriously, please, think again.