Shortwave listening and everything radio including reviews, broadcasting, ham radio, field operation, DXing, maker kits, travel, emergency gear, events, and more
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Pavel Kraus, for the following guest post:
Building a Drain Pipe FSL Antenna
by Pavel Kraus
Hi, I greet all DX fans and the entire SWLing Post community! I enjoy reading reading this blog and the diversity of contributions from our authors and contributors; many thanks from me for so much useful information.
The following are the construction notes of my FSL antenna, which I designed thanks to the suggestions of GaryDeBock, and other FSL designers.
The antenna is a classic design featuring 60 ferrite rods 200x 10 mm, which are placed on a plastic sewage pipe.
Pict 3: Pipe with ferrite rods and windings
Pict 4: Pipe with ferrite rods and windings
In addition, sewer pipe sections are used for the entire antenna cover. I assume that this material can be obtained in other countries as well. Continue reading →
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jason, who writes:
Hi Thomas,
Recently I was cleaning and foolishly decided to clean the face of my Tecsun PL680 with 90% iso alcohol using an ear cleaner / Q-tip. Now the LCD has a smudge look to it, almost like a fog. The display is still legible thankfully, but only when looking head on. I quickly wiped it down with a cloth and left it in an airtight container filled with silica gel packets for a week.
Would you or other SWLING readers have any idea how to remedy this? It is my understanding that this is just cosmetic damage and shouldn’t impact the usage of the radio.
Regards,
– Jason
Sorry to hear about this, Jason. Yes, isopropanol/isopropylalcohol is a solvent and can corrupt plastic surfaces like this. I’m familiar because my wife once tried to clear a DVD with 90% isopropylalcohol and it made the surface so hazy, the DVD player could no longer read it. I don’t think this will have any impact on the radio itself since you didn’t exactly did it in iso alcohol.
I understand that in some cases, polishing the surface can minimize the haziness, but how to do that, I’m uncertain. My hope is, another SWLing Post contributor can chime in with some real-life experience!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Giuseppe Morlè, who writes:
Dear Thomas,
This is Giuseppe Morlè, from Formia central Italy on the Tyrrhenian Sea,
I built this “Magic Tablet. during a rainy afternoon to test various portables I have.
The tablet is composed of 2 separate circuits: one for the short waves, a single coil along the entire perimeter of the tablet, and another with 2 ferrites wrapped around 36 turns of telephone cable for the medium waves.
The heart of the system is a 1050 pf variable capacitor with its old wheel.
To listen to medium wave I have to exclude the short wave loop with a switch on the loop.
I also added another small switch to connect it to a capacitor for more or less capacity, but this I will do later.
I can test my portables like this because the tablet tunes very well from 500 kHz to 18 MHz. I spent very little to make all this as it is all recycled stuff.
You can see the first tests on the balcony of my house with a Tecsun H-501 via my YouTube channel:
Note: this video is in Italian, but you can turn on closed captions and have it translate into the language of your choice.
As I always say, I am not a technician and I have little manual skills in building things, not having a proper laboratory. When I get an idea, I put it on paper and I start to find all the materials and then see if they work. Not all of us are of the experts in electronics–what drives me is a passion for radio listening. Now being retired, I have more time to devote to it.
Thanks to you and hello to the whole SWLing Post community …
73. Giuseppe Morlè (IZ0GZW)
I love this, Giuseppe! What a clever all-in-one portable antenna system for your shortwave radios. I especially love the fact you were able to create all of this from parts you have at your home. You’ve got a winning attitude, too: build and experiment! Thank you for sharing.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jock Elliott, who shares the following guest post:
The Essential Listening Post
By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM
Listening to shortwave radio (or any radio, for that matter) is just plain fun.
So what do you need to get in on the fun?
