Tag Archives: Don Moore

A DXpedition to East Sandy

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the following guest post:

A DXpedition to East Sandy

By Don Moore

When I was in college over forty years ago, seven of us had a small DX club in central Pennsylvania. A couple of times a year we would gather at the house of one of our parents for an all-night DX session. We shared tips and ideas, had fun, and always heard some new DX. Good DX can happen anywhere if conditions are right and most of mine over the past fifty years took place at wherever home happened to be at the time. But most of my best experiences and best memories of DXing were not made at home. They were made by getting together to DX with other hobbyists such as we did back in college.

Nowadays when I get together to DX with other hobbyists it’s to go on a DXpedition, which is nothing more than taking your receiver to a place where DXing will be better than at home because there’s less noise and you can erect better antennas. Simple DXpeditions can be done from cars. My old friend Dave Valko used to go on what he called micro-DXpeditions. He drove to a remote spot in the mountains not far from town, laid out a few hundred feet of wire, and then DXed from his car for a couple hours. He frequently did this around dawn and around sunset and got some great DX. I know several other DXers that do this today, either at countryside locations or in large parks.

I’ve done micro-DXpeditions a few times. It’s fun but it always lacks an important element: other DXers. For me, the best DXpeditions aren’t just about hearing interesting stuff (although that is very important). They are also about sharing the hobby with other interested friends. And the best way to do that is to go on a real DXpedition with them.

For three years in a row prior to the pandemic a group of eight of us had rented a lodge in rural central Ohio for an annual DXpedition. Covid shelved our plans for 2020 but by the summer of 2021 we were all looking forward to a fourth DXpedition in September. Then another wave of covid swept across the country and we canceled a few weeks before the event. Fortunately, the worst of those days are behind us and we finally had our fourth DXpedition the first week of October of this year. Unfortunately, only five of us could make it – Ralph Brandi, Mike Nikolich, Andy Robins, Mark Taylor and I.

For four nights our DXpedition home was the same place in western Pennsylvania that we had canceled at in 2021. The location was a rural house on the bluffs overlooking the Allegheny River near the old East Sandy railroad bridge (now a hiking trail). It’s always a gamble going to a new place chosen solely based on the AirBnB listing and other information found online. But this site had all the appearances of being a good place to DX from. The pictures and Google satellite view showed that there were trees around the house and large nearby open fields surrounded by woodland. The terrain was relatively flat when viewed on 3D satellite view. We would have plenty of space for a variety of antennas. Furthermore, it didn’t look to be a noisy location. The nearest neighbor was over a quarter mile to the south and because the house was the last one on the road that powerlines stopped at the driveway. I couldn’t have done much better if I had designed the location myself.

Our DXpedition home. Coordinates 41°19’23″N 79°46’08″W (Don Moore)

ANTENNAS

Good antennas are the most important part of any DXpedition and erecting them is usually the most time-consuming part of set-up. Still, you never really know what’s going to fit until you’re there. I arrived at 2 p.m. and Mark pulled in a few minutes later. We immediately walked the grounds and were pleased with what we saw. Ralph arrived while we were laying out the first antenna. Mike and Andy arrived later in the afternoon in time to help finish up.

Our DXpedition antenna farm consisted of two delta loops, a DKaz, and two BOGs. The delta loops used Wellbrook ALA-100LN units and are as I described a few years ago in my article on radio travel. These are easy to erect and are good all-around antennas for anything below 30 MegaHertz. The DKaz (instructions here) is a rather complex-to-build antenna designed for medium wave. Ralph uses one at home which he had taken down for the summer to make yard work easier. He brought the pieces and put it up by himself. The two BOGs (Beverage-on-the-ground) were a 300-meter wire to the northeast and a 220-meter wire to the north. Beverages are good for long wave, medium wave, and the lower shortwave frequencies. Continue reading →

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Don Moore’s Photo Album: Bolivia 1985

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the latest installment of his Photo Album guest post series:

Don Moore’s Photo Album: Bolivia 1985

by Don Moore

After finishing Peace Corps, my ex-wife and I spent six months traveling around South America in 1985. In mid-June we crossed the border to southern Bolivia from Argentina and took an overnight train to the mining center of Oruro. We also visited Cochabamba and the capital of La Paz before heading to Peru ten days later. We would have stayed longer but 1985 was the worst year ever for Bolivia’s typically unstable economy and the country was being wracked by labor strikes and food shortages. But I did manage to visit about a dozen Bolivian shortwave stations.

Photos

La Cruz del Sur was founded in 1949 by Canadian missionary Sydney H. Hillyer and the Canadian Baptist Mission. It broadcast on 4875 kHz shortwave for many years. My last log of it was in 2003.

La Cruz del Sur QSL from the 1980s.

