15100 ish Pirate?

[7designs]

Might have caught my first pirate station. See the details and video at link bellow:

signal report

 

[7designs]

Turns out to be Radio Kuwait on 15540. Apparently the dial on my S-20R is off a bit.

 

[Token]

Turns out to be Radio Kuwait on 15540. Apparently the dial on my S-20R is off a bit.

Not unusual for an S-20R, or indeed many old boatanchors. Even when new the dials on some of these radios were "suggestions" of frequency. Sure, you can align the receiver so the dial is close, even relatively correct, but when the smallest indication shown is in the 100's of kHz it gets hard to get an exact frequency on anything.

An old school answer, and what I like to use whenever I am playing with any of the old beasts, would be a heterodyne frequency meter, something like the BC221 or LM-XX series that can still be found at hamfest and swap meets for $10-25 in working condition, and $50-75 in good condition.

A few years back I threw together a quick page on what this is and why any boatanchor user needs one. Also, the second page (linked at the bottom) shows a number of exampples of boat anchor dials and why they can be hard to get a good frequency on.
My BC-221 and LM series Page

By the way, ignore the email address at the bottom of that page, it has not been active in years. I suppose I should readdress the page sometime.

T!

 

[ridgescan]

Nice writeup T 7D you could also go on a known BC station in a band and zero-beat it on ssb, coordinate the main dial position with the fine tuner then go exploring nearby that station and be within the ballpark.
My boatanchor has calibrate points in each band that serve to do the same.

 

[7designs]

Great to know guys, thanks.

 

[Boombox]

You could also use a digital SW radio as a spotter. I've done that before, with an FRG-7 and also with analog readout MW radios.

 

[kb2vxa]

Boat anchors, somehow you forgot the classic 100KHz crystal calibrator.

 

[Token]

Boat anchors, somehow you forgot the classic 100KHz crystal calibrator.

I can not speak for anyone else but personally I did not forget something like the 100 kHz crystal calibrator built into some older radios. And even if not built in you can build one for a few dollars and add them to just about any radio. And I think that might have been what ridgescan might have been referencing as calibration points on his radio.

But, I do not like to use them when other options are at hand.

Such crystal calibrators are pretty good when dealing with mainstream broadcasters. Most of these broadcast stations are on some multiple of 5 kHz and you can often “eye-ball” the dial to get within 5 or 10 kHz between known 100 kHz CC markers. But typically using such a marker with the average boatanchor dial you probably can not get closer than maybe 5 kHz, and sometimes not even that close.

So what happens when you are trying to ID a station that is not on a 5 kHz step? Say Radio Gazeta, out of Sau Paulo, Brazil, in Portuguese and on 9685.3 kHz. CRI out of China also transmits in Portuguese on 9685.0 kHz. Yeah, you try to catch the IDs and hope you can make it out, but when dealing with a foreign language knowing the real frequency can be a real help to narrow down what you expect to hear in the ID. Or when you hear a foreign language that you can not ID, knowing the real freq can help narrow the possibilities down quite a bit. If you can just tell the freq is about 9675 or 9680 kHz and the language is one you can not ID, might that be Turkish, Tibetan, Hindi, Arabic, Mandarin, Chinese, German, Sudanese, or Spanish? Because all are on those 2 freqs, several are scheduled at the same time from different stations around the World. But knowing that the station you are hearing is actually on 9677.8 kHz can quickly narrow it down to probably Voice of Justice, in Azeri, out of Azerbaijan, a language I probably would not be able to correctly ID by ear.

And in the case of the OPs post, he thought the station was near 15100 kHz, but it actually turned out to be 15540 kHz. Using a 100 kHz CC without referencing an external source such as WWV/WWVH/CHU would result in him thinking it was 15140 kHz, still incorrect and not a help in trying to ID the station.

Yes, crystal calibrators were a good thing back in the day, but after I got hold of my first BC-221 in the 60’s I pretty much never used a CC again, and my logs contained much fewer “guesses” and much more accurately recorded frequencies. And once you learn how to use the –221 or LM-XX series they are pretty much as quick and easy, while being much more accurate, as finding the nearest 100 kHz marker tone and guessing the possible freq from interpolation.

T!

 

[ridgescan]

Yes Warren and Token on the 100Kc crystal-I have it here-a "Bliley KV3" but like T said I personally never tried the cal method all these years. The owners manual explains the procedure step by step so I may give it a try just to see how accurate it is on this radio

 

[7designs]

Half the fun of this S-20R is just blind tuning never knowing what you might catch. I only use the dial indicator if I want to tell others where I hear a signal.

 

[kb2vxa]

The calibrator remark was a bit tongue in cheek but still it came from many years experience and a whole lot of guesswork working with analog dials, crappy bandspread and headaches getting proper tracking across the dial. If you've ever played with trimmers and padders until you're angry enough to spit you're in the club. BTW not all were built in, many went in the accessory socket and were swapped back and forth with an FM ratio detector as one example I used with VHF and UHF converters.

Heh, I came across one interesting construction project on the web that reminded me of one I built from a frequency generator/divider board I scrounged from a marker generator. Depending on the crystal I could put markers here, there, everywhere as close as 1KHz apart depending on which divider tap I chose.

Then there is the essential component, the trimmer cap used to zero beat a marker to WWV and don't forget every good counter has one too. Uh uh, not one of those signal sniffer things, I'm talking about test bench equipment. It's a simple matter to loosely couple one to the 1st conversion oscillator and do a bit of quick math, you can get the RF frequency down to a couple of Hertz if you calibrate the BFO and zero beat the input signal.

Yup, there are all sorts of handy little tricks and I just thought I'd mention the more "professional" ones for the serious DXer on a budget.