Good old days

[NQC]

Hey N2AVH,

“ Noise” is obviously a subjective phenomenon.A number of QTH’s are now
beat up by device noise ( to whatever degree).

In ancient times there were zillions of high powered SW broadcasts. These were engineered for “ the masses” who very often were using moderate grade ( or lower) receivers on  telescopic antennas  in low or moderate noise environments.

Any decent rig on a long wire was gravy.

Now it’s not just a matter of getting blasted by local noise. It’s also the simple fact that nearly ALL strong broadcasts ( and utilities for that matter)
are simply GONE.

What is left ( outside of the ham bands) now ( IMHO) requires a GOOD rig, good antenna AND a quiet QTH .

There still is “ some “ stuff out there. But much of it is VERY far away and probably limited in power.

Ex:Currently there are MANY domestic broadcasts from China, especially on gray line.

Good luck hearing most (or any) of them if you can’t meet the criteria above.

There is still “SOME “ decent strength Western Hemisphere stuff still kicking around, but not a lot.

Now I just have to work “around” the noise ( whenever possible).

 I am concentrating much more on the broadcast band , with a very distant second effort on HF and long wave .

On the UP side, regenerative rigs “like “ short antennas . So my indoor 40 meter
“ quarter wave” may grab “ something “ .I haven’t done a regen since the farm came down off the roof.

It’s definitely a TBA for crystal or TRF rigs.

Not sure how much Dx I might get. But even strong local AM stations on a home brew (for music ) might be a fun alternative to the factory built DX 440.

The rig itself is “coming along” . I made a very good amount of progress on it this past weekend.

de NQC

[n2avh]

NQC- Yes, it's just a question of how much time, trouble, and expense we want to go through to hear a station that likely won't be there in a couple of years. I don't really understand the audience for those stations (largely Chinese and N/S Korean, but three Peruvians and one Bolivian, and a mixed bag of others) that still exist, given what must be very low rates of SW-receiver ownership. The US and European pirate/low-power stations are vanity projects that don't care if anyone's listening, so they will likely continue and even proliferate as long as there isn't a crackdown...and why would any government care at this point?  But I don't want to imagine a scenario in which shortwave broadcasting comes back into fashion, as that scenario would likely involve something apocalyptic.

[NQC]

Hey N2AVH,

 re The remaining "tropical"  stations ( Peru, Bolivia ,China, Brazil,Canada, etc) : In THEORY there are still remote areas of the world without much in the way of local radio station coverage or internet. So the few regional SW stations that ARE left may still have "some" audience (maybe) . . Many (or most) of the tropical SW stations in Central/S America also were on the AM broadcast band as well .I believe 80 or 90 % of the listener ship was always  on AM . SW was just kind of a 'fill in". Even back in the day  I also think that the   same advertising on SW made a lot less money as well.

FWIW,  way back when ,some of the German high end cars- for sale IN Germany- had 49 M for "regional" coverage of a few favorite stations.

Perhaps the shrinking audience and cost vs return  of SW simulcasts  ( along with transmitter parts maybe becoming harder to come by) struck a death blow for 99.9 % of all  tropicals .

There are a few "hobby" stations still on ( R. Tarma Peru 4775, +  1 AM and multiple  FM , WAZN 1470 Boston, WJIB 720 Boston, etc).

It seems that China may still have an audience for "tropicals "in rural areas . But they may be govt subsidized anyway .The PRC may simply want to flood ALL media outlets, even low audience tropicals.

Not sure if the US govt  really cares about SW pirates now . But admittedly (since my "friend" shut down- for HIS own reasons) ,  I haven't researched how many (if any ) busts there have been on US SW (or X band AM) pirates lately  . FWIW, most of the Xband AM outlets around here  shut down for their own reasons , not because of a bust.Probably the same deal on SW. But DON'T do it ANYWHERE on the  FM band. You really put a bull's eye on yourself there.

Re SW ever coming back , even during an "apocalypse". I really doubt it.Big SW stations would need lots of money and electricity. I also doubt that in a serious crisis than folks in the US would be trying to get info on SW. Any SW  activity in that scenario would be "lone cries in the wilderness" type stations  with the operators just " throwing it out there"  out of desperation. VERY few (or no) folks would probably  hear them.

 Low power local FM (or MAYBE AM) would be the "better" band of choice. But how many people  would have FM (or AM ) broadcast transmitters in their possession and ready to go during very bad times ?   Precious few.Their are a LOT more rogue  hams that would  be able to gear up on SW . But again, I doubt a population  on crisis  is going to park  for hours on 6955 hoping to hear something "useful ".

SW never had a huge audience anyways (compared to AM /FM), even during the 1970's heydays.SW broadcasting (like it or not)  is now  simply an obsolete technology.

de NQC

[n2avh]

Re Radio Tarma, on their web page they have a chat function (well, at least as of a year ago) and someone said they were listening from inside a mine! So that was very heyday-of-tropical-bands. By the way, I asked Radio Cultural Amauta (4955) back in February why they were no longer on, and they got back to me very quickly to say the shortwave antenna "had problems" but they were fixing it.  I haven't heard them since then, even on closer SDRs (Bonaire, Argentina, Brazil...the Lima one is useless), so either they couldn't fix it or they asked themselves why they were bothering. I agree with you that the Chinese stations are probably not subject to the usual economic calculations--they just don't want anyone out-of-reach of the party line....as opposed to places like Burkina Faso, which went over to FM serving towns more than 30 years ago, and presumably didn't see the point of burning money to serve rural populations.

