Category Archives: Guest Posts

Ken’s low-profile, low-cost vertical antenna

Ken’s antenna “deployed” in his back yard.

SWLing Post reader, Ken Hansen (N2VIP), writes:

A few months ago I purchased a couple S9V18 18′ vertical antennas for $65 at cheapham.com, with the intention of deploying a quick HF aerial at my HOA-laden home for ham radio use. I found they work great for SWL.

The S9V18 antenna is made to slip over a 1″ o.d. pipe driven into the ground at least a foot, with 12″ of the pipe rising off the ground. You can pound a two foot pipe half-way into the ground, or do as I did and fill a bucket with cement and stick the pipe in that half-way.

This is a ‘close-up’ of the bucket. Note the plate the ground radials are attached to–it’s from Home Depot, it’s a bus bar designed to bond the ground wire for each circuit in a breaker box.

After adding a reasonable ground plane of 8x 14 ga wire cut about 15′ long I hooked up a 4:1 balun and ran it to my Kenwood TS-570D.

What I found was the aerial not only worked well on 20 meters, it also made a great shortwave aerial! Stations were booming in here in Texas at night.

The antenna slides over the pipe sticking out of the concrete in the bucket. Here is a picture of the bucket before the antenna base is slipped over it.

My ‘discovery’ was that a nice, modest vertical antenna can really improve reception on SW bands…

Cheapham.com sells the S9V18 antenna on close out for $35/each, the 2′ pipe is a few dollars more, add in a bit of coax and a modest ground plane and you can really up your SWL ‘game’.

Antenna on closeout:

http://www.cheapham.com/s9-v18-18-vertical-antenna-closeout/

I suggest anyone buying this antenna seriously consider buying additional clamps at the same time, they are just a few dollars and will help extend the life of the antenna:

http://www.cheapham.com/products/S9V18-Replacement-Clamps.html

For shortwave broadcast listening a direct connection without balun would probably suffice, but I used an LDG 4:1 balun to support multi-band ham transmitting:

http://www.cheapham.com/rba-4-1-voltage-balun/

Just thought I’d share my ‘discovery’…

And we thank you for sharing your discovery, Ken! This is a great, simple solution for those who cannot erect a permanent “high-profile” antenna. I’m especially impressed with how budget-friendly your solution is, Ken.

Post Readers: If you have other suggestions for inexpensive low-profile antennas, please contact me or comment below!

Guest Post: Brian’s 1974 mix tape of off-air shortwave radio recordings

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Many thanks to SWLing Post and Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributor, Brian Smith, for the following guest post and vintage recording:

Shortwave Radio 1974: Canada, Argentina, Spain, West Germany, Albania, utility stations

-Brian Smith (W9IND)

Want to know what shortwave radio sounded like in 1974? This 55-minute recording, recovered from a cassette, was never intended to be anything but “audio notes”: I was an 18-year-old shortwave listener who collected QSL cards from international stations, and I was tired of using a pen and a notepad to copy down details of the broadcasts. I wanted an easier way to record what I heard, and my cassette tape recorder seemed like the perfect means to accomplish that goal.

But it wasn’t. I soon discovered that it was simpler to just edit my notes as I was jotting them down — not spend time on endless searches for specific information located all over on the tape. To make a long story shorter, I abandoned my “audio notes” plan after a single shortwave recording: This one.

Hallicrafters S-108 (Image source: DXing.com)

Still, for those who want to experience the feel of sitting at a shortwave radio in the mid-1970s and slowly spinning the dial, this tape delivers. Nothing great in terms of sound quality; I was using a Hallicrafters S-108 that was outdated even at the time. And my recording “technique” involved placing the cassette microphone next to the radio speaker.

Thus, what you’ll hear is a grab bag of randomness: Major shortwave broadcasting stations from Canada, Argentina, Spain, Germany and Albania; maritime CW and other utility stations; and even a one-sided conversation involving a mobile phone, apparently located at sea. There are lengthy (even boring) programs, theme songs and interval signals, and brief IDs, one in Morse code from an Italian Navy station and another from a Department of Energy station used to track shipments of nuclear materials. And I can’t even identify the station behind every recording, including several Spanish broadcasts (I don’t speak the language) and an interview in English with a UFO book author.

The following is a guide, with approximate Windows Media Player starting times, of the signals on this recording. (Incidentally, the CBC recording was from July 11, 1974 — a date I deduced by researching the Major League Baseball scores of the previous day.)

