Re: [IRCA] New XHDATA D-808 Poertable for $75.64

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Gary,

I noticed that excellent price on the D-808 too! It's almost as good as the
original $70 price of the first D-808, through AliExpress.

Others may not be aware of the global Ebay search engine "Geo-Ship". The
web site is: www.geo-ship.com  I've located a number of Ebay bargains
through this service, including the recent D-808 bargain.

I've noticed that a number of Ebay sellers will ship internationally, but
they do not post their auctions on all, or more than one, Ebay site.
Geo-Ship can reveal these auctions; it helps to configure the search
settings to "All Ebay sites" (except Ebay Motors) and set the drop-down
"Location - Available to..." box to "United States" (or whatever your home
country is).

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
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Re: [IRCA] Sangean DT-800 AM/FM/Weather Pocket Radio

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Dennis,

I reluctantly returned a new DT-800 to Amazon last week. It's a pretty
sweet pocket radio, but with some QA concerns.

I first learned of the model when YouTube reviewer "Todderbert" posted a
few videos of his. He encountered problems such as audio distortion above
mid-volume levels, and wildly different FM sensitivity levels between the
headphones cable (as an antenna) versus the plug-in FM wire antenna (when
using the speaker for FM listening). Both his and my DT-800 had the same
#01 firmware revision.

My DT-800 did not have audio distortion at any volume setting, and FM
sensitivity was excellent no matter what the antenna method. AM sensitivity
was great too; the best I've ever encountered in a radio this size (apart
from the legendary Sony SRF-T615).

However, the big problem with my particular DT-800 was no FM stereo from
the headphones jack. The "ST" icon would light up on every station with the
wire antenna (which limits listening through the MONO speaker), but plug in
any stereo headphones or earbuds, and the output was all FM MONO! The "ST"
indicator would never come on for any stereo station, either, with
headphones. This is a deal-killer for me as at $68.80 the radio is too
expensive for occasional ultralight MW radio DXing use. I wanted to use the
radio daily for FM stereo listening.

I may try buying another unit, to see if I can get one that outputs a
proper FM stereo signal. The other capabilities of the radio are top notch
for the size. I found the dual bandwidths (AM *and* FM!) to be useful for
DXing. You can also set the radio's tuning to 1 kHz steps on MW, and switch
off the soft muting as Jay Allen mentions.

Bottom line--the DT-800 is worth a close look. In raw MW DX performance I
feel it's a step up from the earlier DT-400W.

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



From: Dennis Gibson 
> To: Mailing List for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2019 10:03:59 -0800
> Subject: [IRCA] Sangean DT-800 AM/FM/Weather Pocket Radio
> https://radiojayallen.com/sangean-dt-800-am-fm-weather-pocket-radio/
>
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Re: [IRCA] Yet another!!

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Phil,

On a whim I pulled out a CCradio 2E and was stunned to find near-LOCAL
quality Russian talk on 1520!

The signal nulls for me in a NNE direction (est. 345-350 deg. bearing) from
Puyallup; that's actually *towards* Everett in general.

I first heard Russian talk at 7:45pm PST, but now at 7:58 it's Russian
language music.

OK, at the top of the hour I just heard "KQRR, Oregon City, Oregon" in
English, and then back into Russian with mentions of "Christiana" or
similar. I note this station is 15 kw nighttime.

I wonder why they are coming in so strong? They are nearly pegging the 2E's
signal meter indoors.

Guy Atkins
Puyallup WA




-- Forwarded message --
From: Phil Bytheway 
To: "irca@hard-core-dx.com" 
Cc:
Bcc:
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2019 03:06:11 + (UTC)
Subject: Yet another!!
I'm being haunted.
So, for the 3rd time, I'm listening to what sounds like Russian on 1520
with Everett nulled for like 20 minutes (1750-1810 PLT). Music and a
woman talking just after the hour.

No break, no ID is it me or what??

Phil Bytheway
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Re: [IRCA] Perseus and Jaguar?

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Brandon,

Jaguar has been "team ware" (invitation-only users) from the beginning, and
only accessible by a handful of DXers (most of them in Nordic countries). I
became one of the group in early 2012, but lost interest a year or so
later--the features, tool set, and methods of operation were changing
almost weekly. It left my head spinning and I just didn't have the time or
interest to keep up with the latest Jaguar versions AND provide feedback.
About this time the developers moved the program to a new code base that
could better handle future features. They also arranged to have Nico write
a Perseus EXTIO.dll that provides a narrower sampling bandwidth to
accommodate WAV recordings on medium wave without extra Gigabytes wasted.

More recently (2-3 years ago?) the developers released the "Jaguar Lite"
version to the public, with no strings attached. The feature set of Jaguar
Lite is GREATLY reduced, but at least it's stable. If I was to get a
Perseus again, I'd at least investigate Jaguar Lite (or maybe the last full
prior version I used in 2013). I do miss some of Jaguar's no-brainer, quick
to use shortcuts; one of them is the VERY handy single keystroke "c" for
starting an audio clip of the current frequency, and another single "c"
keystroke to end the clip. This works with live recordings and WAV IQ
playback.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 3:20 PM Brandon Jordan  wrote:

> There has to be many MW DXer’s in NA still using Perseus SDR. Why do you
> Perseus  folks not use Jaguar?
> ___
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Cape Lookout DXpedition Loggings - Nov. 7th

[Guy Atkins]

CORRECTION for 1503 kHz:

A big thank you to Chris Kadlec for questioning my "definite Korean" on
1503, a frequency where no Korean language station is known to broadcast. I
took another listen around the 0955 time frame I mentioned and it's just a
jumble in the noise...you can hardly even tell that a station of ANY
language is there...much less "definite".

I think I entered a wrong frequency in my B-Log database for that one. I
wonder what frequency I WAS listening to for that entry?

I did go back to the files and pursue further audio on 1503 however, and by
1020 UTC I had Japanese language rising to the surface including mentions
of "Tokyo". This is probably JOUK Tokyo, a 10kW outlet rather than the much
weaker 1kw and less outlets on 1503.

As someone once said, "not a DX happens at the top or bottom of the hour"--
1503 was completely devoid of identifiable content until 1020, and then
only briefly.

73, Guy
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Re: [IRCA] Cape Lookout DXpedition Loggings - Nov. 7th

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Nick,

The only DU I came across was a tentative 693 Radio Sport, Dunedin, beneath
a much stronger JOAB Tokyo. It was all Asian, all the time.

73, Guy


On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 10:33 PM Nick Hall-Patch  wrote:

> Nice loggings, Guy.   There's hope for the rest of us.
>
> Sorry that I seemed to absorb all of JOIG; believe me it wasn't very
> strong here.
>
> It's interesting that I was able to hear a couple of DUs, but
> apparently nothing heard there on the coast?
>
> best wishes,
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
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[IRCA] Cape Lookout DXpedition Loggings - Nov. 7th

[Guy Atkins]

. (Atkins-OR)

1017 JAPAN JOLB Fukuoka, Nov 7 0828 - Two Japanese male announcers with
talk. Definitely northerly conditions with no hint of Tonga. (Atkins-OR)

1017 UNIDENTIFIED Unid, Nov 7 1501 - A three-way jumble on this frequency,
with Chinese, Korean, and Japanese languages battling for bragging rights.
JOLB Fukuoka, HLAW South Korea, and China are the culprits on 1017.
(Atkins-OR)

1044 CHINA CRI Changzhu, Nov 7 1233 - Male and female talk in Japanese,
which is listed in PAL for this time frame. Fair signal but muddy audio or
propagation. Tentative. (Atkins-OR)

1053 JAPAN JOAR Nagoya, Nov 7 0903 - Rapid fire discussion with two men in
Japanese. Humorous 'hi, hi, hi!' banter...wonder what that was about? Fair
level before taking a nose dive. (Atkins-OR)

1134 JAPAN JOQR Tokyo, Nov 7 0827 - Good signal of bouncy music and a
cheerful announcer in Japanese. (Atkins-OR)

1179 JAPAN JOOR Osaka, Nov 7 1156 - Noted with vocal music in Japanese, and
male announcer. Signal was fair but took a dive after 1157 and was MIA at
top of the hour. (Atkins-OR)

1287 JAPAN JOHR Sapporo, Nov 7 0627 - Another early appearance for this
northerly city's broadcaster. Lively man and woman chatter. Poor to fair.
(Atkins-OR)

1350 JAPAN JOER Hiroshima, Nov 7 1523 - Tentative. Good signal of lively
Japanese talk by two or three announcers, co-channel with KTIK, Boise,
Idaho (ads for snowmobiles; mentions of Boise). (Atkins-OR)

1422 JAPAN JORF Yokohama, Nov 7 0945 - Rapid fire chatter by two men in
Japanese. Fair and slowly getting better before fades. (Atkins-OR)

1503 UNIDENTIFIED Unid, Nov 7 0955 - I noted a station in Korean language
rise above the noise here at 0955, but it was gone well before 1000. Very
faint...who might this be?. (Atkins-OR)

1566 SOUTH KOREA HLAZ Jeju, Nov 7 0818 - I noted an early fade-in of this
FEBC broadcaster, with large choir and church hymns, plus Korean language
announcer. Poor to fair. Good at 0859 with 'HLAZ' ID by woman, and single
tone at 0900. At 1529 signal was fair during the sign-off of the Chinese
language segment. Sign-on in Russian at 1631 was much stronger (beam
change). (Atkins-OR)

1575 THAILAND VOA Ban Phachi, Nov 7 1359 - No sign of the unid English
station heard earlier, but this station was talk in listed Khmer with a
'VOA' ID right at 1359:41. (Atkins-OR)

1575 UNIDENTIFIED Unid, Nov 7 1317 - I came across 1575 again just as a
weak, US-accented male English speaker was speaking over a non-descript
music selection. It may have been a PSA or announcement. Possibly one of
the AFN Japan stations?. (Atkins-OR)

-
Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA USA
DXing from Cape Lookout State Park, OR
FDM-S2 / IC-7300 / ALA1530NLP Imperium @20 ft.
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Re: [IRCA] Nov. 7th: Ionosphere Delivers a Gold Mine to the Pacific NW

[Guy Atkins]

Oops...I meant to type Japan *sunset*, of course.

--
On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 10:18 AM Guy Atkins  wrote:

>
> At my temporary Cape Lookout post in Oregon, I noticed a few Japanese
> stations in audio more than an hour and a half before Japan sunrise.
>
--
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[IRCA] Nov. 7th: Ionosphere Delivers a Gold Mine to the Pacific NW

[Guy Atkins]

I hope other DXers in the Northwest, from the Victoria crew southwards,
found last night to be a fascinating time at the dials.

At my temporary Cape Lookout post in Oregon, I noticed a few Japanese
stations in audio more than an hour and a half before Japan sunrise. With
4.5 terabytes of hard drive space on my laptop now I decided to just let
SDR recording continue uninterrupted through the night.

Spot checks a few times through the night showed a wealth of TPs up and
down the band. When I stopped recording at 1645 UTC (nearly two hours past
local SR), a handful of Chinese and Korean signals were still providing
weak but clear audio.

So... what a turnaround from the previous two mornings. I'll be interested
to know others impressions of DX on Nov. 7th, as I face an SDR DXer's
dilemma of how to approach over 11 hours of productive DX recordings!

73,
Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
DXing from Cape Lookout State Park, OR
FDM-S2 / IC-7300 / ALA1530LNP @20 ft. / 10-inch FSL / portable RXs
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[IRCA] November 5th & 6th DX at Cape Lookout State Park

[Guy Atkins]

My initial impression of the band on Monday morning held up through closer
inspection of my FDM-S2 recordings: it was dismal indeed. Although I'll
take coastal DXing any day over inland, the "sea gain" effect still bows
down to the propagation gods.

Tuesday morning showed promise from around 1400 onward, but it was mostly
just whispers of NHK audio from the strongest tier 1 stations. I did notice
a very weak CRI trumpet fanfare on 1017 kHz at 1500 beneath a presumed.
slightly stronger JOLB Fukuoka, but that was the only non-Japanese TP I
heard.

The star of the morning--to save it from the trash heap--was JOAK Tokyo on
594. It persisted at a strong level, with J-pop such as this crooner from
Yukari Onishi (thanks for the artist ID, Shazam app!):
https://app.box.com/s/krho5he9jq3l9oyelhz2vsw1xvx5zwj5

 It's tough to fault the lackluster DX when you can take a few steps
outside and enjoy the sights and sounds of another kind of wave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWxkNnoFo9I

During the day I experimented with a new prototype Wellbrook module that
works with a connection to the core of a Ferrite Sleeve Loop antenna. It
performed better than previous broadband FSL efforts, but still fell short
of an inductively coupled, "one frequency at a time" FSL. The champion of
broadband compact antennas remains the ALA1530LNP Imperium, in my opinion.
It packs a lot of performance in a 1-meter diameter package. Like the FSL,
the loop fits into locations where other antennas simply cannot (such as my
cabin at Cape Lookout that's surrounded by dense brush and foliage).

73,
Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
DXing from Cape Lookout State Park, OR
FDM-S2 / IC-7300 / ALA1530LNP @20 ft. / 10-inch FSL / portable RXs
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Re: [IRCA] TP conditions this morning

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Bruce,

My timing must be impeccable, as this was my first morning at the Oregon
coast for a few days. I haven't reviewed files yet but some spot checks
(live) showed very few carriers of interest and audio of only common TPs.

Bring on the DX I say... noise levels around my cabin are impressively low,
and the ALA1530LNP Imperium is working better than ever. I've mounted the
loop higher than I've ever done before (20+ feet) and further away from the
cabins. I'm easily hearing S1 signals on HF that don't budge the meter.

73,

Guy Atkins
@Cape Lookout, OR
FDM-S2, IC-7300, ALA1530LNP Imperium, 10-inch FSL, etc.
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[IRCA] ​Re: Logging Methodology?

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Mark,

I've used B-Log for many, many years and like it a lot. I gave software
author Tom Lackamp feedback in the early version regarding output formats
for club bulletins, emails, etc. I'm surprised that B-Log still runs on
Windows 10; B-Log version 1.1 came out in 2001!

I think Walt Salmaniw in Victoria BC also continues to use B-Log.

For those interested in trying this basic, but useful "flat" database
logging program for DXers, I've uploaded the ZIP file of B-Log version 1.1
to a shared Google Drive folder called "Lackamp Utilities":
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GulxsbSdG9TS4EaENYuFdty3iiSx4Z3M?usp=sharing

Inside the folder you'll also find another of Tom's programs, "My Reference
Library". This simple program lets you build organized lists of links to
documents, PDFs, photos, files, etc. that may be scattered across your
computer. I don't know if the program will run on modern Windows versions,
but in the past I've used it as (very) a "poor man's" OneNote or Evernote.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
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Re: [IRCA] DKAZ and Flag data

[Guy Atkins]

Thanks for reformatting and posting this, Nick! The 18 X 18 corner fed loop
looks better than I expected; I may try this with a FLG100LN in the limited
space I'll have at Cape Lookout in a few days.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
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Re: [IRCA] KAZ versus Pennant/Flag

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Nick,

The best F/B of any phased antenna I've experienced at the coast was Dallas
Lankford's Quad Delta Flag Array (QDFA). I know you're quite familiar with
this, but some others on the IRCA list may not be. Here is an archived link
to Dallas' article on this antenna:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100921085637fw_/http://kongsfjord.no/dl/Antennas/Phased%20Delta%20Flag%20Arrays%20rev%2010.pdf

I worked with Dallas in 2009 to get his design tested and operational at
Grayland. Once we got a few bugs out of this complicated design, the result
was phenomenal. Check out the pattern on page 3 of the PDF and you'll see
why domestic inland DX at sunrise was knocked down to a degree I'd never
experienced before or since.

This four loop, phased antenna system is NOT DXpedition friendly. Because
of the complexity it's best for a permanent installation. I know that
Bjarne Mjelde also installed a QDFA some years ago but I don't know if it's
still operational.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA

On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 8:42 AM Nick Hall-Patch  wrote:

> For the coastal DXer, I think that the takeaway
> from the presentation was that the really
> important thing is not so much the response from
> the two quadrants facing out over the ocean, but
> rather, the two quadrants facing the domestic interference.
>
> The DKaz has a narrower beam, but often the MW
> DXer wants to hear whatever the conditions
> deliver, whether it be New Zealand or Siberia, so
> a narrow beam is not always an advantage.   But
> ideally, don't you really want zero signal from
> the two quadrants facing inland?  The DX is out
> there, but in a realistic situation, often it is
> hard to (impossible?) to read due to domestic splatter.
>
> Where the DKaz really shines then is in those two
> quadrants facing inland.  It delivers less signal
> from those two quadrants than the Flag does, so the DX is more readable.
>
> For an inland DXer, the narrower beam will be
> more an advantage, because it will lessen
> interference in the forward direction,  but
> probably it is still better to place its back
> side to minimize the overall interference level,
> because the beam width is still wide enough to
> inhale a fair bit of DX, .  Craig's 260 degree
> proposed direction should be ideal for down
> under, and still hear Japan pretty well with that
> 100 degree beam width.  Hopefully, it
> incidentally nulls a lot of domestic interference as well.
>
>
> Nick
>
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Re: [IRCA] Antenna switches for automated spectrum recording

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Mark,

There looks to be good information in this PDF about remote antennas used
over the Internet:
https://www.marcclub.org/mweb/doc/WN3R%20Remote%20Operation%20Slides.pdf

I think this ham's approach is way too complicated for what you need, but
there are some good vendors, products, & links mentioned.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA




On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 11:56 AM Mark Pettifor  wrote:

> Given the following criteria:
>
> 1. Two or more antennas
> 2. Spectrum recordings are set up for two or more times of the day
> (sunrise and sunset, for example)
>
> Are there antenna switches out there that can be switched
> programmatically from my PC at certain times of the day?
>
> The goal is to be able to program spectrum IQ (or even single frequency
> IQ or audio) recordings at time T using antenna X.
>
> Or at the least, the goal would be to be able to remote in to my PC and
> run a program that would allow me to (a) select which antenna is active,
> and then (b) start a recording. I can already do (b), but the recording
> will be using whatever antenna happens to be selected on the mechanical
> switch (and it's usually the wrong one).
>
> Mark Pettifor
> Goshen, IN
> KC9DOC-en71ao
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] TP 12 Oct Victoria West Coast live snippet

[Guy Atkins]

Your story reminds me of the mid-1990s when I'd tune into RRI Palangkaraya
on 60 meters--regularly--during my morning drive to work.

The car receiver was a Philips DC-777; I think Walt Salmaniw owned one of
these fine units also. Its achilles heel was segments of the LCD digits
going out, due to poor connections with the printed circuit board (kind of
like the early CCradio displays).

I'm sure I was the only one in the office arriving at work humming the *Bagimu
Negeri* <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIep7XkDPL8> anthem  :^)

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 8:50 AM R. Colin Newell 
wrote:

> My previous Honda COULD flip between the 9k and 10k channel plan --
> actually it was a KENWOOD
> audio system and it was plenty sensitive -
> so on the way to the antenna farm I had access to (mid-decade)[2008] I
> could listen
> to the band and get a sense of where it was going...
>
> It's odd driving down a country road listening to Korean on 972 Khz or
> Japan on 828.
>
> Yup - explain that to the constable!
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Morning TP Methodology?

