20-21 Septembrer 2003


Hi amigos radioaficionados... You are now listening via shortwave or via the world wide web to Radio Havana Cuba's radio hobby show... YES !, this is Dxers Unlimited comingo to you twice weekly with almost eighteen minutes of all radio hobby related items... And here is item one: After what could best be described as a rather nice past weekend, HF propagation took a downward turn after Tuesday and will continue to be rather poor for the next several days, especially for those of you located at latitudes higher than 40 degress North or South, and remember that at higher latitudes some very interesting propagation conditions that actually enhance DX on some frequencies will be happening at the same time that higher frequencies will be completely lost... The number of sunspots is now moving up again, after it hit bottom low figures ... latest optical observations show the number of sunspots to be around 90 or so... Item two: The trend towards radio receivers that are capable of tuning an extremely wide band of frequencies continues... some of them are packed in very small cases, and YES, the do actually tune to those frequencies but the performance of such miniaturized wide band radios leaves much to be desired. Among other things those ultra-compact radios lack the adequate front end components to deal with crowded band conditions and they are subject to cross modulation problems , especially if you attempt to connect external antennas . So, here is Arnie Coro's advice, avoid those ultra-compact radios that will be advertised as tuning from 100 kiloHertz all the way up to 900 megaHertz or even higher frequencies... It's a lot better to invest your money in a high quality receiver capable of tuning from 100 or 500 kiloHertz all the way up to 30 megaHertz , as such radios have properly designed radio frequency input filtering and thas protects them from overload from the powerful signals that cross the airwaves these days... Second bit of advice... table top receivers, especially those under the "communications receivers" category are the best choice if you really want to upgrade from a small or medium sized short wave radio. You will never regret upgrading to a communications receiver, as they will provide excellent reception and reliability that is simply not available from cheap radios amigos ...
Item three: Our popular you have questions and Arnie tries to answer section of the show will be answering today not one or two, but three questions, and as always at the end of the show, you should have your notepad or tape recorder at hand for Arnie Coro's HF plus low band VHF propagation update and forecast...
Margarita Delgado is my sound engineer and produce, stay tuned for more radio hobby related items amigos.

From Havana this is the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited, and YES, we are receiving some very nice reports of our 11760 kiloHertz frequency using the new transmitter. The English language program is now on the air on 11760 kiloHertz from 05 to 07 UTC, which happens to be an excellent time slot for those listeners in Europe that like to enjoy an early morning wake up listening to Havana !... I want to thank very especially several German listeners for their excellent and detailed reports of the 11760 kiloHertz English transmission from 05 to 07 UTC....
Herbolzheim, 19th of September 2003

Dear Arnie,

I had the pleasure to listen to your broadcast on the new frequency of 11760 KHz. I am really glad, that Radio Habana uses this frequency for the Englishlanguage program. Although the transmission was directed to the USA, reception here in Germany was pretty fine. Since a few weeks I can follow your programs on this new frequency very regularly without any reception problems. Very nice frequency!!! Your broadcasts directed to Europe can not be heard at all. Absolutely no signal. Another good frequency to listen to RHC-broadcasts in English is 6000 KHz in the 49-m-Band with good reception in the early morning hours (german local time). I reported about this a few months ago and already got responce from Lourdes Lopéz. I hope, you will stay on the air on 11760 KHz
for a long time.
Now here is the actual reception report
Date of reception: 18th of September 2003
Time: 20.30 - 21.25 UTC/GMT
Language: English
Frequency: 11760 Khz
SINPO: 45344 - nice reception!!!
Signed
Your listener
Helmut Matt

Muchas gracias amigo Helmut for the nice report and your advice for us to stay on 11760 kiloHertz, something we will do for sure, and for your information , we have been using that 25 meter band frequency since we went on the air from our Bauta transmitter site in February of 1961, when the station's name was " Onda Corta Experimental Cubana", that when translated to English means "Cuban Experimental Short Wave", then later that year the name of the station was changed to the one we have kept since then, Radio Habana Cuba, in Spanish, or Radio Havana Cuba in English... By the way , ours is one of the few national short wave broadcasters that uses both the name of the country and the name of the capital city in its name !, and before I forget, let me tell you amigo Helmut and all other listeners that are now tuned to RHC, that our first 11760 kiloHertz antenna was a half wave broadband dipole that was strung between two masts made from the local power utility wooden poles. To make them higher our engineers used a very clever arrangement, putting two poles on the ground and a third one in the middle of those two about half way up, in order to reach the height that my engineering mentor and our station's chief antenna engineer Jose A Valladares Ph.D. had told us, the tower crew that was essential in order to provide the proper take off angle... A few weeks later the steel towers arrived from Switzerland , and we started to install our first high gain rhombics, one of which was used on 11760 kiloHertz beaming to South America.... At this moment, our 11760 kiloHertz transmitter is connected to a nice rhombic that was originally installed in 1961, and that we have had to rebuild several times, but always preserving the original design parameters...


