Tag Archives: Bob Colegrove

Bob’s Radio Corner: Pairing a Phone or Tablet with a Radio

Pairing a Phone or Tablet with a Radio

By Bob Colegrove

The Internet is full of resources for radio listeners and hobbyists. There are numerous examples of general information, frequency, and schedule lists. There are also WebSDR sites, which allow you to compare reception experiences from around the world. All of these can be accessed quickly and easily by having them loaded on your phone or tablet operating side-by-side with your radio and having Wi-Fi or cellular access. We never had any of this when I was starting out.

I realize there are other ways to go about what I have described below, for example, merging station listings with SDR. This posting is for folks like me who are SDR-challenged. I listen to plain old radios. My modern-day experience with newfangled technology has been limited to hitchhiking on WebSDR sites for the last few years. It has served me well.

Ideally, I would like to generalize this topic to simply cover all phones and tablets. In truth, my experience has been limited to an iPhone and Kindle Fire tablets. They have worked very well as I shall explain. Perhaps you have paired a different phone or tablet with your radio, in which case, feel free to share your experience.

The choice of a phone or tablet is yours. Either works well. Your decision will be affected by what you have available and what is easier to use. If you intend to buy a new device and associate it with your radio, cost will be an additional factor.

A noteworthy device (the one I tend to favor) is a Kindle Fire. Mainly, they are cheap. The regular price of a 7-inch model is just under $60 and can often be purchased for less during Black Friday and Prime Day sales. It is versatile, possessing all the usual functions except for cellular access. Perhaps most importantly, it is virtually noise-free. For a while I struggled using Internet sources on a laptop computer. Even a good one located about 10 feet away from the radio antenna generates noise. On the other hand, I have taken a 7-inch Kindle Fire in hand and placed it against the resonant coil of a loop antenna. This abuse generated no more disturbance to the antenna than if it were a block of pinewood. I have noticed some slight noise from the 11” Kindle when the antenna is exposed this way, but when that tablet is held at arm’s length from the antenna, all is well. Recently, I have expanded this application to my iPhone and found its noise immunity matches that of the Kindle Fire 7.

Broadcast Schedules

The most useful Internet resources are the broadcast schedules. These are the comprehensive frequency-time-station listings that tell us where and when to tune. There are many good ones. My favorites are the EiBi listing http://www.eibispace.de/, and Dan Ferguson’s https://groups.io/g/swskeds/topics. For the latter you will need to request membership. SWskeds merges EiBi, Aoki (https://www1.s2.starcat.ne.jp/ndxc), HFCC (https://new.hfcc.org/index.php), as well as other sources into a single list.

Processing

The EiBi listing comes as a CSV-formatted text file, which can be imported into a spreadsheet. I have done some processing using spreadsheet functions to produce a customized listing. Processing the frequency-time-station lists is most conveniently done using a computer rather than the phone or tablet. Processing includes selecting, arranging, or filtering the downloaded data tailored to your needs. This might include adding a filterable column to indicate only stations that are on at the current time. Some users might favor filtering by country or station. The heavy lifting processing is done automatically whenever a new listing is published by simply dropping the new file into the existing spreadsheet. No, the functionality of a spreadsheet and ease of editing are not as good on a tablet as with the mouse and keyboard of a computer. My processing on the computer includes measures to optimized the screen view to the most essential information thus minimizing the amount of scrolling on the tablet.

After the files are downloaded and processed, they can be loaded on the phone or tablet in a couple of different ways. They can be directly transferred over a USB cable, or they can be transferred using a cloud server. The USB cable-transfer method may be difficult on some devices, particularly iPhones. The Kindle seems to be the more convenient device. Being an obedient Microsoft customer, I can also transfer the files from my computer to OneDrive, then pick them up on the Kindle or iPhone using the OneDrive and Microsoft 365 apps which are available for both phone and tablet.

Examples

The screenshot below shows an EiBi example at 0014 UTC. Although the “ON” column filter is set to show only transmissions currently “ON,” it had not been manually updated on the Kindle for a couple hours and thus includes listings from a previous time. The EiBi database does not include transmitter power or beam information. However, the identification of countries and transmitter sites is extensive. These are determined by downloading and printing the README.TXT file on the EiBi site.

The SWSkeds listing is available in both CSV and Excel formats. It contains several additional data fields, very importantly including transmitter power and beam direction when available. For this list, I make the simple conversion of the existing Excel data range tab, “COMBINED” to a table so I can easily apply filters. The screenshot below shows an example at 1750 UTC with the “ON” column filtered to “ON.”

