Dxers Unlimited
Dxers Unlimited weekend edition for 17-18 April 2004
By Arnie Coro
Radio amateur CO2KK
Hi amigos radioaficionados , you are tuned to Radio Havana Cuba's twice weekly
radio hobby program,
coming to you via short wave and also trough our streaming audio from
www.radiohc.cu.
I am Arnie Coro, radio amateur CO2KK , your friend in Havana and host of this
show that is entirely,
absolutely, devoted to our fascinating hobby: RADIO !!!
Here is now item one: Solar activity passed trough a minimum sunspot count of 16
a few days ago, and
at this moment there are no large active sunspot regions on the solar disk. so
expect rather quiet
propagation conditions , especially because optical and other special
instruments observing the Sun
show no coronal holes at this moment.
Best bands for daytime short wave listening during the next few days will be 16
and 19 meters,
although you may pick up the very few international short wave broadcast
stations that are operating
on the 13 meters or 21 megaHertz band, spanning from 21455 all the way up to
21800 kiloHertz. More
about HF propagation as always at the end of the program.
Item two: ASK ARNIE the most popular section of Dxers Unlimited is giving me a
lot of work, but let
me add that it is a very rewarding activity, as many listeners are learning more
about the hobby,
and quite a few of you have really become interested in obtaining your amateur
radio station's
licenses.
ASK ARNIE today will be answering several questions regarding amateur radio.
ANTENNA TOPICS, an also
very popular section of the show will be devoted today to more information about
the HALF W3EDP, a
controversial antenna by all standards. I ran some interesting and easy to
implement experiments
this week with a HALF W3EDP and will be telling you about the results. So that's
the menu for this
weekend edition of the program, and I hope that you enjoy it in full. standby
now for a few seconds
as Dxers Unlimited continues after a short musical interval amigos !!!
...
This is Radio Havana Cuba, the name of the show is Dxers Unlimited, and yes we
do QSL here, we do
verify your reception reports. send them directly to me via e-mail. send mail to
arnie@rhc.cu, and
don't forget to include your POSTAL MAILING ADDRESS, so that Irma Veitia from
our correspondence
department may send you one of our nice QSL cards that I recently autographed
for Dxers Unlimited's
fans around the world. Now here is our popular , la numero UNO, ASK ARNIE.
section of the show.
Question one, came from
Norway. listener Olaf near Oslo, wants to know more about amateur radio, and
especially what is
happening around the world regarding the CW Morse Code tests that were required
to obtain an amateur
radio license authorizing the use of the short wave bands. Well amigo Olaf, for
your information,
the International Telecommunications Union's recent WARC 2003 Conference adopted
an agreement that
opens the way to each nation's administrations to issue amateur radio licenses
for the HF region of
the radio spectrum without subjecting the applicants to a CW Morse Code test.
The reason for
deleting article S25 of the Radio Rules and Regulations is a very solid and
logical one. MORSE CODE
transmissions are no longer used for emergency communications , as they were
replaced completely at
a worldwide scale by much more modern and efficient systems using active Earth
satellites. So amigo
Olaf, you must still study electronics, radio communications procedures, rules
and regulations and
other important topics in order to pass the typical amateur radio license test,
but, in many
countries, following the ITU decision of last year,amateurs that had restricted
VHF-UHF only
licenses are now on the air on the HF short wave bands, and newcomers don't have
to take the Morse
Code tests anymore.
My personal opinion about this particular decision is that it was a step in the
right direction, as
it left the use of the CW Morse Code operating mode to individuals that still
want to enjoy
communicating using it. CW Morse Code won't disappear from the amateur bands ,
but you can be sure
amigo Olaf that the new generation of radio amateur operators like yourself will
show a lot more
interest for the new technologies, like computer assisted modes , especially
PSK31, MFSK16 and
others that look and feel much more like the world we are all living in today
!!! Now question
number two of ASK ARNIE for today. came from Canada. amigo Bryan near Toronto
wants to know if there
is a radio club near to him that he can join. Sure Bryan, the Ontario DX
Association is a unique
radio club that hosts all radio hobby enthusiasts in a very special way. Short
wave listeners, AM
Dxers, FM band Dxers, TV Dxers, and Radio Amateurs are members of ODXA, that by
the way also hosts
several very interesting ham radio events every year. You can contact my good
friend VE3SRE, Bob
Chandler at ve3sre@rac.ca, and he can tell
you how to apply for membership . Question three, also
amateur radio related, and this one is not a very easy one to answer. it came
from listener Vlad
near Saint Petersburg , Russia, who listens to Dxers Unlimited very late in the
evening his local
time. Vlad wants to know what's the lowest possible cost of an amateur radio
station. Well amigo
Vlad, it all depends on what you really want, and the type of equipment you can
obtain. In Russia
there are many fine old receivers available at rather low cost, as they are
considered obsolete
technology. among them the huge R-250M a military surplus radio that is
extremely popular among
Russian amateurs. The R-250M is very reliable, easy to repair, and the only
inconvenience that I see
is its huge size and weight. An R-250M or M2 a more modern version, together
with a simple homebrew
20 to 50 Watt transmitter will put you on the air using CW. Adding a simple wire
antenna will
complete a low cost, yet effective amateur radio station for the HF bands. Amigo
Vlad, there is also
another approach in order to go on the air.. you can try to buy a simple hand
held 2 meter band FM
transceiver. that will put you on the air trough the local repeaters. and I may
add, that such a
rig, the FM handie talkie for 2 meters is today's most popular amateur radio
piece of equipment at a
worldwide scale. Some amateurs even own more than one, and those little radios
are extremely
effective during communications emergencies !!!
