CNN Travel features the abandoned Duga Radar site near Chernobyl

(Source: CNN Travel via Heath Hall)

(CNN) — The peaceful untouched forest north of Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, is a perfect spot to enjoy the outdoors — save for one fact.

It contains the radiation-contaminated Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, established in 1986 after the world’s worst nuclear disaster sent a wave of radiation fallout across Europe.

Since 2011 it’s been a major draw for adventurous tourists, but the forests here conceal another legacy of the Cold War, with a far more sinister and mysterious reputation.

The Duga radar.

Though once a closely guarded secret, this immense structure can be seen for miles around, rearing up through the mist over the horizon — a surreal sight.

From a distance, it appears to be a gigantic wall. On close inspection, it’s an enormous, dilapidated structure made up of hundreds of huge antennas and turbines.

The Duga radar (which translates as “The Arc”) was once one of the most powerful military facilities in the Soviet Union’s communist empire.

It still stands a towering 150 meters (492 feet) high and stretches almost 700 meters in length. But, left to rot in the radioactive winds of Chernobyl, it’s now in a sad state of industrial decay.

Anyone exploring the undergrowth at its feet will stumble upon neglected vehicles, steel barrels, broken electronic devices and metallic rubbish, the remainders of the hasty evacuation shortly after the nuclear disaster.[…]

Click here to continue reading the full article and explore the photo gallery at CNN Travel.

Mesh cages to shield noisy power supplies

2 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, TomL, who writes:

Hi Thomas,

Stumbled onto this article while on the RTL-SDR website. Talks about shielding noisy power supplies inside a homemade wire mesh cage. It might be interesting as a weekend project. I wonder if a noisy laptop could be put inside one of these things, too?

https://macradiodiysdrsystem.home.blog/2019/02/17/the-all-new-remote-rig-part-1-1-testing-the-hf-shield/

Thanks for the tip, Tom! As this author states, it looks like it’s well worth the time and the wear and tear on your fingers to build one of this mesh cages.

TC notes differences between Kenwood TH-D74 and TH-F6A on MW/SW

1 Reply

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, TC, who shares the following response to Ivan’s post about the Kenwood TH-D74 on mediumwave:

A couple of years ago, I published a side-by-side comparison of the TH-F6A and the TH-D74 on YouTube comparing reception of a local AM broadcast station. The F6A was far more sensitive on the AM broadcast band than the TH-D74.

You can see the video here:

Click here to view on YouTube.

I didn’t take the internal orientation of the bars into account, but the D74 is less sensitive in pretty much any orientation compared to the older F6A.

I contacted Kenwood about the difference, and they stated something to the effect of while the TH-D74 does receive MW, it wasn’t necessarily designed for it, and thus the reception there suffers compared to the F6A.

However, the tradeoff here seems to be better shortwave reception in the TH-D74 compared to the F6A. Hook the D74 up to a large wire antenna and you can easily pull in stuff on the shortwave broadcast and ham bands, and the IF filters help quite a bit as well.

Thanks for sharing, TC! I own a few wideband handheld transceivers so I keep a short SMA “pigtail” in my EDC pack that I can use to enhance HF performance. I simply clip a 15′ wire onto the pigtail’s exposed conductor to enhance HF performance. Also, as Ivan points out, inductively pairing any of these tiny radios with a mag loop antenna will also augment performance on mediumwave.

Thanks again for sharing!

Radio Deal: Eton Executive Traveler $49.93

1 Reply

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Christian, who writes:

Just a note that the Eton Executive Traveller’s price has dropped to $49.93 shipped on Amazon.com. It’s the lowest price I’ve seen for this radio in a few months. Thought your readers might be interested. As I’ve said before, I think it’s a great little radio. This is Amazon, so the price can change without notice.

Thanks for the tip, Christian!

Click here to view on Amazon (affiliate link that supports the SWLing Post).

Photos from the 2019 Charlotte Hamfest

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This RS HF receiver was pristine. If I had the budget and the shack space, it would have gone back with me. See more photos in our gallery below.

Yesterday morning around 5:30 AM I started my nearly three hour pilgrimage to the 2019 Charlotte (North Carolina) Hamfest. The Charlotte Hamfest is one of the larger regional hamfests in the area–due to its central location, it attracts people from all of the surrounding states.

The Charlotte Hamfest typically falls on the heels of (or the same weekend as) the Winter SWL Fest in Pennsylvania so I usually don’t even put the dates in my calendar. Indeed, the last time I attended the Charlotte Hamfest was about twenty years ago! It was at a different location and, back then, was also very much a computer show. Today it’s almost purely radio.

Following Vlado to the hamfest site on a very foggy, rainy Saturday morning.

The Charlotte Hamfest is a Friday/Saturday event held at the Cabarrus Arena & Events Center in Concord, NC. The center is a superb hamfest venue: it’s well lit, clean, spacious and can easily house all of the vendors indoors–a huge bonus as weather was less than desirable.

My buddy, Vlado (N3CZ) reserved two vendor tables and packed it with gear to sell–I also brought along a handful of items.

