Category Archives: What’s On Shortwave

Updade: From the Isle of Music

Solomon Islands and Vanuatu On Shortwave

Paul Walker’s listening post in Galena, Alaska.

by Paul Walker

I tried logging the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu shortwave broadcast stations for years, however, owing to my location and poor antenna along with technical problems with the stations, I was never able to log them.

Well, I recently moved to Alaska and was able to take the stations off my “Most Wanted List.”

SIBC has two frequencies–5020 kHz and 9545 kHz–both with 10,000 watts. They use 9545 kHz during their local workday time frame and the 5020 kHz frequency is their late night and early morning frequency.

A few times, I have caught 9545 kHz not signing off at 0500UTC for the switchover to 5020 kHz like it should of. When 9545 kHz is on late, the signal is usually pretty darn good.

In fact, on April 25th, I caught 9545 kHz on about 2 1/2 hours past the scheduled switchover and the signal was AMAZING! It was near perfect with a rock solid signal, fading so slightly it’s barely noticeable, no interference and pretty good audio!!

For whatever reason, when 9545 kHz is on late, It seems to have a better signal most times then 5020 kHz would if it was on at that time. SIBC has one transmitter so two frequencies can’t be on at once. Both times I’ve caught 9545 on late, it signs off abruptly and minutes later, 5020 kHz is on, as it should be.

As for 5020 kHz, this recording on May 22 at 1148 UTC this was about the best I’ve ever heard it.

Listen closely when SIBC goes to dead air before shutting off the transmitter, I clearly hear two people talking.

As for Radio Vanuatu, their signals seem to be chronically/habitually under modulated and combine that with the large amount of speech programming they ran…and they are hard to catch. Good luck hearing them on 3945 kHz. Even with Radio Nikkei off, the best I’ve ever gotten from 3945 kHz was a signal so poor all I could make out was the speech on 3945 kHz and 7260 kHz matched.

On May 14th at 0923 UTC, I got about the best signal out of Radio Vanuatu on 7260 that I’ve ever had. Conditions must have been good and that combined with the fact they were running music made them a bit easier to hear.

For those that don’t know me, I am living in Galena, Alaska a village of 500 people in rural central Alaska, halfway between Nome & Fairbanks. I work here as the Program Director for a small network of community radio signals along the Yukon river. I DX from the river bank 500 feet from my apartment with a Tecsun PL-880 and 80 foot or 225 foot long wire, soon to be a Wellbrook ALA1530LNP.

Paul Walker is located in Galena, Alaska and is a regular contributor to the SWLing Post. Be sure to check out Paul’s YouTube channel and SoundCloud channel where everything he logs is recorded and posted. Click here to read his other contributions on the SWLing Post.

“The Classics Experience” with Paul Walker this weekend!

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Paul Walker at KIYU Alaska.

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and broadcaster, Paul Walker, who writes:

The next broadcast of “The Classics Experience” with Paul Walker is rapidly approaching. It’s a 2 hour broadcast of rock and roll music with some country classics scattered in and occasionally a few audio surprises.

The next broadcast schedule looks like this:

WINB 9265khz Saturday June 4th 0230UTC to 0430UTC
WRMI 7570 Saturday June 4th 0400 to 0600UTC

WINB’s principal radiation direction is 242 degrees true or almost due southwest. Looks to cover parts of the Midwest/Southern US pretty well: Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas and into Mexico. WINB claims “At the long range, the main beam hits Eastern Australia and New Zealand. The rear lobe hits the Mediterranean area of Eastern Europe.”

WRMI’s 7570khz signal beams at a 315 degree azimuth to Vancouver, Canada. It is very listenable, near local like on good nights here in rural Central Alaska.

No appeals for donations, no begging for sponsors, no political or religious rantings and ravings nor any silly personal opinions. I promise. Just good music for the fun of it!

Seriously, I fund the broadcast out of my own pocket about once every 2-3 months just for the heck of it!

Reception reports are only accepted by regular postal mail. $2 appreciated to cover the costs of the QSL cards I had printed up and the postage. Reports can be sent to:

Paul B. Walker, Jr.
PO Box 353
Galena, Alaska 99741 USA

FYI: There are two surprises: I will have text in the MFSK32 format in the second half of the first hour and then a picture in the MFSK32 format in the second half of the second hour.