Not to be left out, the complete medium wave broadcast station list for Region 2, the Americas, is easily downloadable at https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/am-query. The entire database is formidable and contains nearly 600 pages in a printable format. Much of this bulk is due to the doubled size necessitated by giving both daytime and nighttime power separate entries for each station. A number of marginally useful data columns can be eliminated in spreadsheet processing. I have added formulas to calculate the azimuth heading and distance from my listening post (blanked out in the example below).

A variation of the downloadable file format is the direct-query site, SHORT.WAVE.INFO. Here you can simply enter queries by station, language, frequency, or band, and produce listings which match your criteria. Any listings which are currently on the air will be highlighted in red.

WebSDR

Finally, I would like to mention the WebSDR sites. While not used explicitly for broadcast schedules, these sites are great for anyone wanting to compare how well they are receiving signals relative to what others are experiencing. Granted, location and time of day are big factors that affect reception, but it is still useful to make these relative comparisons.

Home base is http://websdr.org/ which presents a catalog of many WebSDR sites by location. At the bottom of the page is a world map which pinpoints the location of each site. Most of these sites cater exclusively to hams; however, The University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands (http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/) covers 0.000 to 29.160 MHz unabridged. The screenshot below shows the tablet/phone version of the U. of Twente site. There are also two sites on the US East Coast which cover some non-hamband portions of the SW spectrum: http://na5b.com:8901/ in the Washington, DC area and http://websdr.k3fef.com:8901/ in Milford, Pennsylvania. The SHORT.WAVE.INFO and WebSDR sites can be directly accessed and queried over the tablet’s browser and a Wi-Fi or cellular connection.

Using the System

In my relentless pursuit to log the Nibi-Nibi Islands, I will load up one of the frequency-time-station listings and start my DX session. This typically includes a scan of a particular band, checking signals I can receive against the lists. If my interest peaks on a particular catch (usually a weak one), I will switch the tablet over to a WebSDR site to see how it is being received in Europe or along the East Coast of NA.

In summary, ready access to these Internet resources using a phone or tablet next to the radio has notable advantages:

The frequency-time-station listings provide quick, reliable signal identification in most cases.
The WebSDR sites confirm that my antennas are doing their job.

Am I done? I hesitate to stop here. The process of discovery is a marvelous human experience. The foregoing are merely starting points. Other applications might include sunrise-sunset calendars or maps or propagation forecasts. There are certainly other ways to do all this depending on your druthers. I know I am erring by omission and neglecting many other good resources. Let’s hear about yours.

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What’s in the Box? Bob Colegrove Investigates the Forgotten Extras of Your Radio

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What’s in the Box?

Itemized by Bob Colegrove

Not one to throw anything away, I tend to save ‘the box it came in’ for many new purchases. The other day I decided to organize all my radio boxes. Besides the radios themselves, they usually contain a selection of “goodies,” which can include, cases, power adapters, USB cables, batteries, earbuds, antennas, manuals, and so forth.

I generally do not use much that is included in the box. Over time, however, some of the paraphernalia has gotten scattered around, and my recent effort was intended to corral and sort the accessories. My experience is itemized below.

Cases

The cases are invariably the largest accessories in the box. These are sometimes firm, faux-leather enclosures with a zipper around the edges. I prefer the soft, pliable pouches which seem to function more easily and take up less space.

The Sony ICF-2010 and -2001D did not include cases. To give the radio some protection during travel and storage, I fabricated a ‘sock’ out of an old bath towel and some hot glue. The so-covered radio was then inserted into a travel bag along with earphones and anything else I needed. This worked very well over the years; so well that I extended the concept for some of my smaller radios, which came with cases.

Homemade socks for a PL-880 and ICF-2010 could even be color-coordinated with the rest of your gear.

Power Adapters and Batteries

The following is not intended as the definitive treatise on power adapters and batteries. Enough guidance has been provided by others. The takeaway here is that, if you ever refer to the radio’s manual, this is the occasion to do so. Ensure you know how your radio was designed and the proper way to power it.

In my collection of portable radios there are several combinations of power adapters and batteries.

Some radios came with power adapters and others didn’t.
Some radios came with batteries and others didn’t.
Some just came with USB charging cords.
Some were intended for both chargeable and nonchargeable batteries. Others were intended only for alkaline, nonchargeable batteries, in which case the power adapter disconnects the battery from the circuit and is only used to power the radio.

