| 980 | RCN, Columbia | 
0500 31/8/11 |
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| 1440 | WWCL | Port Myres, FL |
0500 31/8/11 (poor id) |
New / Personal first's this month = 2
NB: ALL TIMES ARE IN GMT
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LOGS / NEWS - AUGUST 2011 A site mainly dedicated to Mediumwave Dxing |
| 980 | RCN, Columbia |
0500 31/8/11 |
|
| 1440 | WWCL | Port Myres, FL |
0500 31/8/11 (poor id) |
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The main beverage that was shreded by the fermer's hedgecutter the other day seems to be just fine and well. I fixed it yesterday, and found a section of the thick coax broken. The cable itself is the thickest stuff I have, and was resued from the fires of a scrappie!!
DX LOGS FROM TODAY: 980 RCN
0500. Very good considering.
No files for today. I heard the farmer with his tractor / hedgecutter yesterday in the field where the antenna feeder goes. I came into the shack today and tried the overnight recordings, to find signals are way way down to almost nil!! Damn. But what can I say. It's his hedges and land I run the cables across, and I am glad of the chance to run the cables across his ground in the first place. Thought. I wonder if he is planting his field with winter crops again this year, or leaving it for a beverage farm like he did in 2008.. LOL
Below
I have included a few clips of dx heard in the last few days. There
is also a montage of various common stations. 110829_0100_1360_wdrc_poor_but_multi_call.mp3 110821_0401_1630_krnd_la_jota_mexicana.mp3 110829_0300_1570_wflr_dundee.mp3
Below I have given another montage of common stations, some of them with quite powerful signals. Others are a little weaker, but may be reasonable for the particular station. That is the first time I have noticed Radio Encyclopedia this season. Note my recording from the other day of WWKB with an OK City advert, and I mentioned that I guess some dxers may claim KOKC if they heard that ad under weak signal conditions. Well I have included a recording with included WWKB with the same ad, as well as KOKC creeping in, on this montage!! 110827_to_29_montage.mp3
950 CKNB
DX LOGS FROM TODAY: 1230
CBC 0400. site??
900 CHML
0505 wx then old radio shows
I wonder how I will get on trying to make this on line page my main log?? Thing is I become sloppy, and dont tend to bother. But this morning I had some very powerful signals, so much so that I will no doubt create another montage. I noticed that there were a few stations to add to the list from the last week, which have been added, including KRND 1630,which is a Mexican format now, and not LA GRANDE, but still SS.
CKNB 950 DRAMATICALLY IMPROVED: Today the old poorly modulated voice of 950 CKNB was booming, and their transmitter is for sure much improved on the last few winters. Although good to hear a real radio station playing music and not relaying crap satellite shows, I guess this may become more of a pest now?? It was much easier to hear other stations below when the audio was watery and poor.
WLKK 930: Let's begin with WLKK call in the mush on 930. This turned out to be WBEN // 107.7 station. Another one for the list!!
LOGS FROM TODAY: 530 R
Encyclopedia
There may have been a power glitch or something today, but the automated overnight recordings failed. This is very unusual and the auto hotkeys system has been in use reliably since it was first introduced in the Perseus group a good few years back now. Auto updates and the likes on a PC also make these things fail. It will also fail obviously if there is no room left on the hard disk!! Anyway, there's always tomorrow!!! I was asked last year why I don't use some of the other systems of timer recordings. One of them requires a clumsy 250 meg download of .net framework. It probably works just the same, but the auto hot keys is as simple as a click on the hours you want to record overnight. A click on 04, and 05. which is mainly all I record at this time, and that's the timer set. It is virtually two clicks. Maybe three if I record 0200, to see what's on 1440 before RTL comes on. But being realistic, even Bill Gates is not above the occasional PC crash. Remember his Windows 98 launch??? And don't listen to the man that tells you his PC never crashes. He is only boasting and making a fool of himself. The only PC that NEVER crashes, is the one that is switched off!! I am not suggesting that my PC is crashing every day or anything. If it was, that is when it is time to wipe the drive and reinstall Windows from scratch. It has to be done on machines every now and again to keep them running smoothly, especially ones that are connected to the web, Many people cringe at the thought of wiping their PC. This is only because they are not in the habit of it. But I have had to do this since Windows 3.1 days...!! The first time was nerve racking though!!!!!!!
