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Messages - BoomboxDX

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 54
16
General Radio Discussion / Re: 11 MHZ ....15 MHZ listening
« on: June 28, 2023, 0658 UTC »
Might have been a slight uptick in the propagation. There is music on 11780 most nights, that's Amazonia, from Brazil -- a station located near the capital that serves the Amazon region, Rondonia, Mato Grosso, and similar regions.

Without having any specific frequencies mentioned (or locations of the FB posters you refer to), that's the only obvious station I can think of that plays music on the 11 MHz broadcast band.

17
Doesn't sound like Chinese. Maybe a SE Asian language? hard to tell.

18
Can't hear it very clearly because it's such narrow bandwidth.

About 3/4 in it sounds like one guy is talking in French. Near the end of the recording too.

That's the closest I can ID it. Some of the sounds are French, and I think a couple of the words might be, but it's only a guess at this point.

19
General Radio Discussion / Re: CFVP 6030 likely going dark
« on: June 25, 2023, 0752 UTC »
Another Canadian Connection - I am pretty sure my first DX station was the CBC Northern Service, at least that was my first QSL.

Mine was probably Radio RSA, which would come in on my old, upright multiband tube radio in the afternoons.

I remember CBC Northern Service. They'd even broadcast in native languages, which were pretty cool to hear.

20
Propagation / Re: Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression
« on: June 22, 2023, 2127 UTC »
Just wondering if / when the Solar Cycle peaks, will it be stronger than the last one. According to NASA, the last cycle's peak had the same amount of solar irradiance as the Solar minimums had in the 1970s. And does Solar irradiance affect propagation, or just the number of sunspots?

.... And I can answer my own question: Solar Irradiance is ultimately what makes the Ionosphere work, and if Solar Irradiance drops, so does the ability of the Ionosphere to reflect/refract radio signals.


21
General Radio Discussion / Re: CFVP 6030 likely going dark
« on: June 20, 2023, 0302 UTC »
Wow. Just another wonderful day in the radio industry.

Very surprised that Edmonton's 1260 ESPN (CFRN, which gets out into the States very well) sports talker will be shut down. Sports is a big deal in Edmonton, and there can't be too many sports talkers up there. Oh well.

So much for the radio experts always saying that a station can do fine if it has low ratings, because they have a lock on some demographic.

The latest ratings figures I could find CFRN pulled a 1.3, 23K cume. Higher than many US sports talkers, comparitively. And CFRN is apparently the only sports station in that metro. Well, I guess it's bye bye.

Radio continues in its downward spiral. A slow one, but it's circling the drain. Sad especially for radio fans.

22
General Radio Discussion / Re: CFVP 6030 likely going dark
« on: June 20, 2023, 0253 UTC »
I heard CFVP a couple of times during the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but that was it.

What was the low power HF station that served the Inside Passage and the islands to the north from the city of Vancouver? They ran low power but I could hear them every morning in the Appalachians. Their transmitter gave up the ghost, but a bunch of hams got together and modified a Kenwood rig to specs they thought the radio board would accept? The board shot it down because it couldn't do the Hokey-Pokey or some other damned nonsense.

I think you're talking about the CBC outlet on 6160 which relayed 690 khz out of Vancouver. There was a transmitter fire, and 690 dropped from 50KW to 10KW and the SW transmitter on 6160 was never restored to the airwaves.

The 6160 khz relay was readily audible at least 200 mi away. One night I heard them and CKZN Newfoundland at the same time, all on a DX-350 off the whip. That was around 2012 or so, when the sunspots were better than they are now.

23
Vague or no, it's a good idea, if only for emergency redundancy (and the FEMA transmitters mentioned upthread).

Redundancy for emergency information delivery systems is a good thing.

24
LaGrande, Oregon -- as anyone who has been through that part of the state knows -- is a small city with few local stations.

One wonders what the story is behind the turning in of the pirate station(s) there. Were the few commercial stations losing that much audience? If you look up "LaGrande FM Radio" in a search most of the stations are in cities 50-100 miles away.

