[HCDX] RE; DXERS UNLIMITED´S WEEK END EDITION FOR 8-9 MARCH 2008

["Prof. Arnaldo Coro Antich" <coro@xxxxxxx>]

Radio Havana Cuba

Dxers Unlimited

Dxers Unlimited´s weekend edition for 8-9 March 2008

By Arnie Coro

Radio amateur CO2KK

Hi amigos radioaficionados around the world and in space , you are all 
most welcome to the weekend program of Dxers Unlimited, coming to you 
when once again solar optical observations show a spotless solar disc 
!!! Zero sunspots during four of the past six days until March the 
seventh…and nevertheless I see reports of 10 meters band openings 
between Namibia, callsign prefix V51 and Southern Europe, something that 
can be explained by the typical enhancement of trans equatorial 
propagation that happens as we approach the spring equinox of the 
Northern Hemisphere. So, Saturday and Sunday I will be keeping a close 
watch on both 10 meters and 6 meters for South American stations that 
are surely going to be coming in to the Caribbean from Argentina, 
Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile , Bolivia and Brazil… TEP, or Transequatorial 
propagation is one of the most interesting modes of Ionospheric 
propagation that incidentally was discovered by radio amateurs more than 
50 years ago…

Item two: Got a recent report of Radio Guama, the Pinar del Rio 
provincial network heard in Texas on 990 kiloHertz, their main station 
located near the city that has the same name of the province, Pinar del 
Rio. Radio Guama is also on the air on FM, so I expect to see reports of 
their FM broadcasts when the spring-summer sporadic E season starts…

Item three: Also about Cuban AM broadcast stations between 900 and 1000 
kiloHertz, right in the middle of the classic AM analog radio´s dials… 
On 900 kiloHertz Radio Progreso´s 50 kiloWatts located in Holguin 
province can be usually heard in the Caribbean, Central America ,the USA 
and Canada by nulling the Mexican station on the same channel XEW, that 
according to some sources runs a very high power transmitter on that 
frequency. Many years ago, the Chief Engineer of Radio Progreso Cuban 
National Network, Carlos Estrada , visited Mexico City to attend an 
International Radio Broadcasting Conference, and he came back very 
impressed by the XEW 250 kilowWatt transmitter that used a Doherty type 
linear amplifier. Doherty and Terman-Woodyard linear amplifiers are now 
part of broadcast history, because practically all if not all of today´s 
new transmitters are built using solid state devices that operate with 
rather low voltages . The solid state power output stages are modular, 
so in case one of them fails the transmitter still stays on the air at 
reduced power output, something broadcasters appreciate very much…

More about AM broadcasting in a few seconds when Dxers Unlimited´s 
weekend edition continues. I am Arnie Coro , radio amateur CO2KK in Havana…

…….

Si amigos, sure, AM broadcast band Dx season for this winter is about to 
come to an end, but if just gives way to the spring equinoctial DX 
season that brings in some very nice openings too, especially at just 
after local sunset… With the extremely low solar flux that we are 
observing nowadays, I expect a very nice AM band spring equinox DX 
season to be starting up by next week… Now, more about Cuban AM stations 
in the 900 to 1000 kiloHertz segment of the AM broadcast band… on 910 
kiloHertz here in Havana , we have Radio Metropolitana, a local capital 
city station that is on the air 24 hours , and on that same frequency 
910 kiloHertz we also have Radio Cadena Agramonte from Camaguey city, 
that can be heard very well all over eastern Cuba due to its 
transmitter´s excellent location. And here in Havana, on 950 kiloHertz 
we have the 10 kiloWatt Radio Reloj, the easiest Cuban station to 
identify because it sends out the letters R R on CW many times every 
day… You will hear a one per second pulse and the RR on CW from all of 
Radio Reloj´s network stations… Cuba is now using its national fiber 
optics cables backbone distribution network, as well as the several 
microwave radio relay systems, so many times you will notice that Radio 
Reloj´s signals on different frequencies have a slight time delay due to 
the coding and decoding process of the digital systems used by the fiber 
optic equipment… By the way, this last item answers a question sent by 
listener Jeff, from Toronto, who asked why he could hear on two radios 
slightly different audio from Radio Reloj on 950 and 1020 kiloHertz…

Now here is our next item… a special or amateur radio operators that are 
getting ready for the spring equinox DX season… Don´t expect this season 
to be a record breaking one… solar cycle 24 has not shown any more signs 
of activity after the tiny high latitude sunspot, and cycle 23 continues 
to provide many, many days of zero sunspots… Anyway, during the spring 
equinox HF propagation conditions will certainly improve, and I expect 
that the 20 and 17 meter bands take a turn for the better starting in 
about a week or two from now…

Another news item for radio amateurs has to do with the 60 meters band, 
that is now slowly becoming available to ham radio operators in some 
countries, although the trend is to authorize the use of specific 
frequencies, in other words, that the telecoms administrations want to 
keep radio amateur operators on the 5 megaHertz region of the HF 
spectrum tied to channelized operation, in order to avoid conflicts with 
primary users of that very much sought band of frequencies. 60 meters 
should be particularly useful for handling emergency traffic when the 40 
meters band closes up for near vertical incidence skywave propagation, 
the mode used to communicate at short distances on the HF bands during 
emergencies.