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Walt,

The ILG databases have been back for a couple of years or more; I've
subscribed (again) to the service for almost that long. Bernd Friedewald
(DK9FI) is as passionate as ever about the accuracy of the data. I use his
files to import into programs like CSVUserListBrowser. The web site
remains: www.ilgradio.com

Ergo has indeed kept up with the SDR support, and will control Perseus and
others. I fire up this program every now and then; I really like his near
real time propagation integration, with the neat graphs of MUF levels and
so on (HF only)... and the map displays with short & long paths visible.
BTW, the author of ERGO, John Fallows, has a interesting blog for the
technically minded: http://ergo.fallows.ca/wp/blog/. He covers a lot of
topics I've not seen discussed elsewhere.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



On Sun, Sep 23, 2018 at 8:23 PM, Volodya S  wrote:

> A fine article, it is!   Nice reading the article again, and bringing back
> such nostalgic memories.  Today, I'm still using B-Log, Total Recorder, and
> Nick's updated DX Radar (Fishbarrel).  I was a user of most of the
> hardware/software mentioned.   Today, it's DX Atlas that I still like for
> sunrise/sunset information.  ERGO was a fantastic advancement in DXing in
> it's time powering my AOR 7030+ and HF-2050 receivers.   ILG databases were
> fantastic, as well, and still better than what I use now (the database
> which shows up on Perseus is adequate, but not nearly as good as having the
> PAL and MW List available.  ERGO is still around, although I'm not aware of
> anyone using it anymore, and whether it's kept up with the SDR revolution.
> I know that it will power the Perseus, but not sure of the advantages, if
> any of going that route anymore.  My Cybiko is still in a box somewhere,
> too, waiting for a chance for a new use!   The big days of the west coast
> DXpeditions seem to be over, unfortunately, with the demise of the Grayland
> Motel, and more likely because we're all getting that much older!  Thanks
> for the memories!   73,  Walt Salmaniw
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Morning TP Methodology?

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Nick,

As you mention further down in your thoughtful response, indeed, live
listening isn't really my thing. Maybe in retirement, when I don't have a
commute up to two hours each way, live listening will be possible-- and
fun-- again  :^)

Ultimately I'd like to get very comfortable with the Data Analyzer in
SDR-Console, as it's a good visual way to check for activity over time. It
is similar to the Tractor feature in the Jaguar software that I used when I
still DXed with a Perseus receiver.

With my ultrawide format monitor and a 17-inch laptop screen running,
closely spaced waterfall lines aren't as much of a problem as they used to
be. I agree that your DXfishbarrel presents pertinent information with as
little distraction as possible... it's winner and a unique tool!

Our locations are approx. 105 miles apart, so I could conceivably make
regular use of your DXfishbarrel. Didn't you used to have a version of this
running on the DR-333 receiver back in the day?

73, Guy


On Sat, Sep 22, 2018 at 7:59 PM, Nick Hall-Patch  wrote:

> Thanks Guy.   I agree that this is a very effective method for top of the
> hour ID searches.   However, here I'm reviewing up to 90 minutes of files
> every day, and SDR technology is capable of more than clicking on  a
> playback bar when reviewing potential DX over that much time.
>
> I mentioned the DXFishbarrel, which uses an older SDR, and which can be
> recorded as a video from screen.  An initial analysis of conditions
> changing over 90 minutes can take very little time.   See
> http://www3.telus.net/public/shallpat/4all/FBarrelSept2018.avi for a
> minute long analysis of this morning. (yellow, orange and red on the color
> bars indicate signals with audio) The Japanese big guns are there of
> course, but at 13:37UT, 1422 pops up for less than a minute in the original
> recording with a woman in Japanese at good level:
> http://www3.telus.net/public/shallpat/4all/1422_20180922_1337.wav And
> then, for a quick fade up and down for 30 seconds or so, check out 1701kHz
> at 13:44UT http://www3.telus.net/public/shallpat/4all/1701_20180922_134
> 4.wav (Brisvaani judging by the 30Hz offset?)
>
> Those were found with that minute long scan of signals over the entire
> band, and of course there is much more, but both of those were unusual, so
> caught my eye.   So, SDR's could do this, and if anyone knows of software
> that performs similarly, please let us know.   I'm not a programmer, and
> I'd be happy to hear of someone who is, that can deliver a worthwhile
> product, as I've heard that this one doesn't quite cut it.
>
> This was initially developed for assisting live listening with the R8,
> nearly 10 years ago when SDRs covered only 190kHz or so of bandwidth, but,
> even in those days, the SDR-14 had a spectrum analysis function for up to
> 30MHz bandwidth.  There's an IRCA reprint from that time describing the
> details
>
> If live listening isn't your thing, then my system won't be much use to
> you, unless you operate and record your own copy for later playback.   But
> seeing that it writes to the web (http://www3.telus.net/public/
> shallpat/test/display.htm), it's a fairly good initial indicator for
> anyone in a 100 mile radius of here, that maybe you should (or should not?)
> be using the radio, and it is easier on the eyes than peering at over 1MHz
> worth of closely spaced lines on a screen, especially on a phone-sized
> screen, which is what I tend to use to check what is happening on the
> radio.  And once you are warned, and are live listening, its display of a
> suddenly fading up 1422kHz signal (such as this morning) will catch the eye
> far faster than one of those closely spaced lines on a normal SDR
> waterfall.  And, yes, SDR has been used for live listening here  for over
> five years, while recording at the same timeno, not a Perseus,
>
> Admittedly, my interest is more in propagation peculiarities than in
> logging new ones, though I've certainly never turned down the new or
> unusual ones that have turned up during these searches.
>
> best wishes,
>
> Nick
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Morning TP Methodology?

[Guy Atkins]

My thoughts: what Chuck describes is basically what I do for reviewing SDR
recordings, with whatever software I might be using. Clicking carefully on
the playback bar can also advance the recording in increments of your
choice.

Skipping ahead in one-minute increments makes the top-of-the-hour range
we're generally most interested in go by rather quickly during review. As
Chuck described it only takes your brain a second or two to recognize if
there's any content worth pursuing. If not, then a quick click
fast-forwards you to the next minute for a second or two auditory check.
It's kind of the "30,000 ft. view" of the DX, and if anything seems
interesting you can get more granular in your review & playback...that's
the beauty of SDR because nothing is lost.

What I'm listening for is audio rising up to intelligibility (in the case
of threshold signals that may be worthwhile to follow), or in the case of
signals with decent intelligibility already I'm listening for content clues
that there may be an ID, advertisement, or other helpful content in the
"vicinity" of that moment I'm reviewing. If so, then I dive in for a
careful listen.

This minute-by-minute quick checking method is a great way to get past
music so you can get to an announcer's voice.

The same approach works for bottom-of-the-hour and other in-between times
when an ID *might* be heard. However I save these less productive time
frames for after I've exhausted top-of-the-hour possibilities. As Chuck
said, bad or normal nights are obvious and you don't need to waste your
time. Were conditions shown to be great on your recording? Then you may
have a gold mine waiting for you to dig through...that's the fun of
capturing the entire band with an SDR. DXing "live" with a traditional
receiver or an Ultralight is another kind of fun, too. It's all radio, and
all good  :^)

Guy



On Sat, Sep 22, 2018 at 10:21 AM, Chuck Hutton  wrote:

> Nick:
>
>
> If you listen to  a second or two every minute or two, wouldn't you agree
> the needed time is a percenrt or two of what it was?
>
> And many channels won't need attention at all.
>
> And bad or normal nights quickly become obvious and the files don't need
> to be studied.
>
>
> Nothing earth shattering here.
>
>
> Chuck
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Brainstorming - Temporary Antenna Supports

[Guy Atkins]

I concur with all the comments about fiberglass poles, especially Chuck's..
he knows whereof he speaketh.

I'll mention that I'm fond of "pro audio speaker stands", such as this one
(I own three):
https://www.amazon.com/Pyle-Universal-Speaker-Stand-Holder/dp/B000E0PPG0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8=1537502614=8-3=pro+speaker+stand
The pricing is very reasonable and the stands can hold anything from
fiberglass poles to Wellbrook loops. For the Wellbrook loops I add one of
these mounts:
https://www.amazon.com/Speaker-Mounting-Adapter-Bracket-Tripod/dp/B00IGGRXT6/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8=1537502847=8-3=pro+speaker+stand+mounting+bracket

While the stands won't weather high winds on the Rockwork cliffs, they will
hold up better in moderate wind if you add some weight like wrap-around leg
weights (such as used for exercising).

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA





On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 8:28 PM, Chuck Hutton  wrote:

> Mark -
>
>
> I'd not think of using the painter;s extension poles. They are a bit
> flimsy and too short for a DKAZ or flag/loop.
>
>
> The Jackite poles are fairly common in ham circles. I've owned 4 of them
> for at least 10 years without problems.
>
>
> I also own a handful of other fiberglass poles and they have all been OK
> except an MFJ product. They collapse to approximately 4 feet.
>
>
> Two of my poles with the bases at https://wordpress.com/view/
> chuckhuttonblog.wordpress.com
>
>
> form the 18 x 18 corner fed loop I use at Rockworks. It can be assembled
> in 10 minutes in total darkness (with a flashlight).  The concrete bases
> are thick enough to withstand moderate coastal windstorms and might be a
> bit heavy for a several hour DXpedition.
>
>
> Chuck
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Try Something New This DX Season!

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Gary,

Thanks for the download links and descriptions of eleven of your articles!
I neglected to save a similar post & links you shared previously, but I've
downloaded all eleven this time to save offline. Your articles are an
excellent reference for my own DIY antenna and radio work! I appreciate the
work you've put into this documentation.

Good DX,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 2:39 AM, Gary DeBock  wrote:

> .If you are looking for some new DXing excitement this season, why not try
> out one of the DIY antenna projects described in the links below? A great
> variety of projects are listed, all of which have proven to be popular and
> effective in the Ultralight Radio DXing community over the past ten years
> (with the exception of the new XHDATA D-808 "Supercharging" article, which
> was just written). Whether you would like to "homebrew" a low cost PVC air
> core loop, transform a modest portable into a dream travel DXing radio or
> become a "Frequent Flyer" DXer with a miniature FSL antenna that performs
> like gangbusters on exotic ocean beaches, an exciting DXing future is yours
> when you accept the challenge. So go ahead and take the plunge!
>
> 
>
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Re: [IRCA] Loop antenna question

[Guy Atkins]

Thanks for the link to Everett's mobius strip loop experiments, Nick! I
wasn't aware he's worked on any antennas buy FSLs.

Interestingly, he's discovered the "PEX AL PEX" tubing that the LZ1AQ loops
frequently use. I thought the tubing was available only in Europe, but
Everett mentions finding a supplier in the USA. With its aluminum skin and
semi-rigid plastic form, this tubing is a great basis for home brew
magnetic loops. I'd guess it's easier for hobbyists to work with than 100%
aluminum tubing.

Andrew Ikin of Wellbrook Communications, known for extensive R of his
antennas, published a short paper a while back which pointed out a problem
of loop-amplifier mismatch with mobius strip loops:
https://www.wellbrook.uk.com/loopantennas/pdf/ComparisonoftheMobiusLoop.pdf
I know he is not a fan of this design, despite Dr. Baum/Chris Trask's
investigations. The mobius strip approach is found in Pixel Technologies's
competing RF-PRO1A loop. (Current version is the $499.99  RF-PRO-1B
<https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/dxe-rf-pro-1b>, sold by DX
Engineering.)

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 11:22 AM, Nick Hall-Patch  wrote:

> Another possibility is: https://www.george-smart.co.uk
> /wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/EWS-Article-in-MW-News.pdf
>
> 
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Loop antenna question

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Larry,

I'd recommend you check out LZ1AQ's web site at https://active-antenna.eu/.
This individual has offered extensive kits and documentation for magnetic
loop antennas which a lot of hobbyists have built. The pricing looks very
reasonable and the quality is high. Some of the varieties are very
directional; there is a lot of information on this site if you dig deep
enough.

I've been wanting to build one of these sometime to compare against my
Wellbrooks.

A few reviews of the basic amp module are here:
https://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/12530   and here:
https://www.eham.net/reviews/review/146210

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 8:25 AM, Larry R Fravel 
wrote:

> I am trying to come up with a working design for a broad banded (AM BCB)
> for an external loop antenna based on a 30 inch diameter hula hoop as the
> form.  I want to mount this on rotator outside the shack and feed my SDR
> with 50 ohm coax to eliminate noise pick up from the feed line. Has anyone
> ever done this before,  or can anyone point me in the direction to a good
> site that has the plans for one?
>
> Thanks in advance for any replies.
>
> Larry K8YYY
> Shinnston, WV
>
>
> For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there
> is freedom.
> 2 Cor. 3:17
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] 558-Fiji and 1017-Tonga Rock Rockwork

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Gary,

Thanks for sharing these superb recordings. We are really blessed to live
within driving distance of such a unique DXing spot as the Rockwork cliffs!

I found your August 8th, 1304 UTC recordings of 1017 kHz to be very
insightful. The hot rodded D-808 is highly competitive; but on close
inspection of the stand-alone D-808's recording versus the 17-inc FSL
boosted one, you can clearly hear the benefits of the extra "oomph". For
instance, the 2KY Australian is much clearer and crisper to my
ears--despite being in the background--with the FSL's help. Review the
~00:15-00:18 seconds segment on both MP3s and it's especially noticeable.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 8:54 PM, Gary DeBock  wrote:

>  As most west coast DXers know the Rockwork ocean cliff near
> Manzanita, Oregon easily holds the record for New Zealand reception in
> North America during a DXpedition, but last month the "Kiwi Magic" seemed
> to include two other nearby Pacific island DU's which seemed to enjoy the
> same, cliff-boosted propagation rush-- 558-Fiji and 1017-Tonga.
>
>  File review is adding to the charm of the trip, with multiple S9
> recordings from Tonga showing up over the 9 days. Of course numerous New
> Zealand stations also managed their best-ever signals, including 531-More
> FM, 594-Star, 657-Star, 756-RNZ and 936-Chinese Voice. After file review
> the 2 kW relay 639-RNZ was the latest to join the list with an S7 level on
> August 1, and even the Tasmanian 585-7RN hit its first S9 level ever. But
> the signals from Fiji and Tonga were both in a higher league than in
> previous years, resulting in awesome music peaks from each station at
> various times during the trip. Quite an unforgettable way to close out the
> summer!
>
>
> 558  Radio Fiji One   Suva, Fiji, 10 kW   S9 Island music with song medley
> ID ("Radio Fiji One, Na Domoiviti") at 1:38 into the recording at 1252 on
> 8-1. This was its strongest signal ever at the cliff
> https://dreamcrafts.box.com/s/vhwdviemmimdxervjaoe1qqci7a59dqj
>
> 1017  A3Z   Nuku'alofa, Tonga, 10 kW   During my first morning at the
> cliff (on August 1st) the newly rejuvenated station had an overwhelming S9+
> signal all session long. This was in comparison to marginal reception in
> Spanish splatter (from 1020-KTNQ) in years past. Neither Craig Barnes nor I
> could believe our ears. This island music was recorded at 1314
> https://dreamcrafts.box.com/s/xgw85zga7d337r8905bnyu1qdgmvepn8
>
> This Tongan island music was received on the same morning at 1221
> https://dreamcrafts.box.com/s/ime1qsdd32h6wh0pumkrsozhwy6xestn
>
> On the second day (8-2), Tonga "only" reached an S9 level with its
> beautiful island music (at 1318)  https://dreamcrafts.box.com/s/
> k4tnfovufud0ek4zjkaexcpwayug5v97
>
> The new Big Gun DU pounds in with S9 music at 1250 on 8-3
> https://dreamcrafts.box.com/s/1l1xkyix03o7onoxsmr1wa2tsivqxr8s
>
> The 5 kW Australian station 1017-2KY tries to make it a horse race at 1304
> on 8-8, but ends up folding in the clutch  https://dreamcrafts.box.com/s/
> r6yrwe7pzze6kw59qnzrbg8c704kg1l2
>
> The exact same segment was recorded on the stand-alone 7.5" loopstick
> XHDATA D-808 model at 1304 on 8-8 (all the others were assisted by the 17"
> FSL antenna). Even the hot-rodded portable receives a fine signal from
> Tonga (and a sinking signal from Sydney)  https://dreamcrafts.box.com/s/
> xw0vuzpbqyg2gc0ekh7s2tdzm5n6r7l0
>
>
> 73 and Good DX,
>
> Gary DeBock (in Puyallup, WA, USA)
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] New Grayland SDR WAV Files

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Ken,

Good question! I forgot to mention that my HF+ SDRs have the "R3 bypass
mod" as well as latest firmware installed. The designers of the HF+
expected hobbyists and experimenters to configure and modify the antenna
input characteristics, so they made it easy with a larger SMD chip
capacitor in-line to the HF antenna input. (Despite being called R3 it is
actually a resistor.) Changing or bypassing this part affects the impedance
curve of the radio, if I remember right.

Initially thought to only help out long wave, it actually gives a decent
boost to medium wave sensitivity too, all the way up to 15 MHz per some
reports. Top DXer Bjarne Mjelde, among others, has confirmed the R3 bypass
improvements-- see his review of the HF+ here:
https://app.box.com/s/d2dni57dzrsxgs38gxbbfz9gm26brqpk

The last few firmware updates resulted in even better RF overload
performance on the HF+, and this on a radio which was already receiving
accolades for excellent strong signal handling.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



On Sun, Sep 2, 2018 at 6:46 PM, ken brookner  wrote:

> Hi Guy,
>
> Was that an unmodified HF+?
>
> Thanks for posting your comparison!
>
> 73,
>
> Ken
> Lummi Island, WA
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] New Grayland SDR WAV Files

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Chuck,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

You've hit the nail on your head in your RSPduo assessment!
Performance-wise I find it's NOT in the ballpark of the "upper tier" of
consumer SDRs. The promised Holy Grail feature of software phasing remains
for developers to decide if the market is large enough to warrant their
efforts to add coherent tuners for phasing.

An SDRplay representative recently said it's not close on their radar, and
that's why they've decided to make the API open source. Hopefully someone
will pick up the ball and run with it, and deliver on what would be a
killer feature--if it works well!

Last week I made a day trip to Ocean City State Park, specifically to
compare SDR models on weak daytime signals. Ocean City, WA is well away
from strong RF, as is Grayland. Below is a summary I shared with some
others:

*I went to Ocean City State Park for a few hours, specifically to test the
RSPduo, FDM-S2, and HF+ receivers on weak daytime medium wave signals. The
antenna used was the Wellbrook ALA1530LN Pro, and all radios were operated
with SDR-Console V3 fed from a single 4-way antenna splitter. All coax from
the splitter to receivers was identical lengths of the same type of cable.
This way the only variables were the SDRs themselves...all modes,
bandwidths, etc. were the same.*

*My key takeaways, specifically related to MW weak signal performance:*


*The FDM-S2 gives excellent reception, that in my past experience equals or
out-performs a Perseus SDR *except* in strong signal areas (Perseus has
more built-in band pass filters to help protect the front end). Some others
have noticed the S2's "edge" over Perseus at times, too. *

*AirSpy HF+: I knew these are over achieving SDRs for the price, but
Friday's careful comparisons proved their outstanding performance! My HF+
receivers always equalled the FDM-S2. That's really saying something! NO
attenuator or gain adjustments on the HF+ are needed; it handles large
signals extremely well. If you dive far enough into settings you  *can*
make adjustments but it's not needed.*


*The RSPduo trails the pack significantly, with generally noisy reception
and "fiddly", complicated to adjust gain/attenuation settings for best
reception. I think the radio is great for the hobbyist with interests on
different bands, but except for the potential of eventual phased (coherent)
tuners in future versions of the software, there are better choices for the
MW DXer. That said, the RSPduo is the best performing SDRplay product yet.
Caveat: I may not have adjusted gain settings optimally on the RSPduo
before recording with it at Ocean City. However, at Grayland with this
radio and a 160 ft. DKAZ antenna I did little adjustment and found that I
was hearing the same DX the other fellas were hauling in. The radio didn't
seem noisy in that situation, either. My gut feeling though is that the
RSPduo is not a top tier SDR like the others. It's very good for the price
(plus the two tuners inside) but not up to the DX ability of the Elad or
AirSpy.*

*(Interestingly, with ALL FOUR receivers recording WAVs, the total CPU
usage was just 6.7% and the GPU usage (nVidia CUDA graphics card) was 75%.
Wow, 6.7% CPU with all radios recording full-bore?! I'm very pleased with
the horsepower of this "new" Dell workstation laptop.*

So Chuck, I've taken a lot more words to summarize what you stated so well.
The RSPduo is not a top contender but worth considering if a DXer wants to
cover a lot of other bands too.

