Inside The Shortwave Russian Woodpecker Killer
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
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Cheers for the plug buddy 👍 few Sinad meters are still available 👍
I subbed to your channel.
BLAME LEWIS...😊
That's more tightly packed inside than I imagined it would be. I wasn't expecting two circuit boards either! Very interesting to see and gives a few more clues as to how it worked, appreciate you popping it open 👍
i am an expert in audio engineering and audio electronics, and my take is that is way more circuitry than just a simple audio notch filter...i would love to check out the schematic and see what's going on....great vid, as always!
There's a filter but there's way to much parts for a simple audio filter.
I was under the impression that it inverted the interference signal to put against the interference normally picked up to null it out. Sort of like a QRM eliminator but can be only used with the woodpecker.
As this device is connected in-line from the aerial and also in-line with the audio output of the receiver, I'm thinking it's more than a notch filter in the audio spectrum? Maybe the device is syncing to pulses in the RF spectrum to switch the notch filter in and out, which also lights the 'blanker active' LED? It's possible that having locked onto the Woodpeckers pulses, the RF is also attenuated to avoid overloading the receiver front end.
Also IMHO the 10Hz or 16Hz references the repetition rate of the pulses not the audio frequency; 10Hz would be deep bass that even most hi-fi systems can't reproduce.
The antenna was disconnected for the duration of the pulse, thus allowing the receive AGC to recover, it made for choppy audio. 10Hz was the repetition rate, not the frequency of the interference.
Yes, I asked myself the same question when I saw that both SO239 and phono sockets were on the back. I think the problem with 'only' an audio blanker is that the RF front end will overload , roduce intermodulation distortion and create a period of poor reception in teh radio as the AGC recovers. So I strongly suspect that this is a two stage solution that removes the strong pulses from the RF by using a threshold comparator to create a dead zone in both the RF and AF. The dead zone length following the comparator triggering is set by the 10Hz or 16Hz button. This slightly more complicated approach explains the larger number of components than a single notch filter and also the requirement of an external power supply.
It appears to not have any actual filtering, instead it uses a 'ring' of capacitors to sequentially store the average DC level of the signal with a new capacitor being used for each 1/10th of a second time slice. As long as the transmitter and eliminator used the same rate, no sync was necessary as the pulses would just happen to line up on the same capacitor with each pass around the 'ring'. This caused the 'ring' to store up the profile of the low frequency pulses, also making them available to replay with inverse polarity. The level on the capacitor for that time slice was subtracted from the raw signal like combining anti-noise in a noise canceling headphone and there you go.
I concluded that there is much more to this circuit than a simple audio blanker when I saw that both SO239 and phono sockets were on the back. Why are the RF sockets needed for a pure audio blanker? I think the problem with 'only' an audio blanker is that the RF front-end will overload , produce intermodulation distortion and create a period of poor reception in the radio for a number of milliseconds as the AGC recovers. So I strongly suspect that this box is a two stage solution that blanks (gates out) the strong pulses from the RF by using a threshold comparator to create a dead zone in the RF and a final 'mopping up' stage in the AF. This slightly more complicated approach explains the larger number of components than a single audio notch filter and also the requirement of an external power supply.and the SO239 sockets. After the time that the Datong product was developed, single-chip, two-stage blanker solutions came out, for example the Allegro Microsystems 3845.
I recall these things from my early days working for a large amateur radio dealer on the south coast and from the latter years of the woodpecker. As far as I remember, it seemed to sync with the woodpecker’s pulse rate and gate the incoming RF when a pulse was due. In that way, it would eliminate the problem of the receiver’s AGC becoming swamped, something which wouldn’t have worked by simply filtering or gating the audio alone.
In my younger years, pretty much any receiver or amplifier with an un-terminated input would pick up the woodpecker, either that or radio 4 on 692KHz from the transmitter a couple of miles away!
Thanks, much appreciated! I was one of the mob who requested a tear-down. It looks like it may be a PLL synchronised notch filter, possibly with a dynamic attenuator that is switched in circuit just at the right time, with a switched-capacitor notch (or high pass) filter for the audio. That is a BIG bank of capacitors!
As an electrical engineer I seriously doubt this was anything like an audio notch filter. Those simply wouldn't work because of the harmonics generated by the signal. Also this is way more complex.
If I was to hazard a guess on how this works, I'd say it would use a wideband detector to detect the pulses of the woodpecker regardless of the signal you want to receive, essentially a wide-band AM receiver. Since the pecks occupy a very wide spectrum, they are easy to detect that way. Then once it finds out when those "pecks" happen exactly, you can predict the next "peck". Since it's rather short, you can just blank out the audio for that moment. Yes that causes periodic outages in the audio, but that's much less annoying than the loud "pecks".
Wow haven't seen RF cages accurately drilled/punctured for components to come through the PCB. What an interesting board.
Hi Lewis, the company that made that little box was owned I seem to remember by a chap called David Tong , he made all kinds of items like Morse code readers and lot's of problem solving interfaces for us ham radio men, we had some dealings with him when I worked at Microwave Modules in Liverpool back in the late 70's
see you soon
Dave.
You have such an extraordinarily interesting and unique channel, please keep doing what you're doing! A mix of technology and also history!
Wow, thank you!
Fascinating. As the adverts for the TV Times used to say: "I never knew there was so much in it!"
