| 800 | CHAB | Moose Jaw, SK | 
0828, 0904 12/12/09 (Old File)(10kW) |
| 820 | KUTR | Taylorsville, UT |
0900 12/12/09 (Old File) (50 / 2.5 kW) |
| 920 | WOKY | Milwalkee, WI |
0804 14/2 (5 / 1 kW) |
| 980 | WITY | Danville, IL |
0700 4/2 (1kW) |
| 1060 | WILB | Canton, OH |
2300 6/2 (5kW
Daytimer) |
| 1210 | Radio Anzoategui, Venezuala |
0203 10/3/85
!! Old Tape !! (10kW) |
|
| 1230 | WJOB | Hammond, IN |
0800 9/2 (1kW) |
| 1570 | WBGX | Harvey/ Chicago |
0800 9/2 (Tip
Paul C) (1100 / 500 watts) |
Personal Firsts this month = 8 SO FAR (inc old logs) ALL TIMES
ARE IN GMT |
|
WTCM 580, TRAVERSE CITY - HAMMERS INTO EUROPE: MW DX. Yes that's what this site is all about in theory. This morning I had a smile at the weather report on WLW and thought of the babies that whine and moan about a heavy frost here in the UK. Signals were rather good, see recording below. But I was caught out almost by a strong signal on 580, almost assuming CFRA, seeing as many other East Coast Canadians were good, eg 600, 610, 590 etc. But when I heard ABC news, I checked more closely. Considering I only heard Traverse City for the first time this season, this was a surprise. Signals were roaring in. The station is listed as 50k / 1.1k. I suspect at this time it was somehow on 50kw, maybe under test in the middle of their night by the engineers?? But there was no sign at either 08 or 06, when CFRA was in. Was it just luck?? Who knows. I have given a longish audio clip, and an ID only. Other DX this morning, AM 980 London was dominant on 980, and ESPN NY dominant 1050, both 0700.
OLD FILES UNCOVER GOOD DX: My old friend across the water in Norway was on the dx chat last night, and talk got on to the 12th December, and what a great dx day it had been. I decided to give it another shot, and so far have found two personal firsts which had went unseen during the original checking of the file!! I also had a good signal from 570 CKSW, and 600 CKWW. There was a confusing advert, that I am sure could lead to wrong logs, heard on WCCO 830. See recordings at the foot of today's entry. There is also an interesting sounding station on 800 from Mexico, see clip below, though I don't hear any form of ID sadly.
CHAB 800, MOOSE JAW, SK: Heard this for the first time on 12/12/09, 0904!! Playing twisting the night away, followed by a station ID. Also noted at 0828. Today's recordings are all at the bottom of this entry for today.
KUTA 820, TAYLORSVILLE, UT: This one popped up on 820 at 0900 12/12/09. So it is after all worth keeping those old Perseus files. Today's recordings are all at the bottom of this entry for today.
RADIO ANZOATEGUI, VENEZUALA - 1210: And talking of old files, I found an old cassette the other day from 1985, 25 years since, and all it says is UNID LA, good ID, but too fast, or words to that effect. I found it earlier in the week, but only played it last night. The ID is quite clear in fact. Initially I thought Radio San something or other, but when you see the name of the station in the WRTH lists, it is clear as a bell. Why then was I not able to ID this 25 years ago!!! Below is a recording!!!
100226_0700_580_wtcm_traverse_city_vg.mp3 (1,208k) 100226_0700_580_wtcm_traverse_city_id_only.mp3 100226_0700_700_wlw_snow_re.mp3 091212_0828_800_chab_moose_jaw_sk_ssb_then_am.mp3 091212_0904_800_chab_moose_jaw_sk_ssb_then_am.mp3 091212_0830_800_unid_ss_norte_mexicana.mp3 091212_0900_820_kutr_ut_mix_cham.mp3 091212_0900_830_wcrn_wcco_confusing_ad.mp3 850310_0203_1210_radio_anzoategui_venezula_c90_1135_kb.mp3
THE SINKING OF THE RAINBOW WARRIOR: I saw on True Movies today that the film with the above title was to be shown. I had the dvd recorder ready to rock, but guess what. I forgot. Oh well, it may be on again. Back in 1979, Tony Allan on board the Mi Amigo interviewed members of Greenpeace, when the Rainbow Warrior sailed alongside the Caroline ship, to thank them for their support. The interview was of poor quality, due to rf getting into the tape recorder used for the interview. (Radio Caroline playing in the background) They often played songs by the Dutch band Teach Inn about the Rainbow Warrior, as well as Richard Quin - "The Last Leviathan" and "If Only Is Too Late". I will try and dig up the interview. I first saw this movie way back about 20 years ago on VHS, about the French Government sinking a peaceful protest vessel. So the Britts and the Dutch are not the only governments to operate illegally when it comes to ships. (aka the illegal raid on the Ross Revenge on the high seas)
ROBIN BANKS ON DRAGON'S DEN LAST NIGHT: I noticed ex Atlantic 252 and Virgin presenter, a guy called Robin Banks, was on Dragon's Den looking for investment. So much for his so called 6 figure sums that he earned on Virgin!! I gather this was a repeat on channel Davie, of a prog screened a couple of years back. Seems he was just out of a rehab place!! Pressures of the rock industry.. lol. I never took to the fellow on Atlantic, mainly for using the name of a well respected offshore presenter and transmitter engineer of the 70's in vain. That would be like going the whole hogg and using the name Tony Blackburn!! Atlantic at this stage had gone very dance orientated, and had a musical format I neither knew, understood or cared for.
PETER LENTON DEED: I have had word reaching me that another name from the world of offshore radio has passed on. Peter Lenton, a chap who used to trade in memorabelia from Kettering is sadly no longer with us. I never did correspond or write to Peter, although I have many friends who did. His name was always on a list of people to write to. Therefore, I have not much of an idea about his personal memorabelia, but I certainly gather that it was a massive collection.