..
This is the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited coming to you from Havana. now
here is our ANTENNA
TOPICS Section of the show. more about a unique simple wire antenna. the HALF
W3EDP, an antenna that
when used with my simple PI network antenna tuner will work quite nicely from 7
megaHertz all the
way up to 29 megaHertz for transmitting and receiving, but that will also let
you pick up stations
from 5 to 7 megaHertz on receive only mode. A HALF W3EDP is just a wire 12.8
meters long, or if you
want to use round numbers, just make it 13 meters long. The wire is connected
DIRECTLY to your
antenna tuner, and if you are indoors, you simply let it out of the room trough
a window and tie it
to a support outside. This is an almost ideal antenna for portable work too. as
it can be installed
horizontally, vertically or sloping. My favorite way of installing the HALF
W3EDP is a
sloper,keeping the lower end at no less than 3 meters of about 10 feet above the
ground.
I use standard PVC insulated number 14 or number 16 household wire, the one used
by electricians for
home installations, that is easy to find and has a low cost. The antenna tuner
uses two air spaced
variable capacitors taken from old radio receivers and a homebrew coil wound on
a length of PVC
plumbers pipe. The coil is wound using bare solid copper wire of number 14
gauge, but you can also
use number 16 gauge too. For the frequency range from 7 to 29.7 megaHertz, I
wind 16 turns on a 37
millimeters or one and a half inches diameter PVC pipe, spacing the turns by one
wire diameter. I
solder taps every two turns, and take them to a 10 position ceramic wafer
switch. The HALF W3EDP
requires a ground radial or counterpoise system, and the easiest one to install
is a 6 meters length
of number 14 household PVC wire connected to the ground of the antenna tuner.
Now let me tell you about this week's tests of the HALF W3EDP going down from my
second floor shack
to a garden post down below. On the 40 meters band during the local daytime
nets, reports were about
6 dB down from the cloud warmer NVIS antenna I normally use for that band here.
During the local
evening I worked several USA ,Mexican and Canadian stations on 40 meters CW, and
later during the
sunrise in Europe, I was able to work several European stations also, and all
this was done with 50
Watts, feeding the single wire HALF W3EDP that used a 7 meters long ground
counterpoise. Not bad at
all for such a simple antenna, that is also providing excellent short wave
reception from 5 to 30
megaHertz !!!!
.
And now amigos as always at the end of the program , here is Arnie Coro's HF
plus low band VHF
propagation updated and forecast. Solar activity is at low levels, and will
continue low for the
next three to fived days, sunspot count is at around 50 , the solar flux, the
effective sunspot
number is rather low at around 40, but HF conditions will be rather nice during
the next two days or
so, because there are no sources of possible geomagnetic disturbances. Start
getting ready for the
upcoming Sporadic E DX season that according to my forecast will be an early
starter this year.
See you at the mid week edition of the show, Tuesday and Wednesday UTC days, and
don't forget to
send your comments about the program to
arnie@rhc.cu, or VIA AIR MAIL to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana
Cuba, Havana, Cuba.
SB PROP @ ARL $ARLP016
ARLP016 Propagation de K7RA
ZCZC AP16
QST de W1AW
Propagation Forecast Bulletin 16 ARLP016
>From Tad Cook, K7RA
Seattle, WA April 16, 2004
To all radio amateurs
SB PROP ARL ARLP016
ARLP016 Propagation de K7RA
Geomagnetic activity was pleasantly quiet this week, but sunspot and
solar flux numbers were way down. Average daily sunspot numbers for
the week were down over 44 points to 33.4, and solar flux was down
15 points to 91.5. Spring is a nice time of year for HF propagation,
except that activity this low will reduce openings on 15, 12 and 10
meters.
Currently sunspot 591 is rotating away from earth while 592 and 594
are coming into full view. However, these are not large spots.
Solar flux is expected to rise above 100 this weekend, April 17-18,
and reach a peak around 120 on or near April 24. There is a small
possibility of a coronal mass ejection from 591 today.
On April 8 and 10 energy from a couple of coronal mass ejections hit
earth, but both were tame. They were enough to cause a rise in
geo-activity near Polar Regions. Alaska's college A index at
Fairbanks rose to 30 on April 8, but the mid-latitude and planetary
A index were just 16.
The ARRL Technical Information Service (TIS) has a resource page
devoted to propagation. Within the next few weeks I hope to get a
couple of new items written by Carl Luetzelschwab, K9LA, concerning
propagation prediction software posted there. These are short
practical pieces about two free programs, VOACAP, and the W6ELprop
software. The W6EL program is the one used for making the occasional
path predictions in this bulletin.
For more information concerning propagation and an explanation of
the numbers used in this bulletin see the TIS Propagation page on
the ARRL Web site at,
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/propagation.html.
Sunspot numbers for April 8 through 14 were 33, 18, 20, 16, 37, 41
and 69 with a mean of 33.4. 10.7 cm flux was 93.5, 90, 87.7, 89.6,
91.3, 93.1 and 95.2, with a mean of 91.5. Estimated planetary A
indices were 16, 16, 10, 8, 11, 6 and 5, with a mean of 10.3.
NNNN
/EX