Fastradioburst23 here to let you know about our next imaginary Stations offering on Sunday 19th March 2023 on 9395 kHz at 2200 hrs UTC. This week it’s a WORK special. They’ll be a shortwave tea break with an assortment of biscuits*, training courses, interview tips and lots of tunes to get your through your shift. Clock in, tune in and then chill out.
*Subject to availability.
Category Archives: Guest Posts
Guest Post: Listening to LRA 36
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, TomL, who shares the following guest post:
Listening to LRA 36
by TomL
I finally had time to go outdoors to listen to LRA 36, Antarctica. People were gushing about how well it is being received. My location was a park across the street from the Forest Preserve I usually go to (the Forest Preserves are shutdown and gates locked after sundown). Even though it was after sunset, this Park has no gate or chain to prevent people from parking there. In the dark, I setup the trusty amplified Loop-on-Ground antenna, SDR, and laptop. Solar Flux Index about 179, K index 2.
Started recording and, NOTHING! ARRGH. But I had just heard it at home in the noise!?!? Waited about two minutes and all of a sudden music started playing in the middle of a song. S6 – S7 strength with lots of fading. Very cool. 20 minutes later, went off the air. Then 10 minutes later, came back on again in the middle of another song. They must be tweaking the transmitter. This feels like the 10 kW transmitter; no way could a 1.5 kW be this loud over 12000 kilometers! Also, an advantage with IQ recording of a spectrum is I could tune into it later. Good thing because between their tweaking the transmitter, my SDR, and the crazy propagation, I had to tune to 15475.983 kHz in order to get the USB signal perfectly in pitch.
For your listening enjoyment if you have not had a chance to hear it clearly, I have uploaded both recordings to archive.org where you can listen as long as you want. Worth listening to, playing music of Argentina music bands. Happy Listening! Here is the link to Archive.org and the audio files are also embedded below:
LRA 36 at 00:30 UTC on 05 March 2023:
Audio PlayerLRA 36 at 01:00 UTC on 05 March 2023:
Audio PlayerWSTL while you WELK
Tune into the Japanese Jukebox
Good day SWLIng Post community, Fastradioburst23 here to let you know about our next imaginary Stations offering on Sunday 26th February 2023 on 9395 kHz at 2300 hrs UTC. This week it’s JNHK and it’ll be an hour of a distinctive Japanese flavour. Tune in and enjoy the sound of Japan wherever you are.
Paolo’s review of the Eton Elite Satellit
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paolo Viappiani, who shares the following guest post:
ETON Elite Satellit: an expensive flop
by Paolo Viappiani, Italy
Introduction
After various and sometimes conflicting announcements that have created strong expectations in radio listening enthusiasts, ETON has recently launched on the extra-European market (basically in the United States) what should have been its “top of the range” portable, the Elite Satellit model . Aesthetically (and also functionally) inspired by the previous E1 model, the new portable radio should have been free from the defects of its predecessor, in particular as regards the “sticky” coating of the plastic case but also with respect to other technical drawbacks repeatedly reported by users (display contrast and shading, etc.).
The new Elite Satellit was announced to look practically identical to the E1 model and to use the same cabinet, but with various additions and improvements: RDS, FM-HD reception, Air Band, etc. A frequency resolution of 10 Hz in the shortwave bands, a PBT (Pass-Band Tuning) facility, a large LCD display with the possibility of changing its background color were also provided.
It is therefore obvious that its release was highly anticipated, and the resulting expectation gave rise to numerous pre-orders of the radio in the United States, where the main distributor was (and still is) the well-known Universal Radio company owned by Fred Osterman [1].
Unfortunately, the initial boom in sales of the ETON Elite Satellit was followed by many return requests due to the poor performances of the radio and the numerous defects encountered by users, also reported in a lot of videos and negative reviews on the Internet [2].
Fred Osterman himself, disappointed by the performance of a radio that he should have sold as an excellent portable, began to test the individual devices in his own laboratory and to return to ETON all the units that did not meet the declared specs (basically the vast majority of those received for sale) [3]. All this caused great confusion at ETON, which was forced to somehow remedy its errors (mainly due both to a very approximate alignment of the circuits and to an almost non-existent final quality control).
Unfortunately, despite the precautions adopted “hastily” by ETON, most of the “overhauled” devices that were returned to Universal Radio continued not to comply with the specifications, so that Fred Osterman, who is a good technician and a very honest dealer, decided to cancel most of the orders received and to sell the very few radios found to be in good working order within the United States only, (see again note [3]). I myself placed an order from Universal Radio for an ETON Elite Satellit on August 8, 2022 (Order ID: #8992932, retail price $599.99 plus shipping and import customs duties), but Fred was forced to “drastically cut” the orders received and to cancel mine too, due to the impossibility of satisfying the many customers on this side of the pond. However, my desire to have an example of the ETON Elite Satellit in my hands, in order to be able to see, test and judge the new radio it was really great, and great was also the wish to realize if the many negative impressions circulating on the web were or were not justified and true.
