RADIO HABANA CUBA Hi, welcome to the mid week edition of Dxers Unlimited... just a few days away from the winter solstice... the shortest day of the year for us in the northern hemisphere....
DXERS UNLIMITED
WRITTEN BY ARNIE CORO
MIDWEEK EDITION
TUESDAY, 16 DECEMBER, 1997
SEND YOUR COMMENTS, QUESTIONS AND IDEAS DIRECTLY TO ME AT: arnie@radiohc.org
I am Arnie Coro, radio amateur CO2KK, your friend here in Havana and host of this twice weekly radio hobby show... Here is the menu for today...
Propagation update: very stable and yes... very nice conditions that was item one...
item two: 10 meter contest evaluation.... coming up
10 meter contest review
The 10 meter contest held this past weekend was a very interesting one indeed... according to the rules you can work both CW and voice... something which is not usual these days...
But, that's a good idea because that portion of the shortwave spectrum above 25 megahertz or so is really a frontier territory... It can , and certainly is considered by some a VHF like band most of the time... Well, here is what some of Dxers Unlimited's listeners and myself found....
no spectacular F2 worldwide openings.... something that I expected due to current state of the ionosphere
lots of sporadic E contacts... that I had forecasted twice, during the mid-week edition pre-contest forecast, and again during our last week end edition while the contest was in progress
ionospheric forward scatter contacts.... they happen every time someone operates on 10 meters with a nice setup !!!
ionospheric backscatter contacts, which ocurr under certain peculiar propagation conditions that did exist during the contest period...
Then I could add possible FAI, or field aligned irregularities DX, happening just after the sporadic E propagation moved away...
and, of course, extended ground wave, or to call it properly tropospheric super refraction ...
As you have just heard, or perhaps read if you are on the World Wide Web at Dxers Unlimited's page... the 10 meter contest was, for all practical purpose,s a very enjoyable one... So, be ready for next year's edition... it is going to be the best 10 meter band contest in many years amigos !!!
This is Radio Havana Cuba, the name of the show is Dxers Unlimited and I am your host, Arnie Coro, sharing with you about 15 minutes of all radio related information...
YES, GIVE: IT'S THE NICEST GIFT..... A SHORTWAVE RADIO !!!
one of the nicest presents ... and need not be a very expensive one is you guessed right... a shortwave radio !!!
even a very simple, no frills, receiver will allow the person receiving your gift to listen to at least the more powerful international shortwave broadcast stations... but , of course... a somewhat better receiver will provide much better reception ... something to be expected... Anyway.. if your budget is on the low side, here is Arnie Coro's advice... go ahead and shop around for a small portable... don't worry if it is an analog dial model....just give it a short test if possible, I am sure that you can have a good feeling of the dial mechanism in the analog models and the quality of the frequency sinthetizer and display in the digital radios.... its surprising to see how well even a rather modest analog miniature radio may work when properly designed...
SO.... GO AHEAD and GIVE SOMEONE A SHORTWAVE RADIO !!! and to go with it, when ever possible, some on the spot, hands on tutoring....
NOW... Arnie Coro's book and magazine review.... a long time no see section of Dxers Unlimited, that is brought to you today at the request of a first grade school teacher in Texas that reminded me of the importance of adquiring information in the old, traditional , but very effective way of READING A BOOK...
Thanks KIV, in Texas for your nice e-mail and your reminder .... So, here is Arnie Coro's book and magazine review... today Ill tell you about an excellent antenna book, which happens to be a collection of outstanding articles and short pieces which were published in the prestigious Radio Communications magazine during the period 1968 to 1989.... No, don't worry about the 1989 date... antenna theory and practice hasn't really changed a lot since then, and besides, most of us need a good refresher of the antenna basics from time to time... and the newcomers to the hobby will find the reading simply fascinating. The name of the book is HF Antenna Collection selected and edited by Erwin David, G4LQI.... of course G4LQI is Erwin's amateur radio callsign... Now about the book, it is published by the Radio Society of Great Britain, and its international ISBN is 1 872309 08 9... which are the number required by your librarian to find it in the ISBN catalogue. HF Antenna Collection is available from the Radio Society of Great Britain its publisher, and I will provide their complete address here too... Radio Society of Great Britain, Lambda House, Cranborne Road, Potters Bar, Herts ... England EN6 3JE... And right... you may find them on the World Wide Web too...
Well, now more about this excellent antenna book... first, it's very well written... understandable... second it goes a step at a time... dividing the chapters in such a way that you really learn as you read... there is an introduction by well known british author Pat Hawker, G3VA... followed by a must read section on antenna safety.... don't skip that one amigos !!!
Then HF Antenna Collection goes through 9 chapters and 6 appendixes of extremely valuable and really practical information.... Lots of graphics too !!!!
