RADIO HABANA CUBA
DXERS UNLIMITED
WEEKEND EDITION
SATURDAY, APRIL 21, 2001
By Arnie Coro CO2KKSend your comments, questions and ideas to: arnie@radiohc.org
Hi amigos! Welcome to the Weekend edition of your favorite radio hobby program on the air and on the web! I am Arnie Coro, radio amateur CO2KK, your friend here in Havana, and host of this twice-weekly radio show which is entirely, absolutely, devoted to our wonderful hobby, the one and only way to have a nice time...
Yes, there are more than 50 different ways you can enjoy radio, from homebrewing a simple crystal radio receiver, to working a very rare DX spot using QRP or very low power... You can also listen to natural radio signals on the extra low frequencies, watch TV DX signals, talk to your friends on the local 2 meter ham band repeater, and of course, listen to shortwave, which by the way, was THE WAY many of us started to learn about the radio hobby indeed...
Now here is the menu for today: The Sun is back, after passing through the 27-day cycle's minimum precisely this past week... We may see some more solar fireworks during the next several days coming from solar active region 9393 which now, during this solar rotation, will be known as region 9433. So, if you hear about solar flares coming from region 9433, that's nothing but a new name for the biggest solar sunspot group of the present cycle, the one that triggered the huge X22 solar flare that broke all known records... Now ex-region 9393, which with its new name of region 9433 is no small one... latest measurements show it is about five times the size of our planet Earth, amigos.... More about the upswing in solar activity and what to expect during the next two weeks later....
Item two: The future of amateur radio is..... and you can go on filling out the questionnaire... but you can be sure that I will fill out mine with these few words: "...in the hands of the younger generation!" So my answer will read: "The future of amateur radio is in the hands of the younger generation, and that is why so important to bring more young kids into this fascinating hobby! A good example is what the Boulder, Colorado Amateur Radio Club is doing... stay here and listen to Kristin Winston, a twelve-year-old girl with the callsign KC0INX who is now studying for her General Class license....
Item three: still more Regenerodyne receivers technical information...seems like many Dxers Unlimited's listeners around the world are building them and, as I expected, are extremely pleased with the results....
ALL THIS, and maybe more, in the weekend edition of DXERS UNLIMITED, your favorite radio hobby show on the air and on the web.... Send your QSL requests and signal reports to arnie@radiohc.org and now stay tuned. Margarita Delgado is my sound engineer and producer.... I am Arnie Coro in Havana... solar flux is almost 180 units and the ten meter band was wide open to Europe at noon local time when I was writing the script of this show, amigos!!!
You are reading the Weekend Dxers Unlimited here at Radio Havana Cuba, and we do QSL one hundred percent... you can send your signal reports and comments about the show VIA AIR MAIL to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana Cuba....
Now here is item two: KC0INX is twelve years old; she is the daughter of Mike KCOEFR from Boulder, Colorado. Kristin is a member of a very special radio club, organized with kids in mind, the Boulder Amateur Radio Club Jr.... I learned about this unique ham radio club Saturday, while having a two-way amateur radio contact with Mike KC0EFR. He told me he was leaving to pick up some kids to take them to the Arrow Antennas plant in Cheyenne, Wyoming, that visit forming part of their radio club's activities. Then Mike told me about his daughter, Kristin, and how she was going to club meetings every Saturday to prepare herself for the upgrading of her amateur radio license... I then asked Mike to let Kristin tell me about herself.... and here is how it sounded... [audio]
Well, amigos, I hope that you enjoyed listening to this nice 10 meter band QSO, which has given us the opportunity of learning about how a group of young kids is studying either to become amateur radio operators or to upgrade the ham licenses that they already hold... And I don't want to bring this part of Dxers Unlimited to an end without sending congratulations to Mike KC0EFR and other members of the Boulder Amateur Radio Club who are doing such a wonderful job bringing young people into our hobby.
This is the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited, and YES AMIGOS, the ionosphere is again charging up... ultraviolet and x rays coming from the Sun are breaking up those atoms up there, and generating the free electrons we need to increase the maximum useable frequencies. The more free electrons per cubic millimeter measured, the higher the MUF is going to be....
And now here is item three... still more about homebrewing regenerodyne radio receivers.... Well, I must say that I am overwhelmed with e-mail and air mail correspondence related to the regenerodyne receivers.... and here are excerpts from some of that mail...
Arnie, I had built regenerative radios in the past, both vacuum tube and solid state, but you know, although they worked, and some worked rather well, they are nothing compared with even my first very crude regenerodyne... keep up the good work, and why don't you try to write a little book about the regenerodyne receivers.... signed, DXers Unlimited's fan from Ontario.
Well amigo, I agree with you that even the simplest and quite straightforward regenerodyne receiver out-performs the best of regeneratives many times over.... My latest experimental regenerodyne has one very interesting feature: I can either plug in a coil that will let me listen to a full 2 megaHertz segment of HF, or plug in another one that is a bandspread coil, fashioned after the famous National Company HRO bandspread coils, that lets me tune just the first 100 kiloHertz of any given segment. See, for general short wave listening one uses the full coverage coil, and for tuning to the CW portion of the amateur bands, then one uses the bandspread coil. By the way, this particular regenerodyne receiver is using some nice computer quartz crystal oscillators to generate the local oscillator frequencies.... so this is the first hybrid regenerodyne, using both vacuum tubes and solid state devices. I am using a 4.000 megaHertz oscillator now, but plan to include a simple switching arrangement to use several similar oscillator modules, extending the range of the frequencies that the regenerodyne can pick up.
For those of you still not familiar with the regenerodyne receivers, they are nothing more than a conventional front end, that is an RF amplifier, mixer and local oscillator, feeding not standard Intermediate Frequency amplifiers strips and detectors, but feeding a very carefully built regenerative detector stage that tunes anywhere from a 100 kiloHertz segment to a maximum of about 2 megaHertz... SO, as you may realize, the regenerodynes are a very special kind of radio, combining the best of the superheterodynes with that very wonderful detector stage known as the regenerative detector!!!
OK amigos, no more time left... don't forget to send your comments, QSL requests, radio hobby related questions and new ideas via e-mail to arnie@radiohc.org or via Air Mail to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba, and here is now Arnie Coro's HF plus 6 meters propagation update and forecast...
SOLAR ACTIVITY MOVING UP... SOLAR WATCH PATROL concentrating at region 9433, formerly biggie 9393, as there are many chances that it will start flare activity soon... The daily maximum useable frequencies on the standard F2 3000 kilometer single hop path showed a signficant increase since Friday, registering chirp sounder returns as high as 45 megaHertz, a sure-fire indication of possible 6 meters DX conditions during the rest of the weekend, and possibly for the whole week....
See you on 10 meters; 28.500 is my parking spot, and if 6 is open, I move down the band to around 50.105.... I am expecting your e-mail at arnie@radiohc.org, amigos! Don't forget to send me your comments and new ideas about Dxers Unlimited!
Arnie Coro CO2KK
Havana, Cuba
April 21, 2001Postal address:
Arnie Coro, "Dxers Unlimited"
Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, CUBA
e-mail: arnie@radiohc.org
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