Radio Habana Cuba: Dxers Unlimited Weekend edition for September 2, 2000
By Arnie Coro, radio amateur CO2KK
Hi mis amigos, my friends, mes amis... Welcome to the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited, your favorite radio hobby show via short wave PLUS scripts via the INTERNET... I am Arnaldo, Arnie, Coro, radio amateur CO2KK, RHCs Science Editor and host of this twice weekly show devoted entirely to the promotion and development of our wonderful hobby: RADIO!!!
And now item one: Get ready for another upcoming geomagnetic storm... Seems like a coronal mass ejection from the Sun that happened just a few hours ago, on the second day of September will very likely cause a magnetic disturbance with the typical pattern of high ionospheric absorption at higher latitudes, aurora borealis, long range 6 meter band propagation via the F2 layer etc... More about HF and 6 meter band propagation as always at the end of the show.
Item two: QSL on the air, QSL on the air to the many listeners that are sending signal reports while using homebrew short wave receivers!!! It's nice to hear from you amigos, and nice to see how much many of you are enjoying homebrewing simple, yet effective radios!!! Let me remind you that several rather simple short wave radios that can be built even using recycled components are free just for the asking.. E-mail your request to arnie@radiohc.org, and I'll send you the SIMPLE RADIOS INFO PACKAGE, which I just finished assembling very late in the evening Friday!!! It contains from a single vacuum tube regenerative receiver, to an easy to build 4 field effect transistors radio, PLUS, a REGENERODYNE, one of the most interesting radio receivers to homebrew! Again, send your request for ARNIES SIMPLE RADIOS INFO PACKAGE, via e-mail to arnie@radiohc.org, or via Air Mail to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana Cuba...
Now item three: It's never too late, yes amigos, it's never too late to start enjoying yet another aspect of the radio hobby... Friday afternoon I received the visit of a new radio amateur; he is almost seventy years old, and wanted to be a ham operator since he was in his teens, he told me. Now, his dreams are about to become true... He already took the ham radio license test, and is now bringing back to life a Canadian built single side band transceiver that served for many years aboard a Cuban deep sea fishing fleet boat. More about recycling commercial radios later here at Dxers Unlimiteds weekend edition that will continue in a few moments. Margarita Delgado is my sound engineer and producer; I am Arnie Coro in Havana, stay tuned....
The name of the station is Radio Havana Cuba, reaching you via short wave. You can send your signal reports, comments about this show and our programming, radio hobby related questions, and your ideas on how to improve Dxers Unlimited -- via Air Mail to: Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana Cuba, and via e-mail to arnie@radiohc.org.
Now back to item three, recycling old radio equipment and how it helps to go on the air with a very tight budget... Ernesto is almost seventy years old; he is a member of the Playa Radio Club in Havana. He is as enthusiastic as anyone can be with amateur radio, and sure, he is going to be on the air from his home QTH very soon with the help of many of us... Ernesto somehow obtained a dado de baja Spillsbury and Tyndall Canadian HF transceiver; "dado de baja" means "decommissioned from service," but that doesn't mean that the nice radio cannot be brought back to life, restored and used for many years at a ham radio station. Ernesto's Spillsbury is almost thirty years old, but it was very well kept by the Cuban Fishing Fleet maintenance personnel. When he obtained it, the radio had a missing 455 kiloHertz carrier generator crystal, and that was precisely why we met each other. Another amateur -- Omar, CO2JW, from the Playa Radio Club executive committee -- asked for help on our local 2 meter FM repeater Wednesday nights net... His message was, "anyone who has a 455 kiloHertz crystal, que levante la mano!" -- that colloquial Spanish phrase meaning, please raise your hand, so I pushed the transmit button of my 2 meter FM rig, and said, "OK, Omar I have not one but two of those..." and Friday afternoon Ernesto was picking up the missing part so he could start testing his transceiver. In my humble opinion, and I am sure many of you share this thought with me, this is amateur radio at its best!!!!
Well, the Spillsbury and Tyndall HF transceiver was originally intended, as I explained earlier, for maritime channelized communications, but ham ingenuity solves that little problem, by bypassing the crystal oscillator and connecting an external homebrew VFO or variable frequency oscillator. Thanks to some nice Canadian hams that live in Vancouver, the hometown of Spillsbury and Tyndall, we have the circuit diagrams and service manuals for the two most popular marine HF transceivers, so I am sure that in a couple of weeks, Ernesto will fulfill his lifelong dream of going on the air with his amateur radio station. You can be sure, that all along the recycling of the marine HF radio, he will receive a lot of help from other amateurs, in true ham spirit, and that after he is on the air, he will do likewise to help others start assembling their amateur radio stations.
My friends, it's really nice to read your correspondence, both e-mail and letters or postcards... I must say that Dxers Unlimited's regular listeners or sometimes readers of the script, are a very special breed...always wanting to share with the rest of us their interesting experiences. For example, last Tuesday, UTC day just a few minutes after the show's first airing ended on 9550 kHz to the Caribbean and the Southeastern United States, I received a nice e-mail message from a listener in Florida, telling me about his success with the easy-to-build, low-cost Arnie Coro's Broomstick shortwave antenna, and how he was picking many more stations now that he installed the BROOMSTICK and the PI network antenna tuner. He commented about how reception became much better after the PI NETWORK TUNER was installed, because his radio receiver is a rather inexpensive and unsophisticated budget radio that does not have a well designed and built front end... The sharp tuning PI network acts as a very effective filter between the antenna and the radio, reducing cross modulation and image problems that are typical of low cost radios.
The Florida listener built the PI network tuner using two air-spaced variable capacitors from old AM radios that he bought at a fleamarket, and he wound the coil using a 4-inch, or 100-millimeter, length of PVC plastic tubing of one and a half inches or 37.5 millimeters diameter. The coil has 20 turns, spaced the diameter of the wire, which is no.16 PVC insulated household wire, and you achieve perfect one-turn spacing by winding two wires at the same time, and then carefully unwinding one of them. YES, it does the trick, and you are left with a beautifully evenly spaced coil... When I replied to his e-mail message, I suggested that he install a simple resistive attenuator, made from a 5 kiloohm carbon linear potentiometer, between the antenna and the tuner, and to experiment with different settings of the simple attenuator.
By building the BROOMSTICK from PVC pipe and low-cost speaker type no.18 or no.20 insulated wire and assembling the PI network tuner and RF attenuator, these humble low-cost little radios show a tremendous improvement in performance over what their designers and manufacturers could have ever dreamed!!! Try building your BROOMSTICK and your PI Network antenna tuner and attenuator... the instructions are on the Dxer's Unlimited website. You can also obtain the BROOMSTICK AND PI NETWORK INFO PACKAGE free; just send e-mail to arnie@radiohc.org, or send Air Mail to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba...
Now item six: the Tropical Band DX season is now just starting, and this might be your last chance to log in some of the Tropical Band stations that soon may go off the air. Of the almost 500 Tropical Band Broadcasters that are known to be on the air nowadays, many of them are certainly going to move to the FM band soon, as reception of Tropical Band Stations in their target areas is showing a steady decline. Broacasters working on a shoestring budget, as many Third World stations are, are reshuffling their very limited resources to FM broadcasting in many locations, while others are obtaining AM medium wave band licenses. So again, this equinoctial DX season just starting now, may be the last one for some of those Tropical Band Stations that you have always wanted to add to your logbooks!!!
And now just before going QRT, here is Arnie Coro's Dxers Unlimited's HF plus 6 meters propagation update and forecast... YES, F2 openings on 6 meters are happening just NOW, so be on the lookout for some nice DX like the ZD8KW station from Ascension Island, that was putting out a beautiful signal here in Havana Thursday afternoon local time. Expect below-normal HF propagation conditions for the next 24 to 48 hours, and be ready for a possible geomagnetic storm that may start at the beginning of the week due to the coronal mass ejection that occurred September the second.
Amigos, radio is a nice hobby, it's relaxing and rewarding, it brings people together, and often provides a unique opportunity to help others, like during hurricane emergencies... Enjoy radio and join me again next Tuesday and Wednesday UTC days for the mid-week edition of Dxers Unlimited.
prepared 9/2/2000; transmitted 9/4/2000
Arnie Coro CO2KK
Havana, Cuba
September 2, 2000Postal address:
Arnie Coro, "Dxers Unlimited"
Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, CUBA
e-mail: arnie@radiohc.org
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