FAX from Shanghai: Pacific Pressures
This FAX broadcast was new to me and received on December 16, 2019 at 08:20 UTC on 16557,1 kHz. It was transmitted via Shanghai Coastal Radio, presumably directed into the Pacific, of which it shows the 48h surface pressure.
It was demodulated from a 25 MHz wide HF recording over 24 hours. This recording was made with Winradio’s G65DDCe Sigma SDR, connected to an active vertical MegaDipol MD300DX (2 x 5 m), and decoded with Wavecom’s W-Code. The recording was scheduled with software SDRC V3 by Simon Brown, and directed via USB3.1 to a 20TB hard disk, WD Duo Book. The resulting one file was 8TB, format WAV RF64.
It was also played back from this hard disk, also via USB3.1. Doing so, it is most remarkable that this setup worked smoothly without any glitches which would promptly have been seen at such a time-critical mode like this FAX., 120/576. So, this reception is also a proof that one can work smoothly with such ‘big data’ even on a hard disk – and not only on expensive SSDs. A FAX transmission is that sensitive that you even see a very weak echo (best seen of the big vertical black stripe at the right which echoes from around 115° East). This originates from a mixed short/long path reception. The strong short path’ flight time is 28.7ms, whereas the weak long path needed 104.7ms. As one FAX line covers 500ms, you can easily measure the delay of roughly 80ms, almost exactly matching the difference of long and short path.
The screenshot has been left un-retouched.
