Radio Havana Cuba Dxers Unlimited's mid week edition for 9-10 January 2007
by Arnie Coro CO2KK Hi amigos radioaficionados worldwide ! From Havana this is the mid week edition of your favorite radio hobby program, Dxers Unlimited, with Arnie Coro ... Stay with me for the next seventeen minutes listening to radio related topics that I am sure you will enjoy... Here is the first one: How Internet is actually helping to promote amateur radio, and also providing ham radio operators with a lot of information about many different aspects of the hobby, from specialized mailing lists aiming at earth moon earth communications to up to date propagation information that certainly helps to optimize your search for DX stations, without forgetting to mention those web sites that provide instant data on the DX stations that are actually on the air at any moment. With the new concept by telecommunications administrations that the Morse Code tests are no longer necessary to issue an amateur radio license, we are certainly going to see a lot of newcomers to the hobby, especially among those persons to whom the Morse Code learning curve proved to be a very difficult challenge... But CW Morse Code communications won't disappear from the amateur bands, as many operators will continue to use it for weak signal work, and I am sure that many of the newcomers will "discover" CW by themselves and start enjoying its fascination... Because, without any doubts , CW radiotelegraphy transmissions are capable of providing two way communications with the bare minimum equipment requirements ... Item two: Got plenty of feedback from Dxers Unlimited listeners regarding the QSLs topic, and they all agree in one way or the other that short wave stations should be encouraged to QSL to their listeners... As regards to Tropical Band, AM broadcast band and FM stations, QSLing is left very much to the existence of members of their staff that are willing to devote time to answering the QSL requests... Item three: Using a very simple vertical antenna that looks very much like a fishing rod... a Canadian radio amateur tells me that he has worked DXCC,that is two way contacts with 100 hundred DX entities, so when he receives the last QSL card from the 100th country worked, he will be able to apply for the DXCC award... The antenna is put up in less than two minutes by fitting it into a jig that he has installed on the balcony rail of his eleventh floor apartment... And as explained in a recent Dxers Unlimited's edition, the ground system or counterpoise is a permanent installation. He has only to connect the ground to the base of the antenna with a butterfly nut, and start operating less than two minutes after taking the antenna from the closet where he keeps it to the balcony. He has made three loading coils for it, one to operate on 40 meters, the other for 30 meters and the other one for 20 meters. On 15 meters the antenna can be tuned with the antenna tuner without the need of a loading coil, because it uses a capacity top had loading device that artificially extends the length of the three sections aluminum tubing antenna. More about the Toronto Special Balcony antenna when Dxers Unlimited's mid week edition continues after a short break I am Arnie Coro in Havana.. ........ This is Radio Havana Cuba, the name of the show is Dxers Unlimited , and yes we do QSL, so you can send your requests for the verification of reception reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], or VIA AIR MAIL to Arnie Coro Radio Havana Cuba,Havana, Cuba. Now, as promised early in the program here is more information on the Toronto Special Balcony Antenna... According to its designer and builder, the idea to make it came right from Havana, when he heard yours truly talking about balcony antennas and how they could make possible operating an amateur radio station on the HF bands with very small sized antennas. Our Toronto friend who wants to remain anonymous, said in his first e-mail that he had operated on two meters and seventy centimeters from his eleventh floor apartment since moving to that building. He said that the antennas he had tested for 2 meters and 70 centimeters included ground planes, J poles several YAGI and QUAGI designs and the only problem he had found was that signals from and to the other side of the building were heavily attenuated, so his coverage of the area behind his building was reduced significantly. Nevertheless our Canadian friend says that he enjoys now also working on 6 meters , having made recently his first Auroral Curtain propagation two way contact... But, he wanted to be on the HF bands, and with absolutely no possibilities of installing a rooftop antenna due to the building regulations, after hearing my explanation of how short vertical or inclined antennas protruding from a balcony could prove to be efficient enough for HF work, he began to think about the project. He has a very nice antenna tuner, with a built in Standing Wave Ratio bridge meter, and capable of covering a very wide range of impedances... For this particular balcony antenna, the base impedances involved are rather low, that is they are much less than 50 ohms, and that requires a very well designed tuner. The Toronto Special Balcony antenna is built in three sections that telescope into each other, with the one closer to the base providing a very good mechanical strength, so that even under heavy winds the antenna will not break up and fall into the ground, something that must be avoided by all means as it is a potentially dangerous problem. So, the first section is made using 50 centimeters of 50 millimeters or two inch diamter heavy wall aluminum tubing, followed by a second section of 25 millimeters or one inch tubing that is two meters long, and the final section is a stainless steel whip antenna cut to a length of about one meter, making the overall length of the antenna from the insulated Teflon base of three and a half meters, and