FTIOM & UBMP, January 20-26


From the Isle of Music, January 20-26:

This week, we feature the music of Ramon Valle, winner of the Instrumental Music category in Cubadisco 2018 as well as a nominee in the Jazz Soloist and Jazz Ensemble categories. All this with three different albums, and we will taste a little of each.
The broadcasts take place:
1. For Eastern Europe but audible well beyond the target area in most of the Eastern Hemisphere (including parts of East Asia and Oceania) with 100Kw, Sunday 1500-1600 UTC on SpaceLine, 9400 KHz, from Kostinbrod, Bulgaria (1800-1900 MSK)
2. For the Americas and parts of Europe, Tuesday 0100-0200 UTC (New UTC) on WBCQ, 7490 KHz from Monticello, ME, USA (Monday 8-9PM EST in the US).
3 & 4. For Europe and sometimes beyond, Tuesday 1900-2000 UTC and Saturday 1200-1300 UTC (New CETs) on Channel 292, 6070 KHz from Rohrbach, Germany.

Uncle Bill’s Melting Pot, January 20 and 22:
Episode 96 features vocalese (sometimes called Scat) from around the world, from Bebop to Roma to Cuban to Carnatic.
1.Sunday 2300-2330 UTC (6:00PM -6:30PM Eastern US) on WBCQ The Planet 7490 KHz from the US to the Americas and parts of Europe
2. Tuesday 2000-2030 UTC on Channel 292, 6070 KHz from Rohrbach, Germany for Europe. If current propagation conditions hold, the broadcast should reach Iceland AND Western Russia due to a long skip.
Also recommended:
Marion’s Attic, a unique program produced and hosted by Marion Webster featuring early 20th Century records, Edison cylinders etc played on the original equipment, comes on immediately before UBMP on Sundays from 2200-2300 UTC on WBCQ 7490 Khz.

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Free radio e-books for download

(Source: Southgate ARC)

There are a number of vintage radio and amateur radio related eBooks available for free download on the Gutenberg site

Among them is the 1922 edition of The Radio Amateur’s Handbook by A. Frederick Collins.

Jarno de Haan @PA3DMI tweeted this link that will display the books available:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=radio

A. Frederick Collins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Frederick_Collins

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Jeff is displeased with Sangean buttons

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jeff McMahon, who writes:

After my wife complained about our Sangean radio button problems, I made this post:

Our Sangean radios are good performers for FM reception and speaker sound. They are reasonably priced. For user-friendly radios to use throughout the house, the kind that my wife and daughters enjoy using, Sangean is the best bet.

However, for me a general use Sangean is not my first choice. Because I am an FM reception fanatic, I prefer more of a high-performance radio, the kind that has an SW port, so I can connect a wire antenna to the radio, which usually results in improved FM reception. That’s why I have a Grundig G4000A next to my bedside table. But for the rest of my family, it’s a Sangean affair.

However, I should point out a consistent flaw, one that my wife complained about this morning: Three of four of our Sangeans have button problems.[…]

Read the full article at The Herculodge.

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Any reviews of the HanRongDa HRD-737 portable radio?

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jamie Anderson (KM4WYO), who writes:

I have been browsing around eBay too much and was trying to put together a do-it-all radio for camping/backpacking that is small.

It is hard to find SW/broadcast/weather/air band together (for good reason, of course). I did run across this radio that is interesting: the HRD-737 which retails around $40.

  • Internal 700mah 3.7v lithium, with 5v usb charge
  • Air 118-138 MHz
  • FM 87.5 – 108 MHz
  • AM 520-1720 kHz
  • CB 25-28 MHz
  • SW 2-30 MHz in 5 kHz steps
  • VHF narrow/wide FM – 30-223 MHz (10,6,2,220)

I’m not sure if it would pick up NOAA stations as I think they have a slightly different FM bandwidth.

It seems interesting for a do it all point of view, you could possibly monitor ham repeaters on 2 meters, just a little too short of frequency coverage for 220.

Click here to view the HDR-737 on eBay.

Have you seen one of these or something similar in your reviews?

I have never used the HDR-737, but thanks for bringing it to our attention, Jamie!

I should think, assuming the stated VHF frequency coverage is correct, that you should be able to hear weather radio on this receiver. NOAA weather frequencies are on 162.400, 162.425, 162.450, 162.475, 162.500, 162.525, and 162.550 MHz.

The manufacturer isn’t clear about the frequency steps on VHF however–it’s possible tuning increments could be too coarse to get a good lock on the station. That specification is omitted altogether even though every other band has stated frequency steps.

I should mention that the original C. Crane CC Skywave meets all of your specifications save the ability to potentially tune in the 2M ham radio band.

Post readers: Is anyone familiar with the HanRongDa HRD-737?  Please comment!

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Fred Jacobs on “Rekindling Our Fading Romance With AM Radio”

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, who shares the following article which appeared in Jacob’s Media Strategies on Dec 31, 2018. I’ve pasted an excerpt below, but you’ll want to read the entire piece by clicking here:

Rekindling Our Fading Romance With AM Radio

I know I may sound like a relic from another era, but chances are if you’re a Baby Boomer (or gasp – even older), you were inspired by AM radio as a kid growing up whether it was in a big city or a small town.  If you’re a member of a younger generation, you may not even know that AM – or amplitude modulation – has a magic power.  At night when the clouds are just right, AM signals have the ability to “skip” across geography, unlike frequency modulation (FM) which is line of sight.  “Clear channel” stations had an even easier time being heard beyond their metro confines – often covering many states during the nighttime hours.