Oh well.

EDIT: seeing mention of this on another thread (including an FCC document) I guess the operator was pushing the limit. But still...

25
Propagation / Re: Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression
« on: March 30, 2023, 0434 UTC »
Just wondering if / when the Solar Cycle peaks, will it be stronger than the last one. According to NASA, the last cycle's peak had the same amount of solar irradiance as the Solar minimums had in the 1970s. And does Solar irradiance affect propagation, or just the number of sunspots?

26
Inflation is a thing. In fact, it's a very real thing. That applies to gasoline for vehicles as well as nearly everything else that has gone up in price. It's undoubtedly affecting a lot of discretionary spending, regardless of demographic.

Regardless of the exact causes or validity of the reasons this particular store closed, it's sad to see the ham stores, and other electronics stores, fold.

27
Equipment / Re: 11m Roger Beep audio
« on: March 04, 2023, 0701 UTC »
When I operated on 11m it was always with a stock Cobra 148, and within the legal limits, and on the sideband frequencies. Never really felt the urge to mod my radio. It worked fine as is.

That said, hearing roger beeps never bothered me that much. Sometimes it helped when monitoring DX, especially when monitoring the Outband sideband channels on my SWL rigs. When the beep went off, you could tell that one of the people in the QSO you were monitoring had unkeyed his or her mic. It could help in following the QSO, especially if there was fading or 'short skip' (E skip, which sometimes is more fickle than the F layer skip).

Never understood the appeal of the echo mics, or stations with the power mics cranked to the max, along with the extra processing.

But then, people in the radio hobby have as many odd and unique tendencies just as non-radio people do. I suppose some of it goes with the territory.

28
Interesting story. I wonder if there are any such 'zones of silence' in the US, Canada, or other places? I know there are areas with some magnetic anomalies, and sometimes those anomalies are marked on FAA VFR maps for pilots (usually informing them that your compass may be off a few degrees). But zones of silence? that's new info to me.

29
General Radio Discussion / Re: has anyone ever thought about...
« on: January 13, 2023, 0841 UTC »
One could make a considerably strong argument that Brother Stair (and other creature preachers like him) turned more people away from content Shortwave listening than the Internet ever did.  Their borderline hi-jacking of 31 meters is infuriating.

How can anyone 'hijack' an empty SW broadcast band?

Since 2016 the 31 Meter Band has been mostly devoid of stations every night and many, if not most mornings. If I look over my logbooks, especially since the downturn in sunspots around 2016, 31 Meters has probably had an average of maybe 3-5 stations on any given evening, at the most (sometimes including WWV), and the 31 Meter band is about 600 khz wide -- at least 60, 10 KHz channels ar available (more if you consider that SW traditionally has used 5 kHz channels).

Sorry if it infuriates you, but religion's been on the SW since the 1950s probably. The real issue is other broadcasters have left the air, and the downturn of the last Solar Cycle just sped the demise of SW on its way.

Lately if there's no good prop to Asia in the morning, 31 Meters and 49 Meters are mostly static here (esp. at night) in my location, with a varying signal from WRMI, Cuba, and WWCR in the mix. Sometimes WWV doesn't show up on 10 MHz. If I hear Voz Missionaria on 9665 at night it's like Christmas. Amazing they even make it as far as the NW US.

In 2012 there was a LOT more activity. And Bro. Stair was still blaring away on the airwaves back then. He was just easier to tune past and find another station up the band.

As for the OP, there's a guy on several SW and MW and radio forums who works in the radio business, and he sometimes rents time on WRMI and plays music. So it can be done. It apparently doesn't have to be a long term thing. Apparently some of the stations will allow one-offs.

30
Very cool vid. So cool that the BBC did a vid on it, too!

Aikhainiemi and Lemmenjoki are the two places I've read about where the MW DXers go. The guy in Kongsfjord, Norway seems to get a lot of publicity in MW circles, too.

The vid has some great shots of the area. Looks awesome.

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