The pictorials are well done, and do help you a lot understand what the text is all about...Chapters go from single element horizontally polarized antennas to modelling and testing, without forgetting about the all important measuring instruments... The book is 233 pages full of what anyone wanting to learn about antennas will want to read... So, again, thanks to Kiv in Texas for given me the idea of reviving Arnie Coro's book and magazine review... and I do hope to bring you this feature more often...
You are listening or reading Dxers Unlimited... YES AMIGOS... the scripts of Dxers Unlimited are now available at our website... http://www.radiohc.org and then click Dxers Unlimited... There you will find not only the scripts, but also the latest updates on solar activity, easy to read technical information, and as yours truly catches up with technology... more graphics !!!
STORM IN HAVANA AND AM DXING !!!
now item four:
It was a storm... coming from the northwest at high speed with fierce winds and huge waves... and it struck Havana sunday morning and kept going until early afternoon monday.... we had our fair share of downed trees and powerlines, flooding from the huge waves going above Havana's famous seawall , the Malecon... and , yes, power went down in my neighborhood for almost 18 hours... During part of that time... I was enjoying, yes, enjoying, excellent reception of very weak AM medium wave broadcast band signals that I can never hear when the the AC power is on.... That's because those of us living in the city have to fight very high noise levels coming from leaky insulators, appliances, light dimmers, TV sets, computers... you name it ...
When the electricity went off, I grabbed my little portable radio and started tuning the normally rather noisy AM band to my great enjoyment.... Lot's of nice loggings from what may be considered very appropiately daytime AM DX... heard stations all the way to Jamaica, Haiti, a very faint Dominican Republic one, and of course, lots of cubans and american stations... Now, I am talking about pure AM daytime DX... one fascinating aspect of AM DXING which goes by the following rules... to call it AM DAYTIME DX... you must do your listening from 2 hours after the sun rises above the horizon to 2 hours before the sunsets.... again, here is the number one rule... for AM DAYTIME DXING... your loggings must be made ONLT from 2 hours after sunrise to 2 hours before sunset.... This is to avoid any possibility of SKYWAVE reception.... When you do you AM Daytime Dxing from 2 hours after local sunrise to 2 hours before local sunset... you can be pretty sure at NON POLAR LATITUDES , that your signals are coming via "ground" and not "sky" wave...
I thought it would be nice to pass along this bit of information as, this is yet another fascinating aspect of the radio hobby that you can enjoy even with that 7.95 two penlight cell powered little radio amigos !!!
TESTING NEWLY REBUILT 10 KW PEP SSB TX ON 9830 kHz
This is Dxers Unlimited mid week edition... and just a brief note to tell those who enjoy monitoring our 9830 kHz single side band transmissions that we are now testing a rebuilt 10 kW transmitter on that frequency.... 9830 kHz SSB, using upper sideband and -12 dB pilot carrier is on the air with Radio Havana Cuba's english language broadcast from 0100 UTC to 0700 UTC using a rhombic antenna beaming 37 degrees azimuth from Havana... Try it, sometimes, manytimes, when reception is difficult on other frequencies using the SSB mode and a tight, narrowband 3 or 2.8 kilohertz filter will provide much better reception .... So, if your radio is capable of tuning to SSB signals... try 9830 kHz with our newly rebuilt 10 kW transmitter, and send me a signal report to arnie at radiohc dot org via e-mail or to Arnie Coro Dxers Unlimited Radio Havana Cuba, Havana Cuba...
PROPAGATION UPDATE AND FORECAST.... LOOKS GOOD BUT NOT SENSATIONAL !!!
and now, just before going QRT here is Arnie Coro's exclusive and not copyrighted propagation update and forecast...
solar activity has remained low, but nevertheless at quite nice levels hovering around 90 solar flux units... the geomagnetic field has stayed at very quiet leves during the past 72 hours... and if nothing new happens, it seems like we are going to enjoy these about average shortwave propagation for the next three to five days...
daytime muf or maximum useable frequency in many paths remains at values below 20 megahertz, with the ocassional very good paths going up to 28 or even 30 meghertz for a short time.
Nightime reception of shortwave signals is going to be very good from 4 to 12 megahertz... with rather low atmospheric noise levels, not too high absorption and good DX possibilities , especially around your local sunrise and sunset... As the winter solstice approaches the nightime MUF will continue to drop very sharply after your local sunset... but this is going to turnaround after the end of the year... for radio amateurs, THE daytime band continues to be 15 meters, while nightime DX is going to be on 40 and 80 meters... and of course, for those equipped with 160 meter antennas , this is the real beginning of the 160 meter band DX season with the first 160 meter contest coming up ...
73 AND LOTS OF DX AMIGOS
SEE YOU AT THE WEEKEND EDITION OF DXERS UNLIMITED
AND DON'T FORGET TO SEND YOUR SIGNAL REPORTS, COMMENTS, IDEAS ETC TO:
Send e-mail to Arnie Coro
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