RADIO HABANA CUBA
DXERS UNLIMITED
WEEKEND EDITION
SATURDAY, 14 MARCH, 1998
By Arnie CoroSend your comments, questions and ideas directly to me at: arnie@radiohc.org
HI AMIGOS... MY FRIENDS, MES AMIS... WORLDWIDE... This is the weekend edition of your favorite listener oriented radio hobby show on shortwave. I am Arnie Coro radio amateur CO2KK, your friend here in Havana and host of this twice weekly program entirely devoted to the promotion and development of this wonderful hobby we, both you and I, enjoy so much... RADIO...
Item one... SORRY... but you will have to hear something not very nice here today, as I have no other choice but to reply to some very improper and unethical comments made by the host of one of the radio hobby shows on shortwave,about our station.
I will first read the message that I received from a German friend, who kindly copied the so called Glenn Hauser's SW/DX report 98-10 for march 12 1998... of course that just by hearing the tone of the comments and the sarcastic language employed by this Mister Hauser you can draw your own conclusions, but, I will nevertheless add mine, so that this sick personality will perhaps realize that he is NOT the owner of the whole truth about anything!
The exact text of Glenn Hauser's comments about a technical problem on one of our transmitters will be posted together with this script at our website, so that you can download it, read it carefully, and see by yourself why this person deserves the kind of treatment he usually gets from many fellow hobbysts, who reject his SUPER-EGOTISTIC, "ONLY I KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING" ATTITUDE... and, to make it clear, the e-mail message he mentions sending to me never arrived here in Havana, at any of the e-mail systems to which I myself and the station Radio Havana Cuba are connected, all of which are all of them, in perfect working conditions for the past 7 days!
OK, now item two... PROPAGATION:We had a geomagnetic storm during the week, the A index at higher latitudes went up, and even the planetary or AP index reached almost 30 units. As a direct result of the event, the Maximum Useable Frequencies over the poles went down by no less than 20 percent, something to be expected... and some VHF 'rs probably enjoyed nice AURORA BOREALIS propagation too.
More radio hobby related technical information coming up... Stay tuned right on this same frequency... I'll be back in a few seconds !!!
Your attention please, I am now going to read the exact text of what Mr. Glenn Hauser of Enid, Oklahoma, USA wrote in his so-called Glenn Hauser's SW/DX report 98 dash 10 dated march twelve, 1998...
quote: "CUBA, I've have complained before about noise bursts marring reception of RKI 9650 at 1137 via Canada. I am now 99% certain these are generated by the LOUSY" -- yes you heard it right, LOUSY is the word used by this Mr. Hauser -- "Radio Havana Cuba transmitter on 9550 kilohertz on march 6 at 1140 checks the bursts were again extremely regular, now 12 seconds on,13 seconds off, appearing at just about any empty spot plus or minus 100 khz or more from 9550 kilohertz...." Unquote.
Mister Hauser then continues in his text to describe the technnical problem on the 9550 kilohertz transmitter and adds on about another problem on a transmitter used by RHC on the 6000 kilohertz frequency.
Then I will again quote from his SW/DX report, Mister Hauser adds the following... quote: "I had e-mailed an early version of this item to Arnie Coro a few days ago, but as usual there was no reply and I am not drawing any conclusions." Unquote.
NOW PAY ATTENTION AND LISTEN TO THIS... quote: "I'd fall off my chair if this were ever a topic on Dxers Unlimited. RHC is a technical marvel and any problems can be blamed on the embargo..." Unquote. and it is signed Glenn Hauser.
OK. I repeat that this e-mail was received from Germany, via DF5SX, as Mister Hauser's so-called hotmail.com system seems to have lots of technical problems itself.
NOW, here is my point of view... AS YOU SEE VERY CLEARLY, Mister Glenn Hauser gives himself the position of chief engineer for the world, something to be expected from his extraordinary degree of selfshisness and autocratic style... ANY transmitter, any shortwave transmitter, whichever manufacturer's, how new or how old may have at anytime a technical problem...
NOW that Mister Hauser talks about our old equipment, which is certainly old and kept running by really creative and hard working people, I would like to remind him about the BRAND NEW CONTINENTAL ELECTRONICS 500-kilowatt transmitters of a station in his own country, the USA, that after several YEARS of active service keep a tremendous amount of TRASH on the air without anyone taking the least care to fix them...
YES, Mister Hauser was right, we had a problem with the frequency generator used at our old Brown Boveri of 1961 vintage... AND YES, yesterday, as soon as I read the e-mail sent via Compuserve, a system for which you pay a fee, I personally talked to our chief engineer and we together spent the whole morning Friday looking for the problem, which we finally found and fixed, by removing the decadic frequency generator and connecting a spare unit...
The sarcastic language used by this egotistic, selfish person, describing Radio Havana Cuba as quote "RHC is a technical marvel, and any problems can be blamed on the embargo," unqoute, is certainly well out of focus and well away from the spirit of technical cooperation that usually prevails in the worldwide international shortwave broadcast engineering fraternity, of which he is obviously not a member.
In the past I have personally advised other international broadcasters about technical problems with their transmitters... this is part of everyday life at a shortwave station. You may get even an official monitoring station report complaining about NON-ESSENTIAL RADIATIONS, the term used to describe signals that should not be there, but all this is done in a very professional way, using the appropiate communications channels, like a phone call to the chief engineer, or a fax to the station manager, something I have done concerning the station in his country using the problematic CONTINENTAL 500 kilowatt transmitters.
