Pavel’s Practical Electronics Homebrew Mediumwave Ferrite Antenna

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Pavel Kraus, who shares the following guest post:


Mediumwave Ferrite Antenna

by Pavel Kraus

This antenna for MW was made according to the instructions from Everyday Practical Electronics magazine, September 2000. The author of the Active Ferrite Loop Aerial construction project is Raymond Haigh.

The antenna was only adjusted mechanically according to my capabilities. Reception on this antenna was tested with receivers Malahite DSP 2 – original, Belka, Qodosen DX 286, AOR 7030+, Eton E1 XM and other receivers. Of course, the antenna does not replace a long wire antenna, but in limited urban conditions its performance is sufficient. I compared the antenna to Garry Thomas’ factory Quantum Loop.

Both antennas work similarly, Quantum Loop has a shielded ferrite rod, it is less susceptible to elmg. interference. Raymond Haigh’s antenna shows a bit more gain, the ferrite antenna is made up of 7 pieces of ferrite rods 20 cm long and 1 cm in diameter. The antenna is not shielded.

The construction of the antenna according to the instructions is not difficult. A Raimond Haigh antenna will definitely improve MW reception, especially for radios without an internal ferrite antenna. Instructions can be found at https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Practical-Electronics/00s/Everyday-Practical-Electronics-2000-09.pdf

Belka Test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk-ngCQ8TFc

Qodosen DX286 Test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F77HOJSmu_4

Malahite DSP2 Test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2dvaCT9z6Y

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SolderSmoke: Monitoring Maritime Radio Messages with YADD

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bill Meara who shares the following article from the excellent SolderSmoke Podcast blog:


Monitoring Maritime Radio Messages with YADD

This is really cool and very easy.  Easy nerd thrills.

On Friday, Steve VE7SL, put up a blog post on how we can relive the glories of our youth by monitoring HF long-distance maritime traffic.  In the old days the ships were on CW and many report that it was great fun to listen to the various “fists” in action from coastal stations, and from ships on the high seas.  While the CW is long gone, this maritime traffic is still on the air.  Today they are using a SEL call system called Digital Selective Calling or DSC.  

Happily, it is very easy to decode these transmissions.  Steve recommends a program called YADD (Yet Another DSC Decoder).  I downloaded it in seconds and had it installed on my computer in minutes.  Next I had to find a general coverage receiver.  I thought about pressing my old HQ-100 into service, or maybe even the S-38E, but a cooler head prevailed.  I remembered that Farhan had given us a general coverage receiver in his uBITX transceiver.  So it came off the shelf and got powered up.  Around dawn on October 14, 2024 I put the receiver on 8.415 MHz LSB.  I didn’t even have to do a real connection to the computer — I just put the speaker close to the mic and that was sufficient.

Boom.  Soon I was getting signals from ships afloat and from coastal stations.  I heard Shanghai, New Zealand, and Australia.   See above.   From the U.S., I heard Miami, but the most emotional for me was hearing the station at Pt. Reyes, in California.  This is the station that Dick Dilman W6AWO has volunteered at for many years.  FB.

Back in 2017, Steve had another post on DSC and YADD:
https://ve7sl.blogspot.com/2017/08/yadd.html

Thanks Steve!

This site explains very well what DSC is.  From this I think we can see that there is nothing illegal about using YADD to monitor the DSC alerts (that are all emergency-related):  https://infoshipping.tripod.com/gmdss_dsc.html

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Carlos’ Illustrated Radio Listening Report and Recording of Radio Nacional, Brazil (October 25, 2024)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares illustrated radio listening report of a recent Radio Nacional FM broadcast.


Carlos notes:

Part of Radio Nacional (Brazil) news bulletin (in Portuguese) about police and drug dealers shooting, storms that left people dead in Rio de Janeiro. Listened in Rio de Janeiro in a walkman GE 3-5470B.

Click here to view on YouTube.

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Carlos’ Illustrated Radio Listening Report and Recording of Rádio Nacional de Brasília (October 23, 2024)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares illustrated radio listening report of a recent Rádio Nacional de Brasília broadcast.


Carlos notes:

Excerpt from Radio Nacional (Brazil, AM 1130 kHz) news bulletin, in Portuguese, about President Lula’s videoconference participation in the BRICS Summit, criticizing the war in Ukraine and Gaza strip. Listened on a GE cassette player in Rio de Janeiro.

Click here to view on YouTube.

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Responding to “The Colegrove Inspiration”

By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM

It was Bob Colegrove’s post — this one — that inspired me and set me on this path.

Medium wave broadcast band DXing (MWBCB) has a certain fascination for me, but I am poor at it. Oh sure, I have read the advice: map the band at noon, then again at midnight, and you’ll have a better idea of what’s unusual as you are tuning around. But I have never gotten around to doing the mapping, so my DXing skills are lousy at best.

When Bob asked, “What’s your favorite corner of the dial?”, he also mentioned the challenge hunting below 600 kHz. The implication: whatever is in that section of the band, there are probably not a lot of stations, and they are hard to hear. So, I reasoned in my tiny little brain: “If I hear anything down there, it’s likely to be DX.”

So I tried it, firing up the Grundig Satellit 800 hooked to an MFJ 1886 loop during the daylight hours. With exception of WROW, 590, in nearby Albany, NY, blasting oldies with 5,000 watts, I found nothing . . .  and I do mean nothing: nada, diddly, bupkas, cipher, rien . . . dead band . . . deader than old Jacob Marley. I try it again in the early evening with three different radios with exactly the same results. Nuts.

But then I try again with the Satellit 800/1886 combo at a little after 0900Z and take Bob’s advice about using single sideband. Aha! Carriers 540, 550, and 560. Then at 570, a weird mixture: religious programming in American English over male and female voices in Spanish with time ticks and tones in the background. Is there a time station on this frequency or is it some sort of bleed-over?

On Tuesday evenings I run the Radio Monitoring Net on the 146.94 repeater. During the net, I mentioned the unusual signal I had heard on 570, and W2SRA, an expert DXer, responded with the opinion that this was likely a religious station on Long Island, NY, intermixed with a station known as The Clock from Cuba.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it: Radio Reloj (Spanish for Radio Clock) is a government-owned Spanish-language radio station in Cuba . . . The station is noted for the sound of a ticking clock in the background, with its hosts announcing the time, every minute of broadcast.

I checked the distance from Troy, NY, to Santa Clara, Cuba where the 570 AM station is located; it’s 1449 miles. Wow! According to Wikipedia, the AM transmit power is 50,000 watts

Then I remember that William, KR8L, mentioned that he likes searching above 1620 (another less populated region of the band), so I give that a try. At 1690, I hear oldies, followed by ads for Southern Maryland. The station finally ID’s as WPTX, 1,000 watts nighttime power, in California, MD, a distance of 339 miles. Yes!!

Thanks, Bob and William, for turning me on to some more radio fun!

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