The Radio Hacker's Code Book

ZX Computing

David Harwood

THE BOOK PAGE RETURNS AS DAVID HARWOOD TAKES A LOOK AT THE LATEST OFFERINGS As ZX moves into the monthly magazine market place, we on the book page are moving into the space age. Evidence of this are the books on offer this month, dealing with hacking into the airwaves, Comets, and modern network systems. The Radio Hacker's Code Book, by George Sassoon, is for the person who has heard a little about Amateur Radio and wants to learn more about it. Via the air waves messages are being sent from different countries all over the world (eg from TASS, the news agency in Russia, oil prices from the USA etc) and with the necessary equipment, these messages can be downloaded into a home-computer. The initial section of the book describes the various RTTY (radio teletype transmissions) and the way they are configured. It explains that there are various encrypted messages and provides a description on how to decipher these garbled messages with your Spectrum. Various programs are included in Basic and Machine Code demonstrating how to achieve the results your require. The book isn't an easy read as the amount of technical data is vast and covers everything the enthusiast would need to know when embarking on amateur radio. This is not a book that can be read over the cornflakes in the morning, but for anyone who wants to know about amateur radio and its uses this is ideal. The price of £6.95 also is very reasonable and perhaps reflects the possibility that computer book prices are starting to come down. In the past, books of this technical nature have always been priced around £10.