HISTORICAL AUSTRIAN RADIO TOWERS FELLED: I only mentioned Blue Danube Radio last week in my ramblings. But by chance I noticed on Ydun's web page that the historic MW towers from ORF Austria 1476 and 585 were being demolished today. At about 1130UTC the first tower was felled, and the second tower (585) was brought down at 1400gmt today. There was live coverage on TW1 TV. I have spent last night and this morning trying to get TW1, an Austrian TV station on satellite. My head was spinning with irritation. I do have a 1.8 steerable dish, but it hasn't turned a wheel in years, and though still technically set up, everything from remote controls with battery leakage to mis behaving digital receivers gave me trouble. I couldn't even find an older digital FTA rx, although I did find the broken plastic flap from the front panel!! I even tried a Sky box as an "add other channels" type of thing, but sadly the awful software designers at SKY have closed the add channels command somehow, and demand PIN numbers and queer things. The annoying thing was that I had TW1 stable and clear on my Sky box, but everything was a little snowy. I knew this was only needing something in the dvd recorder to kick in, so I switched it all off and started again. But when I rebooted, the PIN number crap was there. It was at one time meant to be the last 4 digits on the viewing card. But nothing worked. I am not sure if this was a silly trick to stop viewers using a sky box for fta channels from other satellites. If it is, what a pain in the butt, and a stinking trick. It's like having silly passwords on pdf files, or web sites just because you can. At about 5m to the official kick off time, I managed to get the free to air digital rx running again, with TW1. I left it well alone and didn't even start messing with the channels!! I was bemused by the fact that I had either missed the show, or it was delayed. All there was to be seen on the screen was a loop tape of a wildlife/ landscape nature. A text scroll appeared in German, something about live coverage of Bisamberg. Then about 30m later, there it was. Before the final countdown of both towers, we were treated to some superb old historical footage of the transmitter site. They seemed to be under the impression it closed in 1995, not Dec 2008!! I am unsure exactly the date of the 585 closure, and even if I have it in the log books. I can't seem to find a QSL for 585. All I have there is Spain. I would have thought I would have tried to record at least an id, if I had heard it was going off air. Maybe I never heard about that one. The live camera shot on both reports were very poor, and like that of a security fixed camera, and not of a professional camera team.
I well remember this being the transmitter that carried English from Vienna from Blue Danube Radio on a Saturday night. Click below to hear how it was in Scotland way back in October 1980!!
801018_2305_1476__blue_danube_r_inc_orf_c90_122_kb.mp3 (3.6 meg)
Isn't it funny to think that the IBA and their dubious frequency management of the early 80's allocated County Sound to 1476. I wonder if it was this that stopped the Saturday Night Special?? When ORF went off air for years, County Sound had the channel to themselves almost. Then ORF came back on, and County Sound moved to 1566!!!
The movies will be available in poor bitrate on YOUTUBE I guess after today. I will see how big the AVI files are, and see if I can include a decent bit rate AVI movie of the complete coverage.
There is to be some kind of a documentary on TW1 in early March. Not knowing German too well, in fact that would be an understatement, I gather there is a programme about high mast workers. Because of the various screen formats, the recording I have seems cut off. But I suppose the times below are simple to work out. 3rd, 4th, 5th March. The promo showed guys with explosives on a tall tower, so maybe we'll have some decent quality shots of the historic AM towers. Times will be GMT +1, ie 1800, 1500, and 2200. I can't see if it is at the hour or on the half hour!!.
It seems incredible that these towers are to be used only as scrap!!!!
NORTHERN STAR WEB SITE: A project that I assisted with many years back, was something called the AMazing AM. This was a list of AM stations heard in Norway, created by Norwegian dxers. Svenn Martinsen was in touch about the Irish pirates heard across the North Sea. He had many questions, and between myself and some other fellow enthusiasts of the Irish radio scene, managed to come up with many of the answers. Transmitter sites, which station was which etc etc. Anyway, I have again been in touch with Svenn, and although his AMazing AM pages seem to be not one line just now, he has such a lot on material on line I have never seen until recently. Eg. I have never seen his Radio Luimini photos. That is a station mentioned on the harmonic article below, and a regular here in the late 80's especially.
AFN UK/ PRESTWICK: Svenn also has an article on AFRTS/ AFN, and I never realised there was a network of AFN stations in the UK during the war. Less did I realise there was one near me in Prestwick. I am unsure if the Americans take to do with the base at HMS Gannet these days, but it once had American connections, I'm sure. I still can't find any reference anywhere on the web to the freq used. It would have obviously been MW in those days, and not FM. I wonder where the feed was taken from or if they had local programmes. I have never ever heard anyone saying. I am unsure if I could find any radio person locally who would be knowledgeable about this type of thing. I fear I am running out of living people to ask. Anyway, here are three extra links to Svenn's site, in addition to the one I already have on my links page, which is the page with the following quote..
A quote like that has the strength and the power to stop me in my tracks. Visit the page that contains this as an opening phrase. http://www.northernstar.no/norwegianradiodays.htm
The extra three pages are as follows: http://www.northernstar.no/heritage.html http://www.northernstar.no/afrs.htm http://www.northernstar.no/luimni.html
STILL COPYING OLD TAPES: Nothing to report at all over the weekend, on the radio front. Because the band has been average at best, or else I am all dxed out and need a break, my listening not been to the AM band, but to old recordings that have been lying around for many many years. I have been archiving / recording these old tapes to mp3 format, ready to share on line. I must admit to becoming a bit fed up with the 80's music on these old Nova tapes, and the BBC splatter on some of the recordings when Nova was on 819 was pretty tiresome. My own preference was for the Caroline format of the late 70's, but it is still good to hear what we used to listen to at a certain time in our lives, even when the reception was less than perfect. I never did listen to the local ILR or BBC stuff, and was unaware of the presenters names they had. If I heard someone talking about them in the pub, I'd say "Who??". (I still do. A friend was raving about some unknown chic the other night, who turned out to be a modern day so called superstar on BBC Radio 2!!) But back in the mid 1980's I knew who was on when on Nova, and Sunshine and Caroline, and many others. To be honest about things though, in those days I was listening to someone elses local station, and reception came over too great a distance to expect an average Joe in the street to be able listen on their "stereo". Often reception, even for a dxer with reasonable receivers, was pretty poor. But sometimes I became surprised by folks living nearer the coast. First of all, I saw a NOVA sticker on a bus in Largs. Irvine shopping centre was reported to have the station playing at one point, and some guys I knew from the pub amazed me when they could sing the "bikes and prams and value too" advert!! The also wondered "What did Bob Galico say to John Clark" Yes NOVA was at it's peak then, and had a signal that even was able to include remoter areas in the west of Scotland!! OH yes, I am almost ready to upload a load of new files to the download pages...
