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As reported by many DXers worldwide, Radio Guinée, from the Republic of Guinea in west Africa has returned to shortwave on 9650 kHz. Check between 0000 and 0300 UTC as well as around 0600 UTC. Programming is in French with lots of African music. Here is an article from March about the state of radio and TV transmitters in the Republic of Guinea. Perhaps this is what spurred them to reactivate the shortwave transmission. The article is in French.
Looks like a beautiful DX location you’ve got there, Paul. You’ve obviously found ways to mitigate receiver overload from the broadcast station with the number of loggings you’ve been posting as of late.
Indeed, Paul recently forwarded the following sample of logs from this very DXing spot. Paul writes:
Unless otherwise noted, all loggings were from a Tecsun PL-880 with an 80 foot long wire 5 feet up in a tree. My location is Galena, Alaska which is a village of 500 people about 300 miles east of Nome, Alaska and 300 miles west of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Comments questions or thoughts always welcome!
I was able to log Channel Africa broadcasting in French on 15235 kHz, two mornings last week.
This recording was made on Friday April 8, 2015 at 8:45 AM Alaska Daylight Time/1645UTC. I would rate the signal about 6 1/2 out of 10 with good audio, some light fading and no interference.
This recording was made on Wednesday April 6, 2015 at 8:37 AM Alaska Daylight Time/1637UTC. The signal was about a 6 out of 10 with moderate fading, a little more then the recording made on April 8th.
This recording was made on Saturday April 9, 2015 at 10:36 AM Alaska Daylight Time/1836UTC. I would rate the signal about 7 1/2 to 8 out of 10 with good audio, some light fading and no interference.
This recording was made on Saturday April 9, 2015 at 10:36 AM Alaska Daylight Time/1836UTC. I would rate the signal about 4 1/2 out of 10 with ok audio, some light to moderate fading and some interference.
This recording was made on Saturday April 9, 2015 at 9:00AM Alaska Daylight Time/1700UTC. I would rate the signal about 4 out of 10 with fair audio, some light to moderate fading and little interference.
This recording was made on Saturday April 10 , 2015 at 1:29PM Alaska Daylight Time/2129UTC. I would rate the signal about 6 out of 10 with GOOD audio, some light to moderate fading and no interference.
Note: This was by FAR the best reception I’ve ever had of AIR. Their audio is usually pretty piss poor with poor quality and low modulation. Plus, their signal just isn’t that good usually.
I have also logged Voice Of Korea on 2850, 3320, 6100, 6400, 12015, 7220, 11910, 11935, 11735, 15105, 15180, 13760, 13650, 7580, 9650, 9875, 9445, 9665, 9425, 6170 and 3250 kHz.
Radio Algerienne Holy Quran and Radio Saudi are fairly regular visitors here and at times, pretty strong.
6160 kHz via Vancouver is heard several times a week…sometimes just barely, and other times, like a few days ago, nearly like a local.
The upper bands, 15 and 17 MHz seem to do real well here, especially by day, even smack in the middle of the day. I’ve heard RFI and DW via Issoudun right around lunch time in the 15 MHz area of the band.
I get Zanzibar on 11735 kHz from time to time…usually at least at fair levels.
CFRX 6070 is heard just about nightly, sometimes poor and barely audible but many times at least poor to fair and listenable. Now and then it’s pretty strong and listenable.
That is an impressive number of stations you’ve logged. It appears one of your easiest catches is Voice of Korea–I’m not surprised since you’re certainly within their broadcast footprint.
I will be on WRMI, 7570 kHz from 0400-0600UTC Saturday June 2nd, Which is 12 midnight to 2 AM Eastern/9 PM to 11pm Pacific on Friday June 1st.
More oldies and rock n roll music with some country thrown in. I’m working on a CONTEST with some cool radio prizes and even bigger…. I am ironing out the technical details and going to try and do the 2 hot show live from my studio in Galena, Alaska.
My target audience this time with be the West Coast of the US and Canada. I expected the Midwestern US to get a good signal from the 315 degree beam towards Vancouver, Canada as it has to pass over the Midwest to get to the West Coast.
Contest details and QSL information to be released before the show!
I’ll plan to re-post this announcement, with any updates, closer to the broadcast date of June 2, 2016.
Thanks again, Paul, for sharing some of your radio world!
Thank you, Mini! I don’t have the PL-210, but if I did I would certainly disable the soft mute as I find it very distracting during routine band scans.
The Extra class is the highest class amateur radio license you can hold in the United States. I’ve put off studying for this test for more than 17 years.
Why? Well, for one thing, I’m not an electronics engineer–indeed, I’ve never taken a formal course on electronics other than the practice study I did for my first three amateur radio licenses. The Extra exam is chock-full of formulas and electronics theory and it intimidated me for ages. Studying for it was…well…arduous.
I did, however, enjoy studying for my Technician, Novice and General exams. [Note that today there are only three license classes: Technician, General and Extra and no Morse Code requirement.] Indeed, I learned a lot about circuits and radio wave propagation from those first exams. As soon as my daughters are old enough, I’ll teach them the Technician course work.
What prompted me to study for my Extra license exam this month? I gave a presentation at the Blue Ridge Amateur Radio Club on April 4th–the president announced that the Extra class question pool was going through a major overhaul and I had already invested a few hours studying the current material.
The current Extra class question pool is only valid until the end of June 2016.
I made a decision that evening: it was time to buckle down and cram for this exam! Especially since my radio club (the NCDXCC) was giving exams the following week.