La Cruz del Sur pennant from the 1980s. Continue reading →

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Don Moore’s Photo Album: Santa Bárbara, Honduras

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the following Photo Album guest post series:

Don Moore’s Photo Album: Santa Bárbara, Honduras

by Don Moore

I first set foot in Latin America in January 1982 when I arrived in Tegucigalpa to begin three months of Peace Corps training. Three months later I moved to my Honduran home, the town of Santa Bárbara in the western mountains. For the next two years I worked as a teacher and resource person at the Escuela Normal Mixta de Santa Bárbara, a specialized high school that trained its students to teach primary school.

Santa Bárbara had a shortwave station, La Voz del Junco on 6075 kHz but it was rarely reported because it broadcast irregularly and was usually blocked by big international broadcasters when it was on the air. I had never heard it but I met Miguel Hasbun, the owner-manager, on my first visit to Santa Bárbara when he picked me up hitchhiking north of town. He told me that the shortwave transmitter had been broken down for a while but that he was going to fix it ‘soon’. Over the next year I kept inquiring about the shortwave and he finally did fix it. After that the station broadcast irregularly for the next year or so, mostly in the morning. I served as volunteer veri-signer and issued around fifteen QSLs. I even issued one to myself.

Santa Bárbara had one other radio station, Ondas del Ulúa on 1140 kHz medium wave (later 1150 kHz). They also announced 4770 kHz shortwave in their canned IDs and station staff assured me they would be adding shortwave “soon”. It never did happen but the WRTH did list the frequency as future plans for several years.

Audio:

Ondas del Ulúa 1982 sign-off announcement mentioning 4770 kHz.

The department of Santa Bárbara had one other radio station, Radio Luz y Vida on 1600 and 3250 kHz in the town of San Luis. The founder, manager, and veri-signer for Radio Luz y Vida was a missionary from Oklahoma named Don Moore. Needless to say, this caused a lot of confusion in the DX world as some people assumed he and I were the same person. On the map, San Luis is only about thirty kilometers from Santa Bárbara but getting there involved a five-hour journey on two buses. I only went once and the other Don Moore was out of town, so I never met him. I did meet two nurses who were working at the mission’s health clinic.

Photos

These pictures were all taken in 1982 to 1984 while I lived in Santa Bárbara [click on photos to enlarge].

La Voz del Junco’s yellow sign on main street in downtown Santa Bárbara. The small tower on the left was the corner of what had been an army post but was being used as a regional prison in the early 1980s. I once went there every day for a week to supervise student-teachers doing adult literacy classes for the inmates. It was not a pleasant place to be.

Entrance to La Voz del Junco. The girl is examining a poster for the night’s showing at the makeshift movie theater that Don Miguel operated nearby. Continue reading →

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Guest Post: Monitoring Digital Selective Calling (DCS) with YADD

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the following guest post:

Monitoring DSC with YADD

By Don Moore

(The following article was originally published in the April/May 2022 edition of the Great Lakes Monitor, bulletin of the Michigan Association of Radio Enthusiasts. An all-band listening club, MARE publishes a bi-monthly print bulletin and a weekly e-mail loggings tip-sheet. The club also holds regular get-togethers, picnics, and DXpeditions, generally in southeastern Michigan.)

There are dozens if not hundreds of different digital modes used for communication on the MF and HF bands. These aren’t broadcasts you want to listen to unless you like to hear weird tones, beeps, warbles, and grinding noises interspersed with static. Digital modes are for monitoring, not listening. And monitoring them requires having software that does the listening for you and converts the noises into something meaningful – like the ID of the station you’re tuned to. The learning curve to DXing digital utilities can be steep. There are lots of modes to identify and the software can be complicated to learn. Some broadcasts are encrypted so you can’t decode them no matter how hard you try. But the reward is lots of new stations and even new countries that you wouldn’t be able to add to your logbook otherwise.

One of the easiest digital modes to DX is DSC, or Digital Selective Calling. DSC is a defined as “a standard for transmitting pre-defined digital messages.” Look online if you want to understand the technical specifications that specify the values, placement, and spacing of the tones. The result of those specifications is a string of three-digit numbers like this:

125 107 125 106 120 105 120 104 000 120 022 120 041 000 002 022 020 041 108 002 053 020 080 108 006 053 021 080 070 006 118 021 126 070 126 118 126 126 126 126 126 126 126 126 126 126 117 126 112 126 117 117 117 112 109 125 108 125

Each three-digit value represents either a digit or a key word and the positions of the values map to the various fields contained in the message. This message, which was received on 8414.5 kHz, is a test call from the tanker Brook Trout to the coastal station Coruña Radio in Spain. The sender and destination are not identified by name but rather by their nine-digit MMSI (Maritime Mobile Service Identity) numbers – 538006217 for the vessel and 002241022 for the coastal station.

