Monthly Archives: September 2017

WRMI: An update from Jeff White

(Source: Jeff White)

Dear WRMI Clients, Listeners and Friends:

Yesterday evening, Hurricane Irma passed very close to Okeechobee, and tropical storm force winds hit our transmitter site. I’m happy to say that the transmitter building and the transmitters themselves survived with no major problems. In the antenna field, one of our 44-degree antennas beaming up the East Coast of North America and over to Europe and the Middle East was knocked down, and may not be repairable. Fortunately, we have four other antennas beaming in the same direction, so we can continue those transmissions when the power comes back on. There are also about 20 telephone poles holding our transmission lines that are down or leaning, and they need to be repaired.

WRMI transmitter building with windows and doors boarded up in anticipation of the arrival of Hurricane Irma.

At this point, Florida Power & Light has no estimate of when power will be restored to our site. It could take days, or possibly even weeks. But we should have a better idea about this within the next few days. In the meantime, all transmitters are off the air, although our webstream with the 9955 kHz programming is operating. You can find it on our webpage, www.wrmi.net. There is an audio player in the lower right corner which you can click on to hear the programming. This stream is also carried by TuneIn, Streema, Radio Garden and other similar services. So please continue to upload your programs to our FTP servers as usual.

For WRMI clients, please be assured that we will put a credit on your next invoice for any of your programs that do not air on shortwave.

We do have a generator at our transmitter site which powers our control room, offices, lights and computers. Unfortunately it is not powerful enough to operate our fourteen 100,000-watt transmitters.

All of our staff are safe. Half of them were at the station during the storm (with some of their pets as well; we had two dogs, a bird and a turtle), and the others stayed in their own homes throughout the area.

I want to thank everyone who has called, e-mailed and sent messages with their prayers, best wishes and offers of assistance. We greatly appreciate all of them, and I will attempt to answer all of these messages personally in the coming days. The hurricane has dealt us a serious blow, but we will recover quickly and we’ll continue to broadcast your programs to shortwave listeners around the world. Thanks for your confidence in WRMI, and I will update you when we have more news.

Jeff White
General Manager

Jeff, we’re all wishing you the best as you work to put WRMI back on the air!

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WRMI: Hurricane Irma has done “extensive damage”

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(Source: WRMI on Facebook)

1430 UTC Monday, September 11

Hurricane Irma has done extensive damage at WRMI in Okeechobee, Florida.

Two antenna towers are down and many poles holding transmission lines are also down.

Power went out at around 2030 UTC Sunday, and it may not be restored for days.

Meanwhile, all transmitters are off the air. Our Internet service is also down, which means that our live stream is down as well. All of our staff are OK. We’ll try to provide more information later today here on Facebook. Thanks for all of your messages of support.

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Cross Country Wireless release SDR-4+ Special Edition SDR receiver

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(Source: Southgate ARC and Kim Elliott)

Cross Country Wireless have released a Special Edition version of their SDR-4+receiver.

This includes many features previously only available in custom versions of the receiver.

Adding a high IP3 push pull RF amplifier, RF filter upgrades and a lower noise and distortion IQ amplifier have resulted in a high performance SDR receiver with an overall IIP3 of +31 dBm.

There is no increase in price for the Special Edition version.

More details on the web page:
http://www.crosscountrywireless.net/sdr-4.htm

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How to fix the Grundig S350DL’s mechanical tuning drift problem

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The S350DL may look like a digital radio, but it’s actually analog inside and tuning is prone to drift.

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ed, who noted my comments about the Grundig S350DL’s tuning drift yesterday, and shared the following fix found on Jeff McMahon’s Herculodge blog.

Ed writes:

The Grundig S350DL’s mechanical tuning drift problem is reportedly easily correctable with a screwdriver:

(Source: The Herculodge)

[…]The drift on AM was terrible! After 10 minutes, it is jumping all over the place – if you touch the radio, the sound mutes and the display goes nuts. I pack it up to take it back but then I decide to google the problem and find this:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Grundig-S350/message/4644

I do exactly what he says – I pull off the cover after unscrewing all of the screws (including the 2 in the battery compartment).

Only the speaker is attached to the front. I remove the three screws from the display and then tighten the two screws on the tuning wheels. They were barely loose – almost not noticeable – so I was not too optimistic. I carefully got it all back together (the plastic pieces that hold the fabric handle on only go back on one certain way and were sort of a pain!). I cross my fingers, plug it in, and wow – a brand new radio. The tuning is perfect. Zero drift on FM and AM. AM sounds excellent.[…]

I have an earlier Grundig S350 that I bought at a hamfest years ago which had an easily-fixed power problem. For $20 it makes a nice bathroom radio and it sounds great, especially on FM.

BTW, I found schematics for it on radiomuseum.org, which is a great resource for radio schematics.

Thanks for the tip, Ed! I think I’ll crack open my S350DL later today and give this a try!

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Zello transformed Holly from onlooker into dispatcher

Hurricane Irma update from WRMI & RHC

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WRMI transmitter building with windows and doors boarded up in anticipation of the arrival of Hurricane Irma.

(Source: WRMI on Facebook)

Dear WRMI Friends, Colleagues and Clients:

I am writing this at 0400 UTC Sunday, September 10. Here in Okeechobee the winds are starting to pick up as Hurricane Irma heads to Florida.

