Mount Evelyn DX Report

DX QUICK TIPS July 26, 2020 Nearly two weeks ago, I had a fall, twisting an ankle, smashing up the knee cap and face-planting the ground. After two days of swollen agony, I decided I needed some attention from the local hospital's Emergency Department. I am still a tortoise with a limp!  But between compression bandages and leg elevation, I managed to hobble out to the radio shack on a few occasions. Here are some afternoon and evening winter DX observations, focusing on the 49 and 41-metre bands. EQUIPMENT: Yaesu FTDX3000, MFJ-1026 Noise Canceller, and the Behringer 4-channel mixer ANTENNAS: Dipoles for 10 and 14 MHz ⭐ 5950   USA. Supreme Master TV - Okeechobee FL. Vegan chat and thanks for donations at 0750. Plenty of IDs. Fair signal on July 25. 5975   AUSTRIA. R. Japan - Moosbrunn. English to Eu at 0445, weak signal until s/off 0500, July 23. 6005   ENGLAND. BBC - Woofferton. S/on 0500 with English WS news to WAf, weak signal, July 23. 60...

THE REBIRTH OF HF White Paper by Paul Denisowski KO4LZ An interesting document has come to my attention via Paul KO4LZ. Recently, Paul authored a white paper that takes a look at propagation in the high-frequency (HF) part of the radio spectrum, covering propagation modes, sunspots, the ionosphere and ionospheric disturbances. In the second part of the paper, he focuses on HF communications including the decline in traditional HF modes as a result of satellite communications and the Internet. Paul goes on to report on a renewed interest in HF because of expense and vulnerabilities in other "newer" mediums. He discusses Automatic Link Establishment (ALE), improvements in HF data transmission bit rates, wide-band HF, and developments in fourth-generation ALE. He concludes.... "In light of the mission-critical nature of global data communications, there is a strong consensus with regards to the need for an alternative or redundant global data communication...

A LOOK AT RADIO MADAGASIKARA Here is an interesting observation of winter propagation on the circuit between Madagascar and southeastern Australia, specifically my home at Mount Evelyn. We are hearing Radio Madagasikara on the recently revitalised 6135 kHz before 10:50 pm local eastern Australian time, something that would not happen regularly in the summer months here. It is a good example of the difference between winter and summer reception conditions. Here's my log entry from last night: 6135   MADAGASCAR. R. Madagasikara - Ambohidrano. Thanks to a tip-off from Craig Seager and Matt Francis. Local East African music at 1257, ID at 1300, then into a long commentary/report in the Malagasy language. Many mentions of Madagascar and Malagasy. A local popular song by a female singer and a chorus of backup singers at 1323. Into more commercial Afro pops at 1330. ID at 1400 and news.  Monitored to past 1415 with a fair to good signal, July 9. Below is a map of the...

RETRO RECEIVER REVIEW #16 Each image in this post is clickable for a close up view. YAESU FRG-7 by ROB WAGNER VK3BVW Long-time shortwave listeners love remembering the halcyon days of the 60s, 70s and 80s when there were just so many stations broadcasting daily on the HF bands. And those memories are usually accompanied by recollections of the wonderful old radios they operated to tune across the dials. Hammarlund, Hallicrafters, Allied, Trio (Kenwood), Collins, Heathkit, JRC, National, Radio Shack, and so on. All were great names in shortwave radio! And, of course, in the product lines of each brand were some models that performed better than others - better sensitivity, better selectivity, better designs and ergonomics, etc. But there were just so many stations from which to choose that even a lesser quality radio would do a pretty good job of picking up a variety of international and domestic shortwave broadcasts without too much trouble. On the many Facebook g...