Messages

406

Equipment / Re: Purchased my first shortwave radio...not sure what to expect

« on: December 06, 2016, 0312 UTC »

Your problem inside Victoria may have been RFI (interference), buildings blocking some signals, or maybe propagation was just bad. There have been times I've switched on the Shortwave and heard two or three stations at best, when other nights or mornings I'd hear 20-30.

But glad to hear you are picking up some stations.

I would hesitate to overdo it on the length of the wire you choose for the Tecsun -- I'm not sure how long a wire that radio will handle before overloading.

20 ft. (5-7 meters or so) is probably adequate. Of course, you could experiment with longer lengths but the signal strengths may cause the radio to overload and you'll hear stations appearing in the wrong places.

407

General Radio Discussion / Re: A Trump FCC and Pirate Radio: Prepare for Struggle

« on: December 03, 2016, 2049 UTC »

I think it's Congress who funds the FCC, and they've been Republican for a couple years now and it's not like they're slamming the hammer down on anything lately. I really doubt it will change. If Trump wants to accomplish half of what he says he wants to do, the FCC regulating pirate broadcasters is probably last on his list.

408

Equipment / Re: Purchased my first shortwave radio...not sure what to expect

« on: December 03, 2016, 2036 UTC »

^^^^^ I understand. That's why I said "basically". I don't receive anything from them at all and haven't for over a year. I'm only 200 km away or so. I would guess the only receivers that pick CKZU up are within 50 km or so.

If they get it back up to full power that will be cool.

RE: CKZN: one night (great conditions) I heard both stations mixing. Very odd, but really cool to hear.

409

Equipment / Re: TECSUN PL680 BEATS EXPECTATIONS - Part 1

« on: November 10, 2016, 1524 UTC »

^^^^ I had mine for some time before 9-11 -- it was the radio I heard 9-11 radio reports on (KIRO and KOMO AM news radio at the time), as I had taken it to work with me.

Sometimes microprocessors can glitch unexpectedly on these modern digital SW portables. My DX-370 -- which has no 9 khz / 10 khz button, decided to tune the AM band in 9 khz increments one night until I turned it off and back on.

I still have no idea why it did that. The Sangean ATS-800A which it's based on (it's an actual variant of that radio, not just a re-badge) has 9 khz capability. The only thing I can think happened was that the bandswitch was slightly a-kilter and it must have thrown off the microprocessor.

Glad to hear your 398 is working again. They're great radios.

410

Equipment / Re: Purchased my first shortwave radio...not sure what to expect

« on: November 10, 2016, 1519 UTC »

First time poster...good to be here.

So I purchased a PL-380 to listen to CKZU 6160 while I am off the grid on Vancouver Island.

After putting batteries in it and running the ETM scan the radio picks up 3 stations none of which sound like anything.

I was hoping that picking up a SW station 150km away should not be too hard but am I expecting too much?

Am I possibly not using the radio correctly?

Whats the probability that my unit is DOA?

Any advise would be great.

Best Regards, Hedghog

If you're on Vancouver Island, you're in the same general area of the world as I am (WA State, PNW, BC, etc. -- I'm in WA).

CKZU has been basically off air for over a year. Hopefully they will get it back on the air soon. I used to be able to hear it daily -- at night it would be interfered with from splatter from adjacent stations. Until then, I tune to CBU 690 when I want to get my CBC fix, although CBU often comes in better here than CKZU did.

When it was full power, I could hear CKZU off the whip antenna of my Grundig G2, a radio which probably doesn't perform much differently from your Tecsun on SW.

The best time to hear SW stations here in the NW US / SW Canada is to tune between 5900-6200 khz and 7100-7300 khz in the early morning. You will hear stations from China, Korea, Japan, and sometimes Russia and SE Asia.

This a.m. I heard the BBC in English on the 49 meter band, as well as numerous stations from China and a couple Korean jammers. The signals easily make their way over the North Pacific to our area of the world.

Remember, sometimes SW conditions can be really bad. You'll turn on your radio and tune the SW spectrum and hear mostly static. It's just part of the game.

Another good time to listen is late afternoons, early evenings. Radio Nacional da Amazonia comes in reasonably well most nights on 11780 or 6180. Sometimes you'll hear Chinese broadcasts to Europe from Kashgar -- even off a whip antenna.

Good luck, and welcome to the hobby.

411

General Radio Discussion / Re: New Russian Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radars Set for 2017 Startup

« on: November 04, 2016, 1001 UTC »

Something to listen to when the SWBC bands are all dead... 

412

Shortwave Broadcast / Re: CKZU operating on reduced power

« on: November 04, 2016, 0959 UTC »

They've been completely inaudible for the past year and a half, and they used to be audible daily (and on most nights) from my QTH in Washington state. So they must be running a couple watts or something really low like that.

Hopefully they'll get it back on the air in full power soon.

413

General Radio Discussion / Re: Pirate TV, Belize and the Cubs

« on: October 30, 2016, 0917 UTC »

Fascinating. Too bad the Cubs are getting slammed in the World Series, though.

Reminds me of Nashville's influence on reggae and ska music, because a lot of Jamaicans apparently listened to WSM at night.

414

General Radio Discussion / Re: What does AM have to lose?

« on: October 21, 2016, 0528 UTC »

MW is being used for DRM in India, where they are building a nationwide network.

Whether the receivers are readily available, I don't know. But the Indian radio authorities chose MW and DRM because of the vast coverage on AM compared to FM and DAB.