73, Guy



On Sat, Sep 1, 2018 at 6:41 PM, Chuck Hutton  wrote:

> Guy:
>
>
> I'd be curious about your overall impression of the RSP Duo.
>
>
> I also own one andf came to the conclusion it can't match the HF+ or
> Perseus.  I consider its main value to be the promised (bit not yet
> delivered) support for phasing / nulling.
>
>
> Chuck
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] New Grayland SDR WAV Files

[Guy Atkins]

James, these particular files were recorded on a RSPduo. Tonga is so strong
lately they can be heard on nearly any receiver from the coast though!

73, Guy


On Sat, Sep 1, 2018, 5:06 PM  wrote:

> Guy,
>
> Wow, 1017 Tonga is a great signal..
> Which SDR receiver did you record these from??
> Thanks again!!
>
> James Niven
> Austin, Texas
>
>
>
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[IRCA] New Grayland SDR WAV Files

[Guy Atkins]

I've uploaded three new IQ WAV files for interested DXers to download.
These are from August 8th and 9th, during and after local sunrise in
Grayland, WA. Antenna used was a 160 ft. DKAZ, within a few hundred yards
of the Pacific Ocean.

Although recorded in SDRuno, the files play fine in SDR-Console V3 and
HDSDR too.
Size is about 2GB each:


http://www.mediafire.com/file/szydaas173ga654/SDRuno_20180808_125544Z_1120kHz.wav/file


http://www.mediafire.com/file/tcnc23013bzejex/atkins_grayland_9aug18_1309utc_530-1700khz.wav/file

http://www.mediafire.com/file/59apymtuzy1uaha/atkins_grayland_9aug18_1254utc_530-1700khz.wav/file

Not to be missed in these files is the often-excellent signal of A3Z
Nuku'alofa, Tonga on 1017 kHz. A lot of Australian reception abounds, too.

73,

Guy Atklns
Puyallup, WA
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Re: [IRCA] Supercharging the XHDATA D-808-- Full Construction Article

[Guy Atkins]

Oops-- I missed reading that Gary's article was only partially finished!
Thanks to Steve R. for pointing this out to me... in a kind way :^)

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
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Re: [IRCA] Supercharging the XHDATA D-808-- Full Construction Article

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Gary,

This is another great write-up as usual! Thanks for taking the time to
document your hot rodding of the D-808.

If I recall, weren't you also one of the initial USA purchasers of the
D-808 as I was, for a bargain-basement price of ~$68 USD, shipped? A seller
on Aliexpress.com was offering it for this price. Mine came promptly and
was very well packed for transit from China. Not long after this, the
phenomenal $68 price disappeared; hopefully the seller didn't "disappear"
also  :^(

It was after this early, very low price was yanked that we started seeing
ridiculous offers on the D-808 ("just $75.00 + $500.00 shipping", etc.),
until the situation settled down to the current $112.87 + $10.00 shipping
to the USA.

BTW, I don't know why but I've tried downloading your article more than
once, but only the first half of the article appears. It ends just after
entry "J" under Construction Parts.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA

On Sat, Sep 1, 2018 at 12:29 AM, Gary DeBock  wrote:

>  The new XHDATA D-808 AM-LW-FM-SW-AIR portable has been a very
> pleasant surprise among radios introduced this year. With good stock
> sensitivity on the both the AM and FM bands, multiple DSP filtering choices
> and SSB capability, the radio is a tremendous value for those living
> outside of North America (at around $70).
>
>  Because the Chinese-made model has obviously been "inspired" (to use
> a generous term) by the C.Crane Skywave SSB model (which was manufactured
> at the nearby Redsun factories in China), direct shipments of the D-808
> from China to North American purchasers seem to have been forbidden by
> XHDAT.A, though. This is apparently to avoid a copyright lawsuit from
> C.Crane, whose Skywave SSB circuitry is quite closely duplicated in the
> D-808. A single eBay seller has devised a way to skirt around this
> restriction by shipping to North America through Israel, though-- ending up
> with a booming business by selling 62 models to the USA and Canada at the
> marked up price of $112.87 + $10 shipping.
>
>  Despite its murky design pedigree, though, there is no doubt about
> the radio's excellent potential. It is controlled by the SiLabs Si4735 DSP
> chip, offering multiple DSP selectivity choices along with the SSB
> capability. If you have purchased the D-808 and are satisfied with its
> stock performance, that's wonderful. But if you would like to transform it
> into something like a dream travel portable, why not consider installation
> of a 7.5 inch Medium Wave or Longwave loopstick? Both of those models have
> been built here, and they are real thrillers. The 7.5" Medium Wave
> loopstick D-808 model was taken to the Rockwork ocean cliff in Oregon state
> recently, where it received the following signal from 1017-A3Z in Tonga (10
> kW at 5,632 miles/ 9,064 km) all by itself at 1301 UTC on August 8th. It is
> even picks up the 5 kW Australian horse racing station 2KY (in Sydney) as a
> weak co-channel in the middle of the recording
> https://dreamcrafts.box.com/s/tp3i89vky6p7hbylgkk1bp4pa5nvnuk
>  u
>
>  For those who would like to construct one of these 7.5" loopstick
> D-808 models, a full construction article is being prepared. The article is
> complete through the introduction, background information on the model and
> the construction parts list, and the partial article up to that point is
> posted at http://www.mediafire.com/file/yc29lowg0do41d1/Supercharging_
> the_XHDATA_D_-_Copy.doc/file
>
> The link is provided for those who wish to order the construction parts
> while the rest of the article is being wrapped up, which should be
> completed in about a week. Good luck to all who take the plunge!
>
>
> 73 and Good DX,
>
> Gary DeBock (in Puyallup, WA, USA)
>
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Doxytronics loop (was: Loop comparisons / suggestions)

[Guy Atkins]

Colin,

FYI the Doxytronics loop is passive, so there's no amp. It's also simple
and well-designed... I think you'd like both the circuit and construction
quality in this nice, portable loop.

73, Guy


On Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 10:44 AM, R. Colin Newell 
wrote:

> You can send it to me via the USPS and I will fix it for the cost of
> shipping it.
>
> + I will get to see what is under the hood --
>
> Provided that the AMP is not buried in epoxy.
>
>
>
>
>
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[IRCA] ​ Re: [nrc-am] Loop comparisons / suggestions

[Guy Atkins]

I liked the highly portable Doxytronics loop for that reason too. I once
took it with me on a hike along with a portable receiver for some "on the
trail" SWLing. It only takes a minute to assemble or disassemble the PVC
frame and coax loop element.

I'd forgotten about Doxy's web site; in fact, when I bought mine it was
through their site, not Ebay.

BTW this is a passive loop, not amplified. That way there is no added noise
and the preselection of the tuner helps avoid overload that can sometimes
happen with receivers and amplified antennas. Now, if the Doxy covered
medium wave too, I'd still own it :^)

73, Guy


> -- Forwarded message --
> From: "Paul B. Walker, Jr." 
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2018 11:44:51 -0400
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] [nrc-am] Loop comparisons / suggestions
> Guy, you can also buy it online on their website http://doxytronics.com/
>
> Doxy is portable.. its collapsable, you could easily stuff it in a backup
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] [nrc-am] Loop comparisons / suggestions

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Russ,

I've owned the DoxyTronics loop that Paul mentioned, and also have compared
it to my Wellbrook ALA1530LN Pro.

The DoxyTronics is no longer sold under that name, but it still comes from
an Ebay seller in Oregon who goes by the username "antennas4less". In his
auctions he calls it a "SignalLoop HF-315".

Like Paul I also found the DoxyTronics to cover a wider range than
advertised but it doesn't even get close to covering medium wave. At times
it was competitive with the Wellbrook on shortwave--mostly medium strength
signals and above--but I found it to be in 2nd place on really weak DX. The
big advantage of the Wellbrook for SDR radio users is its broadband
coverage; the DoxyTronics loop needs tuning & repeaking every 5 kHz or so
for best performance. If you are OK with shortwave only performance, and
one signal at a time tuning, this ~130 loop is a really great buy. Plus, it
knocks down for easy transportation to camping trips, DX outings, etc.

I have seen some privately-shared lab measurements and test results of the
W6LVP antenna. The two things I recall about it was noisy amplification
compared to Wellbrook loops, and sensitivity variations across its
frequency range. However, for the cost I would say the W6LVP is a pretty
good value for the USA DXer, and it's made well...but so are the Wellbrook
Loops. If you can afford Wellbrook loops they are certainly the top
performing loops all around, and are worth the cost.

For a weak signal medium wave comparison and video of two models of the
Wellbrook loops, see this article:
https://swling.com/blog/2015/11/guest-post-wellbrook-1530lnpro-vs-ala1530s-imperium-loop-antennas/

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA




>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Russ Johnson 
> To: nrc...@googlegroups.com, irca@hard-core-dx.com
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2018 10:36:16 -0400
> Subject: [IRCA] Loop comparisons / suggestions
>
> Good Morning,
>
> I will likely be purchasing a magnetic loop this fall.  I wasn’t able to
> find much on the web in terms of direct comparisons between the Wellbook
> ALA1530LP,  W6LVP loop and DX Engineering RF-PRO-1B.
>
> Ability to withstand the weather is of prime importance.  While cost is
> always a consideration, of equal importance are performance (of course),
> durability, product support, ease of installation and use.
>
> I’d love to hear any thoughts, experiences and suggestions.
>
> Thank you ,
>
> Russ Johnson
> Lexington NC
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Craig Barnes' 3.5 inch Baby FSL Rocks at Rockwork

[Guy Atkins]

Gary, you described the effort very well. Seattle DXer Chuck Hutton and
Andy Ikin (Wellbrook Communications) were also involved in the discussion
on how to successfully make an FSL broadband in reception.

I thought I had success with a FLG100 module as an interface when the combo
provided weak audio on 738 kHz Tahiti (when they were still on the air)
from suburban Puyallup, WA. Later tests right at the coast however showed
the supposed "broadband" FSL to be a very mediocre performer. My guess is
that Tahiti was propagating extra well that night into Puyallup, enabling
reception even on the altered FSL antenna. (This arrangement had the wire
ends of the FSL coil directly attached to the input of the Wellbrook
FLG100, no variable capacitor used).

I'm sure it would be much easier to achieve good, *single-frequency*
reception with a FSL antenna and SDR radio (or other 50-ohms receiver for
that matter). There are different approaches to coupling coils and
impedance matching on the web--check out this link for instance:
https://www.nonstopsystems.com/radio/frank_radio_antenna_magloop.htm
This wouldn't be much different than coupling coils for air core box loops,
feeding a receiver. After the discouragement with the broadband efforts I
didn't pursue single frequency FSL reception.

Also, Everett Sharp tried coupling coils with FSLs. If I remember
correctly, he posted in the Ultralight Radio group that he had gotten best
performance with a 64:1 ratio of transformer between the coupling coil and
50-ohms antenna input.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



-- Forwarded message --
> From: Gary DeBock 
> To: Rick Kunath , "Rick Kunath' via NRC-AM" <
> nrc...@googlegroups.com>
> Cc: "America, Mailing" 
> Bcc:
> Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2018 13:57:09 -0700 (PDT)
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] [nrc-am] Craig Barnes' 3.5 inch Baby FSL Rocks at
> Rockwork
> Hi Rick,
>
> <<< Has anyone done any experiments with an inductive secondary coupling
> loop on an FSL or a high-impedance unity gain preamp with an unbalanced low
> impedance output across the loop winding? I.e. what would be needed to
> couple to a receiver or an SDR? >>>
>
> Local buddy Guy Atkins (also living here in Puyallup) has performed
> multiple experiments attempting to match the compact gain performance of
> the FSL antenna with the Perseus-SDR receiver, and back in 2013 Guy tried
> almost every conceivable interface (low-noise Wellbrook preamps, sensing
> coils, direct connections, etc.) in order to somehow match the
> single-optimized-frequency performance of the FSL with the state-of-the-art
> Perseus-SDR receiver. Because of intense interest among local broadband
> DXers over $1K was used in these experiments, which unfortunately ran into
> the stark reality that a high-Q, single-optimized-frequency antenna with
> razor-sharp tuning peaks is not very compatible with a spectrum capture
> receiver requiring a broadband antenna to record all MW frequencies
> simultaneously. That's not to say that the FSL antenna couldn't be used on
> single frequencies to provide exceptional gain for the Perseus-SDR (or
> other 50 ohm antenna input receivers) once an impedance-matching system is
> devised, and I'm pretty sure that Guy experimented with those type of
> matching systems, and how to get good performance on narrow frequency
> ranges with a Perseus + FSL combination. But the essential fact remains
> that almost all Perseus-SDR DXers are oriented toward spectrum capture of
> the entire MW frequency range, and will not be satisfied with exceptional
> antenna performance on one single frequency.
>
> 73, Gary DeBock (in Puyallup, WA, USA)
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Perseus was [drake r8a for sale]

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Les,

In my opinion the #1 difference between the "serious" consumer-grade SDRs
(I'm not counting the cheap RTL dongles) is overload resistance. When the
playing field is leveled--at a low noise, low RF DXpedition setting, the
contenders are very, very close in weak signal DXing prowess.

Although it doesn't include MW comparisons you may be interested in a piece
I wrote for the SWLing Post blog: https://swling.com/blog/
2018/02/results-airspy-hf-vs-elad-fdm-s2-weak-signal-comparisions/

In this article, readers weighed in with their opinions on best audio
recovery between the Elad FDM-S2 and the relatively new AirSpy HF+ after
listening to a few recordings from an earlier article
<https://swling.com/blog/2018/01/digging-in-the-noise-weak-signal-audio-recovery-with-the-airspy-hf-and-elad-fdm-s2/>.
Les, I'd be interested to know of your thoughts between the Elad and
AirSpy, since you own both receivers.

Is Perseus really discontinued? I see that Universal Radio no longer sells
it, but the two European distributors I checked still offer the Perseus.

My own opinion is that these SDRs are roughly and equally capable for DXing
*in a dxpedition setting* as I described: NetSDR+, Perseus, WR-G31DDC,
WR-G33DDC, FDM-S2, HF+, and RSPduo. Of all the SDRplay models, I owned all
but the earliest model at one time or another...they all were lacking (even
on DXpeditions) except the new RSPduo. I've been very pleased with the
RSPduo at home and away. Likewise, the HF+ receivers I have work great and
are a superb value for the price.

If you can afford them, I think the NetSDR+, WR-33DDC, and Perseus are the
cream of the crop, in a challenging RF environment or not. I'd give
runner-up status to the HF+ and RSPduo in both usage settings.

Let's not forget the software options. Most of the SDRs mentioned can run
under more than one program, but you may love one and hate the other. I
think the two top alternative programs are SDR-Console V3 and the latest
HDSDR.

Well, there are a few thoughts... strictly my own opinion and of course
"YMMV". Maybe someone else can comment on FM DXing performance with SDRs.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



-- Forwarded message --
> From: Les Rayburn 
> To: "IRCA Radio List - irca@hard-core-dx_com" 
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2018 10:15:11 -0500
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Perseus was [drake r8a for sale]
>
> Despite advances in SDR technology, the Perseus continues to maintain a
> reputation for excellence yet to be reached by more recent models. My
> questions are:
>
> 1.) Is this real or just the basis of early adopters who don’t like the
> idea of lower priced competitors? For example, I own the Elad FDM-S2 and
> the Airspy HF+—how do these compare to the Perseus on both MW and FM (with
> adapter for Perseus)?
>
> 2.) Any links to head-to-head comparisons that are worth viewing?
>
> 3.) Why was the Perseus model discontinued? Any chance of a revival?
>
>
> I really wish I’d bought one when they were easily available. I’m tired of
> trolling ebay looking for one!
>
> :-)
>
>
> 73,
>
> Les Rayburn, N1LF
> 121 Mayfair Park
> Maylene, AL 35114
> EM63nf
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] drake r8a for sale

[Guy Atkins]

You can actually run most SDRs on much lower priced computer hardware than
you might imagine. The main (free) SDR software packages have progressed in
processing efficiency the last few years; I'm specifically thinking of
lower CPU requirements for SDR-Console and SDRuno. IMHO the HDSDR software
has been CPU-thrifty from the start.

If all you're doing is DXing the MW band, an older Intel Core i3 laptop
will handle the Mbps sampling rate needed, and even many of the newer
netbooks of yore. I remember at the dawn of Perseus, Bjarne Mjelde and I
used low-end MSI Wind netbooks just fine with Perseus. That said, an i3 or
i5 computer would give more "headroom" for the first time SDR user.

Alternatively on the low end of PCs, the newer Atom processors can handle
SDRs just fine. Three years ago I ran an Elad FDM-S2 successfully on an HP
Stream 7 tablet with CPU usage of just 11 to 13 percent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FAwxwI95Zg


That Stream 7 tablet was only $99 new three years ago, so price really
isn't a barrier as much as some people claim for computers for SDRs.

Don't like Windows for SDRs? There are some Mac SDR programs out there now.
I can't name them as I don't follow the Apple computer world closely, but
the software exists. I also know of some DXers who use Boot Camp on their
MacBooks for running SDRs with their chosen flavor of Windows.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
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Re: [IRCA] Five DXer Session at the Rockwork Cliff

[Guy Atkins]

Hi James,

Thanks for your offer to contribute new files, but my Perseus blog was
active from 2007-2011; I have not been adding to the WAV file directory
since then. I've only maintained the existing recordings in cloud storage
for archive purposes.

73,


Guy Atkins

Puyallup, WA



> -- Forwarded message --
> From: 
> To: "'Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America'" <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2018 15:52:50 -0500
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Five DXer Session at the Rockwork Cliff
> Thanks Guy for the link!
> Do you have any SDR recordings from the past year or two?
> I do have some ELAD recordings from Corpus Christi, TX DX trip from 2015
> and
> 2016 and also from here at home base in Cedar Creek, TX I can contribute to
> your web page if you wish them?
> Thanks
>
> James Niven
> Austin, Texas
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Five DXer Session at the Rockwork Cliff

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Mark,

I still have all those old WAV files from the blog available for anyone who
wants to try them. As you'll recall they were recorded by DXers from many
continents and locations. The earliest ones are from Grayland and
Cappahayden and date from November, 2008. These are all Perseus files,
which should play well in HDSDR also (If I recall correctly).

Here's the link:  http://www.mediafire.com/folder/1shbad73mby1c/wav

73,

Guy


---
Subject: Re: [IRCA] Five DXer Session at the Rockwork Cliff
From: Mark Connelly >
Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2018 01:17:52 -0400


Is anyone going to put some of the DXpedition's better Perseus files
up on a cloud server?

Almost 10 years ago Guy Atkins was doing that kind of thing with his
now-defunct "Five Below" webpage.