Many of us radio veterans remember those nights, lying in bed, where your trusty bedside AM clock radio pulled in signals from all over the U.S. As a boy in Detroit and not especially well-traveled, I learned how to pronounced Des Plaines (Des-planes) and Touhy (2E) by listening to Chicago radio stations like WBBM and WLS.  Tuning in KYW in Philly (which came in “like it was next door”), I learned how to spell the quirky town of Conshohocken from listening to Phillips Ford commercials.  It was from a jingle that got in your head (CON-SHO-HO-CKEN).  At least, it got in mine.

It didn’t matter if you lived in Dallas or Des Moines, or a small town in Delaware – you were able to pick up big AM radio stations from faraway.  And if you talk to today’s broadcasters on the other side of 50, many will tell you their careers were likely inspired by these booming, exciting blowtorches on AM radio that provided a soundtrack for our teens.

AM radio was where we first heard the Beatles, the Supremes, the Stones, Stevie Wonder, and even the Doors.  Big AM Top 40 stations of the day – KHJ, WABC, CKLW, WLS – played all these cool rock songs, right next to Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Elvis, Bobby “Boris” Pickett, and the Singing Nun.  And even though the fidelity of amplitude modulation is obviously technically inferior to that of FM, there was something very different and even romantic about hearing all those songs first on AM radio.[…]

Continue reading the full piece at Jacob’s Media Strategies.

Thanks for the tip, Dennis! I think this piece speaks to so many of us radio listeners–especially this one who prefers the “fidelity of amplitude modulation” over so many other mediums.

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Dave’s review of the Sangean DAR-101 digital recorder

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dave Zantow (N9EWO), who notes that he has updated his Sangean DAR-101 recorder:

Yes, a newly tested (latest production) sample of the [DAR-101]. My years old “lightly used” sample died back in the fall. New one seems to work less sluggish with the updated firmware as well as adding monitor speaker selection in the menu’s.

http://n9ewo.angelfire.com/dar101.html

The AC Adapter info should also be valid for the ATS-909X as well.

Nice standalone MP3 recorder with a built in amplifier and large speaker.

Thanks, Dave.  This is a very tempting purchase. I do quite a lot of off-air recordings for the SWLing Post and, especially, the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive. I typically use my Zoom H2N for line-in recordings, but at home would prefer something that would sit on my desktop better and with a built-in speaker. The DAR-101 might fit the bill.

I see that it’s currently $81.52 on Amazon right now (affiliate link) and $99.95 at Universal Radio.

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Radio receiver innovations over the last century

(Source: Microwaves and RF)

A Selected History of Receiver Innovations Over the Last 100 Years

by Brad Brannon

This article, the first of a two-part series on receiver technology, looks at the genesis and early advances of this all-important area.

Many contributed to the early days of wireless, but it’s safe to say that Guglielmo Marconi ranks as one of the more prominent. While known for his wireless technology, many people are less familiar with the business he created around wireless technology at the turn of the 19th century. For about 20 years after the start of the 1900s, he built a critical business that launched the world of wireless toward what we have today.

His commercialized technology was not the most up-to-date.  However, it was good enough despite rapid technological changes because he figured out how to use the technology available to him to enable a new industry.

Marconi set out to deploy a worldwide network capable of sending and relaying messages wirelessly at a time when the world was in turmoil at the end of colonialism, mainly due to the wars and disasters that pockmarked the start of the 1900s, including the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April of 1912. The role that wireless played in both the rescue of survivors and the dissemination of the news of that accident reinforced the importance of this fledgling technology.

The key role that wireless technology could play wasn’t missed by either the public or the military, notably Joseph Daniels, who later became the secretary of the U.S. Navy. In the U.S. and elsewhere, leaders such as Daniels felt that the military should nationalize radio to ensure that they had access to it during wartime. It must be kept in mind that during this period, the only usable spectrum was below 200 kHz or so. At least for a while, things moved in this direction. After World War I, the government’s control of wireless weakened, but not before the formation of the government-sanctioned monopoly that created the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).1

The Early Radio Days

By our expectations, the radios of Marconi’s time were quite primitive. The transmitters employed spark-gap devices (only later did they employ mechanical alternators) to generate the RF. But on the receiving end, the systems were fully passive and consisted of an antenna, resonant LC tuner, and some sort of detector. These detectors will be covered shortly, but they were either mechanical, chemical, or organic.

Some of these systems employed a battery simply to bias them, but not to provide any circuit gain as we might recognize today. The output from these systems was supplied to some sort of headset to convert the signal to audio, which was always very weak and just a simple click or buzz at best.

Because these systems provided no gain on the receiving end, range was determined by the amount of transmitted power, the quality of the receiver, the experience of the operator to adjust it, and, of course, atmospheric conditions. What Marconi realized was that given a reasonably predictable range, a network of stations could be built to reliably communicate information across both continents and oceans. This included installations both on land and at sea.

Marconi set off to install his wireless stations across the globe and at sea, both on passenger ships and cargo ships.[…]

Click here to continue reading the full article at Microwaves and RF.

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