The exact path of the hurricane continues to change somewhat, but it appears that the eye of Hurricane Irma will be passing a bit to the west of us, but we will still receive tropical storm force winds which are to the east-northeast of the storm. We will remain on the air with all of our transmitters as long as possible. However, once the winds get to a certain strength, our transmission lines will start flapping around and arching, which could cause serious damage to the transmitters and components. If that occurs, we will probably shut the transmitters down in order to avoid equipment damage until after the storm passes.

Our transmitter building itself is quite strong, and several members of our staff will be staying inside the building. But the hurricane could of course do damage to our antennas. We will hope for the best.

After the hurricane passes and winds die down, we would hope to be able to resume transmissions if we have electricity. However, realistically, we know that power outages generally occur in these situations, and they may last from hours to days or even weeks. We have a generator at our transmitter site, but it is designed to maintain our control room, lights and computers operational; it is not large enough to maintain our high-power transmitters on the air. So if the commercial power goes out, we will be off the air. We may be able to maintain one transmitter on the air at low power; this will likely be 9455 kHz, and this may not be possible until after the storm passes and the winds die down. If our Internet service remains functional, we should be able to maintain our live stream operational. This is the programming that is on 9955 kHz shortwave. You can hear it on our webpage, www.wrmi.net. Click on the audio player on the lower right side of our home page. You can also hear this stream on services such as TuneIn, Streema, Radio Garden, etc. (Just search for WRMI.)

We will try to keep everyone up to date on our status via our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/wrmiradio.

Thank you to everyone who has been contacting us with your thoughts and prayers. We look forward to being able to resume normal operations as soon as possible.

Best regards.
Jeff White
General Manager
WRMI Radio Miami International
10400 NW 240th Street
Okeechobee, Florida 34972 USA
Tel +1-305-559-9764
Fax +1-863-467-0185
www.wrmi.net

Many thanks to Jeff White for publishing this update.

I’m curious if anyone has been monitoring Radio Havana Cuba this morning. Rob Wagner posted the following update on Facebook yesterday morning as Cuba was getting battered by the full force of Irma:

Monitoring Cuba at 1110 UTC on Sept 9:
5025 CUBA. R. Rebelde – Bauta. At the height of Hurricane Irma, with a fat carrier and no audio from tune in at about 1000 UT till 1043 when suddenly audio came on. So perhaps power at the txer but not in the studio during that time. Appears to be all live crosses. The audio off again after 1105 till 1109. CNN says that Irma is right over Havana (north side of the island) right about now. So they are right in the thick of it.

If you have an update, please comment.

We’re wishing our many Florida, Georgia and SE US readers the very best as this particularly destructive storm passes over land. We hope our readers who have already been in the path of Irma have made it through safely.

Here at the SWLing Post HQ, in the mountains of western North Carolina, we’re expecting high winds and heavy rains even though the storm path has shifted further west. Much of this is due to our altitude which is relatively high for the region–near the ridge line. Sustained winds may be around 40 mph with gusts in excess based on the current forecast. These are wind speeds we can easily handle. Strong sustained winds and rain may persist until Thursday, however, which may mean power outages due to fallen trees. All in all, we feel very lucky.

Please feel free to share your hurricane report in the comments section.

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Chris reviews the Eton Field BT and an important note about the discontinued Grundig S350DL

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The Eton Field BT

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Chris Freitas, who notes that’s he’s published a favorable review of the Eton Field BT on his blog: Chris Freitas on Radio

The Field BT shares the same basic chassis as the Tecsun S-8800 (check out the review published yesterday) and several other receivers including the Grundig S350DL, S450DLX, and the C.Crane CCRadio-SW.

Chris and I both agree that one benefit to this type of large portable is the excellent audio fidelity they can provide.

Read Chris’ full review here.

Not all large portables are created equally

The S350DL may look like a digital radio, but it’s actually analog inside and tuning is prone to drift.

Important clarification: The Field BT–just like the S-8800 and S450DLX–does not have the flaky analog tuning of the discontinued Grundig S350DL series.

Since I started publishing videos of the Tecsun S-8800 in action, I’ve received feedback indicating that many assume the S-8800 will drift off frequency like the 2008 era GS350DL.

It’s true that both radios share a common form factor, but that’s where the similarities end.

The S350DL is actually an analog single conversion receiver with a digital frequency display. The S350DL tuning knob has an inner ring for fine tuning and an outer ring for speedy tuning. The big disadvantage of the S350DL is that it drifts off frequency every time the wind blows. At least, that’s how it seems. It’s a little frustrating, and that’s why mine pretty much stays tuned to one station on my kitchen shelf. Even then, it manages to drift off frequency every few days.

The Eton Field BT, Eton Field, Grundig S450DLX, C. Crane CCRadio-SW and Tecsun S-8800, on the other hand, all have a pure digital tuning experience with no drift at all. Most of these are at least double conversion and the S-8800 is even triple conversion.

Chris, thanks again for sharing your review of the Field BT! It sounds like a major improvement over its predecessor, the S450DLX. I understand you’re also evaluating the excellent Grundig Traveller III–we look forward to that review when published!

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