RadioBanter - View Single Post - New User - New Receiver

December 16th 05, 05:21 AM posted to rec.radio.shortwave

In article .com,
wrote:

Progress!

Thanks go to Telamon for posting a timely message. I grabbed my
radio and went out into the park. Not hard to do, as I live
essentially in one. I walked between 50 and 100 yards into the
middle of the park, sat down on a bench and fired up the radio. I
tooled around the 49m band as Telamon suggested and I'm pleased to
report that the results were extremely encouraging. Not sure why I
wasn't having better results the other night when I was miles away
from nowhere...

I've recorded the success below, with a small "key" to indicate
exactly what I mean by my terms.

Telamon, you mention the static hiss which you say should go away
when I tune into a sw station. The hiss and static has never in any
of my tests, including this one, gone away. I'm not sure if this is
normal or not, but as some people actually listen to music via sw,
I'd have to say that either it should if the signal is strong enough
else those users have a strong tolerance of poor quality music
signals. When people talk about strong, clear signals and reception,
are they in fact indicating that there is no static?

Okay, here it goes. This was 6:16 to 6:46pm local time (EST), so not
"too" long after sunset.

**********************

TIME: 23:16 to 23:46 UTC

CLEAR = strong voices, no distortion or interference (always some
static) OKAY = decent, intelligible voices with significant static
BORDERLINE = heavy static, able to ocassionally hear clear voices but
majority is not clear enough to be understood. NOTHING = complete
unintelligible static

FREQ OUTSIDE INSIDE 5950 clear okay 5960 okay nothing
5975 okay borderline to nothing 5990 borderline borderline to
nothing 6000 clear okay to borderline 6030 okay to borderline
nothing 6055 okay borderline to nothing 6075 borderline nothing
6090 okay to borderline borderline to nothing 6165 clear borderline
to nothing

Outside I was using nothing but the whip antenna. Inside, I have a
reel antenna.

I have yet to look up the frequencies to see what I caught. There
were also several frequencies that the auto tuner decided to stop on,
though there was nothing to be heard. I did not record these here.

The good news is you made a step in the right direction and you are
picking some stations up.

The bad news is that you listened at a time and band that should have
provided the strongest signals you can encounter and the result was
kind of weak. Conditions have been good tonight so I expected that you
should have done better.

You have probably become aware by now that listening to SW takes a
little more effort and that it can be inconsistent as signals reflect
or refract off the ionosphere above and that is affected by the time of
day because of the sun lights ionizing effect, which then also varies
according to the season just like the amount of daylight hours varies.
In addition SW broadcasters only transmit to where you live at certain
times. You can listen to signals beamed to other areas of the world but
they are generally weaker.

Portable SW radios generally do well with only the strongest signals
and you need to help them to do better. I believe that the YB-400 comes
with an external plug-in antenna. If not you will need to get one.
Sitting in the park if you tune to a marginal signal then plugging in
the external wire should improve it. You will have to work with your
listening situation a little more to get better results.

Assessing your results so far I don't know what you were listening to
on 5950 as I don't see a strong signal to your area at that time. In
Passport. That does not mean that things have not changed but you need
to listen long enough to identify the station as local strong AM
broadcast stations can over load your radio and show up in the SW
bands.

The fact that 5960 has nothing means you found a locally electrically
quiet place to listen.

5975 should have had the BBC on it and it should have been good
reception.

6160 if you had waited a little longer 6160 should have had a good
signal from radio Netherlands.

One tip here is that your radio has a sensitivity switch on the side.
For SW you will probably want that switch to be in the "DX" position.
If that switch is in the local position that will cause the radio to be
insensitive and you will not hear much on it.

Well, you need to make another try at this.

1. Try for the "10 easy catches" again in passport.

2. Listen for a station that the guide indicates is strong or easy.

3. Pay attention that this signal you are listening for is beamed to
your area of the world.

4. The frequency of the signal.

5. The time of the signal.

6. Time to try is around sun set or later time paying attention to the
time and frequency of the guide. The band would be 49 or 31 meter.

7. Your location is in the park again.

8. Use the external plug-in antenna. String this antenna off the ground
by hanging the end off a tree or bush near a bench.

9. Make sure the switches on the sides of the radio are set to "DX" not
local and the switch next to it is "wide." On the other side of the
radio the SSB switch should be "OFF."

Once you have picked up a station well and listened long enough to it
so you can identify it as being the right station then you can
experiment a little. Lets say you listen to 6165 from 00:00 to 01:00
UTC. You should get radio Netherlands in english.

Lets say that you are getting a SW station clearly and it does not have
static noise in the background. Flipping the switch to local position
may make it disappear or make it noisy. Disconnecting the external
antenna may do the same thing. In any event once you tune in some
stations successfully you can try the radio controls in order to
understand their effect on reception. Once you are successful in the
park then you can try your apartment again with the external antenna
across a window. Chance are you will get more local noise than in the
park and it will be harder to hear a SW signal as well as in the park.

Basically if you can get a AM broadcast station well in your apartment
then the chance of getting a SW station well in your apartment improve.

Most stations ID around the hour and half hour times. They will usually
tell you what other frequencies they are on and the time. Hopefully you
will be able to ID them and again in your apartment you can then try
disconnecting the external antenna wire and see what a difference than
makes. You can also try flipping the switch on the side to local and
hear the difference than makes.

Generally you need to pay attention to the guide where it indicates
that the signal is beamed to your area at what frequency and time. This
guide is written for the world so you need to pay attention to the time
and frequency for where you live.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California