RadioBanter - View Single Post - Geo- magnetic storm in progress

[email protected] · August 3rd 12, 07:39 PM posted to rec.radio.shortwave

On Fri, 03 Aug 2012 11:23:28 -0400, Drifter wrote:

On 8/3/2012 8:28 AM, wrote:
On Fri, 3 Aug 2012 09:56:51 +0900, "Brenda Ann"
wrote:

"Michael Black" wrote in message
ample.net...

Do you remember the giant sunspots during the 1960's you could see
with the naked eye? Solar flux over 200. I used to pick up WWV on 25
MHz on my cheap walkie-talkies. New Zealand used to blast in around
midnight local time just below 18 MHz. Good times.

I'm surprised you could hear 25MHz WWV on a cheap walkie talkie. Surely
band conditions opened up that you'd get all the CBers first, so they'd
wipe out WWV. The superregenerative receivers were wide band, but the
CBers were a lot more plentiful.

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In the 60's, there were relatively few CB'ers, and the ones that were around
were legal 3 watt output. The big CB boom didn't happen until around 1971 or
72. WWV would have been what? About 50KW? At any rate, a lot more powerful
than a 3W CB.

These were cheap crystal controlled transmit walkie talkies. The
receive as mentioned was wideband and in the late afternoon during
peak solar conditions (late 60's) WWV would fade in and out. I don't
know what path the signal took,or even what frequency I was hearing -
I assume it was 25 MHz - but I could hear it pretty well from
northeast Detroit, MI.

Jim (MI)

Jim.

As I remember, and don't take my memory to the bank, 11M came about
1958. I built a 5 crystal/channel Heath around 1960, I believe. Ch 9
was the call channel, this was before REACT came about. The only radios
out there were a Halli, Courier, and Heath. Near as i recall,
Allied came out with a rig around 1962. I remember taxi and some truck
company's on ch23. It was a real mess. Hams were ****ed, but most I knew
were in there with the rest of the noise. Lots of medical inside ch22A
and B. Which became ch24 and 25 when they opened up to 40. As I said,
9 was call, 10 to 15 was to anyone, other channels were inter-ticket
only. It was fun, but when it got busy, I walked away. Did make some
nice local friends on it. Lafayette, and then Allied/Radio Shack
really got it moving with reasonable priced radios. I still remember
my Allied with tunable receive and a spot for TX/RX. I was a 20Q
call. And that's about all I remember from back then. Or, I could
be wrong on some of this info.

Drifter...

I am talking about a cheap 100mw output crystal controlled (ch 14
transmit only), hand held walkie talkie. Japanese made (I seem to
remember the Alaron brand name). I don't know what it used for receive
but you could listen to a large part of the 11 meter band. There was
no tuning adjust. And once and a while, if you were lucky enough to
catch someone on channel 14, you could make a contact.

Of course I used to hook up 500 feet or so of transformer wire to the
whip antenna to try and improve reception. It did, overloading the
cheap receiver, but I heard all kinds of stations including WWV.

Now you know the rest of the story......

Jim (MI)