Seems that it would be even easier to find somewhere to park ~2 GB
capture files now.
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[IRCA] ​ Re: Five DXer Session at the Rockwork Cliff

[Guy Atkins]

I hope I'm adding clarification and not fuel to the fire, but this
annotated satellite view map and Rockwork cliffs lat./long. spreadsheet
might help:

https://app.box.com/s/x49nvbi61nmzxrpa9b0pu2ji1bhhftng
I made the map of cliffs #2, 3, and 4 in 2012, which also shows the
relative angle of the rock walls near each cliff (to get an idea of
domestic signals attenuation, etc.).

The .xlsx spreadsheet is from 2011, and I *think* Gary created this
originally. I have compared the Google-reported latitude and longitudes of
the Rockwork turnouts with the numbers in the spreadsheet, and they
indicate that turnout #1 is furthest north as Gary's mentioned (and also
shows as the trail head for Elk Flats Trail on Google Maps). Turnout #6 is
listed in the spreadsheet as "right next to milepost 41 sign" and this can
be confirmed with the Street Map view.

73,

Guy


From: Gary DeBock 
> To: Chuck Hutton , "America, Mailing" <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2018 20:31:54 -0700 (PDT)
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Five DXer Session at the Rockwork Cliff
> FWIW (maybe a little), in the informal numbering system used by DXers
> since 2011, Chuck, you were indeed at Rockwork 3 on Tuesday morning, not
> Rockwork 5. But none of these numbers are "official," and anybody can call
> any turnoff whatever he wants.
>
> In August of 2011 (the very first time that a wacky DXer tried setting up
> at the plunging cliff) I assigned numbers to each of the Rockwork Highway
> 101 turnoffs, starting with #1 for the first turnoff as you approach the
> cliff from the north. As such, #2 is the relatively large turnoff as you
> proceed up the hill, and #3 is the somewhat smaller turnoff after that. By
> now everyone knows where #4 is (including the squatters), while #5 is
> another relatively small turnoff near the crest of Highway 101. Turnoff #6
> is the rather wide, open area at the crest of Highway 101, which always had
> plenty of space for antenna setup until the squatters discovered it.
>
> Up until last week none of these numbers were very important, since every
> DXer simply set up at #4, everybody knew where it was, and everybody
> accepted the name. After this summer's squatter proliferation we had to
> scramble every morning for antenna setup space, though, and the turnoff
> numbers suddenly became very important in pre-session scouting text
> messages. In any case, if you wish to call turnoff #3 by a different number
> (#5), that's certainly OK-- the only risk is that the other DXers may
> misunderstand you.
>
> Gary
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Turbocharged Tonga

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Gary,

You are so right about  Tonga since it’s gone 24/7! This re-energized
station has been a  powerhouse into Grayland this week too, and like you
said the vibrant signal is a welcome replacement for Tahiti 738. It makes
for enjoyable wide-bandwidth listening!

For any carrier chasers out there, after calibration my SDR's software
reports their signal as 5.5 Hz on the high side of 1017. At least a couple
other station peaks were noted slightly lower than 1017.

Good DX,

Guy
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Re: [IRCA] Sangean PRD15

[Guy Atkins]

​Hi Fred,

Are you thinking of the Sangean HDR-16 receiver? The PR-D15 does not offer
HD FM or HD AM.

I look foward to trying the HDR-16 sometime, as it has the same form factor
as the PR-D15 which I enjoy.

73,

Guy​ Atkins
Puyallup, WA


-- Forwarded message --
> From: Fred Schroyer 
> To: irca@hard-core-dx.com
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2018 10:35:27 -0400
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Sangean PRD15
> Interesting comments on the PRD15! It is indeed an attractive, well-built
> radio, with surprisingly good audio, and excellent FM performance...not
> nearly as sensitive for FM HD decode as the Sparc, but it does well on a
> local FM HD (WVAQ HD1,2,3 Morgantown WV).
>
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Re: [IRCA] phasing units, then and now

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Mark,

That was an excellent overview of DX hobbyist use of phasers! You covered
the early history which I wasn't aware of, as I was mostly DXing on the
tropical bands when Gordon Nelson and others did their pioneering work.

There is one more phase (LoL) developing now--software based methods using
coherent dual tuners (or channels).​ I'm sure you're aware of Afedri's AFE822x
SDR-Net device
<http://www.afedri-sdr.com/index.php/new-afe822x-sdr-net-dual-channel>. It
was introduced a couple of years ago, but unfortunately software has not
appeared to easily take advantage of phasing. If you jump through a lot of
hoops and complexities with LINRAD, you can catch a glimpse of the future
of software phasing, but it's nothing practical for a DXer's use in my
opinion.

Much more recently, SDRplay's RSPduo <https://www.sdrplay.com/rspduo/> was
introduced with its dual tuners. I have one myself, mainly for its future
possibilities. I'm hoping that the 14-bit structure and additional front
end filters will provide better basic performance than earlier RSP models
I've owned.I expect it to be neck-and-neck with the AirSpy HF+ SDRs in a
quiet DXpedition setting...maybe not so much in my suburban RF jungle.

SDRplay looks to be the most active of all the SDR software developers, and
they say they fully intend to offer phasing features in a future release of
SDRuno software. Their activity, enthusiasm, and customer support make me
think they are the group most likely to take software phasing out of the
laboratory and into the DXer's shack. If he has the time and inclination,
Simon Brown of SDR-Console software could implement RSPduo phasing too, but
he's *not* dropped any hints about this.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
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Re: [IRCA] 630-Cook Islands Sign On Routine (1555 UTC)

[Guy Atkins]

>
> ​Hi Gary,

Thanks for the RCI sign-on routine recording! I had to laugh when I heard
the tail end of the audio, when the announcer's voice kicks in. Radio Cook
Islands is still sounding over-modulated and bass-heavy, just like they
were *25* years ago when I visited!​ Audio from their tapes or carts were
fine, but announcer's voices tended to sound really distorted.

Anyone interested in hearing a vintage Radio Cook Islands sign-on should
check out my recording #1 from this article on the SWLing Post:
https://swling.com/blog/2015/07/radio-cook-islands-guys-1993-visit-and-recordings/

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Gary DeBock <d1028g...@comcast.net>
> To: "America, Mailing" <irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2018 18:24:12 -0700 (PDT)
> Subject: [IRCA] 630-Cook Islands Sign On Routine (1555 UTC)
> 630-Radio Cook Islands in Rarotonga is one of the most exotic Pacific
> island stations on the MW band, with a reputation of being a real
> underperformer. Here in Aitutaki (about 200 km to the north) you can even
> hear the Australian co-channels 4QN and 2PB in its null at night.
>
>
> Here is the sign on routine for 630-RCI, recorded at 1555 UTC this morning
> (April 12). In the 35 seconds before sign on you can hear the Oz
> co-channels before the horns sound at 35 seconds, starting the day off for
> RCI  https://dreamcrafts.box.com/s/ac25a13oykoc3jmk4e9i898pb8cea0k4
>
>
> 73, Gary DeBock (in Aitutaki, Cook Islands)
>
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Re: [IRCA] Cook Islands (Aitutaki) Ultralight DU's for 4-10

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Gary,

I guess Niue must have ditched their MW station some time ago, then! Niue
is 670 miles distant from Rarotonga and at the time I traveled there (1993)
I figured it would be an easy catch. The station was called Radio Sunshine
and it was on 594 kHz. Unfortunately I didn't hear any sign of them despite
checking every day and evening. BTW, I was staying on the west/southwest
side of the island and it would have been an all water path to Niue.

OK...I just did some checking on radioheritage.net, and evidently the Niue
MW outlet signed off for good in the early 1990s; they may have actually
been silent already in 1993 when I traveled to Rarotonga.


73, Guy


On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 8:41 PM, Gary DeBock  wrote:

> Hi Guy,
>
> Yes, the propagation and weather have both been wild and wacky in Aitutaki
> so far.
>
> <<< BTW, have you logged Niue yet? I tried every day and evening to hear
> them
> but without success. >>>
>
> I didn't know Niue had any MW station (the WRTH only shows a single FM
> one). But if it does have anything on MW it should be a piece of cake from
> here.
>
> Gary
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Cook Islands (Aitutaki) Ultralight DU's for 4-10

[Guy Atkins]

​Hi Gary,

​You're obviously having a blast there on Aitutaki, and getting blasted by
wind, too!

When Rochelle and I went to the Cook Islands, it was also during the 2nd
week of April. We encountered crazy weather too but without the high
winds...just moderately windy. We'd have torrential downpours for a few
minutes, then a parting of the clouds and the blazing sun would cause
billowing steam to rise from the streets and taro fields. After a while
we'd be seeking shade, and happy when the cloud cover reconvened. This
cycle repeated over and over every few hours, and for each day of our trip.

I only wish we had sought out Aitutaki as you have; we stayed on Rarotonga
the entire time.

BTW, have you logged Niue yet? I tried every day and evening to hear them
but without success.

Kia Orana,

Guy

​

>
> From: Gary DeBock 
> To: Volodya S , "America, Mailing" <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2018 02:34:59 -0700 (PDT)
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Cook Islands (Aitutaki) Ultralight DU's for 4-9
> Kia Orana, Walt!
>
>
> Yes, I heard the cyclone update on Tony Ward's 990-Fiji Gold at 0855
> tonight-- pretty scary. We are getting pounded by heavy rain and wind every
> day here in Aitutaki, but they say that this is normal here for early
> April.  Fortunately the DU propagation has been so phenomenal that even a
> 7.5" loopstick Ultralight provides huge signals on almost every target
> station, even without the 5" TSA-friendly FSL. Stay safe!
>
>
> Gary
>
>
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[IRCA] ​Re: First Thoughts on the Skywave SSB Portable

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Gary,

Well, there's someone across the valley from you who's also eager to do an
antenna transplant to his Skywave SSB  :^)  I've been considering whether
to attach a 7.5" Amidon rod antenna or try something else made from parts
on-hand.

Because of the SSB mode I haven't thought of this radio as an Ultralight
contender, but as a fun little radio for DXing apart from ULR pursuits.

I'm also considering adding a line-out jack like I did to the original
Skywave, as there may be line-level audio ports on this particular SiLabs
chip as there is on the non-SSB SiLabs chip model. This mod takes good
magnification, a tiny soldering iron tip, and a very steady hand though!

Good DX,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, wA



> -- Forwarded message --
> From: d1028g...@comcast.net
> To: "America, Mailing" <irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2017 05:05:04 + (UTC)
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] First Thoughts on the Skywave SSB Portable
> Hi Guy,
>
> Thanks for posting your initial impressions on the CC Skywave SSB model,
> and I'm happy that the new radio is meeting your expectations.
>
> <<< On weak daytime signals its almost as good as the 909X and Satellit
> Exec
> but falls behind on the weakest of the MW signals... that's expected due to
> the bigger ferrite in the bigger radios. >>>
>
> Yes, this is the primary reason why I'm about to violate C.Crane's
> warranty by transplanting 7.5" loopsticks into a couple of these Skywave
> SSB models (I wonder how many DXers would be eager to do this on a $169.99
> radio?).
>
> ​​
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] IRCA Digest, Vol 164, Issue 22

[Guy Atkins]

>
> ​Hi Walt,
>

​These newer SiLabs chip-based receivers with SSB are leagues ahead of the
older cheap sets that included SSB or a BFO. I've noticed that the exact
zero beat (within 10 Hz anyway) varies a little bit after the set has been
on a while, but it's nothing like the drift with cheap sets from years ago.
Considering the price, the Skywave SSB's performance is quite commendable.

The alignment seems quite good for a low cost portable-- on my unit the USB
(when checking via ECSS tuning on a strong local) is right on, but LSB is
70-80 Hz high. The fine tuning control is easy to adjust for natural
speech.

I've owned three radios that I believe have the same SiLabs chip (the one
with 10 Hz SSB tuning ability)-- the PL-880, the GP-5/SSB and now the
Skywave SSB. I like the Skywave SSB the best of the bunch... the others
were sold.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



​
>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Volodya S <can...@gmail.com>
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2017 01:10:25 +
> Subject: [IRCA] First Thoughts on the Skywave SSB Portable
> Guy, what’s the alignment like especially on SSB?  My experience with side
> band reception on cheaper sets have generally been poor due to lack of
> stability and poor alignment. Comments?  Walt
>
>
>
>
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[IRCA] First Thoughts on the Skywave SSB Portable

[Guy Atkins]

I received my *Skywave SSB* yesterday... it's a nice unit! The packaging
and accessories make a good impression too. I like it better than the
original Skywave for sure.

On weak daytime signals its almost as good as the 909X and Satellit Exec
but falls behind on the weakest of the MW signals... that's expected due to
the bigger ferrite in the bigger radios.

However the SSB modes in the new Skywave are a really good addition for
tight signal situations! For instance, there's a fairly low power (4.5 kw)
Milwaukie, Oregon station just 10 kHz up from powerhouse KOMO 1000, and the
Skywave can hear it when using USB...indoors and in the daytime. Not only
that, using LSB I can easily hear a 5 kw Dalles, Oregon outlet on 1440,
just 10 kHz away from my strongest local KSUH 1450 (1 Kw omni-directional,
Korean lang., 1.4 miles away). I'm *very* impressed with what this little
handful has accomplished in the short time I've had the radio.

This radio should do well at the coast with receiving some TPs and DUs when
using LSB/USB, especially with a coupled loop.

FM is of course superb on the Skywave SSB, just like on similar
SiLabs-chipped receivers. The weather channels are good to have too, and I
read in the manual that the radio can even be set to receive weather ALERT
broadcasts such as when severe thunderstorms or tornadoes are approaching.

The radio's build quality is just fine for the price. I like the new gray
color, and I don't mind the "Speak & Spell" toy speaker shape once I saw
the radio in person (I admit it--I'm a designer and the looks of a radio
are more important to me than to many DXers). The Skywave SSB's build
quality is pretty good too.

The radio seems sensitive enough (MW & HF) and I haven't noticed any
abnormal amount of digital noises. Like many radio hobbyists, my own home
has enough buzzes and hash to cover up any weaker circuit oddities.

Speaking of oddies, I've never encountered a radio that ramps up in volume
over 1-2 seconds when you turn it on... has anyone else?

I'll be interested in my cross-town pal Gary DeBock's opinion of the the
Skywave SSB after he's taken his for a test drive.

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
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Re: [IRCA] IRCA Digest, Vol 164, Issue 14

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Patrick,

Wow, you've had some great Goodwill finds lately! Now I know where all the
electronics bargains have gone-- to the smaller Goodwill stores! I used to
go to the main Seattle Goodwill (near downtown) during my lunch hour at
work, but they wised up to the most valuable electronics. These better
items are pulled aside for their online sales now.

I'll be DXing near Tillamook next month so I'll have to check out the
Goodwill store there.

My best Goodwill finds over time include a nice Zenith Trans-Oceanic Royal
1000-1 model for $6.95, but the best by far was a rare Stax brand
electrostatic headphones amplifier that is sought after in the audiophile
hobby. It was selling for $29 at the Puyallup Goodwill, but I sold it on
Ebay for over $400... and I didn't even have the proper electrostatic
headphones to test it with.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA




> From: Patrick Martin <mwd...@webtv.net>
> To: IRCA <irca@hard-core-dx.com>, NRC <a...@nrcdxas.org>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2017 06:16:41 +
> Subject: [IRCA] Sony XDRS10HPiP radio
> Hi everyone,
>
>
> Today I went to Goodwill and I found in very good shape, a Sony XDRS10HDiP
> HD Radio.  I plugged it in and it came on and seemed to work. No price on
> it, so I asked. The clerk said "How about $4.99, but the radio is "as is",
> no returns. I even got my 10% Senior Citizen discount, so it was $4.49!!!
> Got it home, hooked up the FM Yagi and it works perfectly. I got several FM
> stations in HD including KJR FM Seattle. It even has a connection on the
> top for an Ipod. I tried the Ipod connection   and it works too. This radio
> has two front speakers with Surround Sound and sounds great! The signal is
> even a hair better than on my XDR-F1 HD. That is the 3rd good deal I have
> found of late at Goodwill. This was the best of the bunch. First I found a
> Turntable/cassette/CD recorder for $20. Then I found a wifi radio for $15.
> All three work fine too. On the XDRS10HPiP radio, I have not tried the AM
> at yet. My XDR-F1 HD gets KSL in HD at times at night. I presume this one
> will too. Depending on the noise level.  I am really pleased with this!
>
>
> Patrick Martin Seaside OR KGED QSL Manager
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Florence

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Michael,

I know of a portable broadband loop design that I think you'd really like
for use with your FLG100. A DXer pal of mine, Dave Aichelman from Grants
Pass, Oregon came up with a clever "Tent Pole Loop" antenna a few years
ago. I have two of his setups and they work really well with either a
Wellbrook FLG100 or ALA100 module,

He has documented the design in a handful of files that are in the "Files"
section of the Perseus SDR Yahoo Group, which you are likely a member of.
Look for the subfolder titled "Example Antenna Models
<https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/perseus_SDR/files/Example%20antenna%20models/>"
and then you can download the three JPG photos of his setup, plus four PDFs
that have the words "2M Loop" or "2M Microloop" in the titles. These PDFs
are details EZNEC computer models of his Tent Pole Loop using the FLG100,
the ALA100, and in single and dual phased loop configurations.

I have each of his loop designs stored in plastic pouches (heavy duty
freezer bags actually) that are approximately 12 inches by 10 inches by 3
inches. (The collapsed tent poles are a separate bundle.) When set up
properly, the crossed tent poles form an "X" that's about seven feet square
which hold the antenna loop element. For the FLG100 version, a 1000 ohms
carbon potentiometer provide the adjustment for the rearward null.

The loops rest right on the ground, but to support the tent pole loop
vertically I use a couple of step-in electric fence posts
<https://www.orschelnfarmhome.com/view/product/si-step-in-post-with-sunguard-ii/si6231104>
and 2-3 cable ties. After some practice it's just a five minute or less job
to set up this portable loop design.  Dave likes to use a pair of adjustable
rifle hunter's shooting sticks
<https://www.amazon.com/Mossy-Oak-Hunting-Accessories-MO-DSS-BL/dp/B003RY5XQW>
to accomplish the same thing (at a higher cost than the fence posts). The
limitation of the step-in fence posts is that you can only support the
antenna over soft earth or grass; the device Dave uses will work over a
hard surface.

I've used the Tent Pole Loop design for about five years now, while camping
and on quickie DXpeditions. I find it a great way to make use of the
excellent Wellbrook ALA/FLG antenna elements but in small, self-supporting
package. Once you have the tent poles and smaller parts on hand, it takes
an hour of trimming and fitting to prepare the loop "kit"...then it's ready
to go for its first use.

Bottom line-- such an antenna might work well for you too, Michael, in that
beautiful Tuscany countryside!