KYW - 1060, PHILADELPHIA, PA: Tnx to a tip from Paul C on the Skype MW DX chat, KYW was logged yesterday. The station has been heard here before, but not with such a signal as at 0503 yesterday. At the top of the hour, 1060 was just mush here. Moral. Don't just flick through the 30 seconds at the top of the hour. But sometimes I do just that!!! 110825_0503_1060_kyw_gd_pk.mp3
NOTHING TO REPORT RECENTLY: Welcome to the start of the traditional MW DX season. I have had a little bit of a buzz by some of the signals of late. I have had nothing to report for a couple of months here. The sporadic e season that was hoped for materialised into the worst summer ever at these latitudes. In the end, I couldn't raise an interest even to switch on the band 1 or band 2 sets. Day after day of empty frequencies failed to catch my attention. I also recorded the odd night of MW, hoping to find some mid summer gems, but nothing much to talk about was heard. It can hardly be described as a particularly great summer here, weather wise, although there have been warm days in June and July, some very chilly weather for the middle of the summer was also experienced. The Beech trees especially suffered, and many hedges and trees were "burnt" brown by June!! I have updated my logs index, although the ALL TIME TADX LIST still has to have last season's dx catches incorporated within. The logs index I have to say was well in need of updating. There were some pages that were inaccessible, because the link on the pop up menu had been taken away!! Sorted.
MW DX AGAIN: Below are some of the stations again heard here. Most are regulars, hence the lack of time taken to make so called proper logs of every day stuff. (I just don't see the point in writing down logs every day of WWKB) Not too many so far had the nice booming signal that was enjoyed only a couple of years ago, but it's early in the season. There may well be other common stations omitted here. 540 CBC
MONTAGE OF RECENT DAYS: As I do regularly, here are a few clips of some of the common stations heard this last week or so. Some booming, some not so good. 110823_21_various_montage_scotland.mp3 880 WCBS
A FEW OTHER RECORDINGS: I have
given a few other recordings here from the last days as well. Just
a few for the moment. Notice how CKNB has other letters at the toth
that could cause confusion during weak signals, and how many dxers
would hear an advert for OK and assume wrongly they heard KOKC, see
WWKB rec. 110821_0201_1360_wmob_alabama_gd.mp3 110805_0300_1520_wwkb_inc_insurance_ad_oklahoma_city.mp3 110825_0500_1560_clip_kgow_yahoo_fantasy_football_no_id.mp3
WMOB 1360 - MOBILE, ALABAMA: There has often been religious music heard playing past the toth on 1360 in the last week. This was ided as WMOB Mobile, 0201 21/8, and 0503 today. They seem to be playing past TOTH often. The id includes the word Mo-beeel, in a Southern twang. This was reported in the Spring by BD, and heard here as well. Seems regular all week, though IDs are never there at peak signals. (power / antenna improvement??) 110821_0201_1360_wmob_alabama_gd.mp3
Complete fiction of course, but I saw a similar response from a "well known" receiver manufacturer, aimed at one of his paying customers the other day, when the said customer complained about a £300 machine having no power supply included, and thus not ready to plug and play. I couldn't believe what I was reading!! Great public relations, attacking the customers!!! Of course it has often been suggested on the Perseus Yahoo Group that customers are regularly treated with contempt. I personally would use a line from the main PC power supply. Red = 5v, Yellow = 12v. So both Perseus 5V supply and FM+ 12V supply are easily accommodated. (My own Perseus uses this set up now) The wall wart that comes with the Perseus has often been reported as creating QRN anyway. But it is not everyone who is confident with soldering irons and DC connector plugs. Some dxers are even scared to try out a new version of SDR software, until they read a full report from a reliable resource. So fine I know, many dxers would not be particularly happy with this less than ideal situation. I am not sure what the back of the FM+ is like. A DC socket perhaps?? If it is, there are so very many of these things, all slightly different. I never did understand why there are so many. It is crazy. Into the bargain, you may imagine that the chassis connection of these sockets are negative, and the pin is positive. WRONG. The polarity can be either, depends on the manufacturer of the piece of kit that is being powered. I am unsure if there is any reverse polarity protection in the Perseus and the FM+. There was a big deal about the Perseus power pack in the original manual. I quote directly from the Perseus manual. +5V – 1A
Talking of reverse polarity, someone had a very neat little simple circuit in one of the magazines some years ago. It allowed the connection of a 12v item any way, ie it didn't matter what side went to plus, and what went to minus. Sadly I can't find the bit of paper in question. Anyone remember this???