So I decided to look for other ways to buy the “latest cry” of ETON. The opportunity presented itself to me, almost unexpectedly, by visiting the American site of Amazon [4].
The purchase and the arrival of the radio; my first impressions
I therefore ordered an ETON Elite Satellit portable radio on the Amazon.com website on January 17, 2023 at the price of $698.16 (including shipping and customs duties). I report in Figure 1 the screenshot concerning my order #113-3575479-2262609 which, as it appears, was delivered to me on January 23, 2023, after only five days; this demonstrates the truthfulness of my statements.
The shipment was delivered to me by UPS courier in the usual Amazon packaging in a plastic bag (Figure 2).
Inside the envelope was a cardboard box containing the radio, in understandably less than perfect conditions (Figure 3).
Once the package was opened, the contents of the box looked like in Figure 4: two shock-absorbing spacers held the device in position (inserted in a plastic bag) and its AC power supply (into a white box, and obviously with a 117V input voltage). There was also the “User Guide” in a paper version and a “mini-guide” to listening to short waves; completely absent was the CD that used to be enclosed in the box of the previous E1 version of the radio.
Continuing with the operations, I came across a sort of brown plastic cover intended for the protection of three sides of the radio (front, top and back) which can be held in position by some magnets and is provided with two circular holes in correspondence with the tuning knobs and volume of the radio (Figure 5).
I omit to make comments on this “protection”; I only say that in my opinion it is useless (and ugly too) and I believe that the gentlemen of ETON could have wasted their energies otherwise; but maybe someone likes it too…
Figures 6 and 7 show the front and back of the portable radio as soon as it has been removed from the protective plastic bag. Note the almost identical appearance of the cases of the Elite Satellit and of the previous E1 model.
Loop-On-Ground Antenna Part 3: Tom’s low-noise, low-profile, portable antenna evolves
Loop on Ground Antenna Part 3
(using multiconductor wire)
by TomL
It dawned on me recently, perhaps due to sloppy thinking or unintended distractions, that I never wrote about my modified Loop on Ground (LoG) receive antenna that I use at parks and such. For over a year now, I have been using 3-conductor rotor wire bought cheap at the local hardware store and have wired the conductors in series. Grayhat (Andrew) was the inspiration when he decided to create a folded dipole along the side of his house.
The usual construction of a LoG antenna for shortwave is a single wire of about 60 feet in circumference in order to not go above one wavelength for 20 meter band usage. If you recall, going above one wavelength will start creating weird lobes in the reception pattern. See – Loop-On-Ground Antenna Part 2.
However, I did not like this 19 foot diameter wire on the ground in public parks just waiting to be tripped over. Like, the time when a horse got loose from its owners and almost tripped over my 60 foot wire. I don’t think I would have liked the resulting lawsuit!
So out of fearful necessity I took some leftover RCA 3-conductor rotor wire, about 29 feet of it, and wired a loop with the conductors in series. This gives about 81 feet of total conductive length. But since it is folded onto itself, there is an undetermined loss of resonant length. Callum (M0MCX) of DXCommander fame has experimented and found folded dipoles need three times more length in the folded section to reach resonance, so my loop is probably around 69 feet (electrically). See – Fold the end of a Dipole Back – What’s Happening?.
In the picture below, the black wire with Ring Terminal at the bottom goes all the way around to the other side, soldered to the green wire, which goes around and is soldered to the red wire, which goes around to the Ring Terminal at the top, plus tie-wraps to hold the wires together.
The next picture is how the Wellbrook Medium Aperture preamplifier is connected to the loop with BNC cable that goes to the 12V power injector. I have had this Wellbrook unit for maybe 6+years with no signs of problems. WARNING – do NOT use the Wellbrook preamplifier in the presence of high powered RF energy like your Amateur Radio antenna pumped with 1000 watts from a linear amplifier; the Wellbrook premap might just overload and get damaged! I did use this loop and preamplifier at last year’s 2022 ARRL Field Day and was able to get away with it because we were only using 100 watts per station. Listening to the 9pm 3916-net trivia group was fun but I still needed to keep it away from the transmitting antennas. Continue reading
This is the 45th Parallel calling again
Apologies for last week’s non-appearance on 9395 Khz, looks like WRMI was down all evening on that frequency. Fingers crossed the Imaginary Stations 45th Parallel Midwinter Broadcast will now be on this Sunday 19th February 2023 on 9395 kHz at 2300 hrs UTC. We promise there will be a good bit of circular latitude fun and some fine forty fives played throughout the show. We’d love you to join us this time. Fastradioburst23