Messages

601

General Radio Discussion / Re: Local law enforcement and antennas

« on: March 31, 2014, 1156 UTC »

From reading this thread, my guess is that there may be some sort of illegal activity going on in your apartment complex, and the police were perhaps trying to figure if your antenna was a part of it or not.

You hear any strange transmissions in your neighborhood? Maybe an unlicensed FM station or something? Any other curious activity going on?

602

General Radio Discussion / Re: Radio Tecnico: How The Zetas Cartel Took Over Mexico With Walkie-Talkies

« on: March 31, 2014, 1151 UTC »

Fascinating article. I wonder just how much of this sort of stuff goes on inside the US? Even on a local level.

603

General Radio Discussion / Re: The Lingo. Help a beginner?

« on: March 31, 2014, 1035 UTC »

UNID & unID, like Chanter says, mean unidentified station.

S3, S4 etc. is either a reading of signal strength from a radio's signal indicator (which can go from S1 to S9 and even S9+); or, in other cases (like mine) it's subjective, "S1" meaning you barely heard the programming, to "S5" meaning that it was pounding your earphones.

Other abbreviations you may encounter are 'hrd' (short for 'heard'), 'condx' (short for SW propagation conditions), QRM (interference from other stations), QRN (lightning, static crashes, atmospheric noises non-manmade), 'mx' (short for music -- used sometimes on AM band DX sites); 'CW' is morse code (usually heard on the ham bands). There are also abbreviations used for the various data modes you'll hear on the shortwaves in between the SW broadcast bands (FSK, RTTY, etc.).

As per usual, jargon sometimes can be a pain to deal with, but with SWLing and MW DXing, it's not really difficult -- mostly just abbreviations and a few ham radio Q codes.

604

Equipment / Re: Educate me about antenna choice.

« on: March 31, 2014, 1014 UTC »

The only thing I would add is consider using a simple antenna tuner with your DX-160 to reduce images below the SW broadcast bands. I made one with a coil wrapped on a plastic spice bottle and a couple of old tuner caps and it did the job fairly well.

In the SW broadcast bands themselves I never encountered many images -- at least none I can remember.

Also there is a resistor across the MW RF tuning coil you may want to remove if you use your DX-160 to DX the AM band. It's R62, marked 33K ohm on the schematic. When I removed it from mine there was a definite improvement in MW performance.

605

Equipment / Re: Anyone?

« on: March 31, 2014, 1001 UTC »

Who can help?

I'm searching for the SERVICE-MANUAL for
the
           HITACHI model no. K-50W

(Portable-) TV/FM/SW/MW Radio -/Cassette-Recorder


Greetz from

André
CoolAM Radio - ShortWave 6735
http://www.coolam.nl
the Netherlands

If no one has it here, you could try one of the boombox web forums. There are at least two of them I have found. One, Stereo2Go, has guys on there that work on / fix their boomboxes. Not sure if a box with a TV would count there, but it just might. Their site covers all sorts of boxes and walkmen cassette radios.

606

Shortwave Broadcast / Firedrake, 15385 khz, 0010 UTC, 2-14-2014

« on: February 14, 2014, 0252 UTC »

Heard the 'drake blasting away a few hours ago on top of another station that had a couple announcers speaking what sounded like Chinese. S4 signal strengths.

Aside from a couple Radio Havana broadcasts, it was the only thing on the 19 meter band.

Acc. to Short-wave.info, the jammed station would be the VOA.

607

HF Beacons / Re: Beep every 2 seconds 13560 Khz

« on: February 13, 2014, 1315 UTC »

Thanks for posting the link to that list, Cmradio. Very cool. Will have to listen for some of those.

608

10/11 meters / Re: Buoys

« on: February 13, 2014, 1311 UTC »

On another forum a guy reported hearing morse code ID's on drift buoys on 27500, might be worth listening for. He apparently is in the Midwest somewhere, so whatever he was hearing may be listenable over a sizeable chunk of the U.S. & Canada.

609

General Radio Discussion / Re: Advice or thoughts for beginner on interesting things to do

« on: January 28, 2014, 1408 UTC »

Short-wave.info is a good website for seeing what's on at a given time, and includes a map of the world, showing the areas of light & darkness, as well as where the station transmitters are located.