A radio. With today’s crop of portable SW radios, many of which have search and store capabilities, a newbie SWL can get started quickly without a lot fuss and bother and no extra stuff. Just hit the search and store function (it has different names on different radios), let the search function do its thing, and step through the memories to see what’s out there. If your radio doesn’t have search and store, you can just tune around to see what’s currently broadcasting or, if you have a computer or smart phone, use it to explore one of the online directories like https://shortwaveschedule.com/
What follow next are some things that I’ve found increase my enjoyment of SWLing. Continue reading →
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paolo Viappiani (SWL I1-11437), who shares the following guest post. Note that, as with any radio modification, perform this operation at your own risk. This is a very simple mod, but if you feel it might be beyond your skill level, consider hiring a radio technician to perform it on your behalf:
Unblocking the YAESU FRG-8800 Frequency Coverage Limitations
by Paolo Viappiani
Figure I: An unblocked FRG-8800 receiver tuned to 29.999.9 MHz.
Introduction
It is well known that some receivers produced in the last decades of the last century suffered from a limited frequency coverage due to legislative restrictions in force in some countries (Germany, Australia, etc.).
In particular, in Germany it was forbidden to listen to HF frequencies higher than 26.1 MHz, while in other Countries shortwave were not allowed to receive frequencies below 2 MHz.
These restrictions led most radio manufacturers to produce “blocked” versions of their HF receivers in order to satisfy the various national requirements; almost classical examples are the world renowned SONY ICF-2001D and the PHILIPS D-2935/D-2999 portables.
The blocking/unblocking procedure of some frequency bands was quite simple in microprocessor-governed synthesized radios: usually it was sufficient to add (or remove) proper jumpers in the vicinity of the microprocessor to perform the task, and the correct procedure was often covered in the Service Manuals or in specific Technical Bulletins; in any case plenty of information can be found on the Internet. Continue reading →
I just finished listening to the most recent episode of the Ham Radio Workbench with John Fallows (VE6EY) as a guest.
John is an SWL and Ham Radio operator and speaks at length about how he uses diversity reception to mitigate persistent local RFI (radio frequency interference).
If you have persistent issues with radio interference or if you’ve been curious about using diversity reception for mediumwave and shortwave DXing, I highly recommend listening to this episode. John has been known to frequent the SWLing Post and actually comes into the discussion primarily from an SWL’s perspective.
If you’ve tried diversity reception or a noise-cancelling system like the Timewave ANC-4+ in the past with mixed results, you’ll definitely benefit from listening to John’s best practices.
In addition, John points out that the excellent SDRplay RSPduo is a very affordable way to explore proper diversity reception.
How effectively can you mitigate RFI with diversity reception? Check out this video on YouTube queued up to the point where John does a live demo with his Anan SDR and loop antennas: https://youtu.be/vu8D87aVUTQ?t=2011 (I also recommend watching to full video presentation for even more detail.)
I’ve embedded the audio for the Ham Radio Workbench podcast below, but you can also find it along with show notes on the Ham Radio Workbench website.
Ham Radio Workbench is one of my favorite podcasts; if you like exploring a wide variety of technical topics, I highly recommend checking it out. It’s available on all podcasting platforms.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, 13dka, who shares the following guest post:
In search of benchmark signals: The International Beacon Project
by 13dka
If you – like yours truly – like to tinker with antennas and radios to get the most out of them, you likely have your own set of reference stations. If this is a new concept for you – reference stations are whatever stations you deem apt to check propagation, the general function of your radio, when trying to improve reception or comparing radios… They are ideally always on when you need them and come in various strengths and distances on several bands from all over the world. Traditional sources for that are of course time signals and VOLMET stations on HF, even though the latter are giving you only two 5-minute slots per hour for testing reception from a specific region and the former have their own specialities here in Europe:
A typical scene on 10 MHz, captured at home 30 minutes after the full hour: BPM voice ID from China mixed with something else, then Italcable Italy kicks in on top of some faint murmur possibly from Ft. Collins, in winter some South American time stations may stack up on that together with splatter from RWM 4 kHz lower…
A reliable source of grassroots weak signals is particularly desirable for me because I enjoy proving and comparing the practical performance of radios at “the dike”, a QRM-free place on the German North Sea coast. In the absence of manmade noise and the presence of an ocean adding 10dB of antenna gain, finding benchmark stations with “grassroots” signal levels turned out to be a different challenge than it used to be: With somewhat sizeable antennas the stations tend to be (too) loud there, even with the baseline ionospheric conditions under a spotless sun in its activity minimum. In short, my old benchmark stations didn’t work so well anymore and I had to find something new. Continue reading →
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