Radio Habana Cuba: Dxers Unlimited Weekend edition for February 10, 2001
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, your friend here in Havana... get ready for about sixteen minutes of all radio hobby related information, which today will include a very interesting interview with a Canadian radio amateur...
Now here our headlines: Very stable HF propagation conditions are forecasted for the next five to six weeks... and that's good news for both short wave listeners and amateur radio operators!!!
Headline number two: At last some information made public about the Oscar 40 satellite, and I can tell you it is not encouraging at all... maybe that's why it took so long to surface in the specialized amateur radio media...
Headline three: More about compact fluorescent and standard fluorescent lamps as noise sources, and how solid state technology developments seem to be coming to the rescue with a new generation of light emitting diodes!!!
And as always, at the end of the show, you should be ready to tape or take notes, as we will broadcast, as usual, our HF plus 6 meters propagation update and forecast... Stay tuned right on this same Radio Havana Cuba frequency... Margarita Delgado is my sound engineer and producer, here at RHC's studio 7... Back with you in a few seconds...
You are listening to Radio Havana Cuba, the name of the show is Dxers Unlimited... it's our twice-weekly program devoted to the promotion and development of the radio hobby in its more than 50 different ways that you and I can enjoy it!!!
[Interview with a visiting Canadian radio amateur, Ted Wood, VE9TJW, from New Brunswick, Canada; not in transcript.]
Well amigos, you have just heard Ted Wood VE9TJW a Canadian radio amateur from St. Johns, New Brunswick who has visited Cuba a number of times....
Now here is Item two, OSCAR 40 satellite news: Information many of us were asking for finally was made available by AMSAT-DL and AMSAT-NA. As was evident from the chain of events, the satellite is in a very difficult situation, and it will take quite some time to be able to really understand what happened and to gain control of it, IF that's ever possible. The SUN SENSORS are not seeing the SUN, and the SPIN RATE is way above what it should be, PLUS the fact that the orbit is way out of what it should be, have all complicated things quite a bit for the OSCAR 40 control stations. For more details, here's the latest AMSAT news on OSCAR 40.
Item three: Fluorescent energy saving lampbulbs and standard fluorescent lamps generate radio frequency noise that may disrupt radio reception... that's why recent news about advances in solid state technology was so welcome by radio hobbyists worldwide... Dxers Unlimited's long time listener and good friend Bruce Atchinson, VE6XTC, wrote an article about the new hi tech LIGHT EMITTING DIODES... which will be featured in our upcoming mid-week edition. According to Bruce, the new high output in the visible light spectrum LED's are still very expensive, but their use can be justified in certain applications, as they are really very energy-efficient and DO NOT GENERATE RADIO NOISE AT ALL... Listen to Dxers Unlimited's mid-week edition next Tuesday and Wednesday UTC days to learn more about the new energy-efficient light emitting diode replacements for both standard incandescent bulbs and the newer --and very noisy-- energy-saver lamps.
Incandescent bulbs are not efficient, because they are able to convert just a small amount of the energy they use into visible light, but they do not generate radio frequency noise, while energy saver fluorescent lamps are efficient from an energy use point of view but are a terrible source of radio noise... So, the new energy-efficient light emitting diodes that generate more light in the visible range are going to become very popular among radio enthusiasts worldwide pretty soon...
And now amigos, as always at the end of the show, here is Arnie Coro's Dxers Unlimited's HF plus 6 meters propagation update and forecast.. HF propagation conditions are going to remain pretty good for the rest of the week, with a slow descent of solar activity expected, but do remember that the SUN is capable of producing solar bursts of activity at anytime. Expect solar flux to bottom to around 140 units at the end of this sub cycle, and according to shortterm forecasts, the next solar rotation's maximum is not expected to go above 170 units. The average 90 day solar flux is still rather high, so daily openings on the 20 to 30 megaHertz range should take place during the local daylight hours. Short wave listeners should be able to enjoy very nice reception on the 31 and 25 meter bands during the local nighttime hours... 6 meter amateur band operators should monitor the band for possible Trans Equatorial Propagation, due to start now at any moment, as we approach the equinoctial DX season.
See you all next Tuesday and Wednesday UTC at the mid-week edition of Dxers Unlimited, and if you are already enjoying the use of your own amateur radio station, let's have a nice two-way QSO on 10 meters... I'll be monitoring 28.500 kiloHertz and calling CQ whenever I have a little spare time!!!
Arnie Coro CO2KK
Havana, Cuba
February 10, 2001Postal address:
Arnie Coro, "Dxers Unlimited"
Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, CUBA
e-mail: arnie@radiohc.org
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