MISCELLANEOUS/
TECHNIQUES A site mainly dedicated to Mediumwave Dxing |
The
Ramblings of a DXer: It is always interesting to read of the experiences and the grief of other DXers. Eg, I read with great interest the trouble John Faulkner was having with local QRN. We all can relate to this menace. I am taking a little time whilst the DX has been flat during November 04, to make up this small web site. The intention for these pages is to include recent IDs, as well as some of the best catches and old calls from the past. All projects start small though. I have a local history project running on the same server as this, which started small, and now contains about 500 meg!! That project is one reason my DXing was perhaps not as intense as in previous years. I think though that has at last changed for the better. On this page I thought I would describe my operating conditions in these rambles. Equipment Used for DXing - Receivers: JRC - NRD 545 (Primary) JRC - NRD 515 (Primary) LOWE - HF225 Europa (Primary) Racal - RA17 (Secondary) Grundig - Satellit 3400 (FM DX) Other odds and ends kicking around include Old Trios 9R59 and 9R59DS, more collectable items than useful, but still in working condition. I have a B40 lying somewhere as well, which has not seen light of day for many years, and a Drake SSR 1. I fell in with a broken down RA17L receiver some years ago, which is now used in the house for general listening. This radio caused some grief last year when I decided to use it at my girlfriend's house with a very modest long wire I strung up. It was described as an eyesore, as well as various other explicit terms!! In the end I had to bring it back. The whole episode, known affectionately as the RACAL incident, really was such a circus. Personally I thought it looked well, especially since I had spent some considerable time getting it going. There were several man made faults on it. Main ones were 1) The only valve different in the RA17 to the RA17L had the wrong one in it. Result - no transmissions received at all, only hiss. 2) Another valve had only a poor match resulting in reduced sensitivity. 3) The somewhat useless LIMITER switch had been removed at some time, and re fitted upside down, resulting in bad distortion, like what you get with the limiter on. So when the limiter was in the off position, it really was on!! Fault 1 was the most difficult to trace, since the manual initially used was for the RA17. I later found a 17L manual and made the discovery. Equipment Used for DXing - Accesories: I use amongst other accessories, an FRT7700 ATU, the little one that was built to match the Yaseu FRG7700. It makes a very worthwhile improvement to the old wire straight into the set routine. About 1995 when I was a member of MW Circle before, Mark Connelly's MWDX6 phasing unit was extensively featured. I built one, though my version did not contain an active circuit. I was then able to phase two long wire type antennas, and be rid of strong locals such as ILR Ayr! On 1035 I heard and still can, North Sound, or London 1035 (whatever it's called this week). The phasing unit is best for strong local ground wave signals, which it can eliminate, from an off the clock +60db signal, to zero. For long distance work, via skywave however the story is different. Other equipment includes a Datong FL3 notch filter, and I have had various MW loops kicking around over the years, but my main antennas are my Beverages and Inverted L types. Equipment Used for DXing - Antennas: In years gone by, I seemed to lack imagination in the antenna front. I suppose we are always learning, but when I think of the DX I could have heard with the aerials I use now, I can only cringe. I always used great lengths of long wires, dipoles, inv Ls. I never ever thought I could string a beverage up, because west from here is public land, and NW the village hall. At one time I had a SW long wire up, 150m or so, which was had a high gain. At the same time I had ran a mediocre wire west along public trees, unterminated. This brought in better US reception than the long wire running SW. It wasn't until mid 90s around 1994 maybe, that I noticed the westerly direction along the other side of the river could be accessed if I had a long piece of coax. Thinking it was far too long a feeder, thinking about the loss at UHF with long cable runs, I never hoped for much. When I did try this set up, I was amazed that it worked so well. My current set up is new. Like the story above, I never thought I could get a NW beverage as I would be out through the village centre, and my lottery hadn't come up to buy a farm. I was greatly in awe at the Alaska stations Martin Hall pulled in during the good conditions in October and November, and when he told me they were only audible using his long northerly beverage, I began to look at aerial photos and maps. There was a path from a point beyond the westerly beverage where along the open field skirting towards the rivers edge and back through the open field would give the desired NW direction. Luckily this winter the field has been ploughed, so I went and saw "Big Sanny the fermer" who informed me the field had nothing sown, and would not have until March. He was not only in agreement of me putting up a temporary aerial, but interested in the results! I needed wire, and no body had any kicking around. I didn't want to buy the supposed trade price drums at £30 each if possible, and went a walk looking along the edge of the wood for fencing wire I could hook up to. Nothing was doing. Then I remembered I had seen a stall at "THE GLESGA BARRAS" offering drums of single core copper cable. I seemed to recall asking the chappie before about prices, which were about a tenner each. Imagine my triumph when I was told he needed the space and that everything there in the pile of junk was a fiver. I lifted five drums of dark cable, and one bright yellow. "Come back next week and I should have more, which will be the last of it", was his