Thanks, Paul, for putting you good music show on the air! We’ll be listening for “The Classics Experience” this weekend. Note: since the broadcast times are in UTC above, listeners in North America should tune in during the evening on Friday, June 3rd. Compare your local time to UTC.

David enjoys hammock mobile SWLing with his Icom IC-92AD

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David Korchin (K2WNW), for sharing this short video demonstrating the shortwave receive capabilities of the Icom IC-92AD handheld transceiver:

Click here to view on YouTube.

Frankly, I’m quite amazed at the clarity and fidelity of the Voice of Turkey interval signal on this handheld. Goes to show that with a proper antenna, and decent conditions, wide-band handhelds can certainly be used for shortwave radio listening! It also helps that David is outdoors, away from RFI, and was located on the coast of Long Island, NY.

Post readers: Have you had good fortune SWLing with wide-band handled transceivers? Please comment!

Listening to The Link via Shortwave Service?

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As we mentioned in a post last month, Radio Canada International’s program “The Link” is now being broadcast via Shortwave Service in Germany.

If you’ve been listening to The Link via shortwave, SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, encourages you to send RCI a short listener report.

You can either send a brief e-mail to Mark Montgomery via [email protected] or use the contact form at http://www.rcinet.ca/en/contact/.

May Update: From the Isle of Music

Bob’s 1961 Radio Havana Cuba QSL Card and full text from DXers Unlimited on 55th anniversary

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Bob La Rose, who shares a QSL he received (see above and below) from Radio Havana Cuba after they had only been on the air a few days back in 1961.

Amazing, Bob! Thanks for taking the time to scan and share this report!

Also, many thanks to Arnie Coro, Host of Dxers Unlimited at Radio Havana Cuba, for sharing the full text/script from his May 1st 2016 anniversary edition of DXers Unlimited:

Radio Havana Cuba
Dxers Unlimited
Dxers Unlimited’s weekend edition for 1 May 2016
By Arnie Coro
Radio amateur CO2KK

Hi amigos radioaficionados, welcome to the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited, today l am happy to celebrate with you all the 55th Anniversary of Radio Havana Cuba… Yes amigos, it was on the first day of May of 1961, during the May Day celebrations when Cuba had just won the battle against the mercenary invasion that we went on the air using our present name Radio Havana Cuba… Two announcers, Orlando Castellanos and Fernando Alcorta announced to the world that Radio Havana Cuba, was on the air… Previously we had used the name Cuban Experimental Short Wave, but from May one of 1961, we are known worldwide as Radio Havana Cuba…

So today is a very special day… remembering those who have passed away after many years of valuable services to our station, like Pedro Costa the General Administration Manager, Carlos Estrada our Chief Engineer, and former Director Generals Marcos Behamaras. Orlando Fundora, Jose Antonio Caiñas and Alfredo Viñas. I also keep very nice memories of Angel Hernandez our bilingual announcer with the most effective voice for short wave radio that I can recall, and also I remember Manolo Ortega, reading our Spanish language editorials so that they could be heard clearly through his powerful voice…

Si amigos, I was there at the station 55 years ago as a young radio technician in charge of supervising the operations of our studios and transmitters that at that time included four Brown Boveri Swiss made short wave transmitters connected to a still under construction antennas farm, and the two studios borrowed from Radio Progreso until we could finish building our first studios .

The history of Radio Havana Cuba is full of very relevant moments, like the day that our Experimental Station announced to the world that the mercenary invasion that entered the Bay of Pigs had been defeated after sixty six hours of fierce combats .

With a lot of enthusiast and the impacting presence of a new generation of announcers, journalists , technicians, engineers and support personnel we are moving ahead to provide the best possible programming keeping our short wave transmitting facilities because we do believe on the use of international short wave broadcasting, while not disregarding the feeding of streaming audio to the Internet-

I am Arnie Coro, your host here at this special 55th Anniversary edition of Dxers Unlimited, that will continue in just a few seconds after a station ID..