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


-- Forwarded message --
> From: Michael Yule <michaeldy...@gmail.com>
> To: markwa1...@aol.com
> Cc: "irca@hard-core-dx.com" <irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Bcc:
> Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2017 18:09:05 +
> Subject: [IRCA] Florence
> Hi Mark, thanks for your message on list. It's a different DX situation
> here than Nova Scotia for sure, and there are times that I'm really gonna
> miss the DKAZ! But there are some compensations for me, like well heck, I'm
> living in Florence...! I'm going to be starting out with a 'Frequent Flyer'
> FSL that Gary is very generously sending over to me, and am looking for a
> portable to go with it, as I can't couple it directly to my ELAD. I think
> I've narrowed the choice down to either a Tecsun 660 or a Sony EX5MK2, and
> I will take the bus about 20 minutes to the hills outside of the city, a
> small town called Fiesole where I think reception will be much better than
> in town here. We aren't going to buy a car as there really isn't any need
> to apart from mini DXpeditions as everything in the city is in walking
> range and if we are going on a longer trip that needs a car we'll rent one.
> Most places can be reached though through the excellent public transport
> available. That being said, I have been considering ways of trying to make
> a foldable version of your broadband loop so I can bring the ELAD and do
> some broadband captures, which is what I'd also really like to do. Is there
> any way I can use my existing FLG100 with this rather than having to
> construct the amplifier? I'd like to use as many existing parts as
> possible. I sent myself the FLG, the transformers I used for the CAT5 and
> one of Colin's Vactrols from Nova Scotia before I left along with a couple
> of toroids and some other things, and they arrived safe and somewhat sound,
> athough Poste Italia made me do a lot of 'splainin what exactly I was
> trying to import and made me pay an import fee.
>

​​
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Re: [IRCA] Greetings from Florence

[Guy Atkins]

>
> ​Hi Michael,
>

​Wow, you've certainly moved a long distance away from your Vancouver BC
home where I visited you in the late 1980s or early 90s! ​The new place in
Firenze sounds very nice from every perspective except potential RFI  :^(

​Sadly, I had no success in making the FSL design both broadband *and* as
sensitive/selective as it is when inductively coupled to a receiver for
"single frequency" usage.​ I had excellent input and ideas from Gary and
especially Chuck Hutton, but we could not overcome major losses when trying
to make a broadband FSL. The best approach was to remove the capacitor and
connect the FSL's coil ends to a Wellbrook FLG100LN module's wire inputs,
and power the FLG100LN in its normal fashion. Using this component was on
the suggestion of Wellbrook's owner Andy Ikin, based on his knowledge of
the input impedance for the module. Using this setup I was initially
excited to hear (weakly) 738 kHz RFO Tahiti from my inland home of
Puyallup, WA, but later discovered that the "broadband" FSL's sensitivity
was FAR below useful levels.

With an appropriate coupling link to a FSL antenna, it should be possible
to get a low-loss connection between a FSL and the 50 ohms input of a SDR
or other communications receiver. Everett Sharp experimented with coupling
coils on a FSL and he reported that the best results were with a 64:1
impedance transformation ratio (step-down). This will still require the air
variable capacitor be tuned for single-frequency reception.

I personally think it's highly unlikely a FSL antenna can be made
broadband, as the tuned L-C circuit--peaked on one frequency for major
gains in selectivity and sensitivity--is the key to its high performance.

If you can get out to the Tuscan countryside and away from RFI sources, the
Bonito Boni Whip would be a very compact, useful antenna to try with SDRs.
One of my articles on *The SWLing Post* is about the Boni Whip:
https://swling.com/blog/2017/07/portable-powerhouses-comparing-the-bonito-boni-whip-and-wellbrook-ala1530lnp-antennas/

​Good DXing in your new location,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA​


-- Forwarded message --
> From: Michael Yule <michaeldy...@gmail.com>
> To: "irca@hard-core-dx.com" <irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2017 16:07:41 +
> Subject: [IRCA] Greetings from Florence
>
> ​​
>
> So the next steps are going to be to review all the literature on FSL
> construction, decide how big I want to go, and start assembling materials..
> I dont know if Guy Atkins ever published anything on making the FSL
> broadband, but if he did could someone send me a link? And if anyone has
> one for sale, please let me know as well!
>
> Thanks very much everyone, I'll let you know as things progress. I might
> be able to help a bit on TA identification once I get going since I will be
> closer to the source as well!
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Michael Yule
> Firenze, Italia
>
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Re: [IRCA] New CC Skywave SSB Model is Unchanged on MW Band

[Guy Atkins]

>
>
> ​Hi Gary,

Greetings from across town!  :^)

Do you think the SSB model of the C. Crane Skywave radio will be
grandfathered into the Ultralight radio category, since its predecessor
without SSB is considered a true Ultralight? I don't recall a previous
situation where a ULR has gained a new reception mode that ​is not allowed
under the guidelines.

Does the addition of SSB take this radio out of the realm of "cheap
consumer grade" receivers? Not only is this an "advanced" mode, the radio
is also above the $100 USD price point.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



> -- Forwarded message --
> From: d1028g...@comcast.net
> To: "America, Mailing" <irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 08:05:08 + (UTC)
> Subject: [IRCA] New CC Skywave SSB Model is Unchanged on MW Band
> For those of you wondering if you should purchase the new CC Skywave SSB
> Model (with the sky-high price of $169.99, temporarily being offered at
> $149.99), please be advised that the new SSB capability is for the SW bands
> only. Anyone purchasing this model hoping to use it to check transoceanic
> DX carrier strength on the MW bands is going to be disappointed.
>
> During ocean cliff MW-DXpeditions an SSB spotting receiver is a very
> effective tool to keep track of emerging DU-DX targets for Ultralight radio
> and FSL antenna reception, and until now "Supercharged" ICF-2010 portables
> have been used for this purpose. I was curious whether the new CC Skywave
> SSB model might be able to perform this function, but upon reviewing
> C.Crane's operating manual for the model it was clear that the SSB function
> is only for the SW band https://www.ccrane.com/files/
> manual/RAD_CCRADIO_SKYWSSB/CC%20Skywave%20SSB%20Instruction%20Manual.pdf
>
> Because of the high price of the new model C.Crane may find it a challenge
> to sell these radios at the $169.99 list price, and until someone writes a
> review I'm kind of curious how effective the SSB function will be on SW
> without greater frequency resolution than the 1 kHz steps provided my the
> main tuning control (although not curious enough to pay $149.99 plus
> shipping to find out).
>
> 73 and Good DX,
> Gary DeBock (in Puyallup, WA, USA)
>
>
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[IRCA] Both DUs and TPs for Oct. 3, OR Coast

[Guy Atkins]

I'm only starting to review files for this morning from the Rockworks #4
site, but the morning was a mixture of TPs and DUs. In addition to 657 Star
Radio (Christian contemporary music, fair 1357) and 729 5RN (good @1355
w/USA journalist interview), I'm hearing a few snippets of English DU audio
on some other channels.

TPs from Japan predominated though--the usual, main NHK stations but also
weaker outlets like presumed JOQG Yamada on 1323 rising to a fair-good
level at 1406.

The view from the cliff as starlight gave way to a cloudless, sunny sky at
sunrise was just a prelude to today's 70-degree weather on the northern
Oregon coast.

Note to KAZ and Tim Tromp--I also saw the 60 Hz spike above 1098 kHz this
morning, but there was nothing below 1098. Perhaps if I had been recording
WAV  files earlier I would have seen the pair of 60 Hz tones.

73,

Guy
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[IRCA] Non-Fake Northern Lights News

[Guy Atkins]

​​
Although not as spectacular as the Alaskan Quoddy House, ME northern
lights, here is what was seen from Anacortes, Washington this week:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/northern-lights-
put-on-a-show-over-washington-state/vi-AAsCvOP
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[IRCA] ​Re: Vintage Kiwa Electronics MW Medium Wave Loop Antenna | eBay

[Guy Atkins]

>
> ​Hi Bob,

I recommend using the www.Gixen.com service for Ebay sniping. It's totally
free, unlike the commercial versions like Auctionsniper.

I've used Gixen for many years and have never had it fail on me. Their free
service is reported to be 99.5% reliable. They also offer an optional
"Gixen Mirror" service that provides that extra 0.5% confidence through an
additional mirrored server; it is only $6.00 per year. ​

​73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA​



> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Bob <superpro...@gmail.com>
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 11:41:38 -0400
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Vintage Kiwa Electronics MW Medium Wave Loop Antenna |
> eBay
> Or use Auctionsniper like I do and the bid goes in with less than 7 seconds
> to go, it helps prevent bidding wars as no one knows you are bidding until
> the last second. I've had so many things sniped away at the least second
> and tried this and became one of them, I usually win now and it's very
> cheap, haha!
>
> Bob Young
> Millbury, Ma
>
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[IRCA] ​Re: Vintage Kiwa Electronics MW Medium Wave Loop Antenna | eBay

[Guy Atkins]

​Nowhere in this auction is the all-important control box shown or
mentioned. Without the controller that powers and adjusts the antenna, it's
just a pricey paperweight.

​It's ​sad that the box is separated from the antenna or lost, as these
high performing loops rarely make an appearance on Ebay.

73, Guy



> ​
>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Eric Floden 
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 11:53:57 -0400
> Subject:
> ​​
> Re: [IRCA] Vintage Kiwa Electronics MW Medium Wave Loop Antenna | eBay
> Up to $73...
>
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Rockwork 4 Ultralight DU's for 8-1 (Conclusion)

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Gary,

It sounds like a productive and fun time for you, Tom, and Chuck! I'll be
returning to the cliffs the beginning of October, but don't think I can get
away while it's still "Kiwi Season".

Anyway, your 531 kHz UnID is likely More FM. The first third of your
recording is an advertisement with a few mentions of a "Skis Unlimited"
store, plus mentions of "this winter". Alexandra (Otago region) is near to
snow capped mountains at -45 degrees south latitude, while Innisfail (4KZ)
is downright tropical at 17 degrees south.

73,

Guy


> -- Forwarded message --
> From: d1028g...@comcast.net
> To: "America, Mailing" 
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 06:14:32 + (UTC)
> Subject: [IRCA] Rockwork 4 Ultralight DU's for 8-1 (Conclusion)
> Well, Theo mentioned that he was looking forward to some more recordings
> from the "Kiwi Cliff," so I thought I would oblige him. Not to mention the
> DU-English in some of these ads is way beyond the deciphering capability of
> any sleep-deprived Yankee DXer.
>
> 531 UnID-DU (either 4KZ or More FM) OK Theo, this lady's DU English speech
> is potent indeed, but her accent is so strong that she might as well be
> speaking Chinese (which would be easier for me to understand). Heard at
> 1255 in a mix with a weaker PI
> https://app.box.com/s/lbmcayqyvvivedjx1j1ru5ihdcdydsem
>
> ​​
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Re: [IRCA] Kiwa still doing receiver mods?

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Walt,

I've been emailing Craig back and forth recently, but sometimes it's a week
or two until I hear back from him. He's been going through some rehab from
a medical issue that requires him to make numerous visits to the Mayo
Clinic (where his wife works). Craig's doing well, but between his
significant commercial & government contracts and the time that his rehab
takes, he is spread very thin. I'm sure he'll get back to you eventually.

Craig has at least two Kiwa sites now. The original one for hobbyists is
still offering the SW1 capacitor upgrade:  http://kiwa.com/SW1.html   The
kiwa-electronics.com site is the one primarily for low pass, high pass, and
bandpass filters. I think he mentioned a 3rd site in the works which would
be for other customers.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Volodya S <can...@gmail.com>
> To: "d...@yahoogroups.com" <d...@yahoogroups.com>, Mailing list for the
> International Radio Club of America <irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2017 01:58:42 +
> Subject: [IRCA] Kiwa still doing receiver mods?
> I just picked up a pristine Sony icf-SW 1 receiver with the case and all
> the accessories.  Of course, it has the presumed problem with capacitors
> which I know Craig used to repair/install.  Does anyone know whether he
> still offers this service?  *His new website only talks about filters of
> various sorts.  He has also not answered my query from yesterday so far.
> 73,..Walt Salmaniw, Victoria, BC*
>
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Interesting presentation on the Bev-Flex 4 antenna

[Guy Atkins]

​Wasn't the idea of using coaxial cable as reversible Beverage antenna
elements presented in detail in Vic Misek's "Beverage Antenna Handbook"? I
had a copy in the late 1970s/early 1980s and seem to recall this
configuration.

​It's definitely not a new idea with Pixel/InLogis.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA

​

> ​
>
>
> -Original Message- From: Nick Hall-Patch
> Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 11:29 AM
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Interesting presentation on the Bev-Flex 4 antenna
>
> In case you don't have the time to watch a presentationthe
> antenna basics are described here:
>
> https://jkantennas.com/rx-antenna.html
>
> best wishes,
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> At 13:27 14-04-17, Bill Whitacre wrote:
>
>> A unique coax-based antenna system.  Works as bev, BOG, flag or EWE.
>>
>> Examples for the demo are AM stations at the top-end of the dial.
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZiQXihUvIo
>>
>> I have not tried this product nor do I have any connection to the
>> developers but it sure looks interesting.
>>
>> Bill Whitacre
>> Alexandria, VA
>> ___
>>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Elad FDM-S2 initial testing

[Guy Atkins]

​Hi Mark,

​​I can second what Chuck has said-- modern Atom processors can handle SDRs
with CPU cycles to spare as long as you don't go crazy and try to run too
many programs at once.

I have a Asus T100TA Transformer tablet/keyboard combination that has the
Bay Trail-T Z3740 processor and runs my FDM-S2 well, including MW recording
to an external SSD. I haven't used this combo since last fall and don't
recall the CPU percentage when recording or playing back files.

Here's a YouTube video I made of an older HP Stream 7 tablet (Atom Z3735)
running the Elad SDR, at around 13% CPU:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FAwxwI95Zg

It's worth noting that the other external bits and pieces needed to run a
WAV file recording, Atom tablet or laptop powered SDR setup can be fiddly,
with OTG adapters, possibly powered USB hubs, and external drives and
cables. However, I've found that the faster MicroSD cards or USB flash
drives like this Sandisk Extreme model
<http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-usb-3-0-thumb-drive/> can
substitute for an SSD drive for a few hours of MW recording depending on
size (Gb). I have also used the tiny Sandisk Ultra Fit flash drive
successfully.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA

> ​

>

>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Mark Connelly <markwa1...@aol.com>
> To: n...@ieee.org, irca@hard-core-dx.com
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2017 12:05:12 -0500
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Elad FDM-S2 initial testing
> With the Perseus I had a similar experience.  Atom-based netbook (MSI
> Wind) gave me OK record / playback up to 800 kHz bandwidth but it couldn't
> cut the mustard for 1600 kHz wide captures.  Core i3 or higher: no problem.
>
> Are DXers using any netbook form-factor PC's (screen 10 to 13 inch range)
> that have i3 or better CPU's?  Seems like that's what you'd really want for
> backpacking.  Battery life in excess of 4 hours (including the receiver's
> loading) would be a plus.
>
> Of course you still have to deal with getting an antenna out there,
> hopefully a directional one.  Roll of skinny wire to stretch on the ground
> + a matching / isolation transformer might work but grounding still has to
> come into play.  Directivity would be sketchy at best.  A wire loop is
> likely better (whether cardioid or figure-of-8 pick-up).  The support
> structure for that (when trees are lacking) is going to be a bigger
> impediment to backpacking than the laptop + SDR combo.  Tuned loops, of
> course, can be quite compact but then you're essentially limited to one
> frequency at a time (live) DXing instead of wideband capture for later
> analysis.  Active whips are also compact but they can be "noise getters" if
> placed within 20 ft. or so of the laptop.  No directivity with those
> either, although a shore site produces directivity independent of the
> antenna.  Single stick pattern of my 1240 local demonstrates that:
> http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/patg?id=WBAS-AM=D
>
> (That map shows why Florida, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, etc. bomb in
> here ... Midwest not so much.)
>
> I would always take a competent ultralight portable in the backpack as
> well, just in case something with the PC + SDR goes "kerflooey."  No sense
> to go out there and come back with nothing, especially if considerable
> flying, driving, biking, or hiking was involved.
>
> Mark Connelly, WA1ION
> South Yarmouth, MA
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Grayland DX won't quit

[Guy Atkins]

I didn't read your message until after 1930, Nick, so the fish barrel was
no longer so impressive  :^)

I'll be interested to see how Rockworks fares for TP signals in a few days.
Snow flurries are predicted for Friday!

Guy



-- Forwarded message --
> From: Nicholas Hall-Patch 
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2017 18:21:26 +
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Grayland DX won't quit
> It's a form of radiation hardening therapy Chuck.   Supposedly, it leads to
> extreme and prosperous old age, but all one will want to do at that point
> is DX, so it may not appeal to the New Age crowd.  It won't make us better
> looking, that's for sure.
>
>  We could reconfigure the Grayland Motel as a spa and make Mike very
> wealthy, if we could figure out a way to appeal to that crowd.  The
> Beverage therapy, the DKaz therapy, the FSL therapy but only at
> Graylandthe possibilities are  endless.
>
> The emphasis was on mid and high band it's true, with audio on many unusual
> channels.  Didn't start to die down until 1730UT, with some audios on usual
> suspects surviving until after 1800UT.
>
> (Craig, the main antenna is a DKaz at 290 degrees, but a 1000' Beverage out
> onto the beach is doing OK also.)
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] [mwdx] New logging

[Guy Atkins]

Love it! A deceptively simple antenna, Chuck, but it works great. Flag
variations are so versatile. I hope you catch some good WCNA DX with it!

73, Guy


On Feb 5, 2017 7:13 AM, "Charles Rippel"  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Been working on a Superloop MW antenna which I can manually slew.  It's
> been a project for the past couple weekends (building/staining the wooden
> supports, mainly) and completed it yesterday, the 4th.  Its dimensions are
> 36 X 16' and is constructed so that I can physically move one end of the
> antenna to have the array favor NW, S or heading of choice.  The antenna is
> fed with 75 ohm RG-6 quad shield bought at the Home Depot for $43 / 500'
> and a packet of quad-shield "F connectors.
>
> http://www.homedepot.com/p/Southwire-500-ft-Black-RG6U-
> Quad-Shield-Coaxial-Cable-56918445/202316309
>
> Instead of installing a fixed value resistor in one corner, I went one
> step further and for the purpose of tuning the null, built a fixture which
> holds a 2K, non-inductive variable resistor to take the place of the fixed
> resistor network.  The variable resistor can be adjusted for the best null,
> removed, then the value read with a DVM which provides a value for a fixed,
> more easily weatherproofed, CARBON FILM resistor network to be inserted in
> place of the variable resistor.  With the loop "looking" generally west, I
> used a C-Crane Skywave, which had been modified by removing the internal
> ferrite bar and an external MW antenna input added   Tuned the radio to
> WCBS 880, about 300 miles up the coast, then connected the Skywave radio to
> the loop feed-point with a cable long enough to reach back to the tuning
> resistor end of the loop.  Adjusted the variable pot for the best null of
> WCBS which is generally off the back of the antenna  The adjustments took
> place at approximately 3PM; both the station and my location were still
> in daylight.
>
> Frankly, I was amazed at the results.  By adjusting the resistor, (the
> final value was 371 ohms) the loop would nearly completely null WCBS which
> gave way to a station with a latin format on the frequency.  In winter,
> WCBS can be heard here on a 24/7 basis at approximately the "S-9" level.
>
> I detuned everything, grabbed my iPhone, went through the process a second
> time and recorded a short video, linked below.
>
> https://youtu.be/ugLKjTuncsw
>
> Next step is to review Mark Durenberger's, "Field Information on the
> Double D-Kaz Antenna" which has details on moving the nulling pot inside
> along with a couple articles on suppressing common mode pickup.  Who knows,
> I have 2 supports; this may turn into a D-KAZ v/s the Superloop.  It also
> comes apart and is compact enough to go in the back of a pickup for a trip
> to False Cape State Park, south of Virginia Beach, VA for some seaside
> magic.
>
> Chuck Rippel
> Chesapeake, VA
>
> On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 2:01 AM, 'Steve Francis' via MWDX <
> m...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>> 1290  WNBN  Meridian MS
>>
>> 1-31  0059 EST
>>
>> Good with spots for Tax Time Check Cashing and Ted's Alternator and
>> Starter, including locations and phone numbers; into old school R tune by
>> Candi Staton.  No ID heard - long live local ads!
>>
>> Steve Francis
>> Alcoa, Tennessee
>>
>> Realistic TRF
>> Select-a-tenna
>>
>> --
>>
>> ---
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "MWDX" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to mwdx+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> To post to this group, send email to m...@googlegroups.com.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] off grid noise

[Guy Atkins]

I'm thankful to Chuck for mentioning the Monster Power inverter that he
found so low in RFI noise. My search for a low noise inverter began years
ago when I was trying to use a Racal RA6790/GM in a DC-only DXpedition
setting. Even with my so-called "medical grade, low RFI" inverter placed
inside a metal can 50 feet from the receiver and with RF chokes on I/O
leads, there was far too much interference. I gave up trying to find a low
noise AC inverter.