PERSEUS FREQUENCY CONVERTER: In connection with all the archive work I am doing at present, I was thinking about a larger radio hard drive. A couple I have here are far too small for my requirements nowadays, and I need to upgrade, as there are files scattered around two or three separate drives, which is not handy. But..But.. I have been shown a link to a German company who have produced two or three separate vhf converters for the Perseus. I am unsure at the time of writing if the frequency on the Perseus receiver changes. Surely it doesn't have to be calculated with every station?? Anyway, these items are quite pricey. 179 Euros each. I am not too sure if the Euro collapsed recently, but I know the conversion rate was pretty poor for a time. Around 1:1. I also saw the price of the tuning knob for the perseus. That alone is over 200 Euro!! A little expensive for an add on. The tuning is exceptionally easy with the mouse wheel, and I really have no desire for a tuning knob. But a freq converter to cover 40 - 80, and also one that covers 80 - 120. Imagine being able to monitor wideband on band 1 during the TVDX season for example. Imagine being able to record 2mhz approx of band 2 during the sporadic E season. 87.5 - 89.1 for example. Superb!! So how do these items play back?? Do you need the Perseus software only, or converter on too for playback... ??? I need to find out all this. Looks like it's time to stay out the pub for a couple of weeks??
VINTAGE RECORDINGS - HARMONICS: During the course of my sudden upsurge of interest in my collection of old manky tapes, I have discovered a few memories. How about this signal taken from 2592kHz in 1984. This was one of the strongest second harmonics ever heard. The station even made it on the the dx show, Media Network, on Radio Nederlands, easily heard in Holland. The station did broadcast from Liverpool area, and tried to be heard on 1296, which they were actually, even here. But what a powerful harmonic. 840108_1804_2592_storeton_community_radio_liverpool_2nd_harmonic_c90_787_kb.mp3
I have heard a number of harmonics in my years of dxing. The subject is worthy of yet another full article to be honest. Don Moore wrote an excellent article from an American dxers point of view. http://www.pateplumaradio.com/genbroad/harmonics.htm I used to regularly hear so many harmonics. I haven't checked for many years I have to say. But in the 1980s, many of the Irish MW pirates had badly tuned final stages, and these gave out second harmonics and sometimes third. These signals could be traced back to the same circuit design of the Irish homebrew transmitters. Stations which come to mind in that category as being very strong include :
Breffni Radio - 2340 twice 1170 BIG M Radio - 2718 twice 1359 Radio Luimini - 2250 twice 1125 Luimini used to be heard signing off at night with the old folk song Limerick You're My Lady.
The above
three were amongst the strongest. Others that were not so strong included
brief errors by engineers at the tx site, including even stations
with commercial gear like Radio Nova, Southside Radio, Radio Clarin
all the way from the Dominican Republic, Voice of Peace all the way
from Israel, BBC Radio Foyle. Boyneside Radio transmitters in their earlier days used to have harmonics around 6.6mHz, and Radio Donegal in 1980 was heard on 1600, 4800 and 6400 all at the one time!! Radio Arklow had a strong harmonic for a time, Quite why these stations were not at least asked to tidy up their harmonics, I have no idea. Some went on for years. I guess if the spot freq their harmonic was on was not too important, no one noticed or bothered. But I do recall the signals from 981 Radio Star at one moment in time, I thing around 1989 time, was coming through loud and clear on 1962, top band!! That caused some trouble. As a post script to the above, I am convinced by talking to some dxers that there are many that have no understanding whatsoever of harmonics and can not differentiate between crap from crap receivers/ preamps, and real transmitted harmonics!!
LOCAL CHURCH ROOF IN DOUBT: The rafters on the church in the next village are being checked this week. For the first time ever on a Sunday morning, this old heathen was in one of the local Churches. I'm sure I heard the timbers creaking...lol.. The reason was that I ended up staying with friends in the next village on Saturday night, and in fact it was quite a late night, what with the red wine and the guitars. I lay down for a couple of hours about half past six!! I am not even up at that time dxing these days!! Anyway, their kids were performing at a special awareness day to do with the brownies and the guides, and the wee one's group called the rainbows. So two of us were taken to the Church, in "last nights" clothes, after a late night party to watch the weins do their stuff!! My host had put on his "Sunday best" but we were in the AC/DC shirts!! The wife of the hoose that I was staying in was shaking her head as there was a strong smell of a brewery off of the three of us guys!!!! Into the bargain, I knew a lot of the punters that were there through my local history project, and of course they all wanted to come up and say "Hello Kenny". Phew!!... (If you pardon the pun) No wonder I heard the timbers creaking!!! Anyone familiar with the Scottish poet, Rabbie Burns, may well be interested to know that on that very spot, the man himself had been brought up before the Kirk session for various sins. Sadly it is not the same old Kirk, as Burn's Kirk was taken down in the 1820's, and the current building put up in it's place. Still at least it is the site of an important piece of Scottish history, and Burns would certainly recognise many of the of the buildings around the immediate area as they are today, and that includes his own auld hoose, now the museum.
BROKEN BEVERAGE, FIXED BEVERAGE: I noticed on Tuesday morning at 0800 the band had virtually died off. I thought nothing of it as I had a good ID of WKOX 1200 at 0700 (Tip Dave H). So when I tried some live dxing on Tuesday night, there was nothing there. Hmm. Tried the short westerly beverage, and there were signals there. Checked all I could in my own garden, connections cables etc, and all seemed fine. So no recordings on Tuesday night. I walked over the river, and walked the 200m or so to where the coax meets the actual antenna, and a small(ish) branch had landed on the aerial wire, and broke the thin wire used on the balun!! A simple fix. Last night I came in from a night out and set the recordings. But I forgot to switch to the repaired 500m beverage. I was using a short 150 - 180m westerly aerial instead. But I managed to check the repaired beverage before fade out this morning, and all is well. Tnx to another tip from DH, I did hear what is pres the Venezualan on 900 at 0700 though.
RECORDINGS: A few recordings are given from the last days. They are only common stations, but they are at good signal levels.
