I think I got bored with shortwave and like medium wave better now

[KF5EGM]

I've been on the fence about buying a hackrf. The one thing that gives me pause has been the mixed reports of poor receive performance. The idea of using it for sdr hamming has me excited.

 

[dlwtrunked]

It is more of a piece of lab equipment than a receiver and will not be as good as a dedicated receiver like AirSpy, SDRPlay, IC-R8600, etc. But it is extremely useful for signal analysis and other similar things. (I only own 6 of them--long story.) Suggest you consider the HackRF1 Portapak if you buy one. If you really want a top line SDR for HF receive and below, seriously, the Airspy HF+ Discovery (5-star rating in 2021 WRTH and about $170) is the best way to go with SDRPlay a close second.

 

[mass-man]

follow along with the posts from PaulDXerAK here on RR! He's in the interior of AK, McGrath and goes out at night and gets some pretty fantastic MW catches...with a CC Crane receiver and DIY antenna. Yes, I know it helps there's not a lot of noise up there!

 

[n5ims]

The best radio (by far) I ever used for AM Broadcast Band DXing was a measuring device we used at an AM radio station I worked with at the time. It was very expensive and used to accurately measure the RF put out by the station (accurate enough to provide them to the FCC as our certified signal levels at various points around our tower array to certify that we were broadcasting according to our license). It was a specialized AM radio with a very good loop antenna that provided deep nulls and consistent reading on the large signal strength meter. It was expensive enough that we only rented it for the required survey so we had to "practice" with it to make sure that we were using it correctly by the time selected to do that survey. Using that radio I was able to pick up two stations on our frequency by moving around our array and nulling out our station (I could visually see our towers at the time) and dial up the sensitivity to pick up the other station. After playing around with (err, practicing) I mentioned this to our chief engineer and he stated that this was one of the things required of the survey. If we could pick up any co-channel station it had to be below a certain signal level and if it was a station our license required us to protect we could've needed to drop our power or readjust our tower array. Fortunately their signals were only received on the most sensitive setting so we were good. I really hated to ship that back to the place we rented it from.

 

[merlin]

I think my boredoms with SWLing comes mainly from the trend to digital stuff.
I used to sit for hours copying all sorts of code, DX broadcast, ETC.
Now a computer does most/all the work, even logging and printing QSL cards.
What fun is that ?

 

[GB46]

I think my boredoms with SWLing comes mainly from the trend to digital stuff.
I used to sit for hours copying all sorts of code, DX broadcast, ETC.
Now a computer does most/all the work, even logging and printing QSL cards.
What fun is that ?

I'm 75, and look back on simpler days, like many seniors do. I've always wanted to decrease my dependence on the computer in this hobby, but it's no use. Most of what's left on HF, besides some SSB voice signals, is digital. Some of those voices are synthesized as well. Hell, even my radios are computerized. It's just too easy to get the frequency right when tuning in signals. As for logging, I don't do that. If I hear an interesting station I assign a memory slot to it, and look for it at the same time the next day. The radio software I use can log things automatically to text files, but I rarely read them later.

Back in the 1990s I acquired an huge old console radio at an auction. It was built way before my time, 1929, had a 15-inch speaker, and covered only medium wave. The radio was in perfect shape, but there was nothing worth listening to, so I used to joke about hiding an MP3 player inside the cabinet and playing some old-time music through its audio amplifier.

 

[ka3jjz]

We have an extensive wiki page on this subject....

MW DXing and Broadcasting - The RadioReference Wiki

wiki.radioreference.com

As the DX test season will begin soon (if it already hasn't), keeping an eye on the various reflectors (such as World of Radio) will give you a heads up when they occur

Mike

 

[jwt873]

Back in the 1990s I acquired an huge old console radio at an auction. It was built way before my time, 1929, had a 15-inch speaker, and covered only medium wave. The radio was in perfect shape, but there was nothing worth listening to, so I used to joke about hiding an MP3 player inside the cabinet and playing some old-time music through its audio amplifier.

There's actually a demand now for small low power Part 15, AM transmitters so people can listen to the music that once played on their vintage radios.

Build an AM Transmitter for Use with Antique Radios

Use a low power crystal-controlled AM transmitter to broadcast age-appropriate material to your antique radio.

www.nutsvolts.com

 

[GB46]

I have also been using this little micro powered medium wave transmitter to broadcast my own music throughout my apt.

It can also be found in kit form to build it yourself. With a 15' antenna it works pretty good.

During my university days I bought a little FM transmitter module, roughly an inch or so on each side, which was enclosed in a permanently sealed plastic case. The circuit was totally inaccessible, with just the battery connector, microphone input and short antenna sticking out. The antenna was a 2-inch pigtail lead, and the frequency was fixed somewhere around 90 mHz; to change the frequency you had to either trim or lengthen that lead.

I was living on campus at that time, and couldn't bring a stereo with me, but I found an old phonograph turntable, mounted the little transmitter inside the turntable's base, and connected the pickup cartridge to the mic input. The dormitory building was a 7-storey high-rise, but my LPs could be heard through any FM radio on any floor in the building.

As for AM, I once managed to convert a simple 1-stage regenerative receiver into an AM transmitter, using the crystal earphone as a microphone. The circuit was very unstable, probably because it wasn't crystal controlled, and the modulation was applied to the wrong part of the circuit.

 

[GB46]

There's actually a demand now for small low power Part 15, AM transmitters so people can listen to the music that once played on their vintage radios.

Build an AM Transmitter for Use with Antique Radios

Use a low power crystal-controlled AM transmitter to broadcast age-appropriate material to your antique radio.

www.nutsvolts.com

Interesting! Too bad I had to leave that old radio behind when I moved into an RV for a few years. I should have had the radio shipped to a storage facility.

 

[Boombox]

point me to it.

Radio France International used to have excellent synthesizer music during interludes. I haven't heard them in years now, though. I know they still broadcast to Africa, but not as much as they used to.

 

[Boombox]

I stopped seriously SWLing when Voz Cristiana (in Chile) went off the air in 2012 or 2014 or so. It was a harbinger of the future. They had some cool music programs on Saturdays and Sundays, and a kids show that -- even though it was in Spanish, a language I can read but not decipher well when spoken -- still sounded cool. And it was always awesome to hear Chile.

It was around the time they went off the air that SW conditions began to change, coupled with more stations going off the air -- Radio Exterior de Espana went off the air around this time also. I still tuned the SW bands (and ham bands) at night, but noticed that there was less and less to hear as time went by. Even the ham bands began to diminish in activity. The last good SW DX I got was China broadcasting to Europe from Kashgar, and that was on my Grundig G2 off the whip, probably in 2015. In 2016 I began hearing less and less activity total, because of the low sunspots.

And remember, the sunspot 'peak' during 2010-2014 was lower than the peak before it (around 2001-2004 or so). This next cycle may have even a lower peak -- so get 'em while you can. Cycle 26 may have nothing to hear on SW but static and utes.

I've always DXed the MW band, ever since I was a kid. There is always something to hear, be it some classic hits station from Canada or California, or the CBC, or various Latino formatted stations from all over the West, or a few South Asian music stations. Sometimes I hear sports play by plays from California or Oregon. There is usually something that is worth listening to, even as background music while reading or doing other tasks.

I do maybe half of my listening to MW on my Sangean PR-D5 (a DSP radio, they were apparently analog PLL before 2012), an the rest of it is on various analog portables, ranging from digital readout ones by Radio Shack and Sangean to GE Superadios. My favorite analog radios with analog tuning are my Superadio III and my DX-350.

 

[DennisCA]

Sad reading overall, last night I sat with my disassembled RR-712 Philips and tested it on SW and got in BBC, some chinese, russian and french too, with justhe built in antenna. The MW band is sadly dead as a door nail in the nordic countries and I think the regulatory agencies are hostile to the idea of letting it be used for analog transmissions. But it's not like they are encouraging DRM either... Which looked really promising, until I see just how little there is to buy for it for consumers and the high prices on what little I found.

I just started out and it's pretty sad to see that the field seems to be in decline. It's just much cooler to catch things out of the air, than getting it via the internet.

 

[Boombox]

The MW band is sadly dead as a door nail in the nordic countries and I think the regulatory agencies are hostile to the idea of letting it be used for analog transmissions.

Norway apparently allows private MW stations, as there is one in western Norway that some guy elsewhere logged, I think he was a MW DXer in Germany. Not sure how common such stations are. Mostly low powered, I would think.

 

[GB46]

MW DX is typically limited to the dark side of the gray lines, so local daytime options are limited.

To pass the time, if you have a radio capable of scanning, check the common aero and GHFS freqs on HF. Lots of nothing very interesting, but some good stuff at times.

To which I would add a few of the maritime frequencies with navigational warnings and weather bulletins from the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Weather Service. If you can't decode digital modes, or don't want to, there are also voice broadcasts in USB on several frequencies. The ones I hear most often are on 8764 and 13089 kHz, but I've also heard them on 6501 and 8502. I believe 17314 is another one, but I haven't heard anything there.

Those voices, of course, are synthesized, and I get a kick out of their software's inability to pronounce some names. When that happens, it spells them out letter by letter, instead. Today, it was finally able to pronounce "Tehuantepec" (the gulf by that name), but got stuck on one of the volcanoes, which have Russian names, so it had to spell out a very long one. It also reads out "slash" and "dash" in the numbers that the USCG inserts at the start of their bulletins.

 

[Patch42]

MW DX is typically limited to the dark side of the gray lines, so local daytime options are limited.

I've actually found it more interesting of late to do daytime MW DXing. It strikes me as a better demonstration of equipment quality and operator skill. Nighttime reception is much more luck of the draw in regards to conditions. Gray line is interesting too, though that's again more luck than anything else. That luck is involved doesn't mean it isn't fun, of course.

The other thing that turned me off nighttime MW DXing is syndication. So I can hear Coast to Coast AM on every single channel. Who cares? And who's going to listen long enough to positively ID all those stations?

That's what moved me to try LW NDB hunting. The signal is nothing but the station ID, so IDing the station becomes a lot easier. If your equipment allows, you might want to give it a try. Unfortunately, if you really get into it you need very narrow filters and some seriously specialized equipment to do a decent job of it. And many of the NDBs have been decommissioned, so there's much less to listen for these days.

 

[ka3jjz]

Grey line DXing - on HF or MW - is not just about luck. It's understanding where you are on the terminator (the line that separates day and night) and where the station is that you want to hear on the other side. There are quite a few articles out there on the subject, and numerous apps out there to show you where the terminator is at any given time. If you get into that side of DXing, then a little digging for these apps is in order.

There's no accounting for old Sol- that's a whole 'nother discussion, and to a point, there's sometimes luck involved, but grey line DXing is a well known and well understood phenomenon.

Mike

 

[Saint]

I've actually found it more interesting of late to do daytime MW DXing. It strikes me as a better demonstration of equipment quality and operator skill. Nighttime reception is much more luck of the draw in regards to conditions. Gray line is interesting too, though that's again more luck than anything else. That luck is involved doesn't mean it isn't fun, of course.

The other thing that turned me off nighttime MW DXing is syndication. So I can hear Coast to Coast AM on every single channel. Who cares? And who's going to listen long enough to positively ID all those stations?

That's what moved me to try LW NDB hunting. The signal is nothing but the station ID, so IDing the station becomes a lot easier. If your equipment allows, you might want to give it a try. Unfortunately, if you really get into it you need very narrow filters and some seriously specialized equipment to do a decent job of it. And many of the NDBs have been decommissioned, so there's much less to listen for these days.

It's easy to find the id's with SDRplay and SDRuno, all i do is setup a IQ schedule that records 5 minutes before the top of the hour and goes to 5 minutes after the hour. I can get most of the id's that way very quickly.I can do that every hour on the hour and before you know it you have most of the radio station id's
Steve

 

[Patch42]

My RF-2200 doesn't have SDRplay or SDRuno. Not to mention a lot of stations don't ID at the top of the hour at night anymore.

 

[jwt873]

I've actually found it more interesting of late to do daytime MW DXing. It strikes me as a better demonstration of equipment quality and operator skill. Nighttime reception is much more luck of the draw in regards to conditions. Gray line is interesting too, though that's again more luck than anything else. That luck is involved doesn't mean it isn't fun, of course.

I sometimes listen to the broadcast band during the day. I keep a log of the stations that I can count on hearing without fail during day. That way if something that's not on the list pops up, I'll know it's not just regular propagation.

My record daytime DX was picking up KOA (850 KHz) in Denver at high noon. That's an 850 mile haul which is very unusual for daytime MW. What was really odd was that was the only DX station I was hearing on the band. Somehow just that one 'path' existed between us.