Monthly Archives: December 2019

FTIOM & UBMP, January 2020

Happy New Year! The following covers our broadcasts for the entire month of January:

From the Isle of Music, January 5-February 1 (multiple weeks):
January 5-11: Our special guests are Ann Reynolds and Daniel Giron, each with collaborative recordings with Cuban Jazz musicians.
January 12-18: Our special guest Kiki Valera will guide us through his years with Familia Valera Miranda, Los Karachi and other bands.
January 19-25: Our special guest Ruy López-Nussa share recent Cuban Jazz from his project La Academia
January 26-February 1: Our special guest Alejandro Falcón shares some of his compositions for the film Vidas Cruzadas.
The broadcasts take place:
1. For Eastern Europe but audible well beyond the target area in most of the Eastern Hemisphere (including parts of East Asia and Oceania) with 100Kw, Sunday 1500-1600 UTC on SpaceLine, 9400 KHz, from Sofia, Bulgaria (1800-1900 MSK)
If you don’t have a shortwave radio or are out of range, you can listen live to an uplink from a listening radio in the Netherlands during the broadcast at http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/?tune=9400am
2. For the Americas and parts of Europe, Tuesday 0100-0200 UTC (New UTC) on WBCQ, 7490 KHz from Monticello, ME, USA (Monday 8-9PM EST in the US).
If you don’t have a shortwave or are out of range, you can listen to a live stream from the WBCQ website here (choose 7490) http://www.wbcq.com/?page_id=7
3 & 4. For Europe and sometimes beyond, Tuesday 1900-2000 UTC and Saturday 1200-1300 UTC on Channel 292, 6070 KHz from Rohrbach, Germany.
If you don’t have a shortwave radio or are out of range, you can listen live to an uplink from a listening radio in Europe.
Visit our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/fromtheisleofmusic

Uncle Bill’s Melting Pot, January 5-28 (multiple weeks)
January 5 and 7: Episode 146 presents light classical compositions by Franz von Suppé.
January 12 and 14: Episode 147 presents Bluegrass with humor
January 19 and 21: Episode 148 presents music from the Republic of Chad
January 26 and 28: Episode 149 presents music from Hungary
The transmissions take place:
1.Sundays 2300-2330 UTC (6:00PM -6:30PM Eastern US) on WBCQ The Planet 7490 KHz from the US to the Americas and parts of Europe
If you don’t have a shortwave or are out of range, you can listen to a live stream from the WBCQ website here (choose 7490) http://www.wbcq.com/?page_id=7
2. Tuesdays 2000-2030 UTC on Channel 292, 6070 KHz from Rohrbach, Germany for Europe.
If you don’t have a shortwave radio or are out of range, you can listen live to an uplink from different web SDRs in Europe.
Visit our Facebook Page at https://www.facebook.com/UncleBillsMeltingPot

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Assembling the uBITX V6 QRP transceiver

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Last Friday, after returning from holiday travel, I found a belated Christmas gift on my doorstep: the new uBITX V6 QRP transceiver.

In the spirit of full disclosure, this package wasn’t delivered by Santa, rather by DHL in record time from India. As I mentioned in a previous post, I simply couldn’t resist purchasing such an affordable general coverage transceiver.

To be clear, the uBITX V6 isn’t really a kit. The boards are all fully populated by a women’s cooperative in India. You can purchase the uBITX V6 for $149 without a chassis and for $199 with a custom metal chassis. I purchased the latter.

Assembly may take thirty to forty minutes following HF Signals’ online guide. I employed my twelve year old daughters who pretty much assembled the entire radio–I only helped seat the display to the main board.

There is no firmware or software to upload. Simply assemble the radio, solder a power cord to the supplied coaxial plug (hint: positive tip polarity), connect an antenna, connect a power supply, and turn it on.

You’re on the air!

So far, I’ve only scanned the bands and listened to QSOs and broadcasters (no AM mode, so I’ve been zero-beating stations in SSB). Today, I hope to chase a few parks via the Parks On The Air program.

I still need to calibrate the radio yet (although it does zero beat WWV perfectly).

If you purchase the uBITX V6, don’t expect a benchmark transceiver. This uBITX V6 feels more like a work-in-progress and I assume the pre-loaded firmware is simply a first iteration.

Since the radio is open source, I expect hams will soon hack this rig to go above and beyond its basic (understatement alert–!) feature set.

If you’re a CW operator, you might hold off on purchasing until someone has properly implemented the mode. I made some test CW CQs into a dummy load just to check out the keyer and I honestly don’t think I could manage a proper QSO at this point. Sending is sluggish and…well…awkward.

