Radio Habana Cuba: Dxers Unlimited weekend edition for November 25, 2000
By Arnie Coro, radio amateur CO2KK
HI amigos!!! Welcome to the weekend edition of your favorite radio hobby show, I am Arnie Coro, radio amateur CO2KK, here in Havana. Join me for about 16 minutes of all radio hobby related information.... Here is our BANNER HEADLINE TODAY: SOLAR FLARES!Three X-type solar flares one after the other coming from solar active region 9236 which, by the way, continues to develop and is still halfway on its trip through the visible part of the solar disk!!! For those of you who asked.... YES, areas of Planet Earth did suffer from short wave blackouts on Friday November, 24th, just as the intense radiation from the X type solar flares impacted upon the upper atmosphere. According to some sources, at one time during the X2 solar flare, which occurred at 15 hours and 13 minutes UTC, that is 10:13 AM my local time here in Havana, signals just vanished from all radios. It was so intense that some HF circuits operators started to look at their receivers to see if they had broken down. BUT, NO, their radios were OK; the problem was that the tremendous impact of a solar radiation storm simply made short wave transmissions via the ionosphere IMPOSSIBLE!!!
NOW, we must strap ourselves to our seats and wait for the upcoming geomagnetic event, which will start as soon as the particles ejected by the solar flares reach the Earth's magnetosphere. NOW I am sure that if you are a regular Dxers Unlimited's listener, you heard here that the period from November 18th all the way up to the first few days of December would be a really interesting one for short wave propagation... That was my forecast, and it was right on target: Saturday, November 25th the 6 meter band was open from Europe to North America and the Caribbean, an indication that the F2 layer maximum useable frequency was higher than 50 megaHertz... AND GET READY FOR MORE ACTION: There are two solar active regions capable of producing still more flare activity during the next three to four days!!!
Item two: The ever-popular BROOMSTICK short wave antenna continues to capture the attention of those who visit our Dxers Unlimited website ... YES, it is very easy to homebrew, materials are readily available, and when working with a simple antenna tuner it will improve your short wave reception a lot. Today I will answer some questions related to the BROOMSTICK antenna construction.
Item three: Does your computer have a sound card??? Again, listen to this very important question, DOES YOUR COMPUTER HAVE A SOUND CARD??? If your answer is YES, then you can enjoy lots of interesting software that will interface your short wave receiver to your computer and let you operate CW Morse Code, Radio Teletype, FAX, Slow Scan Television, PSK31 and other digital communications modes. An interesting FACT: many of the sound card interface programs are FREEWARE, and they do work very well indeed.
So, stay tuned, right on this same short wave frequency for details about the already mentioned topics and more, at the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited. I am Arnie Coro in Havana, my sound engineer and producer is Margarita Delgado....
Get in touch with us... send your e-mail to arnie@radiohc.org, or via Air Mail to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba. Send your QSL requests, comments about the show and your radio hobby-related questions, which will be answered as soon as possible on the air plus direct to your e-mail address,too.
Now item two: It happens very often, website visitors to Dxers Unlimited see the BROOMSTICK ANTENNA files and immediately get interested in building one. And of course, there are many questions asked. This has led to me writing a set of Frequently Asked Questions about the Broomstick, which will soon be uploaded to the website.
But nevertheless, I want to answer right here, on the air, a question that was asked by several listeners...
Here is the question: Arnie, I have not found the no.18 speaker wire for winding the BROOMSTICK antenna, can I use another wire diameter??? ANSWER: SURE, the insulated wire used for winding the BROOMSTICK, all seventy feet of it or about 21 meters of it, can be of a slightly different diameter without affecting the antenna's performance at all. I have built BROOMSTICKS using no.22, no.20, no.18 and no.16 enamel-insulated wire, the so-called magnet wire used for winding transformers and electric motors... it works GREAT!!! I have also used no.22, no.20, no.18 and no.16 plastic-insulated wire, all of which work very well too. AS A MATTER OF FACT, the plastic-insulated wire is the best approach, as the insulation provides an excellent turns separation for the antenna. My latest BROOMSTICK is 4 feet high, mounted on a wooden base to which I attached a heavy metal plate to provide stability. The antenna has a very nice finish, as I painted it with white glossy enamel paint, and it is fed using RG58U coaxial cable.
