Author Archives: Jock Elliott

Checking out BHI’s HP-1 and NCH headphones for DXing

By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM

As an oldster with a bit of hearing deficit, I am a big fan of anything that helps me to hear better when I am trying to tease out hard-to-hear signals, whether medium wave broadcast, shortwave broadcast, or single-sideband signals on the HF ham bands.

Toward that end, headphones help a lot. They deliver the audio signal directly into the ear canal while reducing distraction from external sounds. I had some inexpensive headphones from a big-box store, but I wondered if there were headphones that would be better suited for DXing.

So I contacted the folks at BHI to see if they had any headphones that would help with medium wave DXing. BHI is the British company that manufactures really effective noise cancelling products.

In response, the folks at BHI sent me their HP-1 Wired Stereo Headphones and their . . . NCH Active Noise Cancelling headphones . . . free of charge.

BHI describes the HP-1 Wired Stereo Headphones as “Comfortable Folding dynamic stereo headphones for Radio Communications,” and, in my view, they are just that. I found the HP-1 to be highly useful for medium wave and shortwave DXing. To my ear, they sound like they are biased toward high frequencies, with lower bass response than on the headphones I bought from the big-box store years ago. Because of the lower bass response, I find it easier to tease out faint signals on the airwaves, and the ear cups are comfortable for long-term listening. The cable is 1.9 m long and is terminated with an integral 3.5mm stereo jack plug. The HP-1 headphones are supplied with a 1/4″ stereo to 3.5mm stereo adapter.

The NCH Active Noise Cancelling headphones are a bit of a different beast: they are NOT designed to cancel noise on the broadcast signal you are listening to. Instead, they are designed to reduce external noise. According to the BHI website:

“The bhi NCH active noise cancelling headphones (ANC) do not work like our other DSP noise cancelling products but effectively reduce external ambient background noise enabling you to concentrate more and enjoy your listening experience when listening in a noisy environment. The over-ear style NCH headphones also give good passive audio isolation from external noise.”

These headphones are powered an AAA battery. There is a switch to turn the noise-cancellation circuity on and off, and there is an LED that lights when the unit is activated. The NCH headphones have a 1.25m detachable cable with 3.5mm jack plug (both ends).

So I tried out the NCH headphones while mowing the lawn with a gasoline-powered lawnmower and listening to an audio book on my digital recorder. Bottom line: they really work to significantly reduce (but not totally eliminate) an external noise source and make the listening experience more pleasant. And when they are not turned on, they work really well as ordinary headphones for DXing. Like the HP-1 headphones, they are comfortable and biased toward high frequency.

In the end, I found both these headphones worked well for their intended purpose, and I am happy to recommend them.

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Radio Reminiscences . . . A Reader Participation Post

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By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM

The other night, at 10 pm Eastern Time (0300 UTC), I was listening to Zoomer Radio from Toronto, Canada, on 740 kHz (medium wave) when a program called “Theatre of the Mind” came on. This wonderful program airs Monday through Friday and presents “Old Time Radio” programs from back in the day when radio dramas were a regular part of on-the-air fare.

As I listened, I got sucked through a hole in the space-time continuum. Instantly, I was no longer an official oldster with eight decades in his sights . . . now I was a grade-school kid on Saturday morning in the early 1950s looking forward to Big John and Sparky and Space Patrol coming up on the radio. Programs like that were a regular staple of my childhood.

It’s weird, but I can’t recall the content of any specific episode, but I can easily remember the joy I felt as the familiar strains of “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic” (Big John and Sparky’s theme) were broadcast.

Theatre of the Mind is a great moniker for radio dramas, because your mind is forced to fill in the details of the drama. The dialog, narrative description, and a few sound effects provide the clues, and, in the magic of your imagination, you provide the rest of the scenery and the setting, and it is great fun.

The power of the mind’s eye was brought home powerfully to me, in a funny way. Space Patrol was not just a radio program; it was also a television program. My family did not have a TV until I was in fourth grade. As a result, I never saw Space Patrol on TV until I saw it at a friend’s house. (Remember this was in the infancy of TV.) When I did, my overwhelming impression was: this is lame. The program that was wonderful in my mind on radio was considerably less so on live TV.

Later in grade school, I was given a germanium diode radio for Christmas. It became my tool for secretly monitoring “The Hawthorne Den” (jazz after midnight) under the covers. It was Big Time, Big Deal adventure for a boy my age . . . does it get better than that?!! It actually did, when my Dad brought home a Zenith Transoceanic.

So dear reader, check out Zoomer Radio on 740 if you can and enjoy Theatre of the Mind.

And now it’s your turn: what are your favorite radio reminiscences (modern or ancient like mine)? Please post them below.

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An interview with Glenn Hauser

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Glenn with his wrist-mounted altazimuth DX-398 for MW direction-finding.