……..


You are listening to Dxers Unlimited´s weekend edition, coming to you 
from Havana. Now here is ASK ARNIE, la numero uno, the most popular 
section of the program according to your e-mail messages, letters, fax 
reports and when some of you visit here in Havana and have the 
opportunity to talk to us about our programming… ASK ARNIE today is 
answering the question sent by listeners in Canada, the USA , the UK and 
Germany about DRM , Digital Radio Mondiale, the digital system that 
several stations are using now on the international short wave bands.

Well amigos Mark, Charlie, Ian and Rudolph… DRM continues to be a source 
of controversial opinions among the world´s mass communications 
researchers, but there seems to be a consensus about the waste of 
resources that DRM is causing to the broadcast organizations, many of 
which are openly talking about severe budget limitations. It is quite 
contradictory to watch how an international broadcaster spends money in 
transmitting using DRM signals that have practically no listeners, while 
at the same time cutting back programs and language services that do 
have a well established audience, fully equipped with short wave radios 
that are working perfectly well… The worst thing that is happening now 
is that there are no DRM capable receivers available at a competitive 
cost… and event the DRM receivers that do exist are as hard to find as 
the proverbial extinct DODO bird… If DRM wants to really survive, it 
must find financing for producing a high quality low cost receiver that 
could flood the world marketplace… That should be the number one 
objective of the DRM Consortium if they really want DRM to be 
successful… Instead of encouraging broadcasters to waste their limited 
resources in buying new DRM capable transmitters and put them on the air 
for many hours every day with no listeners picking up those broadcasts 
at the other end… someone must advise the Consortium about both basic 
marketing and audience research…

Just recently a well known Cuban senior engineer and university 
professor commented to me that the DRM basic transmission mode for short 
wave was showing very poor performance even at what he described as 
ideal distances for HF broadcasting. Professor Jose Angel Amador played 
back to me recordings of DRM broadcasts from the Montsinery site of 
Radio France International , that showed frequent totally silent periods 
as propagation conditions changed abruptly between Montsinery and 
Havana, changing from single hop to double hop back and forth.

Professor Amador´s findings coincide very well with what I witnessed 
several years ago in South Africa when experimental DRM broadcasts from 
the Sines, Portugal site were sent beaming to Johannesburg… instead of 
the slow fading typical of such a long path multiple hops propagation 
observed with AM signals, the DRM was either heard with good quality or 
just vanished , making it impossible to follow the program content 
because of the silence periods… The Montsinery to Havana path studied by 
Professor Amador is just another solid evidence that even if and when 
receivers are available, DRM broadcasts on short wave are much less 
reliable and less user friendly than standard AM and even than Single 
Side Band suppressed carrier signals !!!

Your comments and opinions of DRM are invited… send them to

arnie@xxxxxx <mailto:arnie@xxxxxx>, again arnie@xxxxxx 
<mailto:arnie@xxxxxx> and if you wish them to be put on the air just 
tell me in your e-mail. I do believe that it is about time that 
broadcasters that are testing DRM without listeners bring those tests to 
an end in order to save energy and reduce radio frequency pollution, as 
well as CO2 emissions that result from the generation of electricity 
that is wasted powering up those DRM transmitters…

My point of view is that if a station puts a signal on the air that can 
be heard somewhere, the energy and resources invested are well worth the 
effort… but why waste so much resources sending out DRM broadcasts that 
nobody can hear ?.

…..

This is Radio Havana Cuba, the name of the show is Dxers Unlimited and 
here is now our next item… our antenna topics section, that today will 
be devoted to folded vertical grounded monopole antenna as a small 
footprint option for radio amateurs wanting to operate their stations 
with a low take off angle antenna. My experiments with the folded 
vertical grounded monopoles started just recently after reviewing 
several technical papers about this type of antenna that is more and 
more becoming the de facto standard for AM broadcast band transmitting 
installations. It was quite clear from the conclusions of the technical 
papers that the folded vertical grounded monopole could become a very 
nice antenna for amateur stations , especially those operating on the 
160 , 80 and 40 meters bands… I am now in the process of gathering the 
materials to build and install a folded vertical grounded monopole 
antenna for the 20 meters band, a sort of scale model to test how it 
works as compared to a standard quarter wave vertical antenna with 
elevated radials that is going to be used as a reference at the same 
site, at CO2KK my ham radio station… As soon as the new test antenna 
goes up and results can be analyzed, you will hear about them here at 
your favorite hobby program… Dxers Unlimited that is now coming to an 
end today with our HF plus low band VHF propagation update and forecast. 
Very low solar activity, zero sunspots, but due to the approaching 
spring equinox, we will be witnessing somewhat better propagation 
conditions especially around local sunset… See you all at the upcoming 
mid week edition of Dxers Unlimited next Tuesday and Wednesday UTC days 
amigos !!!


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