Messages

526

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Real Pirate Radio 6925 USB

« on: January 10, 2009, 2347 UTC »

About 2320z receiving good signal on 6925 USB


at 23:22z  in NC TX    S7 at times and good S/N ratio at the moment


23:25z

"I'm just a *issy little mobile" ...

23:36z

Too weak to copy now

23:52z broadcast continues

End at approx. 2355z


Update:

Clip of some of what was heard here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPdpgdPBZm0

Also:

Heard reveille at about 00:35z again.

527

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Ultraman? 6925 AM 225z

« on: January 10, 2009, 2322 UTC »

Receiving good signal on 6925 USB


at 23:22z  in NC TX    S7 at times and good S/N ratio at the moment


23:25z

"I'm just a *issy little mobile" ...

23:36z

Too weak to copy now

528

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Un ident growling, reverb more, 6925 at about 0340z

« on: January 04, 2009, 1521 UTC »

Wow - thanks again Lex for the yeoman's work!

529

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: 6925 usb commencing 2201z .. 2230z

« on: January 04, 2009, 1511 UTC »

Thanks Lex.

- SWJ

530

North American Shortwave Pirate / 6925 usb commencing 2201z .. 2230z

« on: January 03, 2009, 2201 UTC »

Music and voice program material - unable to ID

Was DSB initially (maybe AM?)

Earlier heard voice on 6950 USB

Gotta bail; too weak for me with the lightning crashes et al

531

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Un ident growling, reverb more, 6925 at about 0340z

« on: January 03, 2009, 1937 UTC »

Well, 'clipping' is a form of compression (allbeit a non-intended form technically usually involving the PA stage), defined as a non-linear state where x no longer equals y with some scaling factor 'a' where a represents the gain (amplification) factor of the amplifying stage.

The only to really have told if it was the final amplifier stage being in a state of 'compression' (e.g. the 1 dB compression point as a figure of merit in dealing with 'linearity' in the design of equipment) or if the station was actually running too much compression from an audio processor of some sort would be to have obsserved any 3rd or 5th IMD products (commonly called splatter) that were output from the transmitter. I surely didn't have enough signal strength here to deermine that!

Sorry for the long response; too many years dealing with these technical issues up close ...

532

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Un ident growling, reverb more, 6925 at about 0340z

« on: January 03, 2009, 1603 UTC »

Thanks Steve.

Also, here is a recommendation to 'those' out there: follow the lead of Ann Hoffer, not so much compression, but a well balanced audio signal stressing more the mid-range frequencies so that voices are understandable with the -weak- signals that we usually have ...

533

Other / OK MO W KX beacons 1316z 2009-01-03

« on: January 03, 2009, 1556 UTC »

3450, 4077.27, 4078, 4097.4 kHz respectively:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hkALeWVxDc

Edit: Corrected title (had 'C' instead of 'W' due to brain/recall malfunction)

534

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Un ident growling, reverb more, 6925 at about 0340z

« on: January 03, 2009, 1550 UTC »

Update: a minute's worth of the last part of the broadcast -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd3ltLlIDwY

535

North American Shortwave Pirate / Un ident growling, reverb more, 6925 at about 0340z

« on: January 03, 2009, 0344 UTC »

Could not get more as I caught the tail end of something!

Now muffled, w/reverb, cannot make it out .... too much compression.

536

General Radio Discussion / Re: CHU Moving to 7850 kHz

« on: January 02, 2009, 0350 UTC »

Great news! 7335 always was a crap frequency for them.

Peace!

How do you figure that?

If you lived on the west coast, you would not say that. Other than a couple of years around sunspot peaks, 40M is a crap E-W propagation band.

Peace!

Then, can I make a hint of a suggestion and recommend that the receiving party switch to another frequency?

A 'bad' or crap freq for one person might actually be a good frequency for another ... a better way to have expressed that might have been 'always had crap reception on that band given propagation and my location'. These are, after all, utility (time and frequency reference stations) stations; one should suffice for another JJY, WWV, WWVB, CHU etc. for the purposes they were designed.

Anyway, just sayin ...

(In the spirit of full disclosure - for both work and ham-hobby, I have zero-beat/made use of these time-base/frequency references stations on a number of pieces of gear over the years including counters, signal generators and now the higher-accuracy synthesized gen coverage and ham rigs over the years using WWV; WWVB, the VLF source, used to be *the* standard phased tracked by labs to keep the central 10 MHz frequency source accurate before GPS ... you probably know all this! Sorry for the history lesson! Full disclosure:  been in comms, incl. engineering and even ops aspects for awhile in the yrs since school!)

537

MW Loggings / Re: 570 Radio Reloj, Cuba

« on: January 02, 2009, 0249 UTC »

For awhile I have heard the CW ID underneath KLIF (thought I was hearing things initially!) ... and it wasn't until a several years back that it came to light that it was 'radio clock' from Cuba that was the source.

I guess even Communist dictatorships have to have some means to make sure the clocks get set to 'make sure the trains run on time' but for Cuba that may mean that cigar shipments are made on time ...

538

Equipment / Re: Electrostatic discharge protection tips?

« on: January 02, 2009, 0242 UTC »

A couple of 1/4 watt carbon film resistors anything over 1K to ground should work to 'bleed off' any charge that may develop ... tribolectic effects (sand, air rubbing, impacting your wire antenna) and even charge induction (from overhead storms) can be reduced by providing even this simple kind of resistive 'loading'.

If there is already a DC path to ground then the resistors wouldn't be necessary; I lost the front-end transistor in a piece of gear long ago where I failed to have any sort of bleed path from an over head dipole fed with twin-lead. One day, I even drews small arcs to a water pipe from this the lead in as a charged storm cloud was in the vicinity! THATS what the resistors would before on an otherwise insulated and non-DC grounded antenna.

539

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: 7890 usb 2145z

« on: January 02, 2009, 0214 UTC »

Thanks desmo.

540

General Radio Discussion / Re: CHU Moving to 7850 kHz

« on: January 02, 2009, 0207 UTC »

Great news! 7335 always was a crap frequency for them.

Peace!

How do you figure that?

It worked well for many years, and there was a time I used them over WWV for time checks back when I lived in one of those states next to Canada.

Beings it was 7335 it also put it in the range of 10-80 M ham radios like the FT-101 which were not general coverage and could not receiver either 3.333 5, 10 15 or 20 MHz WWV stations!