An adapter might be used to power the radio, recharge batteries, or both. It’s hard to believe in these days of switching power adapters that an adapter could ever be used to listen to AM radio, but that was the case with the Sony ICF-2010/2001D and Grundig Satellit 800. These radios came with a more costly transformer adapter which produced very little discernable noise. Manufactured in pre-rechargeable alkaline days; however, the adapter did not provide a battery charge function. Over the years, I have mostly used these radios in-house. They tend to be D-battery-hungry, and so they are usually powered via the adapters.

When Sony got around to producing the ICF-SW7600GR, they took a different approach. They simply figured it was a small, portable radio, and would mainly be used with batteries. So, there is a power port for an optional 6-volt adapter, but no included adapter.

The OEM batteries aren’t always the best, so I have an extra supply of rechargeable NiMH and lithium batteries which I cycle through my radios, and the originals are simply included in the rotation. The NiMH batteries that came with the Tecsun PL-600, -660, and -680 only had 1000 ma capacity and tended to self-discharge quickly after a year or two of use. However, they got you started.

I have always wondered about using NiMH batteries in radios intended only for alkaline batteries – mainly older ones. There is a 20-percent reduction in voltage. How does this affect the performance of the radio? I suppose this can only be answered on a case-by-case basis. As an example, I have used NiMH batteries in the Sony ICF-SW7600GR from the very beginning with no apparent degradation. However, on the XHDATA D-219 and D-220, the difference is quite noticeable. For some radios, the battery type is switchable, and one must be careful not to connect a power adapter to recharge alkaline batteries.

Earbuds

If you’re serious about radio, you have a good set of earbuds or headphones. I would venture to say the supplied earbuds for each of my radios are still in the box in their original wrapping. I don’t get along well with earbuds. They are hard to install in what apparently are my constricted ear canals and are always falling out. Several years ago I purchased a set of quality over-the-ear headphones. Not the most convenient for travel perhaps, but great for reproducing sound and mitigating outside noise. Grundig went so far as to include a set of over-the-ear headphones with the Satellit 800.

Antennas

Most new portables come with 20- to 25-ft long wire external antennas having 3.5-mm plugs for connection to the external antenna jack. Sometimes a plastic ‘clothespin’ is attached to the remote end of the wire for mounting. For convenience, some of these wires are contained in a tape-measure-style spool. These antennas are quite useful for the non-tinker and traveler, as they provide a means to extend the range, particularly on shortwave.

The C. Crane wire terminal antenna adapter, included with the Skywave SSB 2, is a boon to anyone without a soldering iron or otherwise not inclined to use one. Other manufacturers take note. A #2 Phillips screwdriver, and knife to strip the wire insulation are all you need for extensive antenna experimentation.

Source: C. Crane Skywave SSB 2 Instruction Manual, p. 30.

Sony packed not one, but two 3.5-mm external antenna plugs with each ICF-2010/2001D. The concept was the same as the C. Crane wire terminal antenna adapter. These had wire pigtails ending in screw terminals for an antenna and ground wire of your choice.

External antenna adapter (1 of 2) packed with the Sony ICF-2010 and -2001D

A caution here. The RF amplifier for LW, MW, and SW on the 2010 is an unprotected FET (Q303), which is notorious for failing due to electrostatic discharge from an external antenna. Early on, your author was twice bitten by this snake. There may be other radios that suffer from this vulnerability.

Straps

The strap is arguably the least useful accessory included with any portable radio. The Sony ICF-2010/2001D came with a very attractive blue over-the-shoulder web strap, which has become something of an “item” among collectors. Mine have been bound up in their original wrapping and stored away for 40-plus years, and might yield the cost of a new portable radio should I ever decide to auction them on the Internet. I have never used them on either of my 2010s simply because I can envision the priceless radio dangling pendulously at the end of the strap waiting to meet disaster through contact with an immovable door jam.

The same goes for smaller radios which almost always include an obligatory wrist strap. Perhaps these should not be classified as accessories, as they are permanently attached to the radio. I avoid using them for the same reason as sited for the 2010s. Besides, they just get in the way. These straps are usually anchored inside the case, but I can’t bear to cut them off; so, I have just lived with them. In the few cases where I have opened the case, I have omitted reinstalling them. Instead of having a strap, how about a collapsible “lunchbox” handle? I can even envision one of these being developed into a dual-purpose handle/antenna.

Manuals

Don’t forget the manual. We’ve gotten away from manuals. People don’t use them, and they are a manufacturing expense. Besides, you can find your answer on the Internet.

