Richard’s QSL from Radio Demerara (Voice of Guyana)

SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, writes:

“Your recent post sent me to my archives and I’ve found my QSL from Radio Demerara, the predecessor of the Voice of Guyana. Copies of the front and back of the QSL letter I received are attached.

The QSL was for reception on 13 December 1966 at 01:00 UTC at my home in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto. This was in the same year that Guyana achieved independence from the United Kingdom.

In addition to a commercial for Ovaltine, I heard a program of announcements including births, birthdays, deaths, and personal messages. I used a two-tube Knight-Kit Span Master regenerative receiver, which I built a couple of years earlier when I was in Grade 10, along with a 43-foot inverted-L antenna attached to the top of my mother’s clothesline.

Along with a friend, I had established the Intercontinental DX Club, which we ran for a few years until it came time to go to university. But that’s another story.”

The Intercontinental DX Club? What a great name! You’ll have to share that story sometime, Richard!

Many thanks for scanning this QSL from Radio Demerara. I love the fact that they noted “Temporary QSL” at the top of the letter and apologized for the delay in response. What a great piece of radio history and so relevant as we hear the Voice of Guyana return to the shortwaves.

As RadioShack closes shop, look for deals

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I’ve received a number of messages and comments regarding close-out and clearance deals at RadioShack retail stores. While this varies by market and the type of store (some are corporate, others are RS franchises), there’s no question: now is the time to check for deals.

My good friend and SWLing Post reader, Mike Hansgen (K8RAT), discovered that his local RS in Ohio has marked everything 25% off. Everything.

Another reader recently commented that his RS store had a similar deal–25% off everything–but even increased the percentage of savings as you purchased more items.

While RadioShack has few shortwave radios of note these days, they do have a lot of essential items for your home radio shack: cables, connectors, components, soldering equipment, batteries, scanners, DeoxIT and even Arduino products to name a few.

If you find that your local RS is liquidating stock, please comment with details. Let’s compare notes!

If you’d like to read more about the state of RadioShack, check out the following news articles sent in by readers:

Richard Cuff also shares this blog post from Allen Loudell at WDEL and this brilliant overview of the collapse of RadioShack via Bloomberg.

The story behind Landon’s Realistic DX-160

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Landon's 15 year old son with his Realistic DX-160

Landon’s 15 year old son, Seth, with his Realistic DX-160

After posting Landon Reynold’s excellent listener post a few days ago, Landon added details about his Realistic DX-160. Landon writes:

Something I didn’t share in my original post, was that this DX-160 is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm!

Landon's shortwave listening post and coffee maker. All of the essentials.

Landon’s shortwave listening post and coffee maker inside the aircrew tent during Desert Storm.

I retired from the Tennessee Air Guard/USAF in 2004, having served 20 years as an Aeromedical Evacuation Specialist, flying Air Evac missions. In addition to having served in Desert Storm, I also flew air evac missions during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

But … back in 1990-1991 when I deployed to Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, I took the DX-160 along with me. For an antenna, I used the pictured military surplus antenna, which I would string along our tent, or any other attachment I could find a place to attach it. The antenna was one I had purchased years before, and had used with the AN/GRR-5.

When we were not flying missions, or filling sandbags, we’d often sit around the tent, tuning in shortwave stations, or listening aircraft such as the A-10s calling in their strike reports. They actually used HF radio and sent their reports in the clear on sideband.

I also realized after I had re-read my original post, that I may have led the impression that I purchased this particular DX-160 on eBay. In fact, I purchased it in a thrift shop in Erin, Tennessee back in 1989, before I went off to Desert Storm. I’ve purchased several other radios, such as Realistic Patrolman Scanners, Bearcat Scanners, etc. on eBay for my collection.

Another scan I thought you might be interested in, is the latter, which was from CRB Research Books, owned by the late Tom Kneitel, K2AES. Many DXers who have been around for awhile are most likely familiar with the works of Tom Kneitel, as he wrote many books on the hobby, especially those about monitoring the military and utilities. I have several of his books in my library.

http://www.hfunderground.com/wiki/Tom_Kneitel

Landon, many thanks for sharing this history and photos of your DX-160 throughout the years! It must give you great pride to see your son, Seth, taking an interest in the hobby with the DX-160.