My current FDM-S2 is powered by USB, but there are other times on a
DXpedition or around the house when a good inverter is handy to have.

Anyway, thanks to Chuck's tip I snagged a new, unopened 300 watt Monster
Power inverter, model MCPI-300 for my "make an offer" price of $16.00 on
Ebay. Evidently someone didn't know the value of what they had, as these
were $130 units before they were discontinued. Or, they were just clearing
house and didn't care how low a price it might sell for.

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
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Re: [IRCA] Tecsun PL880 For Sale

[Guy Atkins]

Thats a good price, Paul. ​Another source is the regular Ebay seller
"multimeter_depot" who has used, good condition PL-880s for $124.99
Buy-It-Now with free shipping. This is probably cheaper than the Universal
Radio Tecsuns when you add in their shipping charge.

​I've ​purchased portable receivers before from this Ebay seller and was
pleased with the quality of the radio.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA

​

>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: "Paul B. Walker, Jr." <walkerbroadcast...@gmail.com>
> To: NRC <a...@nrcdxas.org>, Mailing list for the International Radio Club
> of America <irca@hard-core-dx.com>, Hard-Core-DX <
> hard-core...@hard-core-dx.com>, primetimeshortw...@yahoogroups.com, NASWA
> <na...@yahoogroups.com>, "b...@yahoogroups.com" <b...@yahoogroups.com>,
> Short-Wave radio Listening <s...@mailman.qth.net>
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2017 10:13:55 -0500
> Subject: [IRCA] Tecsun PL880 For Sale
> I check the Universal Radio Used List from time to time to see if they have
> anything i'm interested in and came across this listing today
>
> UK52 TECSUN  PL880  RCVR PORT DIG LW/MW/SW/FM bOX,MAN,ACCYS  119.95 GOOD
>
>
> Thats a pretty decent price for the PL880, from a trusted seller..
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] WRTH 2017

[Guy Atkins]

>
>
> ​Also on Amazon.com site for $37.70
​USD ​
with free Prime shipping.

​Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA​

> ​


-- Forwarded message --

> From: Walter Salmaniw <can...@gmail.com>
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2016 12:26:01 -0800
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] WRTH 2017 Link
> Here's the link I used, John (and for others interested):
>
> http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780955548192/
>
> Interesting!   I see the price has risen to $41.74.   Still a good deal!
>
> 73,   Walt
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Cape Lookout Oregon non-DX Overview - Oct. 31-Nov. 2

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Nick,

The conclusions were inconclusive, LOL!

The bulk of the so-called experiments involved observing phasing results
with close spacing (approx. 70 feet between antennas). Andrew Ikin of
Wellbrook has said repeatedly to me and Dave that his phaser design
requires a minimum of 40 meters spacing to work effectively. However, Dave
had the Quantum Phaser along, and he knew we could get *some* results at
closer spacing but with a limited bandwidth. We did not have a Wellbrook
phasing unit with us this trip.

Dave found that he could indeed get decent nulls (loop vs loop, or loop vs
vertical) at 70 feet, but unfortunately the desired DX signal strength
dropped along with the nulled station! That's the main takeaway that I
remember from our work, which granted wasn't very scientific. Too bad you
weren't along, Nick, as I know you'd keep us in line and help us reduce
variables and banish wishful thinking :^)

73,

Guy



-- Forwarded message --
> From: Nicholas Hall-Patch 
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2016 12:44:49 +
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Cape Lookout Oregon non-DX Overview - Oct. 31-Nov. 2
> And what did you conclude from the experiments, Guy?I always find that
> my experiments raise more questions than they answer, especially if they
> involve phasing.
>
> best wishes,
>
> Nick
>
>
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[IRCA] Cape Lookout Oregon non-DX Overview - Oct. 31-Nov. 2

[Guy Atkins]

​My apologies for the delay in this brief report, but I ​initially thought
it wouldn't be worth checking in with comments. However, in light of the
near-daily bemoaning of poor DX conditions at the end of October, this may
be of interest to some.

Dave Aichelman of Grants Pass, Oregon joined me Sunday, October 30th for
three nights DXing from a cabin at Cape Lookout State Park, Oregon. We
spent a lot of time experimenting with phased 1-meter Wellbrook loops and
17-foot verticals, both passive and amplified. We also did some casual
comparisons of an FSL antenna and Quantum Loops (two different ferrite head
sizes).

Unfortunately my main laptop crashed early on (appears to be motherboard or
CPU failure) and I had to operate the FDM-S2 on a small Asus T100TA hybrid
(tablet/laptop). As Chuck Hutton has mentioned, these Atom CPU powered
computers can run some SDRs very well; still, I had power issues with an
external HD hooked to the Asus. In a pinch I used a fast USB flash drive
which worked the best for WAV audio recording without stuttering. Various
other technical glitches created a near-perfect storm of equipment problems
to a degree I haven't seen in ~15 years of DXpeditions!

Sterling DX wasn't to make up for technical woes however. The morning of
October 31 had minimal TPs, mostly weak to fair audio from the top tier NHK
Japanese stations were found up until sunrise. Tonga and Tahiti were
present too, fair to good at times. Post-sunrise there was a nice little DU
opening as reception flip-flopped suddenly from Japan/Korea to Australia.
774 and 702 were the strongest DUs.

Halloween evening was interesting on shortwave with a number of pirate
broadcasters heard.

The morning of Nov. 1 was similar to the previous day, but with my
technical issues I wasn't able to make a fair assessment. I doubt I missed
any noteworthy DX though!

The final morning of the 2nd was interesting in that TPs and DUs were
mixing on a handful of channels, post-sunrise. All signals seemed to be the
commonly heard outlets.

The only way to go from this DXpedition is upwards, so hopefully my return
to the Oregon coast in 10 days will turn out better.

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
DXing from Cape Lookout State Park, OR
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Re: [IRCA] Autumn 2016 DXpeditions?

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Mark,

Dave Aichelman and I will be DXing at Cape Lookout, Oregon for three nights
beginning Oct. 30th. I'll be back at Rockworks (north of Cape Lookout) for
another three-nighter on November 18th.

These dates are starting to be late into the season, but it's what I could
fit into my work schedule and state park cabins availability  :^)

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Mark Connelly <markwa1...@aol.com>
> To: b...@yahoogroups.com, cap...@yahoogroups.com, a...@nrcdxas.org,
> irca@hard-core-dx.com
> Cc:
> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 23:55:02 -0400
> Subject: Autumn 2016 DXpeditions?
> I'm curious as to what DXpeditions are on tap before winter sets in.
>
> "Who's going where when?"
>
> Of greatest interest to me are ones along the US and Canadian Atlantic
> coastline such as:
> PEI - I think Bruce Conti, Brent Taylor, and some others are signed up for
> that
> Newfoundland - ?
> NJ coast (Long Beach Island?)
>
> Of course, here in the east, results from those outings are augmented well
> by near-DXpedition-grade home-based reporters such as Allen Willie in NL,
> Michael Yule in NS, Brent Taylor in PEI, Sylvain Naud in QC, a few of us in
> New England, and sporadic contributors from other coastal hotspots such as
> the NC Outer Banks and south FL.
>
> Still somewhat relevant to me would be news about DXpeditions in Europe,
> Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda.
>
> The West Coast guys must have some activities cooked up (such as
> Rockworks, Grayland, and Haida Gwaii).  Every so often trips to Hawaii are
> mentioned.  Japanese and Australian DXers are likely to be active sometime
> too.
>
> I'm thinking of doing at least one or two sessions from the car at beach
> sites within an hour's drive time.  Typically these would be around local
> sunset at sites providing more consistent / strong TA and South American
> signals than can normally be obtained at the house.  Maybe I would try to
> coordinate a mini-DXpedition night with others' activities in PEI or NL as
> I've done in some previous years.
>
> Mark Connelly, WA1ION
> South Yarmouth, MA
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] DKAZ questions

[Guy Atkins]

A comment was made in this thread about boxes or enclosures for home brewed
DIY projects.

Last year I came upon this weatherproof model and have found the quality to
be very impressive for the price:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1x-Waterproof-Plastic-Enclosure-Electronic-Project-Box-Instrument-Case-DIY-Hot-/271598155425

I have 12 or 15 of them on hand now, which will save me scurrying around
for a small enclosure whenever I build my next impedance matcher box or
whatever.

Don't judge the quality by the low price of $2.69 USD with free shipping!
These boxes even have threaded metal inserts for the lid screws, and rubber
gasket material to keep out moisture. I only wish they came in black
plastic rather than white.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
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Re: [IRCA] Richard Woods' Language Series

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Michael,

​Dr. Richard Wood's Language Series is still available at Colin's web site
for a $2.50 MP3 download. This was originally a 1 hour, 18 minute audio
program via Radio Canada International:
http://www.dxer.ca/index.php/our-stuff/downloads

​BTW, I still remember a very nice visit I made to your Vancouver former
home many years ago... early 1990s I think! It was back when I ran the
Cascade Mountain DX Club, or perhaps during the follow-up group
DXers/Northwest.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


​
>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Michael Yule <michaeldy...@gmail.com>
> To: <irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2016 06:08:32 -0300
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Morocco 612 kHz
>
>
>
> I also remember from long ago a 5 or 6 page pamphlet that was put out by (I
> think) NASWA that was authored by (I think) Richard Wood on id'ing various
> languages. Of course that's long gone from my collection, but I remember as
> a teen finding it very helpful. Today, that info combined with examples
> that
> could be listened to would be an awesome resource!
>
>
>
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[IRCA] Kiwa Electronics' Prototype Tropical Band Loop Antenna - Photos

[Guy Atkins]

Here are links to my two photos of Kiwa's tropical band loop antenna:

https://app.box.com/s/glcwtutzhehn9i60l0vi84gvs0u7xkor

https://app.box.com/s/qz1rchj9iclskb8lsalxywg4khgdcquf

I have fond memories of the trip during which these photos were taken. It
was in the summer of 1992 (as best as I recall) that Craig Siegenthaler and
I agreed to meet at a dispersed camping area near Ranger Creek, Washington
for Kiwa antenna and equipment prototype testing. We also did some DXing
during the two or three-night camping trip, swapped a lot of stories, and
enjoyed a few beverages (the non-antenna type :^)

I'd been "field testing" some of Craig's in-development products for a few
years already by 1992, but this trip was my first chance to experience his
tropical band loop. I remember being impressed with its low noise
performance, sharp tuning, and portable construction. The four "arms" of
the loop folded together for easier transport. The loop was intended to be
mounted on a user-supplied camera tripod.

Despite my urgings, Craig never made a tropical band loop for sale. My
guess is that he had become very cautious about construction time and parts
costs of any new Kiwa products, as he was being "burned" by his
over-engineered Kiwa MAP unit (Multiband AM Pickup). That product had
*many* screws in its custom enclosure, just one of the reasons the device
was barely profitable (or not at all). It was a tedious device for Craig to
assemble. The powder-coated and CNC machined enclosure made the MAP sturdy
as a tank; Sherwood Engineering's competing SE-3 series outboard
synchronous AM detector accessory looked toy-like in comparison.

The Kiwa High Performance AM Loop was also a labor intensive product; at
one point he even built his own screw-feed cutting tool for making the
spiral grooves in the 12-1/2 inch diameter PVC pipe for the enameled wire.
The tool used some parts he found pushed to the curb during a neighborhood
"recycling day".

If anything, Craig has always been very resourceful! As another example
check out this photo of a receiver stand he lashed together from roadside
trash he found in a ditch near the campsite when we were on a DXpedition to
Table Mountain, north of Ellensburg, WA:
https://app.box.com/s/21vn8n36oejqrjx73h30ulhz6n4ufyr8

I'm thankful to have known Craig for nearly 30 years, and to have had the
chance to give feedback on some of his early designs. He and his firm Kiwa
Electronics are on my short list of small companies that are BIG
contributors to the DXing and radio hobbies.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
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Re: [IRCA] Kiwa Loop

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Walt,

I have a photo of Kiwa's tropical band loop, from the DXpedition near
Seattle when he and I were testing the prototype. I think it was from
around 1992 approximately. I'll see if I can get this posted on my file
storage space and share a link to it.

I remember the tropical band loop prototype was just as high performing as
his medium wave loop. Too bad he never produced a finished version for sale!

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


-- Forwarded message --
> From: Walter Salmaniw <can...@gmail.com>
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2016 18:16:07 +
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Kiwa Loop
> Yes, all of his products looked beautiful and "space age".  I remember
> seeing a prototype tropical band antenna (which, unfortunately, was never
> produced).  Some wonderful spiral looking man sized device.  I wonder if
> anyone has a picture of this.  It was displayed at Grayland many years ago
> during the famous "show and tell" Saturday afternoon sessions, chaired by
> the late, great Prof. John Bryant.  As for the loop, a year or two ago,
> they were selling for "insane" amounts of $750 + on eBay.  73,  Walt
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] July 10 Rockwork 4 DXpedition-- Murphy's Law on Steroids

[Guy Atkins]

Wow, Gary! That was quite the welcome you arranged with the weather gods
for Satoshi-san and Hiroo-san! (Nick-san too :^)

As you know, I was scheduled to be at Rockwork 4 this weekend also but had
a change of plans come up in June. I can't say I missed the chance for
another Rockwork-style drenching, but I would have really enjoyed meeting
the Japanese DXers! Please greet Hiroo and Satoshi for me in my absence and
let them know I appreciate the contributions they made to my Perseus SDR
blog "Five Below" during the years it was active.

I hope DX conditions will be on the rebound for tomorrow morning's session,
to make up for the rude awakening you encountered today.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


> -- Forwarded message --
> From: d1028g...@comcast.net
> To: "America, Mailing" <irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2016 15:07:05 + (UTC)
> Subject: [IRCA] July 10 Rockwork 4 DXpedition-- Murphy's Law on Steroids
> It's probably safe to say that none of our DXpedition group has ever
> endured such a miserable DXing session. Severe rain and wind pounded the
> highly-exposed Rockwork 4 ocean cliff turnoff throughout our antenna setup
> and radio listening, providing a very stark welcome for our distinguished
> Japanese visitors (Hiroo Nakagawa and Satoshi Miyauchi).
>
>
​​
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Re: [IRCA] unattended Perseus recording scheduler (HDSDR)

[Guy Atkins]

​Walt,

​Didn't you used to have issues with TOTH recorder skipping over recordings
unpredictably, and you abandoned it for MESTOR?​

​I'm glad TOTH is working so well for Paul.​
​I've heard of others avoiding it because MESTOR was the only add-on
scheduler they found which worked 100% of the time.​

​That said, I find the scheduler built into HDSDR to be flawless. Any
issues I've had have been operator error. HDSDR also has the "IF" recording
option which can be handy if you want the flexibility of a WAV (IQ)
recording of a single station without the huge file size of a large swath
of spectrum. I believe it's an IQ recording of just 15 kHz wide. The
resulting smallish file can be shared with other HDSDR users easily, and
they can manipulate the signal during playback just like a full band width
WAV recording.​

My two favorite SDR programs continue to be HDSDR and Studio 1, although I
still have a lot to learn about Studio 1. The Studio 1 author claims that
his proprietary DSP (rather than the open source DSP code base) is
responsible for some of the performance advantages of his program. Whatever
the reason I think the audio quality in particular is superb on Studio 1,
especially its Selectable SYNCH-AM modes.

I found this information from Studio 1's home page
<http://www.sdrapplications.it/> to be interesting:



Second question: on what Studio 1 is better in comparison to free programs?

The first big difference is in the Digital Signal Processing core, the
"radio" itself. In a SDR system traditional analog circuits are replaced
with software functional blocks; the quality of the processing is heavily
influenced by the design.  In Studio 1 the spurious/alias free dynamic
range is greater than 130 dB
(measurements data will be published as soon as possible but you can do
tests yourself) and at the same time the DSP core is so efficient that the
program can be used with older PCs (Pentium 4 machines) with excellent
results.

We can safely state that Studio 1 is the most efficient SDR program
available (at CPU resources level) when compared to free ones. For the less
technical readers, the spurious free dynamic range influence the capability
of the receiver to resolve small signals in presence of in-band strong
signals. In comparison, other software has as low as 70 dB (or less) SFDR
when strong signals are inside the down-sampling band; still as an example,
other software is much more "heavy" on CPU resources by one order of
magnitude at least.

Further more at the DSP level Studio 1 features (among others):

A selectivity filter with an ultimate rejection greater than 140 dB.
A unique distortion-free double stage AGC with fully adjustable parameters.
Multiple notch filters with BW adjustable down to 1 Hz, Notch Lock feature.
A unique synchronous AM mode with selectable/adjustable sidebands,
dedicated PLL input filter, selectable PLL time constants.

​

I don't mean to highjack this HDSDR discussion, but wanted to add a few
tidbits about Studio 1 for those who may not be aware of it.

Regarding Jaguar Lite, I found it disappointingly basic, and well, TOO
"lite" compared to the full Jaguar program.​

​
​73,

Guy Atkins
​Puyallup, WA
​
​

>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Paul Crankshaw <hoddles...@gmail.com>
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 19:05:00 +
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] unattended Perseus recording scheduler (HDSDR)
> TOTH Recorder does the job perfectly. There's no need for anything else.
> Make sure you use V0.1
>
> Paul
>
>
>
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[IRCA] ​Re: [NRC-AM] Vactrol for Flag?

[Guy Atkins]

Good stuff, Mark.

Here's some more "prehistoric" reading with Vactrol details:

https://web.archive.org/web/20071030091410/http://users.rcn.com/oakridge.ma.ultranet/Beverage_info/RCT_Beverage/RCT_Beverage.html

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


> From: Mark Connelly <markwa1...@aol.com>
> To: l...@highnoonfilm.com, irca@hard-core-dx.com
> Cc: a...@nrcdxas.org
> Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2016 11:42:05 -0500
> Subject:
> ​​
> Re: [NRC-AM] Vactrol for Flag?
> Some "prehistoric" (2002) writing on the subject:
> http://www.qsl.net/wa1ion/flag/flag_antenna.pdf
>
>
> Mark Connelly, WA1ION
> South Yarmouth, MA
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] ​John Bryant remembered

[Guy Atkins]

​Like many of you I also have many fond memories of John, and had such
admiration for him. He and I first met in 1987 when I was publishing the
Cascade Mountain DX Club bulletin, and he joined so that he could keep on
top of shortwave DX heard from the Pacific Northwest (he and his wife Linda
would later spend most summers on Orcas Island, WA).


​Many of my memories of John revolve around the fun times and hard work of
editing & producing the "Proceedings" series of books for DXers,
"underwritten" by the Numero Uno/Fine Tuning group that John and I were a
part of. Proceedings was John's "baby" and his vision from start to finish
(from the 1988 edition to the final 1994-96 book). ​We would work together
on the layout and final editing of the books during my summer weekend trips
to Orcas Island. For the early Proceedings editions, desktop publishing as
a publication technique was at "that awkward age", and we made so many
printing and layout blunders, often churning through multiple dot matrix
printer ribbons (remember them?) as we worked late into the night. The
fade-ins of Papua New Guinea and Indonesian stations on 90 & 60 meters
would be our entertainment as we worked.

​Some of you know that both designed and built the home that he and Linda
were to retire to on Orcas. He was eminently qualified, as in 1997 John was
chosen as a "Fellow - American Institute of Architecture" (FAIA), perhaps
the highest honor in his field.

The home is perched on a dramatic rock outcropping 800 feet above the
water, and has an incredible sweeping view of the San Juan Islands, the
Strait of San Juan de Fuca, and even the shipping lanes across from
Victoria BC. This picture I took of John in his Orcas Island home is one of
my favorites and how I remember him:

https://app.box.com/s/asdsv7kp5a33wnpi64kn8qe7ub0xmh5l

​You are very missed, my friend!

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
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[IRCA] ​Re: Wellbrook Large Aperture Loop Antenna ALA100LN

[Guy Atkins]

​Yes, the ALA100LN may be Wellbrook's "jack of all trades" in my opinion.​
Also up for consideration though is the FLG100LN. A pair of deltas with
these modules also make an excellent phased system in a reasonable amount
of space (40m separation is recommended) compared to a Beverage's space
requirements. Of course, you can phase the ALA100LNs also.

The Wellbrook phaser works well with very little tweaking needed across the
MW band, once phase and gain are set. Other phasers can work but will need
readjustment every 100-200 kHz or so. Wellbrook's phaser is best for
broadband SDR recording with a phased loop array.

​Hmm... I just took a look at Wellbrook's web site, and the phasers are
nowhere to be found. Perhaps they'll still offer them by special order?​


A friend of mine who does considerable EZNEC modeling ​has shown that the
FLG100LN can also work well in "zero ohms" mode (i.e., no termination
resistor) and essentially becomes a bidirectional loop as with the
ALA100LN. Wellbrook doesn't advertise the FLG100LN for use without
termination, but the computer models and actual testing reveal this extra
benefit.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


​​


>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: "Paul B. Walker, Jr." <walkerbroadcast...@gmail.com>
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc: "National Radio Club NRC am@nrcdxas_org" <a...@nrcdxas.org>
> Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2016 14:20:52 -0900
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Wellbrook Large Aperture Loop Antenna ALA100LN
> Les, on Collin Newells recommendation I will be buying a Wellbrook loops
> the ala100ln I think even You'll like it I think
>
> Paul
>
>
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[IRCA] ​Re: Wellbrook Large Aperture Loop Antenna ALA100LN

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Chuck,

No, I haven't used the DX Engineering phaser. I lumped it in with others in
my comment based on Dave Aichelman's experience. He owned the DX
Engineering phaser and found it cumbersome to use and operate compared to
the Quantum. He sold the DX Engineering unit and kept the Quantum phaser.

I don't recall him saying it was any more broad banded than the Quantum,
but perhaps its the equal of the Wellbrook phaser in this regard.

73, Guy


>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Chuck Hutton 
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2016 02:08:35 +
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] ​Re: Wellbrook Large Aperture Loop Antenna ALA100LN
>
> Guy:
>
> Did you test this with the DX Engineering phaser? It requires no tweaking
> of the phasing and I thought it would work at least as well or better than
> Wellbrook.  ​
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] kiwa loop

[Guy Atkins]

That was a healthy price, but I remember a Kiwa loop selling for over $800,
maybe $850 a couple of years back on Ebay.

BTW, if anyone else is is the market for one, a friend of mine in Oregon is
also selling his Kiwa loop in excellent condition. Please contact me
offline at dx at guyatkins dotcom if you'd like his email address.

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


-- Forwarded message --
> From: Terry Baugh <tba...@fusemail.com>
> To: <irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:53:10 -0800
> Subject: [IRCA] kiwa loop
> WOW, So it went for USD$ 790.00 plus $64.50 shipping, a record perhaps?
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] ​"Science Fiction PL-380"-- Pest Control Version

[Guy Atkins]

>
> ​Gary,
>

​I'm still puzzled as to the best way to go for nulling of pests, regarding
diameter vs length proportions. Initially the "long and skinny" antennas
such as in the SRF-T615 were praised for their nulling, but now the
"stubby" ​FSLs appear to have the upper hand.

Do you think the cylindrical (hollow) design of the FSLs changes the
response to a groundwave pest station so that a high diameter-to-length
ratio *FSL* nulls better than a *solid* rod with a high LENGTH-to-diameter
ratio?

I guess this is an unfair apples to oranges comparison (hollow FSL vs
traditional solid rod antenna). To compare FSL to FSL then, are you finding
better nulling the "stubbier" you make the antennas?

Do you recall the large diameter, short rod FSLs that Kevin Schanilec built
inside of Christmas wreath containers? I wonder if those models were
excellent at nulling. I do remember that he did a lot of his testing
indoors, which can screw up nulls and reception completely. High
performance ferrite antennas CANNOT be reliably evaluated indoors!

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA

> ​
>
>
> -- Forwarded message -
> From: d1028g...@comcast.net
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 13:40:28 + (UTC)
> Subject: [IRCA]
> ​​
> "Science Fiction PL-380"-- Pest Control Version
> Hello All,
>
> The first of the new hard-wired FSL models specifically designed to have
> an unusually sharp nulling capability is now a reality. With a "short and
> stubby" FSL design that emphasizes symmetry, isolation and a tidy RF
> reception pattern, this model can put all of my semi-locals (Seattle and
> Tacoma) down in the noise-- and even receive a few competing stations on
> their fundamental frequencies. Using 22 of the commonly available Russian
> surplus 62mm x 12mm x 4mm bars, this model is one of the "spinoff" versions
> of the 3" Bar FSL PL-380 model (for which the 15-page "Heathkit-like"
> construction article was posted at
> http://www.mediafire.com/view/w0gcek56f6aq7kr/3_Inch_FSL_Tecsun_PL.doc
>  ), and has an FSL "sensitivity score" (coil diameter x ferrite length) of
> 264-- pretty close to the 300 point score of the article version (with
> 100mm ferrite bars). The advantage of this model is that there is a huge
> supply of the Russian surplus 62mm ferrite bars, currently sold on eBay by
> two different sellers. You can get 20 of them for $13-- including shipping
> from Lithuania.
>
> Construction of this model is identical to the article version, except for
> the FSL construction (which may be added as an addendum). All of the
> construction parts are readily available, also. Unless you live practically
> next door to a local pest, this "pest control" model should cut
> your offenders way down to size. A photo of the new model is posted at
> https://app.box.com/s/5r95oxc9v24vm9hbpe2w1g800lbt4d3b
>
> 73 and Good DX,
> Gary DeBock (in Puyallup, WA, USA)
>
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] ​​"Science Fiction PL-380"-- Pest Control Version

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Walt,

To my knowledge no one has perfected a broad band FSL that works with
anything close to the performance of a single channel, carefully peaked
version. This has often been a topic of discussion between Gary and myself.
The broad band FSL I made a few years ago in the end turned out to be FAR
below the sensitivity of a tuned FSL. This FSL used a Wellbrook FLG100
module as a matching device and amplifier. In use at home I thought it was
working well, but on a DXpedition it was sorely lacking vs. a Wellbrook
1-meter active broad band loop.

Different matching ratio transformers have been tried without much success.
A tuned FSL is like any other inductively coupled loop in that it's a
resonant circuit, and gain goes up sharply at the expense of bandwidth...
not of much use for broad spectrum SDR captures!

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Walter Salmaniw <can...@gmail.com>
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 01:52:37 +
> Subject: Re: [IRCA]
> ​​
> ​"Science Fiction PL-380"-- Pest Control Version
> Fellas, I'm interested again with the removal of the variable tuning
> capacitor and use for broad spectrum Perseus SDR captures.  As you recall,
> a number of these early large units were kindly built by Gary.  One was
> sent my way (and I may have the same in Masset).  Results have been
> variable.  Would anything different be done with these units compared to
> what we know today?   73,...Walt
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] ​Auroral conditions...

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Colin,

I'm south, not east... but I've been watching this aurora predictor web
site the last couple of nights:
http://www.aurora-service.org/aurora-forecast/

Earlier this evening the Kp index was 7.0 for a while so I dashed out again
to a dark spot in our neighborhood (Kp 7.0 is supposed to be an auroral
threshold for Washington).

Nope, nada, nuthin'. No sign of northern lights, although with the light
pollution here I wouldn't be surprised if a faint display is totally washed
out.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



> From: coffee_canuck <coffeecan...@gmail.com>
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 18:42:11 -0800
> Subject: [IRCA]
> ​​
> Auroral conditions...
> Endless chatter on radio media about the spectacular Aurora borealis we
> will experience after midnight tonight... Fascinating because spectacular
> AB cannot be predicted that easily.
>
> Anyone out east seeing anything?
>
> All the best of the season and good DX in 2016!
>
> Colin Newell - CoffeeCrew.com - DXer.ca - VA7WWV - Victoria - BC
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Elad SDR question

[Guy Atkins]

>
> Hi Neil,
>

​I own an Elad FDM-S2, and it can certainly record, playback, and display
the entire MW band (and even greater bandwidth if desired) in an unattended
fashion. You'll see the signal strength display, the waterfall, and the
spectrum display, and you can "zoom" in for more visual detail if desired.

The particulars of doing this depend of the software you use, as you're not
limited to Elad's own program (in fact, the Elad FDM-SW2 software is my
least favorite choice; I prefer HDSDR or Studio 1).

Every SDR program I know of has either built-in scheduling / recording
features or can use a 3rd party utility to accomplish the same thing. The
utility "MESTOR" is very popular with the Perseus SDR for instance.

The recorded spectrum can be played back in any mode you like: SSB, AM,
Synchronous-AM, CW, etc.  When you are doing the recording you are not
recording "by mode". You are capturing data that represents the entire
"raw" swath of frequencies, and you can then use whatever mode, bandwidth,
AGC, noise reduction, etc. that you like, over and over again during
playback. That's a big part of the allure of SDRs is that you can try
various settings and combinations again and again, without missing any of
the DX that might be there.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA

​


> ​
>
> ​-
>
From: Neil Bell <neil.neilb...@gmail.com>
> To: irca@hard-core-dx.com
> Cc:
> Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2015 23:06:01 -0800
> Subject: [IRCA] Elad SDR question
> Does anyone know if the Elad waterfall and signal strength display can
> display and record the *entire MW band* (530-1710 kHz) for a period of time
> specified using the system clock (unattended recording).
>
> Can the recorded signals then be listened to in SSB mode even if the
> original recording was done using AM?
>
> Comments appreciated
>
> Neil, KJ6FBA
>
>
>
> -
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Re: [IRCA] IRCA Digest, Vol 139, Issue 52

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Gary and Mark,

My efforts to add varactor tuning to the FSL antenna haven't been
abandoned, just put on hold. I gathered all the parts and scoured the Web
for various circuits and approaches for using varactor tuning, to to
reacquaint myself with the pros and cons of varactors, but that's it so far.

As usual I currently have a number of partly finished radio related
projects going on, and I haven't returned to this one. Right now I'm
working on wrapping up a LCD digital readout for a Sony ICF-EX5MK2, and
also doing a LED mod to replace the backlighting lamps inside of a mint
condition, vintage Zenith Trans-Oceanic I acquired.

It's just a case of too much work and commuting! Retirement one day sounds
nice :^)

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: d1028g...@comcast.net
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 04:40:06 + (UTC)
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Puyallup, WA Ultralight TP's for 11-22
>
>
> Hometown buddy Guy Atkins has recently done some experimentation
> attempting to adapt the standard FSL antenna to a varactor-tuned design for
> inside-the-car DXing at the Oregon cliff sites, but apparently was
> disappointed at the results. Many he will chime in with a summary of his
> experimentation, but I do know that he decided not to continue with the
> idea. The High-Q standard FSL with a single-optimized-frequency
> (and razor-sharp tuning) has been a superior transoceanic performer at the
> Oregon cliff sites, but it does require a DXer willing to tolerate the
> extreme weather that these ocean cliff sites attract. Very few seem to have
> interest in this.
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] DXpedition capture files?

[Guy Atkins]

​Hi Mark,

​As some folks on this list know, I used to run a Perseus SDR blog for a
few years, and a Flexradio SDR-1000 for a few years before that. When I had
the "Five Below" Perseus blog, I included a "Perseus WAV Files Directory"
section that over time became quite popular.

At the time, the hosting service MediaFire appeared the best choice for me
(their reasonably priced "Pro" plan) so that's what I used as the Perseus
WAV file storage.

​If I was beginning to share SDR recordings today, I would investigate
Microsoft's OneDrive and Google Drive. Last year OneDrive upped their file
size limit to 10 GB, and ​Google Drive offers a maxium of 5 TB (yes, that's
TB as in Terrabytes!). Both services allow easy sharing of files and
folders.

​Chuck Hutton's "Perseus WAV Chopper" is an excellent utility for trimming
WAVs to just the pertinent time range of interest (60 seconds centered on
top-of-the-hour for instance). I wish something like Perseus WAV Chopper
was available for Elad-generated files! Then it wouldn't matter if a DXer
like myself was using 4096 MB as their file size for recording; the WAV
could still be trimmed down to something reasonable in size.

However, at least the current size limits of OneDrive and Google Drive
allow these more massive WAVs, but of course there's still the long,
l-o-n-g wait time for downloading ​the files that most DXers will encounter.

​73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


> ​

>
-- Forwarded message --

> From: Mark Durenberger <ma...@durenberger.com>

> To: "'Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America'" <
irca@hard-core-dx.com>

> Cc:

> Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2015 19:02:27 -0500

> Subject: Re: [IRCA] DXpedition capture files?

> ...I' hoping Guy will weigh in regarding his experiences in hosting SDR
recordings.

>

Regards,

>
Mark Durenberger

>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Loop Antenna Gain for Rockworks #4 and #2

[Guy Atkins]

>
> ​Hi Mark,
>

​I wish I could help but I haven't used a Perseus SDR in quite a while; I'm
DXing with an Elad FDM-S2 as my primary receiver now. So, my WAV files are
compatible with HDSDR, FDM-SW2, and Studio 1 software only.​

Also, I use 4 GB as my default file size so that fewer of the WAVs are
generated during the DXpeditions, and this is a larger size than my cloud
storage accounts will allow.

It would be great, wouldn't it, if there was one universal file storage
format for SDRs? I think as far as SDR receivers go, we're still in a
period similar to the "Betamax vs. VHS" incompatibility era.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA

> ​
>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Mark Connelly <markwa1...@aol.com>
> To: irca@hard-core-dx.com
> Cc:
> Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2015 12:33:24 -0400
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Loop Antenna Gain for Rockworks #4 and #2
>
>
> Guy, is there any way that the one or two best "knock your socks off"
> top-of-hour Perseus files from the Rockworks DXpedition could be uploaded
> somewhere so DXers can "sit in" on the activities after the fact?
>
>
> Same question applies to files from Walter's recent Masset run.
>
>
> Back when you hosted the "Five Below" website, Guy, the sharing of capture
> files from around the globe was a regular activity.  I got a kick listening
> to the band from places as far flung as Hawaii, Newfoundland, Scandinavia,
> and the Middle East.  I saved a few on portable hard drives to play if DX
> here ever gets too boring.  I don't see as much of this file access these
> days.
>
>
> Even though these 1 to 2 Gig files can take an hour or more to download,
> it can sometimes be worth it.
>
>
> There have been occasions when DXers in a part of the world closer to the
> weak noisy station on a capture can easily figure out audio that confounds
> the DXer at the locale where the recording was made.  It might be the
> language knowledge or that they've heard a jingle or presenter's voice or
> local reference so many times that the ID is a piece of cake for them even
> if a mystery for us.
>
>
> Mark Connelly, WA1ION
> South Yarmouth, MA
>
>
>
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[IRCA] Video Comparison of Wellbrook ALA1530LN Pro and ALA1530S+ Imperium Loop Antennas

[Guy Atkins]

After this past weekend's DXing trip to the Rockworks cliffs in Oregon, I
took a close look at the SDR comparison recording I made while switching
between the Wellbrook ALA1530LN Pro and ALA1530S+ Imperium loops.

​Once I started tuning at the extreme edges of the MW band I began to see
the differences between these high performance, compact loop antennas.

Check out the description and short video at this YouTube link:

Wellbrook 1530LNPro vs ALA1530S+ Imperium Loop Antennas
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbX_G0ll_kk>
[image: image] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbX_G0ll_kk>
Wellbrook 1530LNPro vs ALA1530S+ Imperium Loo...
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbX_G0ll_kk>
This is a comparison file of weak signal reception with the two models of
Wellbrook Communications "Imperium" series loop antennas: the ALA1530LN "
View on www.youtube.com <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbX_G0ll_kk>
Preview by Yahoo


Best DX,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA USA
DXing at Rockworks cliffs near Manzanita, OR
Elad FDM-S2
Wellbrook ALA1530LN Pro & ALA1530S+ Imperium loops
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Re: [IRCA] Loop Antenna Gain for Rockworks #4 and #2

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Chuck,

My apologies for not considering gain differences. I was too "wowwed" by
the obviously lower splatter levels on Dave's Rockworks #4 SDR files
compared to mine from Rockworks #2 on the morning of October 24.

I did no adjustments, but just zoomed in on specific signals to see the
peak signal level and the level of the lowest "valley" in the noise nearby
in frequency, and observed the difference as the station's S/N ratio.

The antenna I was using is reportedly 9 dB "hotter" (compared, I believe,
to the original ALA1530 used by Dave). I'm not sure how that affects the
observed S/N on various signals, but DX heard on the Rockworks #4 SDR file
was cleaner and less affected by the splatter compared to the same signals
at Rockworks #2.

What I know for sure is, if you can't be at Masset, Haida Gwaii, then
*45.743417,
-123.957941
*
 is the place to be!

Best DX,

Guy




> From: Chuck Hutton 
> To: "irca@hard-core-dx.com" 
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2015 05:00:02 +
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Interesting Rockworks Discovery & Oct. 25th DX Comments
> Guy -
> All true, and all already mentioned.But what I was asking is whether your
> numbers were adjusted for the difference in antenna gains.I'm trying to
> compare apples and apples as much as possible. Just like we can't just
> compare raw numbers for systems with preamps of different gains without
> mentioning the difference, we can't compare the Rockworks numbers without
> mentioning the differences between Dave's system and yours.
> Chuck
>
>
>
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[IRCA] October 26th at Rockworks #4, Oregon

[Guy Atkins]

I've just finished unpacking my stuff after the return trip from three
mornings at the Rockworks cliffs and thought I should at least give a
quickie report, since I was the "last man standing". Chris was part of the
gang the first morning, Chuck and Dave joined me again Sunday morning, and
I was there alone Monday morning to scoop up the DX leftovers.

They were very tasty leftovers indeed! Monday's DX from Rockworks #4 was
the best of the three mornings by far. It was obvious within a minute of
tune-in that this DX session was going to easily surpass the previous two.

As I drove the final half mile to the #4 highway turnout, I was greeted by
an amazing view of a large, orange, nearly full moon radiating through a
break in the clouds as it was about to set over the Pacific ocean horizon.
Spectacular is the only way to describe it.