GETTING STARTED WITH DSC

Logging DSC stations requires three pieces of software. First you need a decoder program that turns the noises into numbers and the numbers into meaning. There are several free and commercial options but the most popular one for beginners is YADD – Yet Another DSC Decoder. YADD is free and easy to set up and while YADD can be used by feeding the audio from a traditional radio into your computer, the most common use is with an SDR. That’s what I use and what I will describe here.

Second you need an SDR application and an SDR. I prefer HDSDR for most of my SDR use but I like SDR-Console for digital work. But any SDR program will work if you can feed the audio to a virtual audio cable. And that’s the final thing you need – a virtual audio cable to create a direct audio connection between your SDR application and YADD. There are several different ones available but I recommend VB-Cable. Your first VB-Cable is free and that is all you need to run a single instance of YADD. If you want to expand you can buy up to four more cables from them later. Continue reading →

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Don Moore’s Photo Album: Ecos del Torbes

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the following guest post series:

Don Moore’s Photo Album

by Don Moore

Introduction

When I discovered DXing over fifty years ago I also discovered the world. Through my ears I traveled to other countries and explored other cultures. But DXing has also literally taken me places. My early interest in Latin American DXing developed into a broader interest in Latin America. That led to me joining the Peace Corps after college and working three years in Honduras. That experience furthered my interest in Latin America and I have continued to travel in the region whenever possible. For me DXing and travel were always intertwined. I’m one of a handful of hobbyists who took DXing beyond just listening and went knocking on broadcasters’ doors to visit the distant stations I heard. My ex-wife dubbed this ‘door-to-door DXing.’

To date I’ve visited over 150 radio stations in thirteen countries. A few were medium-wave or FM only, but I was always most interested in visiting broadcasters that used shortwave, either at the time of my visit or a few years before. As my station visits were primarily made in the 1980s and 1990s, almost all of the stations are long-gone from the shortwave bands. However, many are still around on medium wave and FM and often also via streaming on the Internet. As much as I miss the magic of shortwave I know that these stations reach more listeners today via streaming than they ever did with their low-powered shortwave transmitters. Honestly, I sometimes enjoy tuning them in without the fading and static of shortwave. But the memories of what shortwave once was are still there.

Photos also bring back memories. I took dozens of pictures on my station visits and enjoy scrolling through them now and then. You may have seen some of them. Many of my photos were printed with articles I wrote for various DX publications and I’ve done a few slide-shows at DX get-togethers over the years.

In this series of columns I want to share my old photos once again. If you’ve been DXing as long as I have maybe they’ll bring back memories of what you once heard. And if you haven’t been around that long you will have a better understanding of the good old days we oldtimers talk about.

Ecos Del Torbes

There is no better place to start this journey than with Ecos del Torbes. Using ten kilowatts on 4980 kHz, this Venezuelan broadcaster was possibly the most consistent station in the sixty-meter band throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. If you were DXing the tropical bands during those years you surely logged them a few times. If you were lucky you may even have heard their one kilowatt signal on 9640 kHz. They were a very good verifier and for many DXers Ecos del Torbes was among the first Latin American stations QSLed.

Just after Christmas in 1994, my then-wife, four-year-old daughter, and I flew to Mérida in western Venezuela for a family vacation. For ten days we had a great time in this Andean city and then Theresa and Rebecca returned to Iowa while I stayed another week to visit radio stations. I was also getting paid by the Voice of America to research and write a study on the media scene in Andean Venezuela. The now very-out-of-date report can be read at my Patepluma Radio website (which hasn’t been changed in over twenty years and is in need of a facelift).

In that week I visited fifteen radio stations in six towns and cities and Ecos del Torbes was the highlight. I arrived at their doorstep unannounced but was immediately treated as an important guest. I was given a great tour and even got to sit in on a live newscast to see the famous Venezuelan doorbell being used live. I was there about ninety minutes and then walked a block up the street to sister station Radio Táchira. Their facilities were smaller but that’s where the technical offices were and Chief Engineer Ivan Escobar had been told to expect me. Ivan gave me a tour and invited me to visit the Ecos del Torbes transmitter site with him in the afternoon. On the way we stopped by his house where his wife had lunch waiting for us. Visiting Ecos del Torbes was not just the highlight of this trip but ranks as one of my all-time favorite station visits. These pictures bring back many good memories.

Photos

Ecos del Torbes was located in the second floor of this building in downtown San Cristóbal. The entrance was the door on the side.

The small plaque next to the door was easy to miss. I walked right by the first time.

Edgar Fabala of the news department showed me around. Here he demonstrates the mini-xylophones that Venezuelan stations used to make the distinctive ‘doorbell’ sound that separated items in the news reports.

Announcer in the studio preparing to read the news.

The adjoining control room.

Ecos del Torbes had one of the largest record libraries in Venezuela. The LPs were color-coded by type.