By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM

Since he was in grade school, Glenn Hauser has had the itch to receive broadcasts at long distance, and that interest, continuing throughout his lifetime, has led him to become one of the most respected authorities in the world of radio.

SWLing: How did you get started in radio?

GH: I started with TV DXing, trying to pick up Albuquerque 100 miles away, but often getting sporadic E skip stations more than 1,000 miles away. I also started tuning around medium wave. I was 8 or 9 years old.

SWLing: How did you get started with shortwave radio?

GH: In 1954, the family moved to Oklahoma City. By 1957, I acquired a Hallicrafters S-38E and was listening to shortwave using a longwire antenna, sending off for QSL cards. I was still doing TV DXing.

Then in 1961 the family moved to Enid, better for TV DXing, away from all those local stations, also radio DX. I acquired a Hammerlund HQ160, which was quite an improvement.

SWLing: Were you professionally involved in radio?

GH: In college, I worked on the campus radio station and also at a classical music station, KHFM. My BA was in broadcast journalism. After college, I continued to work on classical musical stations as programmer and announcer. I was very interested in foreign languages, learned phonetic schemes of various languages and learned to pronounce them. Radio Budapest was particularly helpful with Hungarian, which some announcers find difficult. I spent my professional career working for classical music stations.

I spent a year in Thailand, working for the American Forces Thailand Network. I was a newsman on the air in 1969 and 1970.

I had the HQ160 and a small TV in a footlocker, and in my spare time, DXed TV from as far as South Korea and the Philippines and medium wave from Europe.

After four years in the USAF, I resumed classic music radio, notably at WUOT, Knoxville.

By then I was contributing to various DX programs on SW stations, clubs, and eventually started my own program World of Radio. You can find out when to hear my program on the Schedules page at www.worldofradio.com . One of the main places to hear it is on WRMI in Florida. I was SW columnist for Popular Electronics, and later, Monitoring Times. Also published my own magazines, Review of International Broadcasting, and DX Listening Digest; at first on paper, then online.

SWLing: How did you get involved in logging SW radio stations?

GH: It was a natural outgrowth of enthusiasm for hobby; I was a regular contributor to DX Jukebox on Radio Netherlands (monthly) and Radio Canada International’s DX/SWL Digest (weekly).

SWLing: What sort of equipment do you use?

GH: A JRC NRD 545 and an Icom R75 for shortwave and medium wave. For antennas, I use a Wellbrook loop, a 100-foot random wire oriented east-west outside, and some shorter random wires inside the house. It is noisy where I live, and I’ve been trying to get the local electric company to fix line noise radiation.

Here in the town, my property is limited in space for antennas. I’ve been known to hook on to a wire fence in the country as a de facto Beverage antenna.

SWLing: How many hours a day do you monitor?

GH: It varies. Because of my program and my logging reports, I have made myself a nexus for information, so a lot gets sent to me. As a routine, I am always tuning around at bedtime, as well as various times during the day. At random times, I may do a band scan to see what’s happening.

SWLing: What are you most memorable moments listening to SW?

GH: Certainly one was October 4, 1957, hearing Sputnik on 20 megahertz.

SWLing: Any tips, tricks or advice you would care to offer to SWLs or DXers?

GH: Become as well informed as possible by participating in groups such as https://groups.io/g/WOR . Be aware of various references online such as the big 3 SW frequency listings, Aoki, EiBi, and HFCC, among those linked from my homepage http://www.worldofradio.com . In addition, scan the radio bands until you are familiar with what’s there, so you can notice something new or different.

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“Uncle” Jock’s Pro Tip for using the scan function

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The postman delivers a new radio for test.

So I unbox it, punch the ON button, start SCAN on AM MW band.

Scan works (yea!) but passes by really strong local stations. Sacred poop, I think, this thing is deaf as the proverbial post.

Is there some sort of space weather thing going on? I grab my Skywave and Tecsun . . . scan with both, and they both find those fat stations out there, as well as a bunch of others.

Does this other manufacturer not know how to build a radio?

Then I tune the radio manually to the fat stations . . . it hears them just fine.

Huh.

Then a thought creeps into my fevered brain . . . could it be that this new radio is scanning at 9 kHz intervals?

I do the procedure for setting the AM MW intervals to 10 khz, punch SCAN, and Ta-Dah! the new radio is not deaf as a post; it is hearing lots of stuff just fine.

Operator error.

Soooo, if you’re testing a new radio or maybe one of your old radios suddenly decides it can’t hear much on scanning medium wave frequencies, you might want to make sure that it is set for the 9 or 10 kHz interval that is appropriate for your area.

Just sayin’,

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Today is the day . . . The Great Medium Wave Grey Line Challenge!