A thumbs-up to David Arthur Tong, the brains and businessman behind this device (and more.)👍 Wouldn't it be ironic if he had sought and found a market for the Woodpecker Blanker in the USSR?😊
Cheers man, not an electronics guy in the slightest, I got a gold star for installing my own SSD hardrive recently for examples sake...I'm pretty sure I'd be slapping that back together as soon as I saw inside with a "nope!" and a head shake as each screw was tightened.
Thanks for uploading this video.
I really wanted to look at the PCB too.
Big Clive is your man! Send it to him, he'll pause momentarily, and then present a detailed schematic on a poundland notebook.
I reached out to him but nothing
@@RingwayManchester Add some beer to the deal.
@@RingwayManchester Clive doesn't do RF.
Yes but then he'd fiddle with it until it caught fire
Just send him pictures of yourself in Speedos he will get right back to you lol
nice, I looked up some schematics after you aired that video. Thanks for doing this. I love looking inside electronics boxes.
I would love to get one of these, or similar item from the past, working or not as a "cold war" relic.........Great video!!!!
Man I would love to have one of those boxes as a collector's item it would be cool to own one
Funny how I suddenly thought this would make a - sort of - interesting module for a synthesizer…
Lots of great naming options as well..😂👍
Very neat I'd never heard about this before. And look at that hand-soldered board! Well worth opening for us =)
Thank you for sharing this interesting and educational video with us. If it was just an audio blanker working at 10Hz would it not have been easier to have produced a device which went between the radio receiver and the headphone or the external speaker? Could radio manufacturers not have created a simple audio blanking circuit and included it in the actual radio receivers themselves thus making them "woodpecker proof"?
Another vid somewhere stated that noise blankers ( they didn't mention Duga interference ) look for a fast rise time ( think square wave ) of noise then muted audio ( the speaker not RF ) Fast rise time would be automotive ignition systems , Duga and perhaps brush type motors.
Send it to big clive in the isle of Man!
It's not pink🤣
Interesting. Great pictures. Thanks.
Cheerz Lewis. Great treatment, thanks.
;)
Very interesting, I was licensed at 14 in 1986 and the Woodpecker was a distant memory then but these units were around in number. I’m assuming that the relay is RF sensing and used to switch out the sensitive circuit when the rig transmits. Then a broadband RF detector filtered tightly on 10/16Hz which switches some RF attenuation in with PIN diodes to protect the receiver agc ? This sync also primes the capacitor loop (10 for 10Hz or 16 for 16Hz) that acts as a crude 16 or 10 x 1 memory device to drive the PLL for the audio filtering / blanker (probably mutes any noise from the PIN diodes) and injects some white noise into the audio loop to reduce the heard effect of the blanked time slot - bloody clever.
Incidentally Datong produced some superb direction finding kit that found favour with “government” users particularly in the northern Irish troubles and their business expanded in this direction leaving amateur radio behind. They manufactured some state of the art surveillance equipment before being swallowed by a bigger business in the early 2000’s.
On subsequent consideration the audio (top board) and PLL (using the 10/16 x 1 capacitor memory) must drive the RF attenuation on the bottom (RF) board - that’s the logical way. It must be doing something at both RF and Audio levels otherwise it wouldn’t need both RF and audio connections - still bloody clever for its time, it would be a DSP and some code in 2023…
very interesting, thx a lot mate! cheers!
Your description may be off.
Radar works in pulses (send a pulse and wait for echo).
I would guess that relay actually disconnect the reciever in sync with the recived pulses.
So the AGC won't see strong pulses and thus not lower the gain messing up reception.
But there is clearly more to the box, anyone have some idea?
A 10 Hz tone would just make some hum(if you can hear that low) in the speaker and not be a major problem.
It's a time slice dependent DC level restore. See my post for a brief rundown of the circuit.
It's an interesting little machine.....
(1) Great video...👍
(2) I subbed to Paul's channel.
I did this with an Audio Equalizer back in the day. You could cascade them.
I learned how to analyze the guts of electronic devices from watching Techmoan do it. As you can see, there are some purple round things, some little beige things with colored strips, a bunch of white blocky things with numbers on them, and a coil of copper wire. There, done! Hope that helps! :-)
nice one. paul does indeed deserve it
+1 from me for a recommendation to Paul's channel - a very handy companion to this one in my experience. 👍
I have been getting the same comments and messages urging me to lift the lids on almost everything,i actually mentioned it in one i uploaded earlier today.
Bizarrely enough most are Russian that call me the bald one.😂
Paul’s channel is definitely worth a subscribe.
Tbh i think i found you through him.
It's rather clean for its age!
There's surely more to the effect of the signal on devices if the base frequency is subsonic, no?
You should call it the gopnik mind grinder.
From McDonald’s to this lol like I said I’m the last video you never know what your gonna get to watch
I have a question is there a box like that that can filter electric noice
For tear-downs you should check in with Big Clive.
To be fair to Big Clive, he really isn't an RF guy, and doesn't normally touch this sort of thing.
so are you sending it to paul for analysis?
"was affectionately known as the Russian Woodpecker" - affectionately is a bit euphemistic isnt it? haha
👍
I believe Woodpecker was driving a death ray. At what was it used against? 😅
Right what am I missing here? I worked in radio and electronics a long time.
You can't hear 10Hz audio. It's far too low.
Please someone enlighten me. Cheers.
@@TMS5100 cheers got it.
I’m not seeing the link to Paul’s channel.
It’s in the description
Umm. Not sure how I missed it. Thanks.
📻
The USSR is just the russian empire by another name.
doesnt that thing look way too complicated for what it does?
All those folk trying to say Ukraine and put you down. I would bet they spell Kiev the new wording Kyev. Absolute kretins.