I know DAB works decently in some European countries that have invested in it. Norway seems to have their entire country covered. Not sure about the UK, but I know it has decent listenership there, also.

Here in the US DAB was never an option because there were too many stations that would have been left out of the loop. That is one reason they went with HD FM and HD AM.

Internet streaming radio is cool until you're out of the area where your favorite station broadcasts. Here in the US increasing numbers of stations geo-block, because of expensive royalty costs. For a while I had fun "DXing" distant stations by listening to their digital steams, but more and more of them geo-block, and I haven't used TuneIn in several months because of it.

I sometimes tune into overseas government radio services like NRK and SverigesRadio, who thankfully still run their streams for overseas listeners.

415

General Radio Discussion / Re: What does AM have to lose?

« on: October 14, 2016, 0828 UTC »

Some AM stations in LA and Chicago are very high billing. I.e., they make a significant amount of money, even though the ratings aren't spectacular. KNX is high billing, so is KFI. WGN in Chicago is a high revenue station. So some AMers do well even though their ratings aren't huge.

While I agree with the writer's overall opinion -- I wish that there was more width in music formats -- the fact is that AM radio still provides quite a bit of variety if you consider the ethnic programming: Korean, Hindustani, Iranian (in California), Regional Mexican and Romantica,Classic Hits (in some areas of the US), Public Radio (Oregon and Washington), Russian programming, Viet programming, etc. There is variety there, It's just not the variety we are used to.

I think AM radio will continue to gradually decline in listenership until it goes all digital, which could happen in the future, and may save the band eventually, because with all-digital the sound quality would improve for people who don't like the present sound of AM.

HD radio is not going to go away. Although IBOC isn't popular on the AM band, the fact remains that all HD FM radios decode HD AM, and the present radios will decode full digital as well as IBOC on AM. So, providing the radios are available, AM will still have a fighting chance for music. But it may take a while.

And those of us who DX the AM band will be DXing HD. It probably won't be as productive or fun, but it will be better than nothing. :-)

416

Equipment / Re: TECSUN PL680 BEATS EXPECTATIONS - Part 1

« on: October 10, 2016, 2247 UTC »

I read your review with interest, especially your experiences with the ATS909. Tough radio!

I have a DX-398 and it's been through a lot, although it hasn't been rained on. Still works well, it's my main SSB / Ham monitoring radio, and the only one I attempt to DX the Longwave band with.

417

General Radio Discussion / Re: YHWH tonite (local)

« on: October 08, 2016, 1556 UTC »

Interesting. The case for Yahshuah (Yah meaning Yahweh, or YHWH, shuah meaning salvation), over Jesus is solid, there's no J sound in Hebrew or Aramaic, never has been. It may be a case where, like in Roman and Greek (as well as Egyptian) times the pagans created supergods out of the combination of two gods, perhaps Jesus is Jehovah Zeus?

Actually the J sound, originally pronounced as Y, is recent to English as well, as in no older than a few hundred years. Of course that also means Jehovah isn't the name either, it's Yahweh as made note of in the callsign, Hebrew has no vowels per se, just what are called vowel points so Yahweh is the phonetic transliteration of YHWH. 

And then there's the case of the christian Sabbath, Sunday, the pagan day of sun worship. The Sabbath is from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, and Yahshuah always observed the Sabbath. Imagine building entire religious industries around falsehoods. So technically, the christians have a lot of their core doctrine based upon error and their leadership knows all of this.

The reason the name "Jesus" is used is because that's the spelling of the name in the Greek, and all of the New Testament manuscripts were written in Greek. The English pronunciation of the name is based on our pronunciation of the letter "J", the English pronunciation of the Greek name used by the original writers of the New Testament.

I used to hear YHWH on the 31 meter band. The guy sounded as if he was reading from some book, like he was reciting a bunch of stuff. It was hard to determine exactly where he was coming from because there was a lot of rambling.

418

General Radio Discussion / Re: KIFM is building a transmitter in Nevada

« on: October 08, 2016, 1541 UTC »

what a clever way to corner the "market".
"listen to us or listen to nothing"

ER... yes, and no.

They're the ones spending money on the radios and giving them out for free. I would think they have a right to have the single channel installed if they so want.

It's no different than handing out free religious tracts. Just a high tech version. If the recipient doesn't like it, they can always throw it away.

I would think that in many of these countries there are plenty of transistor radios available for people to listen to other stations if they want.

419

General Radio Discussion / Re: *&%#&! CFL Light Bulbs

« on: October 08, 2016, 1534 UTC »

Had a CFL that worked fine... Except it was plastering the AM band with the worst electrical AC hash imaginable from 680 khz or so all the way down to the bottom of the band.

I took a portable digital SW-AM-FM radio around the house and finally found it, almost by accident. Finally, in frustration, I began switching off lights and circuits in the house.

It was one of my porch lights. From looking at it, you wouldn't know it was the culprit.

420

General Radio Discussion / Re: Over The Top Craziness on 7200 LSB!

« on: September 27, 2016, 0433 UTC »

On the ham forums they talk about several frequencies on 40, a couple on 80, and one in particular on 20 meters where there is a lot of trash talk, QRMing, music playing, etc. going on.

They always ponder over why it's that way, but I just think it's the temper of the times. Internet "dialogue" often turns into little more than spamming and name calling, and the same mindset is drifting over into ham radio.