Studying
In the past, I used a combination of exam study guides published by the ARRL and W5YI, and free online practice exams provided by AA9PW. The combination worked very well.
With the Extra exam, however, I needed a method that was more persistent and one that focused on my weakest subjects.
Enter Ham Test Online
About this same time last year (April 2015), I decided to invest in an online course called Ham Test Online (HTO) with the idea that I could take the Extra exam at the 2015 Dayton Hamvention. That exam never happened because, in the build-up to the Dayton Hamvention, I had very little free time to study. Indeed, the same was true this month, but I fit study and practice time in every spare moment I had to get the exam in the books by the club meeting.
Typical Ham Test Online study screen.
According to HTO, I spent a total of roughly 30 hours studying for the Extra exam in total–at least 28 of those hours were within a one week period of time. I wouldn’t recommend this level of cramming for anyone else.
HTO advises that setting aside only one hour of study per day will have you in good shape to take the Extra exam in about one month. That is a much more reasonable timeline.
Ham Test online shows you, at a glance, your weakest/strongest subjects and topics you have yet to cover. (Click to enlarge)
In short: I am very impressed with Ham Test Online. It was worth every penny to have a dedicated tutorial system that was persistent in noting and repeating my weakest subjects.
It’s actually a very simple website and, fortunately, was usable via my Moto X smart phone’s Chrome web browser. This meant that when I was waiting for my kids in the doctor’s office or parking lot, I could study or even take a practice test without needing a PC.
HTO keeps track of your practice exam results and notes any missed questions for review later. Keep in mind that you only need a 75% score or higher to pass the test. I felt comfortable taking the test with scores in the 85% range. (Click to enlarge)
Indeed, at any given time, I had HTO running in a web browser session on my shack PC, my MacBook, my iPad and my smart phone–they all worked in symphony, picking up the last session/topic from the device I was last using.
Summary
Here are a few notes I took while using Ham Test Online:
Pros:
Adaptive study
Ability to skip topics temporarily
Informative, concise study material
Responsive website that is even usable via smart phone
Both the study and exam metrics show amount of material learned or committed to memory
User has control over:
level of persistence/repetition when a question is missed
difficulty of practice exams
ability to skip topics for an 8 hour period of time
reminder emails when system hasn’t been used for study
and more…
Useful metrics in both study and exam modes
Cons:
To be honest, it’s hard to list many cons for HTO. I’ve never used a similar online tutorial system for comparison.
I should note that I started studying for the Extra exam last year and perhaps learned 8-10% of the total exam. After a one year hiatus, HTO never assumed I could have forgotten the material I learned last year–bad assumption! (ha ha!) Only a day before the exam, I realized I had forgotten some of the initial study material, so I forced HTO to test me on it by selecting only the first element for study. I’m glad I caught that in time. Perhaps HTO should re-check course material after an extended hiatus?
Obviously, the HTO training method works–I was able to pass my Extra Exam with only about 30 hours of total study time. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have achieved that with books–especially on such short order–and I know of no other web-based platforms like it on the market [readers: please correct me if I’m wrong].
HTO is efficient and cost-effective–especially for those of us with an active family life. It would work well for someone who wants to learn the course material or, frankly, even for someone who is only interested in memorizing the answers.
$24.95 Technician Class study course (2-year subscription)
$29.95 General Class study course (2-year subscription)
$34.95 Extra Class study course (2-year subscription)
(includes both the current question pool and the 2016 pool when it becomes available)
$24.95 Renew all previously-purchased courses (for 2 more years)
If you are considering upgrading to the Extra class license, you might do so before July 2016 when the new question pool will be used. At least, for me, the deadline was a good excuse to get my act together and knock the test out!
Readers: Please comment if you’ve found other study methods or systems that have worked well for you.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ken McKenzie, who noticed the following message from Phil Covington (of Software Radio Laboratory LLC) on the QS1R Yahoo group:
I am working on a replacement for the QS1R that will be less expensive, yet use updated components. I am hoping to have them in production by the end of March.
Ken noticed that the message was originally dated about one month ago, so I’ll follow-up with Phil and see how much progress has been made. The QS1R was a well-respected SDR that had been on the market for several years. It would be great to see an updated version on the market.
Last night, a good friend handed over his brand-spanking-new IC-7300 and is allowing me to evaluate it over the next week or so.
The IC-7300 is Icom’s first “entry level” RF, Direct Sampling System HF transceiver.
I’ve only had the IC-7300 on the air for a few minutes, so can’t comment about performance. I can say that it has one of the most intuitive interfaces I’ve seen on a transceiver with so many functions. I also love the spectrum display–small, but large enough to see all of the pertinent information:
It’s a slick machine, indeed!
Time permitting, I plan to post a few audio clips and get reader reactions much like I did for in the portable shoot-out.
I’ll compare the IC-7300 to my Elecraft KX3 and a few SDRs as well. Of course, I’m evaluating this during one of the busiest times in my life, so we’ll see how quickly I progress–!
Many thanks to UNT Archivist, Maristella Feustle, who shares the following set of recordings she recently published in the UNT Digital Library Willis Conover collection.
The description reads:
“A broadcast of Music USA transmitted by station WLWO in Cincinnati, Ohio, and recorded off of shortwave radio in Lagos, Nigeria. It was sent to the Voice of America to document the quality of radio reception in that area. As a live broadcast, the recording also includes news breaks and station identification.”
I should add that you might also hear ambient sounds from Lagos if you listen carefully! Click on the links below to listen to the recording sets via the UNT Digital Library:
