Radio Dabanga – Saturday Morning

This is kind of a neat one – Radio Dabanga only broadcasts for two hours a day – local morning – local evening – the news for the day / evening . . .

A bit rough with conditions being what they are . . .

Have Fun! – Run the Gun! – and remember – Fish Heads are Cheap!!

and here it’s Sunday and i finally realized i forgot to post this – oops . . .

Radio Turkey This Morning ( Sunday )

Was trying to make a little less mess of my radio / junk room this morning and was pleasantly surprised to run across this . . .

I listened for about an hour and then conditions just basically went sideways – like you flipped a switch . . .

Here’s a few pics from about 20 miles North of Omaha – dark thirty Friday morning – short wave conditions have been really tough – which is why I was happy to catch Radio Turkey . . .

If you are curious you can go to Spaceweather.gov and check the site out – a whole bunch of information there – read on the site Friday that the solar flares actually raised the voltage of the rocks compromising the earth’s crust – which screws up stuff beyond radio – if you want to know more – do some research – it’s actually quite interesting – Nikola Tesla did considerable research / experimentation concerning the electrical / magnetic energy of the planet . . .

Have Fun! – Run the Gun! – and remember – Fish Heads are Cheap!!

Case in Point . . . The Loop is Directional – But – There are Limits . . .

Adding obscure lower power stations to the list is fun stuff to do – and don’t think I am knocking anybody’s station – if somebody has the wherewithal to put a station together and put a signal and program out there – That is WAY Cool!

So at the same time China Radio International is pumping out 500,000 watts to the west in my direction – the green dot is my approximate location . . .

Radio Boa Ventade ( not 100% sure if this is their website ) is not quite due south of me – at 10,000 watts . . .

China Radio International – “looking” right at them with the loop . . .

“Looking” almost due South at Radio Boa Ventade with the loop . . .

Several things are at play here – The power level – 500KW vs 10KW – tremendous difference in power levels – China comes through here like a freight train – Conditions – North to South propagation is quite spotty in the daytime – Equipment – the loop antenna has 2 null spots – one to each side – but – they are not “blind” spots – still getting enough signal from China that I couldn’t prove Radio Boa Ventade is even transmitting.

I swept back and forth from 160 to 180 degrees several times – but no joy . . .

Have Fun! – Run the Gun! – and remember – Fish Heads are Cheap!!

And just to put this out here for you – and YOU as well – at this point I’m not even considering doing a YouTube short wave Listening channel thing – there are multiple channels out there that are doing really good jobs – I have enough of a backlog of just straight up reviews of “stuff” that should keep me out of trouble over the winter – and a MLA 30+ set up to do before winter – Hey, it’s an excuse to get out of town for a couple of days! – work with me on this – and come spring I have a complete random wire install AND someone who can take decent pics of all the stuff and the install – the posts I did on my install – loop & random wire – should get you through it – but the pics are not the greatest and a “stuff” list would probably help as well . . .

Loop vs Random Wire / 10/05/24 – 17.570 @ 1215 UTC

This first one is the loop antenna . . .

This second one is the wire antenna . . .

Not too shabby – World Adventist Radio / Madagascar – 100KW I believe . . .

If conditions are decent – they both perform well – when it’s crap conditions the loop will tend to out perform the wire most of the time because you can rotate the loop and use the nulls to “clean” signals up – the Low Noise Amplifier works great – but then you start fighting noise because you start dragging the noise floor up – at higher gain levels you’re fighting a losing battle – remember every thing is a compromise. And some of the time you can drag stuff out of the noise floor utilizing the MFJ tuner on the long wire that you just can’t “clean” up on the loop. The two really compliment each other.

The switch showed up – has anybody else noticed that if it’s something like ramen soup or a pair of socks – Amazonia has it sitting on the porch almost as quick as you click on buy – and if it’s something you really want in a hurry – it takes days??

I have a set of AM and FM filters from RTL-SDR for the feed coming in from the random wire – haven’t got them in-line yet – one crisis at a time – LOL!

The coax and fitting you see between the switch and the tuner? I finally took time to build out the correct antenna wiring set-up for the Realistic DX-160 and grounded it properly. For 50 year old tech it does well – there is a whole bunch of knob twisting going on to use it but amazingly it’s chugging right along. The eton 750 sitting on top of it shows the difference 45 years of advancement will get you. The fitting on top of the speaker? SO239 to BNC – so I can hook up the random wire to the eton 750 if I want.

Another switch or three and coax jumpers and I can move away screwing/unscrewing coax all the time – maybe set it up so I can hook-up portable radios as well – that would be cool . . .

As a side note – listening to Radio Romania International Thursday or Friday – their English language program – and the announcer was falling all over himself thanking the U.S. for the billions of dollars they (WE) had just given them to help fight the evil incarnate Putin. Anybody heard a thing about that? (I guess you use any laundry service you can ) News to me . . .

Have Fun! – Run the Gun! – and remember – Fish Heads are Cheap!!