Dan watches record-setting vintage JRC receiver auction prices

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who writes:

The question is, will it go even higher than the two NRD-240s a few months ago?

https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/j1000312853?conversionType=item_browsing_history

As collectors of premium receivers know, the Japan Radio Corporation (JRC) NRD-630 is among the rarest of radios.

NRD-630s are almost never seen on the used market and when they do appear, they sell usually for over $5,000 U.S.

This NRD-630, with only a few hours to go, appears on the Japan Buyee (Yahoo Auctions) site, and the receiver appears to be in like new condition.

The last JRC receivers to bring over $5,000 were two NRD-240 receivers, both of those also in like new condition.

Click here to see the results of this auction.

Thanks, Dan! It’s so fascinating to see how prices for these vintage JRC receivers change with time!

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The Sullivans: Could WWII German broadcasts be easily received in Australia?

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ray Robinson, who writes:

Hi, Thomas. I have recently been re-watching the Australian soap serial ‘The Sullivans’, which ran on Channel 9 from 1976-1983. I used to watch it on ITV in England, and also for awhile on the Tempo cable & satellite channel here in the States in the late 80’s. It is set in Melbourne during the second World War and after, and begins in September 1939. In the episodes covering the early part of 1940, much is made of one of the character’s abilities to listen to Nazi German broadcasts via shortwave, in both English and German (and they play clips of actual audio in the episodes). My question is, how realistic is this?

Were German broadcasts at that time able to be heard with good quality in Australia? Does anyone have a transmission schedule from that era? I know that German broadcasts were well heard throughout Europe and in North America, but I don’t have any details of broadcasts targeting Australia. Might they have been relayed via some Axis transmitter in the Far East? If any of your SWLing Post readers can shed any light on this, I’d be very grateful. Thank you.

Ray Robinson

Great question, Ray. This is certainly an inquiry for radio enthusiasts and WWII buffs in Australia and New Zealand. I’m sure there are accounts out there that could verify how easily and frequently Axis broadcasts could be heard in Australia and NZ. My guess would be that propaganda would have certainly targeted Australia and New Zealand during WWII.

Please comment if you can provide some insight and/or evidence for Ray!

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Summer FM DX: Drive-by Sporadic E

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


Summer DX – Sporadic E, FM band

“Sporadic E” DXing is a specialty of some DXers.  I have never dabbled in it being content with mediumwave or shortwave listening.  However, it was truly fun to spontaneously hear this happen while driving on the Interstate highway, Wednesday August 4 around 6pm Central Time.

To quote from an ARRL propagation article:

“As frequency increases still further, signals will eventually pass through the F1 layer to the F2 layer. Because this is the highest reflecting layer, the distance spanned by signals reflecting from it is the greatest. The maximum skip distance for the E layer is about 2000 km. For the F2 layer that increases to about 4000 km—a significant gain.”

I was listening to the local classical music station WNIU in DeKalb, IL which is a good 50 kW transmitter about 10 miles behind me near the Interstate highway.  A different station was breaking through. Eventually, I heard a familiar Christian song “You Make Me Brave” swamp the classical music. I noticed it was a remake of a song made about 10+ years earlier. The two signals fought it out and then I heard the station ID “Spirit FM” and a short humorous segment called “Attitude Adjustment”, then more music.  Finally the local classical music station won out and I thought I would look up the station ID of that contentious station later.

When I googled “90.5 Spirit FM”, it came up with a station in Tampa Bay, FL called WBVM. Cool!  Just to be sure, I went to the station web site and looked up their playlist and this confirms what I heard:

Curious about the transmitter, Radio Locator said it was a 100kW station and gave the Long/Lat coordinates.  I then went to Google Earth and mapped an approximate distance of 977 miles (1572km), give or take 10 miles:

I did not have time to get on the shortwave radio to see if the 10 meter band was busy since I had things to do.  But it is a very nice surprise to hear in my old car radio an FM station almost 1000 miles away. For one thing, Analog radio is still fun.  Secondly, things are busy this summer if you are at the right frequency and time!

Happy Listening,

TomL

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Wanted: Quality 18650 3.7V rechargeable cells

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike Hansgen, who recently mentioned that he’s on the hunt for quality 18650 Li-Ion cells.

Like Mike, I’ve a number of shortwave portables that use 18650 cells, so I understand where he’s coming from: he’d like 18650 cells that are both safe and have a long life. Even though most radios that use 18650 cells have internal chargers, I also assume he’d welcome quality external charger recommendations.

Mike said he’s willing to pay a premium for quality cells but frankly, I’m not sure what to suggest because it seems most of the ones I find are the average eBay and Amazon variety (ie. pretty darn cheap).

I know there are some here in the SWLing Post community who are flashlight enthusiasts and others who are well-versed in the world of rechargeable batteries.

If you have any suggestions, please share them in a comment! Thank you in advance as I’m also keen to hear your comments!

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WRMI will air a second series of Texas Radio Shortwave programs

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Edward, who shares the following announcement:

WRMI to air second series of European free radio and low-power licensed stations

WRMI will air a second series of Texas Radio Shortwave programs featuring European free-radio and low-power licensed stations during September, October, and November.