The way that Mister Hauser has dealt with the technical problem on RHC's 9550 kHz spanish language broadcast frequency is certainly way off course from accepted procedures... and tells me a lot of why he is completely isolated from mainstream radio broadcasting...
NOW a short musical transition to put some fresh air back into the show !!!
QSL on the air, QSL on the air here at Radio Havana Cuba's Dxers Unlimited!
QSL on the air to my good friend Ernie Marquez in Port Saint Lucie, Florida the happy owner of a brand new broomstick antenna, Ernie made following the information provided at our website... www.radiohc.org... Ernie tells me in a recent e-mail message that now he does not have to use his 80 meter transmitting antenna for his shortwave receiver, as he keeps the broomstick permanently connected to his radio, and the 80 meter dipole to his ham transceiver...
QSL on the air from Havana to Minnessota... Hi Jerry W0WVO, it was nice meeting you on 15 meters saturday morning on 21295 kilohertz, just as the 15 meter band was opening up to your part of the world..
QSL on the air to W9BOK Bill in Wisconsin, a long time listener of Dxers Unlimited that also told me about enjoying my technical articles published in radio hobby magazines. Nice to talk to you on 15 meters Bill, just after changing the series pass transistor on my rig's power supply that went to a dead short during a high voltage line condition two days ago....
QSL on the air to all the nice Dxers Unlimited's listenership around the world, who so kindly send comments about the show, new ideas and good questions for the technical topics section of the show...it certainly helps to keep those coming amigos!!!
Now, let's move to the technical topics section of Dxers Unlimited, dealing today with power supplies...
A few days ago I had a breakdown, this was a big one... my twenty amp 13.8 volts power supply went dead... and the worst part of it was that it started to deliver 24 volts unregulated trough the 13.8 volt output... something that could have proven to be disastrous to the amateur equipment it was connected to. BUT... no damage to the radios.... NO SIR... no problems despite the catastrophic failure of the BIG pass transistor in the voltage regulator...
WANT TO KNOW WHY? Well...easy... ONE OF MY ADD-ONS.... YES, the two radios had both a very simple MODIFICATION to avoid damage in case the input voltage went higher than 16 volts. THE ADD-ON MODIFICATION is nothing more than a BIG, and I mean it, a 10 WATT ZENER DIODE... more exactly, a 15 or 16 volt ZENER DIODE, connected in such a way that any voltage reaching the radio that exceeds the 15 or 16 volts is immediately kept at that value. The additional ZENER DIODE proves to be a LIFESAVER, as it will clamp the input voltage at that value until you disconnect the power supply. The ZENER DIODE PROTECTION CIRCUIT may be fitted inside some radios, while others will require some sort of external mounting device. I strongly recommend adding this very simple protection to any device that you are powering from a regulated power supply that feeds its pass transistor with a much higher voltage than the one your equipment is able to accept. In other words amigos, it's a good idea to add this ZENER DIODE to any RADIO that you use with an external power supply, including those used as mobile rigs, as car alternators can sometimes be real KILLERS to electronic equipment if they go out of voltage regulation.
The 15 volt to 16 volt value is good for 12 volt equipment, but even at 18 volts will work, as the radios will usually be able to take a temporary overload, long enough to give you a chance to disconnect in case your supply's over voltage protection does not operate, which, by the way, was the case with my 13.8 transceiver's supply last wednesday.... More about power supplies protection circuits in an upcoming edition of Dxers Unlimited.
NOW, just before going QRT, here is Arnie Coro's exclusive and not copyrighted propagation update and forecast:
Solar flux hovering past the 100 mark once again.. and it should stay at or above 105 units for the next two to three days. Effective sunspot number is down to around 35, but should go up too. Propagation conditions on the 14 megahertz amateur band are becoming better now, with round the world signals coming in from about 2 hours before local sunset... The 21 megahertz band is also going to provide nice DX signals durind the local daylight hours, with some EAST WEST DX available rather early in the morning again, your local time, with very good chances or round the world DX happening near your local sunset too, That's on 15 meters. The spring equinox is getting nearer and possible 50 mHz openings may occur too, especially in the trans equatorial circuits.
NOW for easy listening: Daytime... 16 and 19 meter bands are the choice... from 17.4 to 18 megahertz, and from 15.1 to 15.6 megahertz, for nightime reception the 31 meter band is going to be the best choice, from 9.4 to almost 10 megahertz, while the 7 and 6 megahertz bands will be very good too, for radio amateurs the 40 meter band, 7 megahertz will be the best choice for late night DX, with the 80 meter or 3.5 to 4.0 megahertz a close second.
See you at the upcoming midweek edition of Dxers Unlimited, and please do remember to send any comments, questions and signal reports to arnie@radiohc.org, and via air mail to Arnie Coro, Dxers Unlimited, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana Cuba.
Arnie Coro CO2KK
Havana, Cuba
14 March, 1998Postal address:
Arnie Coro, "Dxers Unlimited"
Radio Havana Cuba
PO Box 6240, Havana, CUBA 10600
phone: 53-7-814243
phone res: 53-7-301794
e-mail: arnie@radiohc.org
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