Well amigo Helmut, I hope that you will continue to copy a nice signal on 11760 kiloHertz and maybe in few months time we will run a test extending our 6000 kiloHertz frequency one more hour, until 0600 or event two more hours until 0700 UTC and start asking for reports from listeners like you that enjoy the nice reception conditions during the local early morning hours.
For those of you wishing to receive our transmitter tests QSL card ,just send me a signal report and comments about the quality of reception in your area for our 11760 , and 9550 kiloHertz from 05 to 07 UTC. Send your reports to arnie@rhc.cu, and if you are not yet in cyberspace, just send a postcard VIA AIRMAIL to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana , Cuba... yes as easy as that, no need for PO BOX number or zip code, just write in the address area of the postcard... Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba

And now amigos the very popular YOU HAVE QUESTIONS section of Dxers Unlimited... well it happens that antenna related questions are always at the top of the list... here is one from California, listener Abel wants to know if he can use a very thin coaxial cable , known as RG174 for his short wave receiving antenna... ANSWER: Amigo Abel, I would not advise you to use the very thin and thus weak from a mechanical point of view coaxial cable.. It can be used for lightweight portable antennas, but not for permanent installations... The types of cables that I would recommend using for permanent antennas are at least the RG58 50 ohm coax, or the cheaper and easily available TV type 75 coaxial cables like the RG59 and the RG6...those two will work nicely for short wave reception with cable runs up to about 30 meters or 100 feet... Question number two: Coming from London , England... another new listener thanks to our 05 to 07 UTC use of 11760 kiloHertz, his name is Peter and he wants to know more about restoring vintage receivers. Well amigo Peter, books have been written on this topic, so its really difficult to answer here, but let me tell you that restoring antique radios is certainly one of the most enjoyable aspects of the radio hobby, an aspect you will learn to love , and where you will learn lots of things, like for example, the restoration of those beautiful wooden cabinets that older radios have... Be extremely careful with your two recently required antique receivers amigo Peter, and try to obtain as much information as possible about them before even thinking of starting the complete painstaking restoration job... Question three: Dear Arnie, with the autumn equinox already almost here, my question is if you think that this year's Tropical Band DX season is going to be better or worse than last year's, signed Edward from Toronto , Canada. Well amigo Eduardo, its really difficult to do an almost real time propagation forecast for the Tropical Bands, that as you know are located around 120, 90 and 60 meters wavelength... With the large number of geomagnetic disturbances that have happened during the past several weeks , due mainly to the high speed solar winds caused by coronal holes , the Earth's geomagnetic field has seen planetary A indexes that have reached figures as high as 90 units, and that very high values can certainly exert a lot of influence on the way the radio waves between 2.5 and 5 megaHertz propagate , so , in other words we must wait and see how the equinoctial DX season for the Tropical Bands will behave this year... By the way the season lasts for about four more weeks, before the winter DX conditions settle in...So here is my advice amigo Edward, wake up very early in the morning and scan the 120, 90 and 60 meter Tropical Broadcast Bands for DX stations, because your chances of picking up some really nice DX are much higher at this moment than at anytime since about the second half of April of this year...

And now my friends, here is , directly and from the source, our exclusive HF plus low band VHF, 30 to 55 megaHertz propagation update and forecast... Expec rather disturbed propagation conditions for the next three to four days... with periods of the K index staying above 3 and the A index moving around up to 25 or 30 units. Your best chances for easy listening on the short wave bands during the local evenings will be between 6 and 12 megaHertz, with some possible opening on the 13 and 15 megaHertz bands to locations south of yours. Radio amateurs will continue to enjoy the best DX signals on the 20 meter band, the queen of the ham bands, while local night time DX will be good between 7 and 10 megaHertz, but the 7 megaHertz or 40 meter band will continue to be a bit noisy due to tropical thunderstorm activity still at a rather high level... Transequatorial DX from 30 to 55 megaHertz will be possible if you live below 30 degrees North, so do watch the 6 meter band for those stations located to the South of you.
And don't forget to send your signal reports and comments about the program to arnie@rhc.cu , they sure help me to improve the show so that more listeners around the world will enjoy it too...