Musical short cut

Yes amigos this is Radio Havana Cuba, using short wave frequencies at different times of the day on the 16, 19, 22, 25 ,31, 49 and 60 meters bands… and now our next radio hobby related item, a very popular section of this show under the name Antenna Topics , that is dedicated today , at the request of several listeners to a very effective Dxing antenna, low take off angle radiator, known as the HENTENNA, A great number of listeners from all around the world have written to me recently, asking to learn more about this Japanese antenna design , known as the HENTENNA, that seems to continue to be making headlines in radio publications around the world once again… But before telling you more about the mysterious HENTENNA…. A solar activity update… believe it or not, we are seen the solar flux moving up to very near 100 units for the first time in many weeks… following the typical ups and downs of the tail end of solar cycle 24… so propagation conditions have improved on the short wave bands …. Now back to the HENTENNA…

By the way, the first original report about the HENTENNA that went on the air here at Dxers Unlimited, dates back to 1999,more precisely, it went on the air the 12th of October of 1999, and according to my records, it then generated a lot of interest from our listeners, who were at that time, 1999, getting ready to enjoy the peak years of solar dream solar cycle 23 !!! >Never as powerful as super cycle 19, but nevertheless much better than the present very poor cycle 24.

So amigos here is at the request of Dxers Unlimited’s fans , a special Dxers Unlimited’s report on the HENTENNA, the Japanese elongated rectangular loop antenna with an easy match to coaxial cable feedlines of any impedance, be it 50, 60 ,75 or 93 ohms…or even 150 ohms !!! Of course that you can feed it with parallel transmission line of 300 to 450 ohms too, it is just a matter of minutes to find the perfect match for the feedline in use.

Let me start by saying that I recently built yet another HENTENNA for the FM broadcast band, and it is working nicely, having already picked up some Sporadic E skip DX stations from Mexico, the US and Puerto Rico during first few days of this year’s spring and summer E skip season.

Now you will have to learn something very unusual about the HENTENNA… the HENTENNA produces or receives VERTICALLY polarized waves when the antenna is placed horizontally; that is, with the long sides of the rectangular loop parallel to the ground. AND, if you want horizontal polarization, just flip the HENTENNA so that the long sides of the loop are vertical, and the short sides are parallel to the ground, something that is puzzling, but that’s the way it is amigos…

By the way, one of the world’s foremost antenna experts, Dr. L. B. Cebik, amateur radio operator W4RNL, did during his fruitful life an extensive analysis of elongated loops, and his findings are really fascinating. Dr. Cebik , now sorrily a silent key specialized in computer modeling of complex antenna systems, and his work with the HENTENNA and other similar elongated loops shows that the HENTENNA is a very good performer indeed.

In a few seconds, be ready to write down, the formulas for calculating HENTENNAS in the frequency range from 14 megaHertz all the way up to 220 megaHertz.

And now, as promised more about the japanese wonder antenna… the HENTENNA. Dr. Cebik’s computer modeling shows that the elongated loop HENTENNA has an edge over a regular square one wavelength loop and the regular elongated loop.

HENTENNAS for receiving FM broadcast signals are very easy to build, using a wooden or PVC pipe frame and copper wire. I built the one just
mentioned cut for 100 megaHertz, using PVC insulated no. 12 wire, the one that is typically used for home wiring.

The loop was closed by soldering with a butane torch, and using regular solder with rosin core… The reason for using the butane torch is that no soldering iron at hand here could handle the heavy wire PLUS the high speed heat transfer of the copper wire.

The loop for the 100 megaHertz antenna is 1.5 meters on the long sides of the rectangle and 50 centimeters on the short sides. The feed point for the 50 ohm cable is was found to be located about 55 centimeters from one of the short sides of the loop.

The antenna is installed with the long sides in a vertical position; for receiving horizontally polarized FM broadcasts. I tried both 50 ohms and 75 ohms coaxial cables, and could not detect any difference on the weakest station that I am picking up here regularly with the FM band HENTENNA.

Again, now please pay extra attention …if you want to make of these elongated loops for receiving, here are the measurements to use: for the long sides of the rectangle 1/2 of a wavelength at the operating frequency, for the short side, the length is 1/6 of a wavelength… and the connection point for the coaxial cable of 50 ohms impedance is a little more than 1/6 of wavelength from one of the short sides of the rectangle, and it must be found experimentally by locating the point that provides the minimum standing wave ratio.

HENTENNAS can be built for any frequency between 10 megaHertz and 300
megaHertz by using heavy WIRE, and for the frequency range from about 50 megaHertz to 500 megaHertz you may try building HENTENNAS with copper or aluminum tubing.

Hope to have you all listening to my middle of the week edition of Dxers Unlimited amigos and do enjoy the improved short wave propagation conditions now in progress, especially after your local sunset.