Guide To The Recording

00:00 — CBC (Radio Canada) Northern and Armed Forces Service: News and sports.
07:51 — RAE (Radio Argentina): Sign-off with closing theme
09:14 — Department of Energy station in Belton, Missouri: “This is KRF-265 clear.”
09:17 — Interval signal: Radio Spain.
09:40 — New York Radio, WSY-70 (aviation weather broadcast)
10:22 — Unidentified station (Spanish?): Music.
10:51— Unidentified station (English): Historic drama with mention of Vice President John Adams, plus bell-heavy closing theme.
14:12 — Unidentified station (Spanish?): Male announcer, poor signal strength.
14:20 — Unidentified station (Spanish): Theme music and apparent ID, good signal strength.
15:16 — Unidentified station (foreign-speaking, possibly Spanish): Song, “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep.”
17:00 — Deutsche Welle (The Voice of West Germany): Announcement of frequencies, theme song.
17:39 — Unidentified station (English): Interview with the Rev. Barry Downing, author of “The Bible and Flying Saucers.”
24:36 — One side of mobile telephone conversation in SSB, possibly from maritime location.
30:37 — Radio Tirana (Albania): Lengthy economic and geopolitical talk (female announcer); bad audio. Theme and ID at 36:23, sign-off at 55:03.
55:11 — Italian Navy, Rome: “VVV IDR3 (and long tone)” in Morse code.

Click here to download the recording as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded audio player below:

Brian, this is a brilliant recording–regardless of audio quality–and we’re very thankful you took the time to share it. Propagation has left something to be desired as of late, so time traveling back to 1974 has been incredibly fun.

Post Readers: If, like Brian, you have off-air recordings on tape that you’d like to share, please contact me! Even if you don’t have the means to transfer your tapes to a digital format, I’m a part of a small community of shortwave radio archivists who would be quite willing to help.

Guest Post: Richard tests the frequency stability of the Tecsun PL-880

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, for the following guest post:

Frequency Stability of My Tecsun PL-880

Recently, while recording the audio on a particular SW frequency unattended over night, I decided to set my Tecsun PL-880 in USB mode with the 3.5 kHz RF bandwidth setting as I had previously noticed splatter QRM from a station 10 kHz below my frequency of interest. I adjusted the frequency to the nearest 10 Hz for natural-sounding voice. On playing the recording, I was disappointed to find that the signal had drifted in frequency and although speech was still recognizable, music was distorted.

I decided to try to measure the stability of the receiver by recording the Canadian time signal station CHU on 7850.00 kHz in USB mode (CHU has no LSB component) over night for over nine hours. The receiver was operated with just its telescopic whip antenna indoors and the audio was recorded with a Tecsun ICR-100 radio recorder / digital audio player. I wrote a Python script to compute the audio spectrum of each one-minute segment of the recorded files using a fast Fourier transform (after removing a DC component). The script then looks for the largest peaks in the spectra centred on a specified frequency and prints out the frequency (to the nearest Hz) and amplitude of the peak. In case the signal has dropped below audibility, a threshold is set and if the detected peak is below the threshold (likely just detecting the random noise background), it is skipped. The specific centre frequency I was looking for was 1000 Hz, the frequency of the tone used to mark each second of the CHU broadcast except when the voice announcement and digital signal are transmitted. In AM mode, the spectrum would consistently show a peak at 1000 Hz but in SSB mode, the peak will vary depending on the receiver frequency setting and the actual frequency of the receiver’s oscillator.

The plot below shows the received CHU one-second tone frequency as a function of time (UTC) from when the receiver was first switched on.

StabilityPlot-CHU1000hz

It shows the tone frequency started out at about 1046 Hz slowly dropping in the first half hour to about 1012 Hz and after about an hour stabilized to 1011 Hz ± 1 Hz for the better part of an hour. (This shows that you may have to allow a receiver to “warm up” for perhaps up to an hour before attempting anything close to accurate frequency reading at the order of 10 Hz.) But then, over the course of the next seven hours when the signal was audible, the frequency slowly rose ending up at about 1034 Hz. The variation might be affected by the ambient air temperature (but this should have been nearly constant), air flow around the receiver, and perhaps the charge level of the receiver’s battery. On several occasions, I have turned the receiver on (after being off for many hours) and seen a CHU frequency offset of only 10 or 20 Hz. So, I intend to repeat this experiment sometime to check on the day-to-day frequency stability. This frequency stability measurement technique could also be used with WWV/WWVH by recording the 440, 500, or 600 Hz tones broadcast at different times during the broadcast hour.

Of course, it’s also possible to check the receiver’s frequency offset in real time by switching between AM and SSB modes while adjusting the receiver frequency in 10 Hz steps until the signal sounds the same in both modes. There is also freely available computer software for various operating systems that can display a real-time spectrum of audio passed to it through a microphone or line input. So, a CHU or WWV/WWVH test using such software could also be performed in real time. And alternatively, by tuning say exactly 1 kHz away from the transmitted carrier frequency in SSB mode, the software can be used to measure the audible heterodyne frequency to better than 10 Hz — even 1 Hz. This frequency can then be added or subtracted as appropriate to the dial reading (assumed accurate or with a noted offset) to get the exact transmitted carrier frequency.

By the way, it is possible to calibrate and reset the PL-880 using the procedure documented on the SWLing Post (click here to view).

As a side benefit of the analysis I carried out, we can also look at the quality of the received signal over the recorded interval. In this case, it is a measure of the level of a particular audio frequency rather than the RF signal+noise level we usually get from the receiver S-meter or other signal strength display. This is illustrated in the plot below for the CHU recording. As you can see, reception was mostly quite good between about 02:00 and 04:00 UTC and then became fair but above threshold level until about 05:30 UTC.

The signal was then essentially inaudible up to about 08:00 UTC when with bouts of fading it became audible again for an hour or two with sunrise approaching.

— Richard Langley

Mike’s thrift store find: a Panasonic RF-888

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Mike's Panasonic RF-888 (left) and his GE Super Radio II (right)

Mike’s thrift store Panasonic RF-888 (left) and his GE Super Radio II (right)

SWLing Post contributor Mike (K8RAT) writes:

I happened upon a good find of a vintage radio recently when I visited my local Goodwill store in a small city in Ohio.

Among the electronic equipment on a shelf I discovered a Panasonic RF-888. I was not familiar with this radio. The large speaker along with switches and knobs for features found on the better radios impressed me.

The price on the sticker read $3.50. I paid at the counter and motored away not knowing what a bargain I had received.

The RF-888 audio is very good on FM and good on AM. Sensitivity and selectivity are very good on both bands. The tuning meter is useful.

I recommend visits to local second-hand stores. You never know what you might find.

Mike, K8RAT

Many thanks for sharing this story, Mike, as it provides a good lesson for us all: never pass by a thrift store! I’ve never had the good fortune of finding a gem like the RF-888–or a Sony ICF-2010 like Vlado–but I shall keep searching.

Panasonic RF-888s sell on eBay for $100 US and higher–at $3.50, I’d say Mike snagged a deal.

Radio Cook Islands: Guy’s 1993 recordings

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Guy Atkins, for the following guest post:

Radio Cook Islands

by Guy Atkins

A view from the driveway entrance to the Radio Cook Islands studio in 1993. Insulators on an antenna (T2FD or multiband dipole) can be seen as dark spots against the cloudy sky. A feedline is also seen rising above the left side of the building. (Photo: Guy Atkins)

(Photo: Universal Radio)

In 1993 I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit Rarotonga with my wife, courtesy of a nice award through my company which afforded me an all-expenses-paid trip anywhere we’d like to go.

I chose the South Pacific island of Rarotonga, partly because I wanted to visit Radio Cook Islands after listening to their “island music” on 11760 and 15170 kHz through my teenage years.

During our visit to the island I recorded 90+ minutes of RCI on 630 kHz with a local quality signal using a Grundig Satellit 500 and a Marantz PMD-221 recorder.

Recordings

The programming of Radio Cook Islands is bilingual, and announcers are fluent in both English and Cook Islands Maori. Music selections on RCI encompass all styles, to appeal to many age groups. These recordings was scheduled to include as much local music as possible.

RCI programming includes all the hallmarks of a small, non-professional station: stuck records & tape carts, dead air, poor modulation, and other miscues.

However, that’s part of the flavor of local radio, and these errors are heard throughout this recording. Particularly noticeable is the bassy, over-modulation of the studio announcer during sign-on announcements.

Recording 1

Notes: National anthem & hymn; sign-on announcements & music.
Music; weather; sign-off announcements & national anthem.
Local & regional news; weather; ads; music.

Recording 2

Notes: “Party Time” music request show; weather; local ads; more music.

Two engineers from Radio Cook Islands, photographed during my visit in April, 1993. (Photo: Guy Atkins)

Sadly, RCI will likely never be on shortwave again; a fire in the local tele-comm building a few months before my 1993 visit destroyed RCI’s transmitter. I had an amusing exchange with the secretary when I visited; she insisted that their station was still on shortwave. Of COURSE we’re on the air she said, because “the frequencies are published right here in the newspaper!” The engineer and announcer confirmed, though, that the silence on their former frequencies was for real. They indicated they were covering the outer islands just fine with FM translators and had no intention of restarting shortwave.

Radio Cook Islands 630 kHz antenna on the school ground of Takitumu Primary School.

RCI’s headquarters is in downtown Avarua, and their 5 kw transmitter (reported at half power, 2.5 kw in Dec. 2012) and modern quarter-wavelength vertical antenna is located in the town of Matavera (northeast side of Rarotonga).

Bing.com maps view of Radio Cook Islands antenna, 630 kHz at Takitumu Primary School, Matavera.

The antenna is in the yard of Takitumu primary school; see photos from Bing Maps and Panaromio [above].

It sure brings back a flood of good memories when I listen to these MP3s! I’d love to visit the Cooks again sometime.

Many thanks for this wonderful stroll down memory lane, Guy–radio nostalgia at its best!

I, too, would love to visit the Cook Islands someday–it is on my bucket list. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy your recordings. Again, many thanks for your guest post!

James’ vintage transistor radio collection

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In response to my recent post about the vintage Arvin 68R58 transistor radio, SWLing Post reader, James Patterson, has shared photos of his collection in New Zealand. James has captioned each photo below:

This portable Sanyo was bought at a “Second Hand” shop. It had badly corroded battery connections. I repaired it and it works fine now.

Very early National portable with twin speakers, broadcast [band] and [shortwave. Works very well.

This PYE Caddy was actually made here in New Zealand. I believe the design was from the UK though. It still works very well.

The PYE Caddy without the plastic cover.

Very popular in their day, the RED National Panasonic pocket AM Transistor 6. Works well.

Very early AIWA pocket Transistor 6. Still works well.

The “Murphy 8” Transistor radio. Broadcast band only. Wooden case in fab condition. Works very well.

This is the rear view of the “Murphy Transistor 8.” I gave it a new battery holder.

This is a “Murphy Transistor 7+” Im not sure what the “+” means because it does have only 7 transistors. Very good performer for its age. Wooden case is identical to the previous Murphy 8.

This is the rear view of the “Murphy Transistor 7 plus.” All very original, and works fine.

This National Panasonic DR 28 is not part of my early AM Transistor radio collection. It is, however, part of my shortwave radio collection.

Many thanks, James, for sharing photos from your collection! You certainly have some gems in there. I was not at all familiar with the New Zealand-made PYE Caddy, in fact. I’m curious if other radios were made in New Zealand in the past.

I bet you and I might agree that the Panasonic DR-28 (a.k.a. RF-2800 in North America) hardly feels “vintage,” but at 37 years old it certainly qualifies by most standards–hard to believe. The RF-2800 pops up on eBay quite often and has certainly held its value well. (Click here to search.)

Seeing the DR-28/RF-2800, in fact, is making me lust even more after the venerable Panasonic RF-2200! Alas…so many radios!

Jeffrey re-caps his Hallicrafters SX-110

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The restored SX-110 sitting on the bookshelf in the shack.

Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Jeffrey Fritz, writes:

During the summer of 2012 you were nice enough to run an article in your blog about my reviving a 1961 Hallicrafters SX-110 General Coverage receiver. The radio has continued to perform reasonably well during the last few years. However, recently I acquired several pieces of professional test equipment. That encouraged me to delve even deeper into the restoration of my old receiver from my novice ham radio days.

Over the past week, I completely recapped the SX-110 (except, of course, for the mica and ceramic caps as they still good, and the electrolytic caps as they were replaced in 2012.)

The SX-110 isn’t a complex receiver, but there are quite a few caps, so I worked methodically and carefully. I started working from the audio amp stage and continued working back through the IF stages and the BFO to the RF stage. I recapped each stage replacing the old caps with new Orange Drop caps. Each stage was tested before I moved on to the next stage. Here’s a photo of the recapped chassis:

Here are the capacitors that were removed from the receiver. Most are the old Bumble Bee caps–called that because of the color stripes that mark their value:

Virtually every Bumble Bee cap tested leaky and out of tolerance.

Next, I tested every tube replacing the weak or bad ones with NOS (New Old Stock) tubes. Every pot and switch was cleaned with DeOxit and moving parts were lubricated where appropriate. Finally, I did a complete re-alignment following the instructions in the Service Manual.

As with all vintage tube gear, restorations require patience, care and a decent knowledge of electronics. It’s easy to make a fair radio–even a good radio–into a disaster if you are not careful. Also there is enough voltage and current inside of the chassis of a tube radio to toss you across the room. So care is always the order of the day as is a VARIAC to bring the radio up to AC line voltage slowly.

The receiver now sounds as good as ever–perhaps even better than ever. It has marvelous AM audio and can pick up ham and broadcast stations on all bands with nothing more than a wire in my basement. It even does a decent job on SSB–something that I don’t recall it ever bring adept at in the past.

That say that you can’t keep a good man down. Similarly an old radio, with some new parts and some TLC, can run virtually forever.

I agree with you: you can’t keep a good radio down! Repair work is certainly the commitment we make when we fall in love with these old rigs. It’s a good thing that almost all of the parts are still available and relatively affordable.

Thanks again, Jeffrey!