100218_0700_1200_wkox_newton.mp3
VINTAGE RECORDINGS: Here are four recordings taken from 1980, found when mucking about with old tapes. First of all, I have a classic recording of how CJYQ sounded with the beacon on 930. Sadly there is no id on the recording, but it is a great example of the beacon that came in along with CJYQ. Then I have a recording of CIYQ 610, which was part of the Q network. The signal was booming in till RTE2 came on the air with their carrier on 612. It's a shame I never recorded the RTE sign on as well. Neither station is on the air nowadays. A familiar voice in the early 1980's was that of Hugh Hardy on Radio Carousel, from Dundalk. Hugh was famous for his Country Call programme. The Carousel office was decorated with pictures of Hugh on the wall, many with well known country singers. Rumours were rife at the time that some of the photos had been cleverly doctored, and were not quite what they seemed to be!!!! Frequency would either have been 1134 or 1125, not sure which. They did change from time to time. He always used to say moooovin' on as well. Hugh died a couple of years ago. And the fourth recording fits in nicely with the London stations featured last week. It is a call on 227m one night, from Radio Buckineer. I wonder who that was, and if they are still around??? I never ever did find out.
800427_0107_930_cjyq_inc_old_beacon_no_id_sadly_c90_73_kb.mp3 800427_0435_610_q93_st_johns_inc_rte_carrier_c90_73.mp3 (1.4 meg) 800430_radio_carousel_265m_hugh_hardy_moooovin_on_c90_73.mp3 800427_0142_1320_radio_buckineer_london_227m_c90_73_kb.mp3
RADIO BILBAO, SPAIN - IN ENGLISH: Does anyone remember English from Radio Bilbao?? I have found an old recording from 1981 with an ID and address in English. Freq was 1260. Can any dxers shed any light on how long this service was on the air for?? I think I only heard it once. Radio Bilbao was supposed to be listed as 990kHz??
I always liked to hear English from some obscure station or other. A programme I used to like on a Saturday night was the Saturday Show from Radio Sweden. The MW service continued till the wee sma' hours on a saturday night on 1178, pre 1978, and 1179 post 1978. Their humour often included a lot of fun jokes at Soviet expense!! But there were other English programmes available. The Saturday Night Special from Paul Hollingdale on Blue Danube Radio on 1476. Exactly how long ago Blue Danube Radio began English, I don't know, but I think it closed about 1981??? There is no sign of Bilbao or BDR in the 1977 or 1978 WRTH. My early 80's WRTH's are in a box in a very inconvenient place to find them and look them up!! If only I had the PDF versions to hand!!
WEAK SIGNALS FROM THE VOYAGER SPACECRAFT ON A PERSEUS!! The Perseus receiver has been used to see the weak flea power signals from Voyager 1 spacecraft, many millions of miles from earth, at the very far outreaches of the solar system!! Check the Perseus Yahoo group for all the details, and for a link for both a Perseus file from the Voyager craft, and one from the Venus Express spacecraft. Check the screen capture below, and notice the doppler effect, hence the frequency appears to wander. The screen capture below is my own capture, made while playing back the recording. Fancy having access to the equipment and the 40m dish!!! Some dxers can't get a 40m long wire up!!! For more details, go to the Perseus Yahoo group messgaes.
Venus
Express and Voyager I experiment
Ground
Station:
Voyager
I (12:55 UTC 25 Jan 2010)
The small instalation that received these transmissions can be seen here!!!!
VOA GO AWAY: There are many people in the world who I bet wish that the VOA would go away. But below is a rare sticker given to me by an ornithologist (a bird watcher) who had it on his car at the time. (1990's) I asked about it, and discovered it was the same VOA I knew, and not a fancy bird club. The reason for the sticker was that the VOA in their infinite wisdom wanted to string curtain antenna arrays at a new relay station across a valley that was the flight path of migrating birds. I think the qth was a valley in Israel somewhere, and as far as I am aware, the bird folks won the day!! Well done to them. I thought this sticker would rarely have been seen in radio circles.
NEW RADIO NOVA MATERIAL COMING SOON: I have been having a trip down memory lane this last week. Because I was in the dusty archives last week looking for dx clips of Radio Jackie, I began to look through a lot of my other old tapes. I have found a lot of unique Radio Nova Dublin recordings, and a whole lot more Caroline from 1983 from the Ross Revenge, after the triumphant return to the air. So it seems I have now restarted my archiving. The files will be on line very soon. Instead of putting one or two on line now and again, I will one day soon have a list of new recordings, with maybe 20 or 30 new files. I will again be using the servers of my good friends at DXARCHIVE, where the current Nova material is located. I see this as a valuable historical project, archiving and making available my old recordings. A photo is given below of part of my collection, some of which date back to the 70's. There is another pile of boxes behind the camera, and a box of reels too. There must be other folks out there who really should be doing the same with their tape collections. It may seem like a long haul, which it is I suppose, but when I consider the times that the PC is sat ticking over, when I am busy doing other stuff. What is the harm in sticking on a 45m tape at dinner time for example, or while I am in the bath tub?? I need to get some of the 6 1/2 hour reels out as well and record them.
A COUPLE OF TIPS FOR ARCHIVING OLD TAPES: If you do decide to start to archive your old tapes, remember to keep any mobile phones away from the recording equipment. There is nothing worse than the buzzing noise of mobile phones coming through a perfectly good recording. I had to restart a few recordings recently because of silly phones!!! Also remember to create the MP3's at a reasonable bit rate. Many dxers ruin recordings whether it be through lack of knowledge about bit rates, or a misguided attempt to save "something". Many recordings available on line are made at a poultry 64k, which is certainly not enough for good quality AM. I have even had a former webmaster rip my decent quality recordings to bits and resave them at some inferior bit rate, for no reason other than save a few meg on a 30 meg file. If you were to listen on a decent amplifier with half decent speakers the problem would be obvious. If you listen on a £5 pile of crap that came free with your PC amid claims of being 400 watt speakers, then you probably won't notice any difference. I am half way through writing a detailed article about MP3 and radio archives, complete with a software guide etc. I need to try and get yet another unfinished job done!!
