DXING IN THE RAIN AT
BLUE ROCK LAKE
I discover a new DX location that has real signs of being a great place for winter daytime shortwave reception. The Tecsun PL680 portable receiver is with me again, along with a healthy length of antenna wire. But....there's just one problem!
DXING IN THE RAIN AT
73 and good DX to you all.
Rob Wagner VK3BVW
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© Rob Wagner, Mount Evelyn DX Report, and contributors 2012-2019
Great stuff Rob. I must join you one of them winters when I get down there to Melbourne.:)
ReplyDeleteThanks Victor. Yes, wintertime DX is fun....but the weather is just a LITTLE cooler than where you live! hihi. All the best, Rob.
DeleteGood hunting, huh? I get to listen to some of the stations you tuned, difference being that it is around midnight here in southern Brasil. I get to tune Radio Marti on 7335kHz and 7365kHz, some of CRI frequencies, on a lucky day WINB on 9270kHz, Radio Free Asia with CNR's jammer on 9350kHz among othes. I also get to listen to WRMI on 9955kHz. My mom accidentally caused my beloved Degen DE1103 to fall 9 stories. Fortunatelly, I liked so much I had a spare one, but it is being fixed. So I've been listening mostly with a PL-660, and boy do I hate its soft muting. So I try to get signals over this filter threshold and make use of its synch detect. I also miss my ICF-2010 which has the best synch detect. I have a question: do you use a counterweight/grounding for you longwire? It helps a lot at the qth I am now, which is located downtown of a large size city, although for this case I still prefer to use loop antennae. I also would like to know whether there is any improvement using a balun to match your radio input. Thanks and 73!
ReplyDeleteJulio, thanks so much for taking the time to leave some comments. Much appreciated. Sorry to hear about your Degen receiver! 9 stories is quite a fall!!
DeleteTo your questions:
When out in the bush operating portable, I don't usually listen with a ground wire attached to the receiver, especially the Tecsun. It makes no difference to either the signal received or in reducing the noise. When portable, I am trying to find the best locations that have no noise, so a ground wire does not add anything in those situations. However, my bigger receivers and transceivers at the home QTH are always grounded to three copper rods smashed into the ground.
Regarding the use of a balun: This is a complicated question and not easily answered here in this blog thread. It can relate to how you are feeding the antenna to the radio (i.e. straight wire, coax, etc). It is much more significant when transmitting on the ham bands than when just listening to a receiver. And if you are going to use a balun, then it has to be the right one for the antenna being used, because the wrong balun will really stuff up the reception! So you need to know what you are doing with baluns. There are end fed half wave (EFHW) antennas that look like long wires but are great because they allow you to transmit on a variety of ham bands. They use baluns, but again it is more for transmitting that makes those necessary.
Ultimately, I wouldn't bother with baluns for just listening. HOWEVER, loop antennas (both the vertical and horizontal types) are worth exploring if you live in a high noise environment. I like horizontal skyloop antennas because they pick up much less noise than a straight wire or even a dipole antenna. But you need heaps of space to put those up in your backyard!! :-) Check out my YouTube video: https://youtu.be/OLq3nBQppqg
Experimenting with antennas is great fun. What might not work for one person may well suit another listener at another location. So experimenting is the key to success here! Best 73, Julio. Rob VK3BVW
Thanks for the reply, it is very useful. I've already watched the video you mentioned (and liked it) in your beautiful property and saw your skyloop. I have a friend who is not very happy about his skyloop antenna. My experience is with small loop antennae and I noticed that they work better with horizontal polarization at no shorter than 12m high, otherwise, vertical polarization produces better results. I tested a delta loop antenna at ground level and it worked very well. I'm installing it on the roof of one of the houses in order to avoid qrm. Right now, I am in another QTH at the centre of a large busy town. My apartment is on the 9th floor and here I get better results for lower frequencies on 90-75-60-49-41m using horizontal polarization, even with built in whip antennae. I am not very far from a huge antenna farm belonging to many FM stations, some of them transmitting out of specifications, e.g. an 8kW transmitter delivering 30kW instead. So, I'm experimenting with artificial grounding, i.e. aluminum window frame and also small loop antennae. The loop antennae are imune to FM spurious. Any type of rf amp, even built in such as that of the PL-660 is inundated by FM spurious on the front end, so much so I use the PL-660 invariably with the RF atennuator on NORMAL. If I'm using a loop antena, I can switch to DX. I'll watch your video again. 73 from PY5WHO/PY5136SWL
DeleteGreat content. I wonder if anyone has ever DXed from atop the Everest!
ReplyDelete