parting comment. I bought another 6 the next week. I have only just set up my first 530m beverage antenna, running NW, ie about 315 degrees. The aerial began as a long 400m cable stretched out along the field. Then I put it on sticks about a foot above the ground. After some opinions from dxpedition DXers, I came to the conclusion that a height of about 4 or five feet would be better. Thus it became a 400m 5 foot high beverage. It remained so for a couple of weeks. The weekend I had a visitor walk down to the end, I felt nothing like doing antenna work. A very sociable weekend had been had. But in due course, the antenna was added to, and is currently about 530m. The 500m end terminated very close to overhead power cables unfortunately. Rather than cut back 50m, I added around 30m, with the option of adding more. Anyone looking at the aerial photo, can see I strayed off line a bit, by ending up in the wood. Rambo would have trouble in that dense pinewood. The idea was originally to keep in the field right to the end. Maybe next year. Initially, I strung out the wire along in a straight line in the dark. There are plenty kids running around locally who would no doubt have wondered what I was at, roaming the middle of a field with great lengths of wire. They would see nothing under the cover of darkness, and therefore have no interest in walking over to the field and pulling and hauling at the aerial. I had an hour at lunchtimes, so I was able to straighten the aerial when they were all at school by day. As it stands, the antenna looks like "Big Sanny" has put up a temporary fence. I have not as yet had the chance to use it with good DX conditions. However during the day, I can switch between the 530m and 200m westerly beverage on 531kHz and change the station. Faroes 531 is dominant on the NW aerial, whereas on the other it can sometimes be the Swiss stn, not always black and white, but certainly sometimes. I have also put up a very black and white recording of AFN / Thunder 1530 from Iceland on the NW beverage, yet switching via the ATU to the W beverage produces only Tony Blackburn (!) on Classic Gold, both at that particular peak were QRM free! Equipment Used for DXing - Recording DX: I have always recorded DX, and when listening in any way seriously, I always have a tape running. Years back, about 1980 I think, I missed a sudden tune in to 1330 WDLW, with a rather good signal and ID at 0800 on a March morning. By the time I got a tape out, yes, it had faded out to virtually nothing. I still use tapes to record station IDs. Obviously it would be much easier and efficient if I could just let Cool Edit run in the background and make notes of the times of interest. But until I have a completely RF silent PC, I will use my old manky tapes. I do not have any new ID tapes any more however. The tapes are transferred to MP3, and kept on CD. The files are much easier to access, and are searchable using simply the windows search facility. eg a search for 1570 could produce all recordings made from 1570, but on the negative side a search for say 1100 would also find recordings made at 1100 UTC. I can live with that though. One tip... I always try and process the tapes the same day as reception if poss. There is nothing worse than having bags of manky old tapes lying around with crackles from previous winters on them. Best to process them when the DX you thought you heard is fresh on your memory. I have boxes of old tapes some of which date from the 80s with unknown recordings of radio and DX. I found one recently from 1995 with Alberta 1140, which was still to be processed. That really takes the biscuit for being a bit slack in keeping up to date. I have begun to MP3 my old ID tapes. It is a slow process. They are archived in two ways. 1) The full tape as one file, and using the old paperwork scrolling thru winamp to find the ID required. 2) IDs that are currently meaningful, eg at the present time North American ids from the past can be split and separated. I keep the full tapes as a .wav files for this reason. I did hope to put up on these pages some ids from the past such as WHN, WCAU, WNEW etc. Old calls. I hope someone finds the clips interesting. Equipment Used for DXing - Software: For recording purposes I use Cool Edit, and save the file as a .wav. I do not save straight to MP3 with Cool Edit, as there has been the odd time I have been left with silly bit rates, or a jumbled mess. Admittedly this was with larger file than a 30s ID. I use Audio Catalyst from Xing to convert from .wav to MP3. I always use the best quality, which is variable bit rate, flat out. I tend to use an old version of Winamp for playback. 2.65 normally. Vs 3 and above began to have more clutter than anything else. The old vs is basic, plays anything almost, and is reliable. Keeping The Shack QRN free: All the RF noisy apparatus in the shack is on separate mains loops. Nothing is ever in standby. All the PC equipment such as scanner, printer, monitors, and the PC itself all go off with one switch. My web only old PC also has a separate switch. Same goes for TV, DVD, satellite equipment etc. I have 2 security cameras, both of which are noisy and can be switched off at the mains at a moments notice. The standby mode even on the little security monitor is noisy. In fact all of the above pieces of apparatus are RF noisy, and even if only minimal, are kept turned off. For casual reception I can sit with the PC on, and DX in the background, WLAM 1470 was on as I typed up the November logs for example. But on a serious night, everything can be switched off except non RF generating equipment. Recently I tested a flat screen TV for RF noise, and was very pleasantly surprised to find how quiet it was. On a portable rx, there was noise very close to it, but a few feet away, I could listen to AM and FM, QRN free. I use a dual monitor system, 17" and a 21", so to replace them with flat screens would prove expensive at this moment in time. |