The one-hour programs will be broadcast every Friday at 9 p.m. ET (Saturday at 0100 UTC) by WRMI, Okeechobee, Florida, on Texas Radio Shortwave’s “regular” frequency of 5950 kHz.

Dates and featured stations in Series 2 are as follows:

September 4-5 = Radio Clash (Somewhere in Europe)

September 11-12 = Radio Merlin (UK) *

September 18-19 = Crusin’ Radio (UK)

September 25-26 = CoolAM Radio (The Netherlands) *

October 2-3 = Radio Monique International (The Netherlands) *

October 9-10 = Radio Blackstone International (The Netherlands)

October 16-17 = Charleston International Radio (Germany) *

October 23-24 = KR1 (The Netherlands)

October 30-31 = To Be Announced

November 6-7 = To Be Announced

November 13-14 = To Be Announced

November 20-21 = To Be Announced

November 27-28 = To Be Announced.

*Series 1 station invited to produce a program for Series 2.

eQSLs will be available from individual stations. TRSW will not issue verifications for these programs.

These popular stations are heard regularly in Europe but seldom in North America because of propagation conditions.

Thank you for the tip, Ed!

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RCA Radio Tours Map circa 1934

My friend, Maristella Feustle, recently shared this classic RCA “Radio Tours” map of North America. RCA printed this in 1934–during the Great Depression–when most people could not afford to travel. Their map encouraged families to use their radios to travel the world over the air and experience local culture & music.

As Maristella pointed out, the detail on this map is pretty darn amazing.

Click here to download a high resolution image of this RCA map.

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Jock discovers the joys of ATS tuning with the C.Crane CC Skywave SSB

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jock Elliott (KB2GOM), who shares the following guest post:


Really cool trick the CCrane Skywave SSB will do — the “radio butler”?

To paraphrase Ratty from Wind in the Willows: ” “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing–absolutely nothing–half so much worth doing as simply messing about with radios.”

That is precisely what I was doing . . . messing, simply messing about with the CCrane Skywave SSB.

Then I observed something. Just above the LIGHT button is some lettering: “ATS.” Not having taken notice of it before, I looked it up in the manual. It stands of Automatic Tuning System, and the manual says this about it:

“This feature programs all receivable stations in the AM, FM, Air and Shortwave bands to memory buttons. To use ATS, select your desired band: AM, FM, Air or Shortwave, and press and hold the ATS button for two seconds. The CCrane Skywave SSB will scan the entire band and automatically set all available stations in sequence 1-20. If more than stations are available, then the remaining stations will be preset to the next memory page, and so on.”

So I tried it; I punched in a shortwave frequency — 9250 — and pressed and held the ATS button for two seconds. The Skywave then muted itself and went to the bottom of the shortwave bands — 2300 — and started silently scanning through all of the international shortwave bands, hopping from one shortwave band to the next. Occasionally it would stop and silently store a frequency. After a while it stopped, unmuted, and began playing the very first memory that it stored. I checked the other memories that were stored and — sonofagun! — there were stations stored in each memory. Some of them were really faint, and I had to mess with single sideband and bandwidths to make them fully copyable, but they were there, automatically scanned and stored by the CCrane Skywave SSB. Obviously, you might want to repeat the ATS scan as shortwave propagation changes, say, from day to night.

Well, I thought, would it do it also for Air frequencies? Short answer: it certainly will. And it will do the same for AM, FM, and — get this — if you put the Skywave SSB in single sideband mode, it will scan the ham bands, automatically changing sidebands appropriately as it hops from ham band to ham band. Note: when you check the memories stored during an ATS ham band search, you may not find anything there, simply because ham transmissions come and go much more often than international broadcasters.

There is one downside to the ATS function. When the Skywave scans and stores stations, it does so starting at Page 1, Memory 1 of the memory system . . . always. So, if you scan the Shortwave frequencies and store frequencies they will be stored starting at Page 1, Memory 1, wiping out anything that you have already stored there. If you then use ATS on the Air band, it will then write over whatever you stored from the Shortwave frequencies. I wish there were a way for the user to designate at which page in the memory system ATS will begin storing frequencies so that the information stored starting at Page 1, Memory 1 is not constantly overwritten.

However, there is another trick the Skywave will do: if you have used ATS to scan and store Air frequencies in Page 1 of the memory system (which it does automatically), you can then press and hold the UP and DOWN buttons at the same time, the Skywave will then scan through the Air frequencies that are stored there. Further, there is a squelch function on the Skywave that works only on the Air frequencies. So, with a little persuasion (very little), the CCrane Skywave turns itself into a civilian air scanner.

The ATS function on the CCrane Skywave SSB is a bit like having a radio butler: “I say, Jeeves, find me what’s on the air this evening.” A short while later, Jeeves reports back: “Here you are, sir, I found 10 shortwave stations you might like to listen to.”

Frankly, I don’t know if other modern shortwave portable radios offer a similar function, but if you have a CCrane Skywave SSB, give the ATS function a try; it’s pretty slick.

— Jock Elliott, KB2GOM

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