Radio Havana Cuba Dxers Unlimited
Dxers Unlimited's weekend edition for June 9-10 2007 By Arnie Coro radio amateur CO2KK Hi amigos radioaficionados, welcome to the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited, your favorite radio hobby program. I am Arnaldo, Arnie, Coro radio amateur CO2KK, your host here at this twice weekly radio hobby show, dealing with all of the more than 80 different ways that you and I enjoy this wonderful way of spending our spare time...RADIO... But some times even more, when we take time away from rest to work on a new project or participate, as I am doing during this weekend in a radio amateur contest. This a very specialized ham radio competition , because it is limited to the VHF, UHF and Microwave amateur bands, making it a lot more difficult because propagation of the range of frequencies from 50 to 50,000 megaHertz is quite different from the way short wave signals behave. The June, American Radio Relay League VHF QSO Party Contest has seen Cuban radio amateurs participating in past editions, and winning too, as at least in two occasions Cuban ham teams have won the DX station first place position. I spend the whole day Friday installing the three antennas for the contest, the 6 meters HENTENNA, the two meters band 6 element YAGI and the 70 centimeters 13 elements YAGI. I will also be using my vertical phased array of three five eighths of a wavelength elements, because at the same time the ARRL contest will be in progress, we run a VHF contest on two meters FM mode, because this is the most popular band among Cuban radio amateurs. There is also going to be a CUBAN ROVER station that will be traveling to different grid square locators , because each square counts as an additional multiplier for the contest. Si amigos, yes my friends, oui mes amis... radio amateur contests are a lot of fun, but I warn you, they have two distinctive characteristics, one is that once you participate in a ham radio contest, you will find yourself getting ready for the next as soon as the last QSO is coming to an end, and two, they are simply exhausting, so my advice is that you ask for a Monday off work whenever you take part in a weekend long contest !!! Be on the lookout for T49C, that's a special callsign, with the T4 prefix that Cuban radio amateur stations use during contests. Also, please look for CO2KK, as I will also be taking part in the contest !!! Now stay tuned , a quick station ID follows, and Dxers Unlimited's weekend edition for June 9 and 10 will continue in a few seconds I am Arnie Coro in Havana ......... The name of program is Dxers Unlimited, you are listening to Radio Havana Cuba and here is our next topic of today's program. Setting up a ham radio contest station is a lot of fun, and it can be as easy as just using your regular home station " just as it is" or as sophisticated as creating a VHF, UHF and Microwave ROVER station using a special 4 wheel drive vehicle , like an SUV in order to be able to climb to mountaintop locations where your contest station will be able to reach really far away stations via ground wave, thanks to the high altitude where you have gone with your vehicle. A ROVER station operation during the June ARRL VHF QSO Party Contest is much looked by other contest stations, because a ROVER can move from one GRID LOCATOR or GRID SQUARE to another and according to the rules of the contest, each GRID SQUARE counts as a new multiplier. In other words, each time you work a ROVER station that is located at a new GRID, your total contest score is multiplied. T49C, Cuba's top level entry for this year's VHF contest will be moving to several GRID SQUARES during the contest, giving participants the unique opportunity not only of obtaining a new multiplier for the contest score, but also in many cases, adding a new GRID for the many awards like the VUCC that starts with the first 100 grid squares and has stickers and endorsements for additional squares that you can work. Wall paper, as radio amateurs call the diplomas given for obtaining the awards are a way that you can show to your visitors the results of your many hours of chasing DX signals amigos ! . A ham radio shack with a lot of wall paper, that is a lot of diplomas is always a nice looking room, as the wallpaper seems to blend nicely with the radios ! And talking about contests and ROVER stations, let me add that a top notch ROVER is not only excellent for working a VHF-UHF and Microwave ham radio contest, but is also a very useful mobile unit whenever there is need to deploy a highly effective station during a natural or man made disaster. As a matter of fact, as a very good friend of mine that is a full time ham radio contests fan likes to say, each contest is not only a lot of fun for the participants but also an excellent training exercise to develop the communications skills that may help to save lives during an emergency . For example, a ROVER station equipped with radios for working on the 6 meters, 2 meters and 70 centimeters band, and a set of omnidirectional antennas, as well as another set of high gain directional antennas, can be deployed to a good location and used as a relay for a command post , relaying traffic between handheld radios and the ROVER, that then can in turn reroute the traffic on another band to the disaster command post. One of the reasons, and as a matter of fact , one of the main reasons why so valuable radio frequency spectrum space is still allocated to the amateur radio service is precisely its unique characteristic of providing emergency communications links under the most difficult circumstances and when many other systems fail due to excessive traffic, like in the case of cellular telephones, or due to the loss of big towers where antennas are installed. When disasters