Note that I will be writing a full review of the uBITX V6 for a future issue of Radcom (the RSGB’s monthly publication). Check back here for uBITX V6 notes along the way.

Also check out the excellent blog of our friend, John Harper (AE5X), who has also recently put the uBITX V6 on the air!

Anyone else order a uBITX V6? Please comment!

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Alan takes a deeper dive into decibels

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alan Fahrner, who writes:

One of your articles below inspired me to write this:

https://math.promo/2019/12/shortwave-decibels/

This past August I went back for a second bachelors, this time in mathematics. So, I love when real life can be used as an example of answering the age-old question, “When am I ever going to use this?” about math. 🙂

Happy New Year!

And a Happy New Year to you, too, Alan! Thanks for sharing!

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The Global Radio Guide: Winter 2019-2020

Videos from DXcamp Marajó Island, November 2019

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Photo: Ivan Dias & Martin Butera, during the first Dx-Camp 15.61 Crew Radio Listeners’ Marajó Island – Amazon Rainforest, North of Brazil – November 2019

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Martin Butera, founding member of the 15.61 Crew, for the following guest post:

The 15.61 Crew Radio Listeners, Martin Butera and Ivan Dias, give us a small video preview made in the first Dx-Camp on Marajó Island in the Amazon Rainforest, North of Brazil on November 2019.

There are more than 11 hours of SDR recordings and videos of the Ultralight radios, which will take much additional time to process, of course.

Crew is working on the report with a complete story that includes videos and photos of everything experienced during the DX-Camp–this will be published in several languages and the first LOG, which we estimate will be the first months of the South American summer 2020.

We recommend not forgetting to periodically visit the official site of the DX-Camp, to find updated information: https://dxcamp-marajo2019.blogspot.com/

Above, you’ll see a short stretch of the medium wave band with plenty of interesting content: 585 kHz, alternating between National Radio of Spain (Madrid), BSKSA (Saudi Arabia), 590 kHz, alternating with Poty Radio (Crateús / CE), Radio Diffuser (Boa Vista / RR) and Radio Continental (Buenos Aires), 594 kHz BSKSA (Saudi Arabia), 595.9 kHz SNRT (Morocco – operating off-frequency for years), 600 kHz Mirante Radio (São Luís / MA), Vale Radio (Barreiras) / BA) and Radio Gaucha (Porto Alegre / RS) and 603 kHz National Radio of Spain (Sevilla).

Videos

All of the following videos were captured during the November 2019 Dx-Camp:

Brazil is a country with vast continental distances. The following three videos showcase Brazilian radio from across the country.

Radio Diffuser Boa Vista (1408 km distance)

Radio Itatiaia 2191 (km distance)

Radio Band B (2747 km distance)

Photo: Ivan Dias & Martin Butera, during the first Dx-Camp 15.61 Crew Radio Listeners’ Marajó Island – Amazon Rainforest, North of Brazil – November 2019

More photos of the DX-Camp from the official site:

https://dxcamp-marajo2019.blogspot.com/p/photos.html

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Free Radio Skybird’s last flight of 2019

Understanding decibels

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Marty, who shares the following article from Nuts and Volts magazine–a primer on decibels:

The “dee-bee” is everywhere in ham radio, and is used for characterizing everything from antenna performance to nano-sized signals. Learn the decibel (abbreviated as lower-case ‘d’ followed by an upper-case ‘B’ or ‘dB’) and you and your signal will go a long way!

From the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual’s online math tutorials for beginning hams (arrl.org/chpt-2-radio-signal-fundamentals), we introduce the decibel. “You have probably recognized deci as the metric prefix that means one-tenth. The unit we are really talking about here is the bel (a ratio of sound levels named for Alexander Graham Bell), so a decibel is just 1/10th of a bel. We use a decibel instead of a whole bel because the bel represents a rather large change in levels. The dB is a just-perceptible change and more useful as a unit of measurement.” As used in wireless, the decibel is the ratio of two power levels:

dB = 10 log10 (P2/P1)

Note that the dB has no units because it is a ratio. The dB is just a number that describes how much bigger or smaller one quantity is compared to the other. Both quantities themselves must have the same base units, though — watts, for example. If P2 is larger than P1, the dB value is positive, such as for amplifier gain. If P2 is less, the value is negative and represents attenuation or loss. (Somewhat confusingly, it’s common to specify an amount of attenuation as a positive value of dB. For example, “This filter attenuates the signal by 20 dB.”)

Click here to read the full article at Nuts and Volts.

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