As a retired technical writer, however, I have a strong respect for a well-crafted technical manual. Besides actually using them, I unconsciously evaluate them. Unfortunately, most are written as an afterthought – an attempt to forestall customer enquiries. “Read the manual.” The problem is compounded by radios intended for a worldwide market, wherein the manuals are authored by writers who labor under the handicap of having English, French, Spanish, German, etc. as a second language.

There are also situations where the printing is too small or the fanfolds too inconvenient. My standard practice is to download an electronic copy of each manual, print it out in 8 ½” × 11” format, and put it in a comb or 3-ring binder. This is easier on aging eyes, and more suitable for adding my own notes.

…and so forth

Besides the common accessories described above, some unique items have been included over the years. For example, Tecsun has packaged very nice 20-inch by 30-inch charts with some models. One side contains a world map showing amateur call areas. The other side is an enlargement of the radio with each button or control function described.

Going back a few years, Sony included a slick publication called the Wave Handbook with some of their radios. These had convenient station vs. time charts for world band radio. The charts were like those published in frequency vs. time format in Passport to Worldband Radio. The booklets were published in several editions over the years, but obviously, these were time sensitive and became outdated rather quickly. Still, they could pique the interest of folks new to SWLing.

Packaging

Finally, there is the box the radio came in and any accompanying wrapping. The packrat DNA in me usually demands that I keep all this. It can speed up the sale or otherwise increase the value of the radio, if you ever decide to sell it.

Which radio accessories do you use?

Would you like an option to buy the radio without any accessories?

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Bob’s Radio Corner: The Curious Case of the Nibi-Nibi Islands

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Bob Colegrove, who writes:

Hi Thomas,

No mention of UTC or frequency in the attached. Made my day, but some folks apparently were not amused.

Source was “Short-Wave Report” by Hank Bennett, Popular Electronics, Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., New York, p. 86, March 1959.

Regards,

Bob Colegrove

This absolutely made my day as well, Bob! What a delightful bit of pranksterism from our esteemed DXing history.

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Radio is Cheap Entertainment

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Source: Better Shortwave Reception, William I. Orr, W6SAI,
Radio Publications Inc., Wilton, CT, 1st Edition, p. 129, 1957.

A Radio is Cheap Entertainment

Digressions of Bob Colegrove

Radio is a cheap hobby. Consider the plight of concertgoers and sports fans. Today, the price of a ticket to a single event can easily equal or exceed the cost of a decent radio. Then, after the event, all you have left is a ticket stub and a memory. Further, if your team loses, the memory is probably not pleasant. Whereas, with a radio, you have a tangible item you can go on using as long as you want to. Perhaps by dividing some measure of enjoyment by the time engaged in the activity one could come up with a quotient indicating the relative value of various forms of entertainment.

I guess my point is an attempt to justify why I have more than the necessary number of radios. After all, it’s hard to listen to more than one at a time. But it’s also hard to put a number on ‘necessary,’ and besides, radios are cheap. It wasn’t always that way. In 1959, the entry-level shortwave “sets” were the five-tube Hallicrafters S-38E and the National NC-60 Special. These radios were marketed head-to-head at the $60 price point. To put things in perspective, that’s nearly $650 today. Conversely, a highly desirable Tecsun S-2200x (price, $372) with countless transistors would have cost less than $35 in 1959 dollars had it been feasible. An XHDATA D-220 (price, $10) would have been 92 cents.

I financed my purchase of a Hallicrafters S-38E using the device shown below. For those too young to recognize it, it was what passed for a lawn mower in 1959. It was very ecofriendly requiring neither gasoline nor battery charging. Instead, the short blade rotated, and the device moved forward on two metal wheels by manual exertion of pressure on the handle, which is shown at the top right. You had to overlap each pass across the lawn by at least ½ a blade width to get a decent cut. I had a clientele of three neighbor’s yards, each of approximately 1/6 acre for which I received $2 per mowing – $1 for the front and $1 for the back. There was no sales tax in Indiana at that time, and my earnings were under the minimum amount to pay any income tax, so you can do the math to see how long it took to buy my radio.

Fast forward 65 years. My neighbor’s boy rides on a 48-inch $3,200 mower with a cold soda in the cup holder; streams rock music on his noise-canceling, Bluetooth headphones; and knocks down $60 in about ½ hour. Radio? He thinks single sideband was a heavy metal group from Chicago.

Outside of an occasional set of batteries, there is very little continuing ownership cost for a radio beyond the initial investment. There is no monthly fee for Internet streaming or satellite radio. Whatever you care to donate to your local public radio station is your own business.