that's why it loads up so well directly on the fifteen meters band without the use of a base loading coil... The mechanical construction of the antenna , as shown by the photos sent to me, is of an extreme high quality, using sleeves that enclose the less diameter sections that are held using Allen type bolts distributed in such a way as to assure a very reliable mechanical assembly. A later model instead of using the steel whip as the last section, uses a length of three quarters inch heavy wall aluminum tubing to which a top capacity loading aluminum disk is attached to artificially increase the length of the antenna, making operation on the 40 meters band more efficient. At the base of the antenna there is an area that is used for installing the loading coils for 40 , 30 and 20 meters band operation and the copper link that is used for 17 meters, 15 meters, 12 meters and 10 meters band operation. The antenna tuner is located right at the base of the antenna, and according to the designer and builder, he is able to achieve a one to one standing wave ratio on all bands from 40 meters to 10 meters without any trouble. Normally he runs his transceiver at around 20 Watts power output or less, a well thought practice if you consider that operating an HF amateur radio station from an apartment building using high power can create problems with neighbor's TV sets, stereos and computers... So far , he says that at the 20 Watts power level , no one has complained.... As you may realize this was not a single weekend project and it did require a lot of mechanical work, but it was worth the effort, and it made possible to enjoy operating on the HF amateur bands, and as a bonus, much better short wave reception,as he tells me that the antenna is also used for that purpose, providing much better reception on the short wave broadcast bands from 6 megaHertz up... His amateur transceiver has a wide range HF receiver covering from 100 kiloHertz all the way to 30 megaHertz, and he tells me that now he listens to Dxers Unlimited on 6180 kiloHertz with much better quality than when he uses his portable radio with the telescopic whip. If you live in an apartment building and have a balcony or terrace, think about the nice possibilities that building a similar antenna from readily available materials may mean for you... both for ham radio and short wave listening! ...... Si amigos, you are listening to Radio Havana Cuba, the name of the show is Dxers Unlimited and here is our next item today.. amateur radio satellites and how they are becoming easier and easier to use ...but with the still not solved problem of very short access periods.... After the now non operational Oscar 40 satellite failed to provide the world amateur radio operators with one more ellyptic orbit spacecraft that could be accessed for hours at a time, the satellites available for ham radio communications are only low quasi circular orbit ones, that due to their low altitude are only available for short periods of time, usually not lasting more than fifteen minutes at best... Anyway, even with a hand held FM dual band transceiver and a simple dual band antenna you can make two way satellite contacts in many parts of the world...they won't last long, but can be made using several communications modes, from voice to digital ... Amateur satellite communications are one of the more than 80 ways that you and I can enjoy this wonderful and even low cost hobby amigos ! ...... ASK ARNIE, is the most popular section of Dxers Unlimited and today I will be answering a question by listener Mario from Turin, Italy. He wants to know more about gray line propagation, that is the optimized propagation conditions that happen along the line that separates day and night, the so called terminator line that is so nicely seeing by astronauts and cosmonauts from space... Well amigo Mario terminator line propagation, as it is also known among radio hobbysts, is a unique mode, of which we still need to learn a lot about... I am sending you via e-mail an information package that I compiled some time ago about this topic, that may help you to better understand how this mode works... Included in the package are a list of Internet websites that have information about gray line or terminator line propagation for you to visit and enjoy !!! And now as always at the end of the show , here is our exclusive and not copyrighted HF plus low band VHF propagation update and forecast... Abnormal tropospheric ducting, totally out of the usual tropo DX season is happening in the Northern Hemisphere due to the unusually high temperatures registered during this winter... Here in Cuba we have seen tropo ducting earlier than at any previous year, as early January brought a wide reaching tropo opening to the Gulf of Mexico... Now the HF update... Less than 50 percent probability of Class C solar flares expected during the next three days The geomagnetic field is expected to be QUIET Solar flux will be very near 90 units and the A index or planetary geomagnetic disturbance indicator is expected to remain at very nice and low levels , making possible good propagation conditions on the lower frequency bands during the next three days The estimated Catania , Sicily solar observatory WOLF sunspot number has increased to 61...and the smoothed sunspot number is now around 35, and that is the figure, 35, to use for making your HF propagation forecasts using the typical software programs for that purpose. See you at the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited amigos ! ---[Start Commercial]--------------------- Preorder your WRTH 2007: http://www.hard-core-dx.com/redirect2.php?id=wrth2007 ---[End Commercial]----------------------- ________________________________________ Hard-Core-DX mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx http://www.hard-core-dx.com/ _______________________________________________ THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/dsl.html