strike, amateur radio operators know what to do, and many of us have specially prepared emergency kits self contained into boxes that are easy to transport, and where you can find everything needed to deal with the emergency, from radios, batteries , antennas, cables, plugs , spare microphones and tools , to drinking water and some food rations to take care of the operators vital needs for a period of no less than 48 hours... My advice is that in true amateur radio spirit, all ham operators should prepare an emergency operations kit, and keep it ready with periodically renewed batteries , and you can even add a solar panel or a crank up generator to recharge the batteries. Si amigos , yes my friends, oui mes amis... the Tropical Hurricane Season of the Atlantic Ocean from North of Equator up, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico is now in progress and this is certainly a good time for those of you living in areas that may be struck by a tropical storm or a hurricane to have your amateur stations ready , in case there is the need to use it, and remember that trying to organize an emergency station when the storm is just a few hours a way is not the best thing to do, and I warn you that if you leave your preparations for the last minute, when you reach the place where your station is required to operate, something important will always be missing... Believe it, It has happened to me a couple of times, and that's why I decided to prepare the EMERGENCY RADIO BOX, with a complete list of everything that the experience drawn from the last SIX, yes you heard it right, the last SIX hurricanes have clearly shown that are essential to assure that the emergency station will be able to work properly, and that the operator will have drinking water and a basic food supply for at least 48 hours after deployment. .............. Si amigos , yes my friends, oui mes Amis in Canada and the Caribbean that speak French, but also are able to listen to Dxers Unlimited in English... here is now the most popular section of the show... ASK ARNIE... with answers to your radio hobby related questions... Today's question is coming from several Caribbean islands and South East Mexico , more precisely from the Yucatan Peninsula, areas that are frequently affected by tropical storms and hurricanes... Dxers Unlimited's listeners from Jamaica, Turk and Caicos, Barbados and Dominica, as well as from Merida and Cancun want to know if there is a specific type of antenna for the 40 meters amateur band that has a high degree of survivability when the wind is blowing more than 100 or 120 miles per hour.... because they all have seen their 40 meter wire dipoles break down in the middle of the storms... Well amigos, there are good news for you all, we have been working on a prototype of a 40 meters band antenna that may be able to survive when the wind is blowing constantly to around 100 miles per hour and gusting up to 150 miles per hour. It is a short antenna, using the inverted L configuration, and it is installed using short masts, of not more than 4 or 5 meters above the ground. In some cases one end of the antenna can be tied to the roof of a building, and the other end to a short , rugged and very well guyed mast. This antenna uses a small loading coil and is fed with 50 ohms coaxial cable. Antenna modeling software show that its gain is about minus 2 decibels or maybe minus 3 decibels below a full size 20 meters or 66 feet long half wave 40 meters dipole, the type of antenna that due to its long length and the fact that it is fed at the center with a coaxial cable downlead tends to break down as soon as the wind speed exceeds 70 or 80 miles per hour... Our new EMERGENCY INVERTED L OR, as we have named it EMIL antenna, is easy to build, can be kept ready to be installed in your emergency station box, or as I am going to do at my home QTH next weekend, after this weekend VHF contest of course... you can install one permanently at your home station and have it always ready for action, and also test it under actual operating conditions and compare its performance with the regular half wave 40 meters band dipole. For those of you that may be asking now, why use 40 meters for handling communications emergencies at a local or semi-local level, the answer is because a unique propagation mode, known as NVIS, or Near Vertical Incidence Skywave , provides excellent coverage of a large area without having to install the station at a hill top or high rise building , as required when using VHF and UHF frequencies. And now amigos, ready to copy... as always at the end of the program when I am here in Havana, here is Arnie Coro's Dxers Unlimited's propagation update and forecast.... Sunspot numbers for May 31 through June 6 were 11, 41, 45, 58, 58, 63 and 47 with a mean of 46.1. The 10.7 cm. microwave solar flux was 74.6, 79.4, 83.2, 87, 85.7, 88.8, and 87.1, with a mean of 83.7. Estimated planetary A indices were 4, 6, 7, 10, 8, 3 and 2 with a mean of 5.7. Estimated mid-latitude A indices were 2, 5, 5, 7, 8, 2 and 2, with a mean of 4.4. Sporadic E openings are expected to happen frequently during the next two weeks, and hopefully during this VHF contest weekend... Don't forget to send me your signal reports and comments about the program , as well as any radio hobby related questions you may have... send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] of VIA AIR MAIL to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba... ---[Start Commercial]--------------------- Preorder your WRTH 2007: http://www.hard-core-dx.com/redirect2.php?id=wrth2007 ---[End Commercial]----------------------- ________________________________________ Hard-Core-DX mailing list Hard-Core-DX@hard-core-dx.com 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