I was very impressed with the turnout–indeed, it was one of the busiest regional hamfests I’ve attended in ages. I sold a couple of items and Vlado sold a lot (he also purchased a lot, but that’s another story!).

I believe I’ll start putting the Charlotte hamfest in my calendar–even though timing isn’t always convenient for me, I think it’s well worth the trip!

Kudos to the Mecklenburg Amateur Radio Society for putting on such a great show!

Photos

I’ve embedded over 140 photos of the Charlotte Hamfest below–click each one to enlarge. Being a lover of vintage radios, my photos feature a lot of boat anchors. Note that when possible, I try to include the price tags for each item.

Note: If you can’t view the embedded photos below in our email digest, click here to view them on the web.

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Guest Post: 2019 Henry’s Island DXpedition catches

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Sandipan Basu Mallick (VU3JXD), for sharing the following guest post:

2019 Henry’s Island DXpedition with Perseus – Logs by Debanjan Chakraborty (VU3DCH)

This year’s DXpedition to Henry’s Island on 10th -13th Feb 2019 witnessed some of the finest receivers available in the country. Among them, there were 3 Perseus SDR which made it to this year’s expedition. Powered with Active Mini Whip Antennas, there have been terabytes of recordings of airwaves.

Perseus array

Expedition member Debanjan Chakraborty (VU3DCH) shared some of his loggings with the Perseus during the DXpedition :

HLAZ Korea FEBC on 1566 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

Voice of Greece on 9420 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

Radio Exterior De Espana on 12030 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

NBC Bougainville on 3325 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

Until now we all knew about the pirate stations in Europe and America. However, DXpedition to Bay of Bay of Bengal had some surprise in store for us. Yes, it’s the pirate stations of Bay of Bengal flocking the Medium Wave which were the prized catch. Below are the Bengali Medium Wave Pirate Stations logs

Bengali Medium Wave Pirate Sagardeep No 1, 1272 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

Unknown Bengali Medium Wave Pirate 1127 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

Unknown Bengali Medium Wave Pirate on 1251 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

Unknown Bengali Medium Wave Pirate 1388 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

More About Dxer Debanjan Chakraborty (VU3DCH): http://radiowaveshunter.blogspot.in/

Debanjan Chakraborty (VU3DCH) Scanning the Airwaves

Debanjan Chakraborty, is a self taught DXer from the city of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. In mid 90’s when he came across an article about radio listening and became fascinated by the hobby to scan the airwave for signals from far way land. His first QSL was from Radio Netherlands in 1996 and in over 2 decades now, adding up to a few thousand QSLs in his collection. It was only in 2009 he started his blog RadioWavesHunter http://radiowaveshunter.blogspot.in/ to put up his loggings and QSL collections. Interestingly his blog site has garnered over 12K+ visitors from across the globe. He has also, got some of vintage radios scanning the airwaves. Sony ICF 5900 (1975), Panasonic FR 2200 (1977), Yaesu – Musen FRG-7 (1976 -1980), Kenwood R-1000 (1979) and Sony ICF 2010 (1985) are few from his collection.

Follow blog (http://radiowaveshunter.blogspot.in/) for more about his loggings and QSL archive.

Thank you for sharing your DXpedition videos! Those are some excellent catches! We look forward to your future reports.

Ivan checks out the Kenwood TH-D74’s mediumwave performance

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ivan (NO2CW), who writes:

One category of receivers not much talked about are the wideband handhelds. I first owned one of those in 1992 when I paid a ton of money for an AOR-1000. Not only did it cost me a lot but I also ordered it from the UK so it was not subject to the “cellular blocked” rule. Don’t ask me why, it never made any difference in the end.

As a busy shortwave listener at the time I was eager to check out reception as the radio also featured Shorwave coverage and even a BFO (Beat Frequency Oscillator) knob! To sum it up it was a great receiver above 30 mHz but Shortwave and Mediumwave was barely there, with a 15 kHz wide filter and low sensitivity.

Well today I have in my hands a Kenwood TH-D74A – a top of the line handheld triband amateur radio transceiver with Medium Wave and Short Wave coverage. The radio is expensive due to the presence of GPS, D Star and APRS, but those are a features for the radio amateur. What about performance on the low frequencies?

Here is my video of the test which revealed surprising results:

Click here to view on YouTube.

So next time you consider purchasing a new receiver,as you dive into the choice of portables, SDRs, tabletops and classics from eBay you may consider adding this category as well – handhelds with wide band coverage.

Thank you, Ivan! You’ve inspired me to check out mediumwave performance on a few wideband handy talkies I own: the Yaesu VX-3R, Yaesu FT2DR and the Kenwood TH-F6A. To my knowledge, all three have internal ferrite bars (tiny ones) but I’ve never actually compared their performance with each other. That could be a lot of fun. I also own an AN200 MW loop antenna so this could be an excellent test to see how it pairs with each radio. I’m especially curious about the wee VX-3R!

Thanks again, Ivan. We always enjoy your videos and posts.