I saw these and the accompanying leaflet that went with it on ebay the other day. I almost bid, but then whilst raking around, I seemingly have loads of the red leaflets. I also had one of the small cards of stickers, with some removed. Click here for a pdf of the leaflet
A 1970's HAM OPERATORS ATTITUDE?? I was up at Davie H QTH the other day and he showed me an interesting e mail from a well known MW dx club. I couldn't believe I was reading something from 2011. It sounded as though it was out of a 1970's ham radio magazine. Someone had reported that the club should not report MAR and the like because they are illegal pirates. Good grief, it's not nazi Germany or cold war DDR any more. (Debatably) The world of communications has moved on. Many of the worst of the worst old time hams had this chip in their shoulder in the 1970's, and they thought they owned the spectrum, which is incidentally a natural resource. Many of the pirates of the time did use home made equipment, while these self same hams were running commercial sets. Who were the skilled operators then I ask? As a keen SWL in my early teens, I met that vile attitude more than once. But be honest, who could blame me for listening to music from the North Sea, rather than political rot from Moscow, Tirana or Washington. These ham operators that were of that era, would cringe at the very word "pop pirate". I have read anti pirate "flaming" style articles way back in the past, but I seriously never thought I would ever read the likes again. It seems absurd in these days of mobile phones, broadband streams, satellites, i pods, i phones, facebook, and who knows what other little gadgets and gizmo's that are used for entertainment and communication, that someone could be worried about logging a MW dx signal. Even the BBC openly discuss pirate radio nowadays. What about BBC Essex etc. (Though as I said on these pages in the past, I bet BBC ESSEX wouldn't be messing around playing at pirate ships if there was still a rusty trawler just over the horizon!! I still remember who tried to cause Caroline and Laser grief in the 80's) I can well remember in the 80's I used to correspond with a dxer in the DDR who had an old manky duplicator of some kind confiscated by the communist regime, because he printed and distributed his dx logs from 48m band stations. They were published in some kind of an old purple style ink. I wonder whatever happened to Burghard in Leipzig I think he was. Imagine, the man's printer being taken off him!! How sick is that kind of paranoia?? Is that what the author of the e mail thinks is going to happen to the dx club?? So is the club in question going back to the 70's, and not going to report on mw dx, incase the gestapo come through the various club editors doors at dawn, in a synchronised Europe wide raid?? Surely not!! There is a lot of secrecy and closed shop mentality amongst many of the dx clubs in the world. I am continually surprised that in these days of www, that most groups still want to have members and secret non public boards. Is this a throwback from these by gone days of being scared to print logs of radio stations heard?? Maybe it has to do with $$$$$$. I have no idea. But there are various blogs and newsgroups on the www nowadays are openly promoting the concept and history of pirate radio. Going back to the 70's, let's remember Wavelength magazine, who were taken to court for so called advertising and promoting offshore radio. The Caroline Newsletter was raided and scripts confiscated, and their printer harassed by the Home Office. This was 1979 Britain!! John Jackson Hunter ended up in the nick because of a paranoid dictatorship in London. His crime was running a disco!! Displaying a Caroline sticker was a risky business as well, or wearing a T shirt. Mind you, I would never have believed the scum Tories would have resorted to piracy on the high seas in 1989, and jamming Radio Caroline as late as the 1990's!!! And they did. And not one government official was ever made to pay for their crimes. I think radio is one discovery / invention that has been hi jacked and seriously abused by consecutive governments and corporations the world over, who never earned or anything else the right to use the airwaves. They just took that right, way back in the experimental days of radio in the 1920's. As a footnote I could say this of 1970's Britain. You may not have had CB or Internet or mobile phones, mp3 players and satellite tv. Walkie Talkies were seriously frowned upon, even if an aerial rigger was using them. Round a bit, back a bit, stop.... These were usually on 27mhz. You could listen to album tracks from the North Sea, but boy o boy did they hate that little outpost of free radio just beyond their reach. But at the same time, there was none of the stupid traffic hump mentality of today, or obscene health and safety rules brought in by do gooders. A pub was a pub, and who cared who was pouring the pints, or having one with the punters, and lock ins, and smoking behind the bar, never mind in the pub. Take a look at the mentally deficient scum of today that move into a flat next to a nightclub and then kick up a stink because of the noise, or the man walking along a working keyside and being alarmed because his stupid kids saw dead fish. Woopy f~*%#ing do. He should lock his stupid kid in a bedroom lined with white cotton wool. Imagine if muppets like that went a walk in the country and stood on "coo shite".. LOL.
IT'S A D-400 KEN: Was it March 2010 when I asked what the unit below was. No one seemed to have a clue, including the less than helpful manufacturer. But while digging around looking for something else, I found a leaflet I must have been given with the unit. It is a D-400, sister to the D-500, and D-100!!! Click below for the four page leaflet. "I have dug out an old gadget I got years ago from Tim B, but I don't think I have ever tried it. It looks very similar in style to the TVDX machine, the D100. So what is it?? Anyone recognise it?? For reasons best know to themselves, the manufacturers have failed to put a model on it. Serial number is 04036, written by hand. The usual bloody annoying audio jack is used for power, and as usual no polarity is given on the unit. You have to open the box and have a look, and an educated guess!!!!"
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