RADIO HABANA CUBA
DXERS UNLIMITED
WEEKEND EDITION
SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2002
By Arnie Coro CO2KKSend your comments, questions and ideas to: arnie@radiohc.org
Hi, amigos radioaficionados worldwide! Welcome to the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited when HF, short wave propagation conditions are providing us with extremely interesting DX on higher bands!!! The Planetary A index, geomagnetic disturbance indicator reaches the very high figure of 90 units, and sure enough a lot of AURORA BOREALIS and AURORA AUSTRALIS, as well as 6 meter band F2 openings at extraordinary distances...
Here is a good example, while testing a balcony two band wire dipole for 6 and 2 meters, with the antenna just 1 meter or 3 feet above the floor, I heard with a 339 report signals from Australia on 6 meters!!! VK2ZF was calling CQ on CW near 50.106 megaHertz,, and that was just around 5 pm my local time here in Havana, 2100 hours UTC... Ten meters also wide open for very interesting DX, too....
Item two: Radio amateur beacons provide a very useful service because they are kept on the air 24 hours a day... so you may find out that a certain band is open for DX even if there is no one operating from that area at that moment. Hear a special report AMATEUR RADIO BEACONS later in today's edition of Dxers Unlimited, your favorite radio hobby program, amigos!!!
Item three: More about simple wire antennas for you short wave radio or amateur radio station.
Item four: another short visit to Arnie's workshop... how ferrite rods and toroids help reduce interference...
And as always, at the end of the show, you will hear Arnie Coro's Dxers Unlimited's HF plus 6 meters propagation update and forecast....
Stay tuned, solar flux near 180 units, and again there may still be a geomagnetic disturbance in progress by the time you listen to this program, although I expect that the effects of the disturbance should be fading away after 0100 UTC Sunday, when our North America English Service goes on the air using 6000 kiloHertz, 9820 kiloHertz and 11705 kiloHertz....
Margarita Delgado is my sound engineer and producer here at RHC studio 7, I am your friend in Havana, Arnie Coro, radio amateur CO2KK... stand by for more radio hobby related information coming to you in a few seconds, after a brief musical interval...
You are listening to the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited, and here is item two: A few days ago I received a question from a British listener of the show; he wanted to know what was the purpose of several signals he was able to monitor on the 10 meter amateur band between 28.100 and 28.300 that kept transmitting the same CW Morse characters over and over again.... Like this -- you will hear now: [TAPE: Beacon de la estacion de Mexico].
That was a 10 meter band beacon, operating from Mexico.... there are hundreds of amateur radio 10 meter and 6 meter band propagation beacons operating around the world, providing a very valuable service to both radio amateurs and scientists... I taped a special Dxers Unlimited report about AUTOMATIC PROPAGATION BEACONS, at CO2KK my amateur radio station... Let's hear it NOW! [TAPE: Special report]. Amigos, you have just heard a Dxers Unlimited's special report, AUTOMATIC PROPAGATION BEACONS... I hope you enjoyed the recordings of the two beacons used for this particular example.... Again there are hundreds of beacons on both 10 and 6 meters that will help you learn when those bands are open for DX!!!
Coming to you from Havana, this is the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited, your favorite listener oriented radio hobby program, with the most up-to-date information about HF plus 6 meters propagation... And sure enough, the effects of the solar wind blast could be felt on the 6 meter band, as I was typing the script of the show at 16 hours UTC, local noon here in Havana. CE3RR, Raul, from Santiago de Chile was working stations on 6 meters from Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Galapagos Islands and other nice DX, but I could not contact Raul, because I was using the balcony wire antenna and very low power... and of course he was called by everyone active on 6 meters too, making it much more difficult...
Now here is item three... Simple wire antennas for both SWLing and Ham radio, when properly installed, can provide excellent performance... BUT, here is Arnie Coro's advice, if you are a city dweller, by all means avoid vertical antennas, as they will pick up much more noise than the horizontal wires.... So, avoid installing your wire antennas as verticals, because your signal-to-noise ratio will suffer a lot due to the fact that human-made noise is essentially vertically polarized...
Now item four: Ferrite rods and ferrite toroids are all around CO2KK my amateur radio station... I use them on each and every power line cord, placed as close as possible to the hole where the power cord enters the equipment.... And amigos, those ferrite bars and toroids do help a lot to reduce interference, both ways. Transmitting equipment's spurious radiation from the power cords will be reduced dramatically and noise coming into receiving equipment and test instruments will also be attenuated by the presence of the ferrite rods or toroids to which the power cord is wound to form an effective radio frequency choke... Toroids are better for this application, and you can salvage high-quality ones from dead computer monitors... you will find the toroid or split ferrite core usually attached to the video cable.... Ferrite rods work well too, but, again, the toroids have an edge over the rods.
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: The geomagnetic disturbance that kept the HF bands almost dead on Friday, and made 6 meters come alive with DX both Friday and Saturday, will be over by the time you are hearing this program. BUT, the ionosphere will continue to be unstable and show the effects of solar radiation that will keep the daytime maximum useable frequencies pretty high, well above the 25 megaHert region of the short wave spectrum. 6 meter band operators should continue to monitor the magic band for more possible TRANS EQUATORIAL DX.
Solar flux was about 180 units Friday, and I expect it to move up Saturday and Sunday. We may see yet another solar rotation with solar flux figures above 200, and the present 155 solar sub-cycle seems to be a very interesting one, indeed..
See you on 10 meters around 28.5 megaHertz, on 6 meters on 50.110 and also I will try to be around on 15 meters, 21.295 is my favorite spot, looking for DXers Unlimited's listeners around the world that are already enjoying amateur radio too!!!
Prepared 20-Apr-2002; received by NY Transfer News 23-Apr-2002, 12:07 EDT
Arnie Coro CO2KK
Havana, Cuba
April 20, 2002Postal address:
Arnie Coro, "Dxers Unlimited"
Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, CUBA
e-mail: arnie@radiohc.org
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