I used the Wellbrook ALA1530LN Pro Imperium loop, and placed its tripod as
close as I could to the *large rock spire*
<https://www.google.com/maps/@45.7435775,-123.9580969,3a,75.7y,147.26h,101.92t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sqzBdTlVqVZUXXt7PBNcGBg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1>
that dominates the south end of the Rockworks #4 highway turnout. I was
hoping for even better attenuation of pest stations to the south, but I
couldn't tell any improvement in splatter reduction from the previous
morning's spot 30 feet to the north. However, I'll take it--Rockworks #4
has already shown its benefit over #2 with apparently better splatter
attenuation.

The ALA1530LN Pro is showing itself to be the best 1530 small 1-meter loop
I've yet encountered from Wellbrook. It's performance for such a small size
is impressive to me, and it's perfect for these limited space situations
like the Rockworks cliffs. The previous evening I did some WAV file
comparisons with my signal-meter calibrated Elad FDM-S2 and verified an
even lower noise floor than that on the earlier "Imperium" series loop.
Surrounding the frequency of SQM, the aviation voice beacon on 529 kHz from
Level Island, Alaska I was noting a noise floor of -134 dB. The result was
a 5 to 8 dB better S/N ratio signal on SQM compared to reception with the
ALA1530S+ Imperium. The difference was very *audible* too.

Anyway, it was TP/Asian all the way from my 1330 start time until I shut
down at 1520, with a half dozen Chinese and Japanese stations still going
strong (~30 min. past local SR). Many of the NHK big guns were in good to
excellent audio from the beginning, especially 774 and 828. HLCA on 972 was
the top powerhouse of the session, with very strong audio from just before
sunrise until 1520.

2nd tier Japanese frequencies and a few mumblings on 3rd tier frequencies
were heard, and from 1500 a few of the Chinese channels came in nicely. I
also heard English talk on 531 after sunrise, mixing with presumed JOQG
Morioka in Japanese.

1134 JOQR rose up nicely from 1430 onwards, as well as 1314 JOUF Osaka.

1035 was strong throughout, but alas with just a warbling carrier and
whispers of audio. Perhaps these are multiple CNR1 stations. 1566 HLAZ was
very strong at times, although I don't recall noticing VOA Thailand 1575
better than "good" at any point.

So, it was a very worthwhile morning and clearly above average for me as a
local sunrise DXing session. Now to find time to go through this morning's
WAV files...!

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA USA
DXing from Rockworks #4 turnout on US Highway 101
near Manzanita, OR
Elad FDM-S2, Wellbrook ALA1530LN Pro Imperium Loop
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Re: [IRCA] Interesting Rockworks Discovery & Oct. 25th DX Comments

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Chuck,

Yes, the LNPro Imperium model has higher gain than the other, but also a
lower noise floor for overall higher S/N (I just finished documenting this
on a weak SQM 529 kHz signal away from the splatter of the rest of the
band;   I consistently got 6-8 dB better S/N on the LNPro model of loop
compared to the S+ Imperium).

Anyway, I was using a better ALA1530 model of antenna than Dave's, and
still he was getting improved reception from Rockworks 4 due to noticeable
splatter reduction. It was easy to tell by simply listening and looking at
the spectrum displays. The measurements just confirmed it.

73, Guy
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[IRCA] Interesting Rockworks Discovery & Oct. 25th DX Comments

[Guy Atkins]

Yesterday Dave Aichelman gave me a copy of his HDSDR WAV file covering two
minutes of the local SR enhancement we encountered at the Rockworks cliffs
in Oregon. We thought it would be interesting to compare signal-to-noise
ratios of the (definitely below average) TP DX we heard with similar
antennas but different locations on the cliffs.

Dave was using a Wellbrook ALA1530 1-meter active loop at Rockworks #4,
known as the prime location for Kiwi MW DX in the summer. A few hundred
yards north at Rockworks #2 I had the two newest models of ALA1530
"Imperium" loops, the ALA1530S+ and the ALA1530LNPro.

We and others like Gary have assumed that Rockworks #2 is easily the
preferred DXing site for chasing TPs due to the less-obstructed horizon to
the northwest. Well, I measured a number of high, mid, and low-band TP
stations for signal-to-noise ratios on my 1428-1430 UTC HDSDR recording
(Rockworks #2) and compared them to the same time & stations captured on
Dave's recording (Rockworks #4). Surprise! TP/Asian reception from
Rockworks #4 was anywhere from 8 dB to *20* dB *better* from the Rockworks
#4 turnout! Remember, we were using very similar 1-m. active Wellbrook
loops, so it's reasonable to conclude that the unique topography of the two
turnouts on the highway accounts for the differences.

Rockworks #4 has sheer rock cliffs immediately to the east and southeast
blasted into the mountain when the highway was built, and there is also a
grid-like steel curtain of cables covering most of the cliff walls (to help
contain any boulders that may tumble down toward unsuspecting DXers).

Here's a map of the Rockworks locations:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3lhmy1jqHQ6dnRqM1oxTC1BYXc/view?usp=sharing
(note:
Rockworks #1, not shown, is [I think] a gravel turnout from the highway
further north, and quite a bit further back from the cliffs... therefore
it's a location we've not tried yet)

>From the comparison results of TP DXing at #2 and #4 and the excellent
summer time Kiwi (and sometimes Aussie) DX at #4 the last few years, I can
tentatively conclude that "Rockworks #4 Rules!" any time of year. The moral
of the story: splatter reduction of local & regional pest stations accounts
for the S/N improvement at Rockworks #4, and is a unique benefit of this
location.

What's next? I think we need to start working on a "squatter eviction
strategy" for Rockworks #4. Now that we know this spot is preferred, we'll
need creative ways to "urge" any non-DXers parked at the turnout to move
along :^)

Gary DeBock deserves a big "thank you" for his initial discovery of the
site referred to as Rockworks 4. If it wasn't for his investigative DX work
and Ferrite Sleeve Loop (FSL) experimentation the last few years we may
never have known about this special place on the Oregon coast for DXing.

--
Regarding this morning, Oct. 25, DX reception was a definite improvement
from yesterday, although I wouldn't call it a barn-stormer of a session.
Reception started out Asian / TP like Saturday morning but signals began
mixing with DU outlets around 1415 UTC. 747 kHz was 50-50 Japanese and
Australian until presumed 4QS Toowoomba dominated closer to SR. Frequencies
like 567 and 1116 kHz were DU all the way from SR enhancement onwards.
English-sounding mumbles were noted on other frequencies as well. Most of
these were logged with the ALA1530LNPro oriented towards TP-land, but by
1435 I rotated to loop to favor DU.

This is the first time I've used the two Imperium loops together in a
DXpedition setting and I'm finding they provide a high level of low noise
performance in a compact package. They are quick to set up, and an
excellent antenna for limited space locations like the Rockworks cliffs.

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
Elad FDM-S2, Wellbrook ALA1530S+ and ALA1530LNPro Imperium loops
DXing at Rockworks cliffs, near Manzanita, Oregon
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[IRCA] Rockworks, Oregon Non-DX Report for Oct. 24th

[Guy Atkins]

I've noticed some comments from Nick, Colin, and Gary that inland DX
reception this morning was "TP dead", "maybe some carriers if I squint",
etc.Fla

Well, those descriptions fit the Rockworks cliffs this morning also! Chuck
Hutton, Dave Aichelman, Chris Black, and myself tried everything but tribal
coastal Indian DX chants to make the TPs (or even DUs) materialize, but it
just wasn't a-happening this morning. No matter what the antenna--from
medium sized Flag loops to compact 1-meter active Wellbrook loops-- the DX
just wasn't appearing. The DXer conversations before and after the morning
sunrise session were good, however!

We were all impressed with Chris' setup for his first Oregon cliffs DXing
session; he had a nifty low-buck table constructed in the back of his small
SUV which looked very comfortable. We did have to do a team "antenna
relocation project" for him, however... his rectangular loop and masts were
far too close to the highway for safety reasons. After shuffling everything
to the west about 20 feet we all breathed a sigh of relief.

I'd say we had *maybe* a dozen TP frequencies in weak to moderate (at best)
audio this morning with perhaps 8 or 12 more frequencies as carriers only.
Most of the signals in audio were big gun Japanese... but barely
propagating this morning. VOA Thailand 1575 was pretty good around the
1420-1430 sunrise enhancement period, but that's the extent of it.

Hopefully Sunday morning will be better!

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA USA
DXing from Rockworks cliffs near Manzanita, Oregon
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Re: [IRCA] Rockworks, Oregon Non-DX Report for Oct. 24th

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Gary, there were two of us at Rock works 2 and two of us at Rockworks 4.
In fact, each location had a Flag or ALA100LN mast supported loop (50 or
more feet in circumference) as well as one or more Wellbrook 1-meter active
loops at each site.

Our results were the same at each turnout, no matter what antenna :^(

It's safe to say that it just wasn't a morning to set the log books on fire!

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
DXing at the Rockworks cliffs near Manzanita, OR
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Re: [IRCA] 1449-IRIB Received on Ultralight Radio in Japan

[Guy Atkins]

>
> Hi Gary,
>

Thanks for the tip about Satoshi's postings on the Japanese DX Facebook
group! That sounds quite interesting, but I'll have to rejoin Facebook
first. A couple years ago I was feeling too overloaded by Facebook and put
my membership on hold. I'll let you know if I get back on board!

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA

-- Forwarded message --
> From: d1028g...@comcast.net
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2015 05:38:00 + (UTC)
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] 1449-IRIB Received on Ultralight Radio in Japan
> Guy, Colin and Walt,
>
> 
>
> Hiroyuki Okamura of Yokosuka is extremely active on YouTube with both
> Ultralight and Perseus-SDR videos, but Satoshi Miyauchi of Sagamihara (near
> Tokyo) is also quite active on the Japanese DX Facebook group, posting MP3
> links of many exotic catches with his modified CC Skywave. If you have
> interest, Guy, I can add you to the Japanese Facebook group, where you
> can see all the action. The Japanese Ultralight radio DXers are some of the
> most fanatical DXers on the planet-- going after tough transoceanic DX like
> Samurai warriors :-)
>
> 73, Gary (in Puyallup, WA)
>
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Re: [IRCA] 1449-IRIB Received on Ultralight Radio in Japan

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Gary,

Did you mean to type Iran rather than Indonesia? "IRIB" is the broadcasting
service from Iran, and that frequency for Iran is a powerful transmitter if
I remember right.

If it's indeed Indonesia that Hiroyuki heard on 1449, then the outlet is
RRI from Surabaya, but the useful PAL reference does not give a transmitter
power for Surabaya. It would be interesting to know the UTC time of his
reception to help determine if Iran was in darkness.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


> -- Forwarded message --
> From: d1028g...@comcast.net
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2015 15:39:52 + (UTC)
> Subject: [IRCA] 1449-IRIB Received on Ultralight Radio in Japan
> For those interested, Hiroyuki Okamura of Yokosuka, Japan has posted a
> YouTube video of his amazing reception of 1449-IRIB (Indonesia) on a 7.5"
> loopstick C.Crane Skywave Ultralight radio during his ocean beach
> DXpedition to Niigata, Japan this weekend.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=27=GjoYowK8cRU
>
> 73, Gary DeBock (in Puyallup, WA, USA)
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] 1449-IRIB Received on Ultralight Radio in Japan

[Guy Atkins]

Absolutely Colin! Think of the challenges to radios and antennas from all
the RF for the average Japanese DXer in such a concentrated urban location.
I'll bet that suitably RF-quiet locations to DX from are highly sought
after.

Also, I'll bet that preselectors as well as selective antennas like tuned
loops are popular and useful... for all types of radios from ultralights to
SDRs.

Gary, do you know of any other DXer in Japan who has posted a variety of
YouTube videos of DXing, DXpeditions, antennas, etc. in their country? I've
enjoyed Hiroyuki Okamura's videos but it would be informative to see some
others.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA



> -- Forwarded message --

> From: "R. Colin Newell" <coffeecan...@gmail.com>

> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
irca@hard-core-dx.com>

> Cc:

> Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2015 20:04:26 -0700

> Subject: Re: [IRCA] 1449-IRIB Received on Ultralight Radio in Japan

> Would be curious to DX from Japan...

>
>
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Re: [IRCA] New Heathkit kits

[Guy Atkins]

Sadly, this is very true, Gary! I had to laugh when I saw the "solderless"
 screw-type circuit construction, which is evidently used instead of
soldering. Rather than being a radio worthy of the Heathkit name, it seems
to me to be more of a glorified Radio Shack Science Fair kit.

Most of the parts expense looks to have gone into the cabinetry and
controls rather than circuit design and components. For someone looking to
brush up on their soldering skills or to build their first "real" kit, I'd
suggest the Scout Regen Receiver as a starting point:

http://www.qrpkits.com/scoutregen.html

The price for the kit is a more reasonable $60 compared to the $150
Heathkit, and you are paying mostly for parts that actually contribute to
the radio's performance, not the enclosure. QRPkits has a good selection of
fairly priced and useful kits, not just for the QRP enthusiast but for
radio hobbyists in general.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA


> -- Forwarded message --
> From: d1028g...@comcast.net
> To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
> irca@hard-core-dx.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2015 03:14:36 + (UTC)
> Subject: Re: [IRCA] Fwd: New Heathkit kits
> Thanks for the info and link, Dennis. I was a Heathkit fanatic in the
> 1980's, building almost all of their amateur radio-related kits.
>
> Unfortunately, the prognosis for this resurrected company is unlikely to
> be much better than that of the original, in view of the changing
> demographics of the electronic experimenter group. The thrill of
> long-distance radio reception and the excitement of building electronic
> kits are concepts which don't seem to connect with the younger generation--
> raised on cell phones, email and Skype. Even among our own generation the
> percentage of hobbyists who are ready, willing and able to build electronic
> kits (and/ or design new antennas) has been shrinking every year, mainly
> due to age-related health issues. Even simple loopstick transplant projects
> can be intimidating to those who don't have their original eyesight
> and/or hand coordination. As such, the new Heathkit $150 radio kit may be a
> tough sell in view of what features it offers in today's highly competitive
> radio market, and the shrinking number of hobbyists willing to take up the
> building challenge.
>
> 73, Gary DeBock (in Puyallup, WA, USA)
> "Heathkid" on eBay
>
>
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Re: [IRCA] Cape Perpetua DX - Sept. 13th

[Guy Atkins]

Hi Gary,

I know exactly which narrower turnout you are talking about! I've never
been bold enough to try it. That spot is just too nerve wracking for me!

BTW, there was an accident around midday today at the main Cape Perpetua
turnout. Fortunately the car crashed on the cliff side (into a narrow ditch
and against the cliff wall) rather than up against the guard rail. I think
someone must have been admiring the view and not paying attention to
driving. Thankfully no one was hurt, but the car will need some pricey
repairs.

73, Guy


-- Forwarded message --
From: d1028g...@comcast.net
To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <
irca@hard-core-dx.com>
Cc:
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2015 15:36:27 + (UTC)
Subject: Re: [IRCA] Cape Perpetua DX - Sept. 13th
Hi Guy,

Thanks for your detailed reports from the top of Cape Perpetua (Sept.
12th), and also from the lower Highway 101 turnoff yesterday. As far as I
know, you are the first DXer to conduct a morning session at that lower
turnoff.

It isn't a well-known fact, but there are actually two Cape Perpetua
Highway 101 turnoffs at a fairly high elevation. If a "sleeping squatter"
is occupying the usual spot (which would be a real deal-breaker at that
narrow turnoff, unlike at Rockwork 4 where we can work around them), you
might try the "Cape Perpetua 1" turnoff, which is an extremely narrow spot
about 200 feet to the north (photo posted at
https://app.box.com/s/02a7sgfxci0gu23xmfjjx3rvmkaxlfpk  ). Although that
turnoff is in a very dicey spot with the 18-wheelers coming straight at
you, I have always thought that the steeper cliff and Asian-oriented
direction of that narrow turnoff would be ideal for the ultimate Asian
TP-DXing experience (assuming that you are prepared for vicious windstorms,
"Chicken" contests with 18-wheelers and no trace of acrophobia).

73, Gary DeBock (in DX-deprived Puyallup)
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[IRCA] Cape Perpetua DX Sept. 14th - NOT !!

[Guy Atkins]

DX was a no-show for me at Cape Perpetua this morning, but not for the same
reason Walt in Victoria experienced (lousy propagation). In my case I lost
the #!%?)* BNC-to-BNC coax cable I brought on the trip!

I was hooking up the gear at 1250 UTC on the lonely highway 101 turnout
this morning, and couldn't find the coax cable anywhere among my stuff. The
features of Wellbrook loops are impressive, but they haven't yet released a
Bluetooth wireless version of the ALA1530 series  :^)

I think the coiled cable must have fell out of the vehicle as I was packing
up after yesterday's session; I looked around the same small parking area
this morning after the discovery but didn't spot it (another DXer passing
through found the cable and scooped it up, ha!

If this was a regular DXpedition I'd have many cables with me, but I only
packed the bare-bones essentials for this vacation. Perhaps I'll locate a
suitable substitute at the tiny Radio Shack store up the road in Waldport,
Oregon.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
*Not* DXing in Yachats, Oregon
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[IRCA] Cape Perpetua DX - Sept. 13th

[Guy Atkins]

This morning's DXing at a highway 101 turnout on Cape Perpetua, Oregon was
quite productive! I didn't have the time to really dig into the
recorded signals to make proper loggings, nor did I progress up the band
beyond 1035 kHz. However, I had Japanese language audio on some 2nd and 3rd
tier Japanese channels, which equals a pretty darn good opening in my
opinion.

Compared to yesterday's predominance of DUs, it was mostly Asian reception.

Here's my brief notes:

-

AUST: 657 (pres.), 684 (pres.), 702 (mixing w/Japan), 891 (mixing w/Japan),
1026 (pres),

CHINA: 981

HAWAII 940 KKNE

JAPAN: 558, 567 (JOIK mixing with pres. R National), 594, 603, 612, 693
(exc.!!), 747, 774 (exc.!), 828 (exc.!), 873, 909 (mixing w/unid),

918, 945, 954, 963, 1008 (mixing w/Korea), 1017,


NEW ZEALAND: 675, 882 (Star- EZL Christian music)

SOUTH KOREA: 972

TAIWAN: 738 BEL-2

UNID: 585, 639, 729, 792, 927, 936, 1035 (Japan or S. Korea)

---

Here's an audio clip of KKNE Hawaii 940 with some really nice Hawaiian
music from around 1335:
https://app.box.com/s/b8g80u6y3v4cwncfdicfiflz0h8skl76

This folder has two photos of the DXing location, and showing the fine
Wellbrook ALA1530S+ Imperium antenna which works so well for these
impromptu DXpedition sessions:  https://app.box
.com/s/zj1vp0kc4a028vt3c55n1tvypmj21sld
<https://app.box.com/s/zj1vp0kc4a028vt3c55n1tvypmj21sld>   The first
picture is of the city of Yachats, taken from across the street from where
our family is vacationing a few days. Cape Perpetua is seen in the distance
with the Highway 101 "notch" in the hillside clearly visible. This section
of the highway that is blasted from the solid rock has a small parking area
at the 140 ft. high point, and is the place where my DXing pal Gary DeBock
has spent many hours DXing with his famed FSL antennas. My DXing spot this
morning was a couple hundred feet further down the highway among the trees,
as seen in the 2nd photo with the Wellbrook antenna. The Wellbrook loop is
very portable when mounted on an inexpensive tripod, and versatile too.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyalup, WA
Elad FDM-S2 and Wellbrook ALA1530S+ Imperium loop antenna
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