The center conductor connects to the BROOMSTICK, and the coaxial cable shield or braid is connected to a GROUND COUNTERPOISE, which at this particular installation consists of a 10-meter-long PVC-insulated no.16 wire that is carefully installed right next to the wall of the room. The RG 58U coaxial cable is connected to the PI network tuner that you can also download from the WEB!!!
The antenna tunes from the 5 megaHertz or 60 meter tropical band all the way up to the 13 meters or 21 megaHertz international short wave broadcast band with excellent results, and I have used it a number of times to transmit on the 15 and 20 meter ham bands too!!! I hope this answers the most frequently asked question about the BROOMSTICK. Tto put it in short form, again, YES: you can use other wire diameters, BUT the wire MUST be insulated, because we don't want the turns to short circuit between them. Again PVC-insulated no.18 speaker wire is my favorite, but you can use other wire diameters without any problems.
As soon as you finish building your BROOMSTICK short wave antenna, drop me an e-mail or a postcard, and let me know about your results when compared with your receiver's telescopic whip antenna and any other short wave antennas that you may have installed at your QTH or at any other location!!! E-mail me to arnie@radiohc.org or send your postcards to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana Cuba.
Radios and computers, computers and radios... sometime they get along quite well, sometimes the computer kills radio reception due to the intense radio frequency signals radiated by the machine's electronics... Radios and computers can be made to get along quite well, and here is a good example: If your computer has a sound card, you can connect your receiver's audio output to the sound card and run a software program that will make the combination do a lot of interesting things. For example, connecting your receiver to the computer's sound card and running a japanese freeware program named MMTTY, you can pick up radio teletype signals anywhere in the frequency range of your radio, and if you are already an amateur radio station owner and operator, then you can contact other hams via teletype with this ultra-simple set up that requires just two interconnecting shielded cables with, the appropriate plugs and a few electronic components that can be wired and soldered together easily. As a matter of fact, many of the freeware programs available for soundcard operation include a file that shows how to make the soundcard-to-radio interface...and believe me it is easy!!! BUT, if you are not familiar with soldering, then ask a friend for help. The soundcard-to-radio interface, once, built will last forever, and it will work with many different software programs that can be downloaded from a lot of sites on the World Wide Web.
You are listening to Radio Havana Cuba, the name of the show is Dxers Unlimited, our twice-weekly radio hobby program... Now here is item four: FOUND, yet another source of high tech electronic components at practically no cost... YES, the phasing out of Band C satellite TV Receive-Only equipment is a fact of life in many countries... Although most of them are still in perfectly good condition, the newer, much smaller dishes are replacing the big ones, and you can find the whole system at very low cost or absolutely free. Now you may want to ask, "Arnie, and what can be done with a TV Receive-Only C band system?" ANSWER: You can turn it into a first class SOLAR RADIO TELESCOPE, or you can also use the set for searching the skies as a standard stellar radio telescope. So, amigos, if you happen to come across a Band C satellite dish, LNB and receiver, bring it home, and install it so that it may look at the SUN. Then you can join those who are now enjoying one of the more than 50 ways of having a nice time with this hobby.. by becoming a home-based solar radio astronomer!!!!
And now, as always at the end of the show, here is Arnie Coro's Dxers Unlimited HF plus 6 meters propagation update and forecast: Solar activity will oscillate between MODERATE and HIGH during the next 48 hours. The Earth's magnetic field may see a disturbance beginning real soon, as the charged particles ejected from the Sun during the several X class solar flares that occurred on Friday will be reaching the magnetosphere. We may see still more solar flares coming from solar active regions 9236, which is still growing in size, and region 9231, which is still magnetically complex.
Six meter band radio amateur operators should monitor the band as much as possible during Sunday and Monday. DX conditions will peak to Europe and North Africa in the morning, and later in the afternoon local time in North America and the Caribbean, DX from South America and the Pacific will very probably be worked. For HF operators, the most interesting band is going to be 10 meters during the local daylight hours, and the band may continue to be open even well after dark... Listen to the WWV minute 18 reports, and if you hear a K index higher than 3, then look for very unusual DX, as this indicates a disturbed geomagnetic field.
Don't forget to send me your e-mail or postcards with reports of what you have heard or worked after listening to this propagation forecast... Send e-mail reports and your comments about the show to arnie@radiohc.org and via Air Mail postcard to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba.
Arnie Coro CO2KK
Havana, Cuba
November 25, 2000Postal address:
Arnie Coro, "Dxers Unlimited"
Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, CUBA
e-mail: arnie@radiohc.org
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