All of this is to say I have gone to some concerts and sporting events, but a fair share of my disposable income in recent years has been spent on radios, some of which, like entertainment events, are now just memories. The remaining radios festooning the shack are all necessary.

Bottom line: If your conscience is troubled by the prospect of spending money on a spare radio, or you are consumed with guilt at having done so, reassure yourself by considering what little would remain after any investment in a good meal at a decent restaurant. Just remember, for the sake of domestic tranquility, use discretion when sharing any plans with your spouse. In this situation, I often reflect on words attributed to the late Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, USN who used to say, “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

May your radio logbooks be enriched with many new entries in 2025.

Happy New Year!

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A File Worth Having: Bob’s guide to building an Electrically Small Resonant Loop Antenna for Mediumwave Reception

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Screenshot

This post is short and sweet.

If you click here–Electrically Small Resonant Loop Antenna for Mediumwave Reception (PDF)–you can download a copy of Bob Colegrove’s excellent paper on the Electrically Small Resonant Loop Antenna for Mediumwave Reception.

He has actually built this antenna; it works; and he uses it often. Perhaps you might want to build one for yourself. As an added bonus, Bob is an excellent writer (in my not-so-humble opinion). What’s not to like?

— Jock Elliott, KB2GOM

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Bob’s 1968 Radio Tirana QSL Card

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Bob Colegrove, who writes:

Kudos to Don Moore for his excellently crafted article on Albanian radio.

[…]Perhaps some might be interested to see a 1968 QSL from R.
Tirana.

Regards,

Bob Colegrove

Thank you for sharing this excellent Radio Tirana QSL card, Bob!

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Channel 6 FM Radio Stations

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

Channel 6 Radio Stations

By Bob Colegrove

Even after all these years, I still find occasional surprises while playing with radios. How did I miss this one? I recently did what I thought was a definitive audit of the available FM stations in my area. Then, just the other day I happened to tune down below 88.1 (FM Channel 201). At 87.7 MHz I came across some delightful Latin music in clear stereo and proceeded to park the tuning knob there for a listen. At first, I thought I might simply have some intermodulation from a strong local station, but the stereo signal was much too clear. So, I resorted to the internet to determine what was going on. Turns out, according to their website, I was listening to DC 88.7FM in Fairfax, Virginia – no call letters, just “DC 88.7FM.”

Further investigation indicated that the station is officially WDCN-LD a low-power operator, but you won’t find it listed on the FCC FM Query site. That’s because it is something of a legacy station, a carryover from analog TV days when the audio for Channel 6 was broadcast with the carrier centered on 87.75 MHz, within the range of most FM receivers. Having discovered this, I retuned the radio slightly to 87.75 MHz and found the signal strength peaked. Wikipedia describes the history of WDCN-LD at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDCN-LD.

Of further interest is the history of so-called “Channel 6 FM radio stations.” The evolution of present-day stations is long and involved. Over several years, the FCC formed committees, requested comments, held hearings, wrote reports, published proposals, rendered rulings, and ultimately granted waivers. For the full story, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_6_radio_stations_in_the_United_States. What resulted are legacy stations dating back to analog TV days which continue to operate sans video as de facto FM stations. For all practical purposes, we have a modest extension of the FM band. There are, in fact, 14 such stations currently spread across the lower 48 states. It is unlikely that the circumstances which created these stations will ever result in more stations being added. As of July 20, 2023, an FCC report and order restricted these stations to those already licensed and current licenses untransferable.

Do you live near a Channel 6 FM radio station?

Just to complete the picture, there is also officially an FM Channel 200 at 87.9 MHz, which was established in 1978, but to my knowledge is not used. Does anyone have any information on FM Channel 200?

As an historical aside, the present-day FM band, 88 to 108 MHz, is located directly between analog TV Channels 6 and 7. In 1958, to foster FM use, Regency Electronics, Inc. marketed a converter, Model RC-103, in a handsome Bakelite case, which could be attached between the antenna (generally “rabbit ears”) and the TV set. The converter contained a single transistor and was powered by three AA batteries. By tuning the TV to Channel 6, turning on the TeleVerter to FM, and rotating its dial, one effectively detuned the Channel 6 audio frequency upward, and could listen to the entire FM band. As this converter was manufactured prior to the advent of stereo broadcasting, the sound was in mono, and fidelity was limited to the audio quality of the TV. My dad bought one of these. It was connected to our Arvin 12”, B/W tabletop TV, and it served as our first FM radio for a few years. There were only a few stations at that time, mostly classical as I recall. Thus “FM” came to stand for “fine music.”