Others will have to help with the European stations. Not many of them left anymore.

In my area of the U.S. it's wall-to-wall China, Cuba, Brazil, and a few other stations thrown into the mix. Very little from Europe aside from Greece, sometimes Spain, and now and then the Vatican.

610

General Radio Discussion / Re: Re-arranging the FM band

« on: January 16, 2014, 1606 UTC »

KA1IIC, I know what you're saying. Even in the 1960's and 1970's, radio stations would push the envelope a little bit to cater to their audience. There were regional variances even in 'national' formats like Top 40 and AOR.

In today's radio climate, where there's so much amalgamation and so many clusters, individual programmers are fewer, and some of them just look at the national charts and that's what they play.  Even college stations have become more commercial in outlook and practice, with reduced airshifts, more paid professional staff, and one of the results is the difficulties for local artists getting played because of all the b.s. you have to go through. 

Increasingly, the only thing missing from these "non-commercial" stations is the commercials.

Nirvana in 1989, for example, were basically unknown, and just dropped off a 45 at the college station in Seattle - and got played the same day.  Chances of that happening today would be minimal, if not non-existent.

611

MW Loggings / 1566 khz, 1410z, tentative HLAZ, South Korea

« on: January 16, 2014, 1551 UTC »

Tuned across the AM band this a.m. and heard a het on the lower side of 1570 khz. It was there even without aid of a loop, but the loop brought it in louder. On my RS "PLL Synthesized World Receiver" it seemed to zero at 1566, which is the 9 khz frequency that would be logical. As soon as I hit 1566, the RS World Receiver had some guy speaking an Asian language, with splash from 1560 and some QRM from the Deportes station in California on 1570.

Heard a man speaking what seemed to be Korean -- not sing-songy like Chinese, def. not Japanese, and had some of the consonant sounds peculiar to Korean, so I'm pretty sure it was Korean.

It even came in barefoot on my TRF, which -- ironically -- was the radio that seemed to bring it in the clearest (it seems to have a really good ceramic filter, combined with a good audio section).

The RS World Receiver, the SRII and the Panasonic also brought in audio with the loop (didn't try them w/o the loop, though). Once I got it clear w/ the TRF I stuck with that radio....

It's always cool to hear something from across the Pacific, even if you can't understand what's being said.  Guys around here (W. WA) with the bigger antennas seem to bring in Asian stations on an almost daily basis.

612

General Radio Discussion / Re: Re-arranging the FM band

« on: January 15, 2014, 1300 UTC »

I think one of the problems with radio is too many stations just don't advertise. They don't promote their station, beyond liners included their own broadcasts -- which is sort of like preaching to the choir.

CMRadio: there's also that AM station in 100 Mile House (S. of Williams Lake, I think) that plays a mix of country and Southern Rock. Very interesting mix. KTKN in SE Alaska has a very wide range of music they play. Some stations in smaller markets that are run by individual owners seem to be able to get away with unique programming.

613

Shortwave Broadcast / Re: Radio Havana 6000 kHz 0255z 1/5/2014 playing John Lennon

« on: January 14, 2014, 1747 UTC »

I've heard rock (Latino rock as well as western pop/rock like Paul McCartney) on R. Rebelde, so it wouldn't surprise me too much to hear of it also being played on Radio Havana.

614

Shortwave Broadcast / Re: 13mb Specials

« on: January 14, 2014, 1728 UTC »

Nice catches. Do you hear 13 meter band broadcasts very often?

Here where I live in the NW US, the highest broadcasts I've heard were few and far between in the 16 meter band; mainly Radio Havana in Arabic.

615

General Radio Discussion / Re: The Coolest new discovery in quite a while...

« on: January 14, 2014, 1719 UTC »

I wonder if such a thing is possible, theoretically. EME seems to work for some hams, and that's VHF / UHF bouncing off a distant astronomical object. I wonder if anyone has ever heard other terrestrial signals reflected off the moon.

On a related note, one thing I'd like to know more about is those long distance echoes I keep reading about now and then.  Anyone here ever experienced one?