Any other readers have a Monitoring Station Registry certificate from CRB Research? Though I knew about the certificates, for some reason I never obtained one back in the day. And Landon thanks for reminding me about Tom Kneitel; he was certainly one of the pillars of our hobby for many, many years.

The Sony CF-560s: a shortwave favorite in Spain

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Jesus Leal, for contacting me and sharing photos of his Sony CF-560s shortwave receiver. I have never seen the CF-560s before. I believe the its a relatively rare receiver; indeed, I couldn’t even find one in the completed listings on eBay.

The CF-560s covers AM/FM/SW and has a built-in cassette player/recorder. Being a “boombox” style radio, I imagine the SW filter is wide and, when locked into a strong station, provides rich audio.

Mr. Leal, who lives in the La Mancha region of Spain, uses the Sony CF-560s for regular shortwave listening but also has a Grundig/Eton Satellit 750 in his radio arsenal.

Any other SWLing Post readers have the Sony CF-560s? Looks like a gem of a radio. The design certainly has strong 1980s nostalgic value.

Shortwave Radio Recordings: Detecting Radio Guyana/Voice of Guyana

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Yesterday I learned that Voice of Guyana (a.k.a. Radio Guyana) is back on the shortwaves after being off-air for many years. Evidently, the station repaired some of its transmitters and antennas with the assistance of station supporter and technician Jamie Labadia. At this point the station is only capable of a 1,000 watt AM signal.

To be clear, 1 kW AM is not an easy catch for most of us in North America unless propagation is in our favor.

Last night while testing a new military-grade SDR (the Enablia TitanSDR) that I’m reviewing, I decided that Voice of Guyana might make for a good weak-signal test.

And so, last night at 21:00 EST (02:00 UTC) I tuned the TitanSDR to 3,290 kHz; I could see a faint carrier on frequency, but the audio was lost in the noise. I could detect talking and music, but I couldn’t base an ID from it. I set the TitanSDR to record a wideband chunk of spectrum throughout the night. This morning, I played the spectrum recording and found that the signal was at its best around 0945 UTC.

Above you can see Radio Guyana’s AM signal on the TitanSDR narrowband spectrum display (click to enlarge). While still quite weak, I could make out station IDs and music quite easily. It was wonderful to hear Voice of Guyana on the air again!

Note: the TitanSDR was exceptional at pulling the audio out of the static. More about this SDR to come…

Here’s a 27 minute recording I made with the TitanSDR, using its eUSB mode (ECSS), beginning around 0945 UTC:

Audio Player

00:00

Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.

The largest shortwave transmission site in the world is…?

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The 2,800 acre Edward R. Murrow Transmission Site via Google Earth.

What is the world’s largest shortwave radio transmission site? This is the question recently posed to me by filmmaker Amanda Dawn Christie, who is currently working on a documentary featuring Canada’s decommissioned RCI Sackville transmission site.

While I know exactly what North America’s largest government transmission site is–the Edward R. Murrow Transmission Site–as well as North America’s largest private transmission site–WRMI–I’m uncertain which is the largest site internationally…Is it one of these, or another?

Specifically, I believe Amanda is interested in the largest transmission site in terms of transmitters, antennas, and utilized land area.

Can anyone shed some light on this interesting inquiry? Many thanks in advance!

And if we do determine the answer, it will, of course, be posted here.

RadioShack nears the end

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Many thanks to Ron, who shares this link to a story from the ARRL News:

RadioShack’s Long, Slow Downward Slide Nears the End

The end is near for RadioShack. It seems inevitable that the once seemingly ubiquitous electronics and cell phone retailer will liquidate its assets, after which RadioShack would cease to exist. A number of legal steps would come first, including a likely bankruptcy filing. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) delisted RadioShack on February 2, after the company failed to provide a plan to address a lack of compliance with NYSE rules related to maintenance of company value. BloombergBusiness has reported that behind-the-scenes talks are under way to sell approximately half of RadioShack’s owned-and-operated stores to Sprint and shutter the remaining outlets, although other scenarios involving other entities are possible.[…]

Continue reading at the ARRL website…