SILLY SILLY YOUNG DXER: I was such a silly young whipper snapper of a dxer back in 1983 which is the year the tapes I have been archiving are from. Some things stick out a mile in these 27+ year old recordings. The most irritating thing that appears in some of the tapes, is something that may be compared to an active dxer. By this I mean a dxer who constantly twiddles with the controls, as though hoping to squeeze out a slightly better signal. Some dxers will sit on a channel and monitor, while others constantly mess around with tuning, bandwidth, atu, and anything that is adjustable. That is fine for live dxing, but sadly I had a silly habit of messing around with not only the tuner, but even changing over aerials during recordings. It was not difficult to tune a radio in to a good AM signal from Radio Nova for example and then switch the recorder on, and leave it. Many of my tapes are fine, but if I was in the shack at the time, I couldn't resist the temptation to try for a better signal, even if the signal was fine in the first place!!! The result is that on some recordings, the messing around can be such an irritation. But as I have said elsewhere, it is impossible to turn the clock back to a time 27 years ago, and re record these long gone radio stations. We must be content with the old tapes which are still around. Many recordings and full collections will have been lost by now, perhaps because of death, moving house and losing tapes, irate ex wives throwing stuff out, etc etc. I remember speaking to a chappie at a radio meeting in London some years ago, who had been involved in the London pirates in the 70's. I asked if he had any old recordings of the stations of the time. "Yes", he said, "I once had quite a lot, but I put on my jacket and walked out one day and left the lot with the ex wife!!" (lol)
STINKING AUDIO FROM SOME RADIO SETS: Something else that is such a shame, is the audio of some of the recordings. While I did not have the 15 inch woofers of the band/ disco speakers in the shack in those days which I have now, it is not difficult to tell what is good audio and what is bad. I had by 1979, a Grundig Satellit 3400 (still have it) which is very good for recording from, and has really great audio reproduction. So why o why did I believe that an old wooden philips radio gram from the 1950's offered better audio??? The old wooden philips wireless was of the type that sounded quite good, but every now and again on some channels, CW would break through from an unknown source. One day I may find a decent recording with CW present, and try and decypher the morse to try and find the original source. Possibly from 500kHz. Why o why did I think the sound of an old TRIO 9R59 with the wrong audio output capacitor sounded good?? The 9r59 was very tinny, and although changing the output cap would have given the set realistic sounding beefy audio, it was never done. It also was very unstable, and even AM stations had to be retuned after a time. SSB was a constant battle!! But was it good for MW dxing?? Wow, aye was it. Better than anything I had at the time. And I still have the set to this day. There are some recordings made in mid 1984 that I think may have been taped from a Grundig portable Concert Boy, sat next to a frame aerial / long wire combi. This was I think the best audio, heard on some of the Dave Christian Nova tapes and many around that date. Or maybe I had discovered that the old 3400 was indeed of good quality for making recordings. I really don't remember. I came into a TRIO 9R59DS as well in the mid 80's and the audio from that was rather good too. This is a completely different set to the 9R59. They are both on the photo on the home page of this site. I also had a Chapman hi fi tuner which was quite good for recording, but again, it may have also had CW etc sometimes, and lacked selectivity, as one would expect from domestic junk. I am convinced it is the recordings from this set that I can't do much with, even through the ORBAN 642B!! For some reason, EQ in makes the sound go like I used to say in the early 1990's, like an Amstrad. Yes, I used to compare audio quality, and sometimes it had that cheap Amstrad sound!! Don't get me wrong, I am being picky, and the tapes sound fine. But whatever the radio I recorded the mid 1984 Dave Christian shows from, I should have stuck with it!! In mid 1985, I added a fine Racal RA17 to my collection of radios. It had stable audio output, and is still a superb sounding radio today. I have a very good sounding example. I have also a second Racal RX, who's audio is nowhere near the quality of the first one, and I have heard other racal sets from the same era that are also a bit rough. I guess it was just luck that I found myself a good one. The Racal is still mounted into the bench, see photo of the shack on the front page. The dreaded AGC on many cheaper made radios will sometimes give the wrong impression of levels on the transmission. Some radios will give out reduced audio if the signal weakens, giving the impression that the transmission audio was all over the place. In the case of NOVA and Caroline etc, it certainly wasn't, and they had better audio than ILR stuff in the UK, due to their superior optimod settings. So as a result of having a multitude of radio sets, the audio quality changes from recording to recording.
LOCAL HAM: There never were any hams living near me that were liable to break through in CW mode. However I overheard a couple of hams talking on 80m a couple of years back, just before I applied for my own callsign. They spoke about giant hogweed, which made me sit up and take note, as that grows locally here. I nearly fell off the chair when one of the guys said that he had lived in this area in the late 70's I think it was, and he mentioned my village by name. I e mailed him, and the fellow said he had lived at a remote farmhouse a few files out of town. I asked for the name of the place, only through curiousity, but never received a reply. The first response did however say the place was haunted!!
3 HOURS ON A C90: I used to often record 3 hours onto a C90. How did I achieve this?? Simple. I used two receivers tuned to different stations, one recording in the right hand channel and one recording onto the left hand channel. A cheap and easy way to record different radio stations, and I am glad I did. Often I would record an obscure weaker station, and stick NOVA or Sunshine on the other channel. However, (And I bet you were waiting for the negative "however"..lol), Well I have to say on playback, the desk I use does NOT work the way I think a decent desk should. OK I fell in with it for nothing anyway. It had been an old band mixing desk, and had been in a house fire. The channels all unscrew and unplug individually, so it was easy but time consuming to clean all the controls and the metalwork from the very bad smoke damage. But when playing back in the three stereo channels (rest are mono) there is no decent balance control or pan as they say in the trade. Yes it does pan left or right, but not 100%. I have seen many examples these days in equipment, that doesn't give a proper 100% separation. In fact many of the sound effects on hi fi gear I believe to be made up by mixing left and right somehow. If you try a prerecorded separate left / right tape in this kind of gear, the end result is a mess. But that is OK, I have simply made a Y split, and feed one channel at a time into the two channels on the desk from the cassette machine. It is the best results. If I try and save time and record both channels at once into the PC, there is more breakthrough from the other channel. I think some Americal dxers used to use this format and record WWV on one channel and the dx on the other, so as to have a time on dx tapes. I was always envious of the excellent service WWV offered to US dxers, both as a time reference in voice, as well as the regular solar indicies. We had nothing like this in Europe, and WWV reception was not reliable.
AZ ANORAK (A SAD ANORAK): AZ ANORAK is simply the most amazing archive I know of on the web. Most of the recordings available sadly are only made at 64k, but there are such a lot of classics on this site. The archive also includes many old Saturday shows from Radio Sweden. Check out the site by clicking here
AM 9-20 THE WOLF (WOKY MILWALKEE): I liked this name for a radio station the first time I noticed the web page. I have however never heard it. I noticed it last winter when I had a lot more luck with 920 than this winter. I was trying to ID something I had picked up and noticed the cool name. Today I heard country music play past the hour, and luckily I had recorded long enough to have 0804 included. Click below to hear the Belamy Brothers end and a "Wolf" jingle/ voice over. 100214_0804_920_woky_milwalkee_the_wolf.mp3
RADIO JACKIE - LONDON: Davie up the road and I were chatting the other day about Radio Jackie. "I've a DVD", I said, of a superb documentary produced by Pat Eddison who is on Caroline nowadays, but formerly of Radio Kaleidoscope in London. There are brilliant interviews and clips of many of the old London MW pirates. "Did you ever hear it?", I was asked. I dug out a few audio clips of old logs, and I recall that I used to hear them opening up on a Sunday at 8am which at that time would have been from a truck battery in the woods. Signal in the Spring of 1980 was quite reasonable, from a dxers point of view. Audio quality would wipe the floor with mickey mouse signals like CKNB 950 for example. And thats from a cassette recorder in the woods!!! I first heard them probably in the holiday period of 1978, when they used to run right through the festive season. (Christmas). I wonder if they were house based over Christmas??? ie mains and a bit more power..
