Radio Havana Cuba
Dxers Unlimited
Dxers Unlimited's weekend edition for 12-13 June 2010
By Arnie Coro
radio amateur CO2KK

Hi amigos radioaficionados, welcome to the new short format Dxers Unlimited program, designed to fit into Radio Havana Cuba's new one hour broadcasts in English, that will be repeated all along the broadcast day.

Scientific mass media audience research has shown that today's international short wave broadcast listeners preferences aim towards shorter programs that then can be repeated several times reaching a much wider audience .

So, starting from this weekend edition , Dxers Unlimited will be lasting between 10 and 12 minutes, and going on the air every hour, just after the half hour newscast.

For many years, our English program consisted of two hours, and that left many listeners without the possibility of enjoying some of our shows, due to the fact that very few people today have enough time to sit down by the radio and listen to the two full hours.

The new one hour format will also include Breakthrough my science , technology and the environment show, and possibly, in the not too distant future a mini-program devoted to new information and communications technologies, that is now in the planning stage.

Now after this important announcement , here is item two or Dxers Unlimited's weekend edition...

The solar update.... Friday June 11th saw a WOLF number figure of 62, the highest in a long time, and Saturday morning observations done at the Catania , Sicily , Astrophysical Observatory registered a somewhat lower, but nevertheless much larger than those seen for many weeks …

Observer P. Costa wrote on the optical observations webpage that three active sunspot regions were detected and that after processing the data, the R number was at 54.

So, one of the four active sunspot regions that could be seen on Friday was missing, and that was possibly the cause of the lower WOLF number.

According to one of the best known solar observers, there is a very unusual thing happening... the correlation between the daily 10.7 centimeters microwave solar flux and the WOLF number is not matching as well as it should, so even though the R number has increased significantly, the solar flux has stayed below the 80 units mark... Add this new puzzle to the already puzzling solar cycle 24 amigos !!!

Item three: An e-mail from young Cuban radio amateur CM2IR, Frank Martinez Zequeira, tells about a very nice late local afternoon 15 meters band opening to Europe and Africa, that was happening while both Europe and Africa were in total darkness and Havana was seeing the Sun at an elevation angle above the horizon of less than 30 degrees.

Frank , CM2IR described the contacts he was able to make with 50 Watts and a 40 meters band half wave dipole operating on its third harmonic...

He made QSO's with Switzerland, Spain and the Canary Islands , and also heard several stations from Africa. By the way, the Canary Islands are , according to geographers part of the African continent...

Amigo Frank also told me recently about the nice results he was able to achieve with the so called double bazooka coaxial dipole antenna, that at his location is picking up much less man made noise than his previous single wire half wave dipole....

The double bazooka is a very controversial antenna by all standards, with some people praising its noise reducing properties, and others saying that it has a significant signal loss both on transmit and on receive.

Standby now for a few seconds as we take a short break for station ID amigos, I am your host Arnie Coro in Havana
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You are listening to the new compact short form edition of Dxers Unlimited designed to fit into our station's new one hour English broadcast format.

The program will be on the air every hour from 0100 to 0500 hours UTC on 5970 and 6000 kiloHertz. On 5970 kiloHertz we are beaming to Central North America, and the 6000 kiloHertz frequency is beaming all along the East Coast from about 25 degrees North all the way up to the Canadian Maritime provinces and beyond.

Here is now our next item: The ideal amateur radio satellite, the one we radio amateurs are waiting for, is unfortunately far from becoming a reality...

So far all efforts to place an amateur radio satellite payload aboard one of the geostationary telecommunications satellites have proven to be fruitless.

There are many reasons why this is happening, and among them there are two to be highlighted... One is the fact that each kilogram of payload on a geosynchronous satellite costs a lot of money, and the other is that the engineers in charge of the payload are worried that any failure of the amateur satellite package may spread and disrupt the operation of the professional telecommunications bird...

As a matter of fact, according to what I have picked up from several Cuban satellite communications experts, the chances that a ham radio package may go into orbit taking a piggyback ride on a professional satellite are very low, and it is certainly impossible to raise enough money to buy up an independent payload on a rocket capable of placing a satellite into the geostationay orbit...

And now amigos as always at the end of the program, here is Arnie Coro's Dxers Unlimited's HF plus low band VHF propagation update and forecast...

The daily WOLF number will possibly move down again as the active solar regions rotate out of Earth's view during the next several days...Expect lower solar flux after next Tuesday if no new sunspots show up...

Keep a constant watch for the very frequent sporadic E openings that are happening on a daily basis, now that we are approaching the peak of the summer sporadic E season …

Don't forget to take a little time after listening to the program and send an e-mail to inforhc at enet dot cu, again inforhc at enet dot cu , telling me about your radio hobby activities, and it you have any radio hobby related question, send them two … Our postal mailing address is Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba