log your SW catches here:)

[GB46]

I wish you could get more than 23' of wire outside. 23' is just a hank of wire. A longer wire would give that poor R75 a better chance at "being all it can be". But I understand your situation there.

I know. At least, the whip antenna on the portable has the added advantage of being in the middle of the room, away from any electrical wiring in the walls or the metal mesh that holds the stucco on the building's exterior.

One thing about the Sangean: Signal strength (as well as noise level) is noticeably lower on batteries than on the AC adapter, which is how I usually run it. The adapter outputs 9v. AC, and emits no noise of its own. The supply voltage is regulated inside the radio, so the voltage is probably pretty much the same as with batteries. I suspect that there may be either an antenna or ground effect through the power cord.

This morning BSKSA was coming in strong again, so I tried running the radio on fresh alkaline batteries. There was a significant drop in signal according to the meter, but I still got a decent signal. As I gradually brought the power cord closer to the jack before plugging it back in, the strength started increasing while the radio was still running on the batteries. Some capacitive coupling must be going on there, which seems to confirm what I had suspected about the power cord.

 

[KM4OBL]

UTC: 21:12 to sign off at 22:00
Freq.: 6195 Khz
Mode: AM
Broadcaster: Voice of America, relay from Selebi-Phikwe, Botswana
Receiver: NA5B websdr, Washington, D.C. area
Programming: VA1 pop music hits

 

[ridgescan]

Just ran into the good old BBC on 11825kHz transmitting from Tinang, Philippines in the 2300UTC hour! Nice to hear them again-I haven't heard them in a while.

 

[dragon48]

Nice - I haven't listened to shortwave in a while. With my less than ideal antennas, I generally haven't picked SW up until later at night and not too much that high in the band. What radio and which antenna were you using?

 

[ridgescan]

Nice - I haven't listened to shortwave in a while. With my less than ideal antennas, I generally haven't picked SW up until later at night and not too much that high in the band. What radio and which antenna were you using?

I was at the easy chair out in the living room on the R75 to the big wire
they were doing news and it was nice to hear their Brit accents like the old days. Honestly at first, I thought it was RNZI but the accents were too soft and just then they IDed "BBC World Service" which made me run to the desktop to verify-yeah it was the BBC!
It's just nice they haven't gone away yet, that's all.

 

[GB46]

Radio Free Asia was coming in at S9+ on 7415 kHz at 16:45 UTC. The broadcast was directed to the Far East and relayed via Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands, which is 9082 km from me. There were very lively discussions, but in Mandarin Chinese, so I have no idea what they were talking about.

Same strong signal on both my R75 with 23 ft. of wire and the ATS-909X with just the whip, both indoors.

They went off the air at 17:00.

 

[GB46]

The Firedrake jammer in China has been coming in quite strong at 18:15 UTC on 9860 kHz on all my radios. The surprising thing is that it even opens the squelch on my tiny Icom R6 wideband scanner, which is supposely not very sensitive on HF. And this is with just its short rubber duck antenna.

 

[GB46]

I was at the easy chair out in the living room on the R75 to the big wire
they were doing news and it was nice to hear their Brit accents like the old days. Honestly at first, I thought it was RNZI but the accents were too soft and just then they IDed "BBC World Service" which made me run to the desktop to verify-yeah it was the BBC!
It's just nice they haven't gone away yet, that's all.

I find the New Zealand accent a bit different from the British one, perhaps more like the Australian accent. Back in the 80s I met a New Zealander here in Canada who seemed to pronounce my name "Geery" rather than Gerry. When Radio RSA was still on the air from South Africa the announcers sounded like Australians. Under weak signal conditions, accents can make voices hard to understand for people unaccustomed to hearing them.