Radio Jackie was similar to the signals from WNKR today from a remote QTH I suppose. In the latter years, 1983/ 85 they were house based and ran 24/7. Power was still lowish, but it certainly carried. They were on 1332, till ILR Peterbrough came on, and they shifted to 1323, but moved back to 1332 during their 24/7 years. Listen below to a few clips, first from the fields, and then a weaker signal below ILR crap on 1332. Details on the superb documentary...
Another worthwhile/ must read is "A VERY ENGLISH STRUGGLE" by Colin King. This is the story of Radio Jackie, and is such a fantastic read to anyone remotely interested in radio. Other London pirates heard up here in Haggisland, include Radio SOVEREIGN 1494, Horizon 1611, Radio Amanda 1404, Radio Christmas 1368, People's Choice 1611, Skyline Radio 1413, and I am sure a few more that I can't remember from the RAM. I must search the hard drive and see if there are any more..lol Click here to listen to Radio Jackie in the Spring of 1980
800323_0805_gmt_1332_jackie_london.mp3 (1419k) 840429_2300utc_1332_jackie_and_hereward.mp3
(1664k)
SUNSHINE 539 - AND CRIMINALS FROM RTE JAMMING THEM: I was searching through some recordings from the 80's etc looking for Radio Jackie recordings, and came across the following recording. It is a classic recording made here in Scotland of Sunshine Radio 531kHz being jammed by RTE on MW. Imagine RTE used to use taxpayer's money to jam the pirates!!! Instead of producing entertaining shows to compete with the pirates, they used to behave like the proverbial spoilt school kids, and jam the stations. Not only on FM, which was relatively easy, but they went to the trouble of installing aerials etc and Sunshine used to have a terrible noise on top of their 531 freq.
As usual, these government workers who think they own a natural resource were above the law, and answered to no one. There never was any jail sentences issued to any RTE engineers (term used loosely). Shooting might have been a better option in this case. I wonder how these parasites slept at night, or what they discussed at the dinner table? "Yes I had a great day at work today love, I spoiled the listening pleasure of many thousands of Dubliners, what a good boy am I". I suppose these were the kind of vermin that would get some kind of sick pleasure out of pulling the wings off of a "jenny long legs". Or to put it another way. Folk you would never tire of booting in the bollocks!!!
840430_1800_news_531_sunshine_inc_rte_jamming_mw.mp3 (4326k)
CHNC 610 STAYS ON AIR: Seems the dreaded French pest on 610 (and // 1150) has been given an extended time to similcast their new FM service on their historical AM frequencies. This time their off air date is not until 1st November 2010!!! So much for looking forward to new dx opportunities last year!! (Selfish dxer side of me creeping in again..lol) This is reported on the IRCA message board, and on the Canadian Radio Authority web pages.
WFNN 1330: Sometimes the ID of WFNN Erie has caught me out. The 1st N sometimes sounds different to the 2nd N, making it sometimes like W F IN EN, and can be confusing under weak condx. Yesterday, I heard a reasonably good id at 0900. A clip is given here.
KGA 1510 IN OLD LOG: Noticed that I have heard KGA 1510 this winter after all, on a Perseus file at 1000 on 7/11. Just goes to show, there is probably more lurking in the old files.
PERSEUS SAM / AM QUIZ: Some folks use SAM on their Perseus all the time. I have always struggled to notice any difference at least in my MW dxing that I do so intensively. If truth be told, the little whines etc when SAM is trying to lock on to a weak signal for me makes SAM more of a chore than a useful tool. Try this audio clip as an example. One is from AM and one is from SAM. Can you tell which is which??? Same settings other than the SAM / AM settings. Play it first and then find the answer at the bottom of this page. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO CBC 990 WINNIPEG IN NOVEMBER 2009
THIS MORNING'S LOGS AND OBSERVATIONS: Nothing of value to report this morning after yesterdays personal firsts and all. Band was very much depressed on yesterday morning, One observation was 1060 and some form of country music. This was not I might add AM 1060, Classic Country from mid west Canada. No. It was Radio Education from Mexico, heard with a country track and ID at 0200. There may be country music experts that will say it was a different style of country music than what AM 10-60 plays. But it sounded very country to me...lol
LOGS
FOR FEBRUARY AND LATE JANUARY:
540 CBGA
FF CBC 7/2 0800
PLEASE HELP THE OLDER DXERS - YOU MAY NEED THE SAME HELP ONE DAY: I would like to hope that assuming I make it through to old age, that I will be still able to get around a bit, and even climb trees and trail through the woods to install aerials etc. Of course we can not predict what will happen in the future. If I become disabled or unfit, who is there to string a beverage up for me?? Well, no one, but surely I would be able to find someone??? I sure hope so. Although of course, I hope I can still do it all myself!!! Would some local bum make a reasonable job for twenty quid and a bottle of beer?? Surely. I have been chatting to a dx friend many hundreds of miles distant, who is in need of some serious assistance and can not seem to get it. He needs help in throwing up some new antennas for MW dxing, but is not as fit as he once was. I asked him about either relatives or neighbours. Maybe my friend is a proud man, and does not like to ask for help. Or maybe his friends and neighbours and relatives are too ignorant to offer their "valuable" time to assist him. I have seen this selfish behaviour all too often. I do not know the full story. But whatever the case, I still find it is sad that an elderly dxer who is not as young as he used to be can find no one to help with antennas. It is not rocket science, and I am sure a few beers and maybe twenty quid aimed at the right man, may have the desired effects. There's always someone needs a few extra quid for beer money. What I do know is that if I was within a reasonable distance, I would go and do the job for him. Davie up the road and I have both joked in the past about the plane tickets etc, but in these days of cheap flights, it is not completely out the question. But this reminds me of a sad story about 12 or 13 years ago, when I used to be regular in another town some miles away, attracted there by the fairer sex. (Or to put it another way, an ex chic..lol). A radio ham, now a silent key whom I only knew of for many years, was seemingly off the air due to his antenna coming down. I eventually met him, through meeting his son in the pub over there. This aerial had been down for many weeks, and he was supposedly waiting for assistance from members of his ham radio club. This assistance never came, which I thought very ignorant and selfish, and not very "gentlemanly" of the ham radio operators. So one thing led to another, and I went to see the old fella, and offered my assistance. It was only a wire aerial that was down at one end. I just hope that the guys that snubbed the poor old fella need help one day and can't get it. I used to also swing from tall trees for another silent key in the village here, as he would shout HIGHER, HIGHER...lol... That person was completely incapable of climbing the trees at the age he was then. Sadly he died after a fall at the festive season, although illness had prevented him doing anything with his beloved radio equipment for quite a number of years.