Julio Achila was a control room operator who had worked at the station since it opened in 1947.

This pennant was considerably larger than the ones sent to DXers.

Sister station Radio Táchira was located a block up the street on the fourth floor of this building.

The Ecos del Torbes transmitter building.

The 50 kilowatt medium wave transmitter on 780 kHz.

Chief Engineer Ivan Escobar and Don Moore next to the 31 meter transmitter. The larger transmitter was for the well-heard 4980 kHz frequency.

The antenna array used for 4980 kHz. The medium wave tower is in the background.

Dipole antenna used for 9640 kHz.

San Cristóbal once had a third broadcaster on shortwave. Radio San Sebastian used 6070 kHz in the early 1970s. (They were not affiliated with Ecos del Torbes).

That was nearly three decades ago and a lot has changed. Ecos del Torbes and Radio Táchira have been gone from shortwave for over twenty years.

In 1995 Ecos del Torbes was at the corner of Calle 9 and Carrera 8, the same address as when I first QSLed them in 1972. Sometime since my visit they moved an outer neighborhood about two kilometers to the east. To find the new offices locate San Cristóbal on Google maps and then search for “Grupo Radial Gonzalez Lovera”. The transmitter site is still where I visited it and can be seen by plugging the coordinates “7.7885, -72.2725” into Google maps and switching to satellite view. (Ignore the picture that pops up to the side. That’s not it.) Zooming in, the medium wave tower is clearly visible but there are no signs of the old shortwave antennas. I suspect they were sold for scrap years ago. I never have found out where the Radio Táchira transmitter site was.

I’d love to go back to Venezuela someday and see some of the other cities that I used to listen to, such as Barquisimeto, Valencia, El Tigre, and Sucre. Unfortunately the political and economic situation there doesn’t look good and it doesn’t look as if it will improve any time soon. But when it does, I’ll be back.

Click here to check out all of Don Moore’s Photo Album columns. Each new article will appear on the SWLing Post home page/feed and in this link.

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Guest Post: An Introduction to DXing the MF Marine Bands

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Don Moore–author of Following Ghosts in Northern Peru–for the following guest post:

Monitoring the MF Marine Bands

By Don Moore

For me, DXing has always been about the challenge of receiving difficult-to-hear radio stations, regardless of the type of station or frequency range. In my five decades in the radio hobby I’ve logged a lot of different kinds of stations – shortwave broadcast, medium wave, shortwave utility, longwave beacons, etc. But some of my favorite catches have been in the upper end of the medium frequency range.

Technically speaking, medium frequency (MF) is the range from 300 to 3000 kHz and includes the standard medium wave (AM) broadcast band. The upper end of the MF band, from 1600 to 3000 kHz (except for a small portion reserved for amateur radio), has always been assigned to various types of utility uses including broadcasts and other voice communications from regional maritime stations. And while digital modes and satellites have done a lot to change the nature of communication with ships at sea, there is still a lot of good human-voice DX to be heard.

Several dozen stations, mostly in Europe and North America, broadcast regularly scheduled marine information broadcasts in the MF range. These broadcasts are usually between five to ten minutes in length and include weather forecasts, navigational warnings, and other notices to keep ships at sea safe. On occasion it’s possible to hear two-way voice communication here between ships and shore stations, although that’s much less common today.

The Equipment

Nothing special is needed to DX the marine MF band other than a receiver that covers the frequency range and can receive USB mode (which all these broadcasts are in). However, for reasons explained below, I highly recommend using an SDR to make spectrum recordings of the entire band to go through later. Continue reading →

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Guest Post: Don targets rare Norwegian stations during Newfoundland DXpedition

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Photo by the Bjørnøya Meteorologiske Stasjon

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Don Moore–author of Following Ghosts in Northern Peru–for the following guest post:

The Rarest DX?

By Don Moore

In mid-October I received an invitation to attend the annual DXpedition in Cappahayden, Newfoundland with Jean Burnell, John Fisher, and Jim Renfrews. It didn’t take long for me to say yes. Newfoundland is one of the best places in the world to DX from and all kinds of amazing stuff has been heard there. I was excited at the prospect of great medium wave DX and being able to log low-powered European private and pirate shortwave broadcasters.

But something else was at the top of my try-for list. One of my many DX interests has always been logging coastal marine stations in the 1600 to 3000 kHz range. In preparation I started checking online sources to update my spreadsheet of schedules. In going through a recently added section on Marine Broadcasts in the DX Info Centre website I came across listings for twice-daily weather broadcasts from Hopen Island on 1750 kHz and Bjørnøya (Bear Island) on 1757 kHz.

I didn’t remember ever seeing anything about broadcasts from these remote islands in the Norwegian Arctic before. Were these stations actually on the air, I wondered. And if they were, could I hear them in Newfoundland? Continue reading →

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