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It’s time to have some fun for a couple of hours chasing MW DX along the grey line. Please note: an important change has been made to the rules: you can choose either Civil Twilight at sunrise or Civil Twilight at sunset . . . but not both.

Here are the rules:

Frequency range is the medium wave band: 520-1710 kHz
From one hour before Civil Twilight your local time TODAY, Saturday, October 14, to one hour after Civil Twilight at your location . . . at either sunrise or sunset
Any radio with any antenna, but must be the radio at your location (no using remote internet radios)
The listener must hear the signal in real time
The stations must be ID’ed by listening to the signal.
Your report should include:
- Your name (or Internet handle)
- Your receiver and antenna (stay with the same setup from beginning to end; if you use multiple setups, provide a separate report for each).
- Your location
- The time, the frequency, and the ID of each station heard
- The total mileage of your top five most distant stations.

A final point: this is not a contest; it is a challenge. The reward for every participant will be fun and fellowship.

You can find when Civil Twilight begins at your location by visiting www.wunderground.com . Enter your location, click on “Full Forecast” then scroll down to the “Astronomy” section.

And when you have completed the Great Medium Wave Grey Line Challenge, please post your results in the comments below.

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Important change to The Great Medium Wave Grey Line Challenge

The weirdest shortwave tuning technique

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By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM

You never know what you will encounter while simply “tuning around” on the HF frequencies. Just a few days ago around 2 pm local time, I happened upon the Maritime Mobile Service Network. Net control was being swapped from one ham to another, and it soon became clear that the hams running the net were smooth, articulate, and friendly to those checking into the net. The frequency was 14.300 USB.

According to the Maritime Mobile Service Network’s website:

Our primary purpose now is that of handling legal third party traffic from maritime mobiles, both pleasure, and commercial and overseas-deployed military personnel. We also help missionaries in foreign countries, and volunteer net control stations from throughout North America and the Caribbean maintain the network. Furthermore, these stations are assisted by relay stations to ensure total coverage of the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean & Caribbean Seas, and the eastern Pacific Ocean. The network, in particular, has been formally recognized for its work with emergency traffic by the Dept. of Homeland Security, the United States Coast Guard, and the National Weather Service, to mention a few.

The network acts as a weather beacon for ships during periods of severe weather and regularly repeats high seas and tropical weather warnings and bulletins from the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.

The Maritime Mobile Service Net is operational every day from 12:00pm until 9:00pm Eastern Standard Time, and from 12:00pm until 10:00pm Eastern Daylight Time, on the 20-meter *Global Emergency Center Of Activity frequency of 14.300 MHz as outlined by the International Radio Union.

* At the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Region 1 meeting in 2005, it was decided that certain frequencies on certain amateur bands would be designated as “Global Emergency Center Of Activity” (GECOA) frequencies. The purpose of establishing the GECOA frequencies was to designate a place for passing emergency traffic on amateur frequencies, should the need arise. Over the next few years, Regions 2 and 3 followed suit in making the following frequencies world-wide GECOA frequencies. Those frequencies are: 21.360 MHz, 18.160 MHz, 14.300 MHz, 7.240 MHz, 7.060 MHz, 3.985 MHz, and 3.750 MHz. These and other frequencies, with their band plans, can also be viewed at www.iaru-r2.org/band-plan.

You can find out more about the MMSN here: https://mmsn.org/

Wow, I thought, this is definitely a net that I would like to listen to from time to time. Since MMSN operates from noon until 10 pm, I decided that night to see if I could hear it in bed on my CCrane Skywave SSB with its relatively small telescoping antenna. I extended the whip antenna skyward, clamped on the headphones, and listened to 14.300 USB. Nothing at first . . . but then I could hear some faint modulation in the background. Then, on a whim, I picked up the Skywave and started to wiggle it around, moving the whip in different orientations, in the hope of improving the signal.

To my surprise, it worked. I could hear the signal improve in some orientations of the whip and get worse in other directions. After a bit of experimentation, I got a positive ID on the Maritime Mobile Service Network with the whip at a 45 degree angle to vertical and pointed toward the North. Any other orientation yielded poorer results.

Now, here’s the thing: in years that I have been involved in messing about with radios – including the years I wrote for Passport To World Band Radio, QST, Popular Communications and Monitoring Times — never once did see or read anyone suggesting that picking up your portable shortwave and pointing the whip in different directions and orientations might improve the signal . . . not once.

Back in March, Thomas did a survey and found that 36.8 percent of SWLing readers used portables radios as their “daily drivers.” So, while it might look weird and might draw some stares if you are in a public place, try picking up your portable and pointing the whip at different angles and orientations to see if it improves a difficult to copy signal.

Based on my experimentation on both ham and shortwave broadcast signals, you might just be pleasantly surprised.

And if you already knew about this, or if you try it and it works, I would love to hear about it in the comments below.

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