OFF COLOUR: I was a little off colour for a week or so at the end of January, but OK now, more or less thankfully. I wasn't recording for a time either, because of the band, but after dx neighbour Paul C began to hear some weird and wonderful calls I have never even heard of, I began recording again. Paul has had a lot of great rarities this last weeks even though during the first impressions, the band seems very average. Maybe I am all dxed out after a long hard dx season. The remarkable opening at the end of January we had last winter certainly never happened again. Daytimers have been non existant here in early February too, a time when last winter there were many rarities heard. The band in January here was so poor, that I don't think there are any real logs worth listing as such. I will just scribble down a few notes, seeing as it is a few weeks since the last update to these pages.
FT-840 HAM SET DUFF: I was sitting the other night in the shack with the FT-840 on top band, but turned down for a time. I looked around and saw only the signal meter was lit up. There was no sound or functions working, and no display. I was convinced I had switched in some ext mode with the junk lying beside it, but nothing was pressed that shouldn't have been. There isn't really anything anyway. I had a look inside, and did notice a point where there had been some heat at a resistor, and it had 12v or so on one side and nothing virtually on the other. Meanwhile I had joined a Yahoo group for 840 owners, and find a few folk had that problem before. R2213 on the board underside was an 8.2 ohm, 2watt. I replaced it and the unit burst into life. Thankfully.
MONTREAL - AM 940 GONE: One surprising piece of news came in late January, when the owners of AM 940 Montreal pulled the plug on the station, and one of the other stations they own, Info 690, a French station. AM 940 was formerly a CBC transmitter. The sound of the station has often been commented on here on these pages as having a real AM OPTIMOD sound, especially on AM RADIO style songs such as certain Eagles tracks etc. Ironically this quality optimod sound was right next door to one of the worst sounding Canadian stations. CKNB 950 have been running about 10% audio for a long time. How they turn a $$ I have no idea, with audio like that. Most of the 70's pirates had better audio. AM 940 should send their closedown instructions over to some of the big euro pests. 675, 1008, 1377, 1395, and the Euro jammers on 1593. Disney, a common station here on 1650 is also gone. (WHKT Portsmouth, VA)
RECYCLING OLD PCS: Whenever I can, I am always on the "scrounge" for anyone that is throwing out PC bits and pieces. I do PC repairs, and people will throw out perfectly good systems when they upgrade. (Rather than keeping an old banger for web only for example!!). My main PC until last week was a 2.8 gig Athlon single core, which I also fell in with a few years ago in exchange for setting up someone's new upgrade PC to the web for them. It is an Asrock board, with dual graphics card, 1g ram, and plenty hard drive space. This ran the Perseus at full bandwidth perfectly OK, but there was not much horse power to spare. I struggled sometimes if I had an HTML file of for example the TADX lists etc open at the same time. Last year I fell in with a duff dual core tower with what looked like the usual simple and cheap power supply fault. It turned out it wasn't the power supply, and I lost the gamble on this occasion. But the other week I was given a broken system, which had been in some form of local authority qth, and was going to the bin!! When I tried this DELL DIMENSION 5100, it was dead. I hung in a power supply, and on this occasion, I won the bet!! The PC burst into life. (Do these guys not like saving public money by trying a simple repair??) Sadly the SATA hard drive had been removed, but that didn't matter. It was a worker. Spec of this PC includes a beefy dual graphics card, Intel P4 3.0g chip, 1g RAM, extremely quiet running cooling, DVD writer etc. I don't think it is a true dual core chip, though the processor does come up twice in the device manager???? (Unsure about what that means) What a difference with the Perseus. The unit doesn't even reach 40% CPU load at full bandwidth recording, and runs about 10% load during playback!! A real big difference. It even runs fine in the extreme cold in the shack here, where the older PC used to reboot etc after the shack dropped below a certain temperature in the mid winter. I was too scared to go out and leave the gas fire burning if I am not in to keep an eye on it. The only "downside" if you pardon the pun, is that Dell have made the PC inside out!!! Yes, back to front. I have to turn the tower up side down to sit in the same space my other PCs have sat in the past, if I want to sit it with the side panel open and facing me!!!! lol.. I always require access to the PC for various reasons, eg testing drives etc, so see no point in having an enclosed side panel. It doesn't give me any noticable rf grief on the MW band.
REFORMAT A VISTA LAPTOP: I had a laptop in for repair the other day. It wasn't really a repair as such. There was no hardware problem. The trouble I find with probably 80% of the PC's I have in for attention is that they require a reinstall of the operating system. They become messed up by crap from the web filling up the drive, and youngsters clicking on any old pop up that shows up on the screen. The emachine I had in last night was only new for a youngster at Xmas, but was filled up with worms and spyware etc, and generally in a mess. I must however make a point about this particular PC. I can not understand anyone who deliberately chooses VISTA as an operating system. The speed of the install and the speed of boot up, and in fact everything connected with the wonderful VISTA reminds me of trying to run my first 386 PC in the early 1990's. Everything is in slow motion. Into the bargain, the crap that comes with these preloaded machines is such a pain. All the trial versions of software etc. No wonder their machines don't last with all this junk cluttering them up. I feel that the microsoft software design team for Vista would not go wrong with a swift kick in the nuts, if truth be told. I know not why anyone can say anything complimentary about this biggest load of clutter and rubbish I have ever worked with. Until such times that a new super dx piece of hardware comes out that will work only on the silly VISTA, I shall avoid like the plague. I have never even seen. far less care about the much heralded Windows 7, so can offer no comments.
SANDISK CRUZER PEN DRIVE AUTORUN: Another unwanted feature of many external hard drives and pen drives are .exe and autorun files that run when the drives are inserted. Seagate external USB drives are bad for this, but are easily formated first time they are run. After all, who needs that kind of clutter and crap amongst your precious Perseus files. Not so easy to get rid of was the annoying and unwanted pop up from a "Sandisk Cruzer" 4gig pen drive. So much so that someone gave me one, as they didn't like the intrusive autorun rubbish that pops up every time it is inserted. No worries, I think to myself, this will be easily formatted. How wrong I was. There is some kind of a hidden partition that is seen as a CD, ...clever, and the partition can not easily be wiped by normal means. Partition Magic doesnt like removable drives, at least the old reliable version I have. After making a web search, it seems I was no the only one that didn't like this intrusive behaviour from a simple pen drive. There is a file that is required called U3Uninstall.exe, which after running, deletes the autorun stuff. This may be on the original pen deep in the autorun software, although I found it on the web. Now the SANDISK pen is just like any other memory stick.
PERSEUS STAND ALONE SOFTWARE OR INSTALLER: I have been reading the Yahoo Perseus Users group, and saw recently some users complain that there is no windows installer for Perseus. For me, that's a strange request. I have always found stand alone software to be much more advantageous and desirable, as nothing is being installed into any unknown locations etc. Although the recent Perseus software seems to be doing some mighty strange things, at least there are no large installs necessary to operate the SDR. Often dxers leave messages on the yahoo group talking of "having installed" or "uninstalled" the latest release. But it can hardly be classed as installed, when it is standalone software and is activated by simply clicking on it. An entry is made in the Windows Registry, but no files are "installed" in the "Program Files" folder.
PERSEUS RELEASE VS 2.1i :
ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT... NOTHING COMES CLOSE..!!!!!!!
My confidence in PERSEUS / Microtelecom is certainly beginning to drop, with yet another release which was tied up with the PC time clock being hurriedly taken off line. This latest problem shows there seems to have been time spent installing tricks and weird weird stuff that seems to do performance no favours whatsoever. I and my fellow MW dxers have hoped for over a year for repairs to the tiny playback bar to stop the deafening high pitched tones, perhaps improve navigation between recorded files etc. But it is not to be. More time seems to have been spent installing these somewhat dubious tricks. Think about the time spent to correct the problem, and release yet another error repair version too. Exactly what these tricks are trying to stop, I have no idea. Who ever heard of a manufacturer that DOESN'T want users to be able use his equipment with 100% reliability. I am so glad that Mr NRD, Mr Yaesu, and Mr Racal have not built silly time out tricks into their receivers. Where would we be then. My old NRD515 is still working a treat, an early 1980's model. The Racal RA17 is almost 50 years old and working fine. Of course these classic sets have no wide band record feature!! I firmly believe that if you spend £700 on a receiver, the very least you should expect is software that is not going to time out like some dross given away free with a PC magazine. Twice Microtelecom have released so called PROFESSIONAL software that has timed out. One release timed out 31st December 2008, so the recordings set to record New Year celebrations in the States and Canada failed, and were met by a time out message, as though it were a 30 day trial, and not software that was part of a £700 receiver. This created a very negative response not only from dxers, but from professional radio users, who desire 100% reliability, at all times. Many questions were asked about this at the time by the professional users, and we were assured it was an error. But yet again, version 2.1h, released in December 2009 has been discovered to have timed out if the clock is adjusted!!! Was this some kind of trick incase someone should dare to adjust their PC clock??? Well all I will say to that is that it is my PC, and I will adjust my clock if and when I see fit!!!! I will change the date to 2090 if I wish. (Not that I have any reason to..lol) Offers to buy a proper non timed out version were answered with claims that the current version will never time out. Let's hope that turns out to be the case. But redundant (and unwanted) entries must still lurk deep in the registry somewhere that will not allow version 2.1h to operate ever, if the clock has been changed. This will be there until such time as a drive format/ fresh install of Windows is run. Removal of the well used main microtelecom entry makes no odds. It remains uncertain how much of an adjustment to the clock you had to make before the trick kicked in and killed the software. Would it kill the Perseus software if the PC was connected to these auto fix clocks on line? Or if you adjusted it by an hour in the spring of the year, or did you have to advance or turn back the clock by days to activate the kill? Who knows? I wonder if the WINRADIO EXCALIBUR software will time out, when released????
PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS WITH THE LATEST PERSEUS RELEASES: The initial problems of the new drivers and latest two releases although never really made too public, were something along the lines of the following:
1) Version 2.1h is released
Eventually discover that there is a problem with the 2.1h release, and a PC that has never been connected to the web and filled up with loads of unnecessary updates will not work with 2.1h and the new style drivers. A few other folk eventually start to announce they also don't have the latest release working. It is suggested that some kind of windows update as well as a dotnet framework download of 237meg is required. This is a big difference from a 32k driver file!!!
Many may use the built in zip function of Windows nowadays, available since XP, and thus did not experience that problem. Who knows, maybe WINZIP is rarely used nowadays.
Tried a blank windows install, XP + sce pack 2, along with new drivers. Same no results with the old DLL - drivers installed OK, but no results. Replace the old DLL with the new updated version, and the receiver burst into life. NB: No mention as far as I am aware was ever made of this updated driver situation from Microtelecom. All that was said in the release notes on Microtelecom web site was that the new DLL fixed issues with multi receiver use, and something to do with a third party piece of software, called CW Skimmer. (I have no experience with any of the two, so can't comment) For some reason, a very important part to do with the massive 237meg download of the dotnet framework was not even mentioned. I am unsure as to why there has not been much explanation. Information has certainly been thin on the ground.
And one final drawback with version 2.1h (unusable now) and 2.1i is the blocking of the possibility of squeezing another 80 or 90khz from either side of an 800kHz Perseus file by direct frequency entry. Don't delete your old 2.1f etc. If like me you like looking back at some of the old Perseus files from good dx days, then in the days of 400 and 800kHz recording bandwidths, an extra 50 or 100kHz at either end of the recorded range just may bring in that new log. Direct entry had to be used to access the frequency. But that option is now blocked since 2.1h.
PERSEUS SAM / AM TEASER: The answer to the SAM / AM queastion further up the page is as follows: The clip starts with SAM, followed by AM. Could you tell the difference??? |