[NQC]

Hey N2AVH,

Tarma is a really cool “ network “ ( having the SW and I believe the AM outlet IN Tarma  and FMs scattered around the region- not sure how much of Peru these cover though).

Sinning against the radio Gods , I have listened to R T on stream ( which seems to be intermittently available).On one occasion he really played some awesome
Andean music, very similar to the music from my wife’s  birth region of Peru
( Departmento Junin ).

Other times ( WHEN he is streaming) it is “good”  but I wish I could remember the day / time he really played the gold records .

R. Cultural Amauta strikes a vague ( possibly imaginary) bell.I don’t THINK I ever logged them.

I have found that Peru , Chile and the Southern half of South America was always kind of tough even back in the day.Ecuador and most countries in Northern South America seemed a good bit easier.

Never had too much luck on the Africans ( except Spring Bok and 1 or  2 others from The Republic of South Africa).
 Maybe a few other tropicals from
Africa , but not many. Mostly it was the big guns.

Asia was also pretty much “ big guns “ only ( ie high powered R. Japan, etc  , over the
 N .Pole ). But even RJ  (actually FROM Japan ) was not too common for me.

I did strike gold one night while camping with my wife in Maine 20 years ago, logging 12 Peruvians in one night on the Icoms.

I believe many SW tropicals run single vertical towers , perhaps without much in the way of radials ( or maybe low height dipoles). I would bet most had/  have pretty high angle signal and fairly low power.This may explain why the more distant stations ain’t so easy to copy outside of the region ie in North America ( along with being in
a “ naturally “ noisy part of the band and propagation “ variability “ factors ).

But the higher angle SW is probably more dependable for , say, 50 to 300 miles- perhaps a bit more so during the day  and / low lobe leaAM probably limited to ground wave during the day.

Not sure how these small stations did at night- on AM or SW.

But having two frequency choices is  always good.

FWIW,I have found U.S. AM graveyard band/  single tower/ at 1 kw or less are good to about 300 mi at night.

Grey line may be a different matter: it has been said that it is not as dependent on the solar cycle and it may act somewhat like a duct , conducting signals further than just the simpler  and more conventional ionospheric propagation.

I also had some crazy stuff happen when I used to run 40 M SSB QRP  daylight NVIS.

“X” number of minutes after sunset ( when working NY) I would go from good copy to ZERO in 45 seconds to at most a minute and a half - EVERY DAY, at the EXACT same window after sunset.Like  clockwork. It was SO dependable it was almost freaky.I had a few theories, but nothing definitive.

de NQC

[East Troy Don]

Perhaps the shrinking audience and cost vs return  of SW simulcasts  ( along with transmitter parts maybe becoming harder to come by) struck a death blow for 99.9 % of all  tropicals

de NQC

Not to mention the death blow to the technicians that know how to service those  transmiiters.       Time marches on....

[NQC]

Hey Don,

Absolutely true.Not only would a third world station have trouble finding parts for a tube dinosaur Collin’s , Continental  or RCA transmitter, but try finding someone qualified to actually WORK on one ( again IF they could find the parts).

Salvage, innovation,  substitution ,in house  rebuilding ( IF possible) , etc would be the order of the day.

Although most of these 1Kw tube wonders are fairly “ simple “ in design, it would probably take a REALLY talented tech to pull it off now.

And again, there is the $$$$!!!. I can see an owner wanting to keep an aging FM transmitter up. And probably, even an old AM rig.

But a SW transmitter? From a business standpoint it would be such a distant third , probably just to the point of “ junk it “.

The only exception I know of is on Tarma.He states he makes near zero money on SW and keeps 60 meters going purely as a public service and a labor of love.

Probably not the philosophy ( or even an option) nearly anywhere else.



NQC

[n2avh]

Tarma and (if it ever returns) Amauta are cool because they existed back in the day, like Radio Brasil Central on 4985 and misc, Brazilians in 60m up to 19m (!). Logos and Senda Cristiana, like the Bolivian on 3310 and Colombian (Venezuelan? Nobody knows) on 4945, are recent SW-only creations and a little more mystifying because of that. 

By the way, I mentioned recently that the SDR in Lima was useless--tonight it's not bad (16db, not good but not useless single digits) and the 3 active Peruvians are coming in very well.

[NQC]

Hey N2AVH,

Just out of curiosity  ( and not that I will probably  copy ever  them direct), what were the names and  frequencies of the Peruvians you heard on the Lima SDR ?

de NQC

[n2avh]

4775 Radio Tarma, 4810 Radio Logos, 4820 Radio Senda Cristiana.  I have heard all of them on local-to-me SDRs (I no longer have a real OTA setup) so I know they can make it into the US, but maybe not strong enough to ID except by comparison to a closer SDR. (Same for the Bolivian on 3310, radio Mosoj Chaski)  Logos is the weaker one and usually in North America there's a ute on 4810 so you have to use the lower sideband. 

[NQC]

Hey N2AVH,

Thanks for the info. The  published (supposed  )  listings for tropical,  are sometimes ( or often) old and /or inaccurate ( same things goes for Cuba on the  regular AM broadcast band).

 It's  really  useful and nice to get actual updated ("live" ) listings from someone.

Once upon a time I had an AWESOME listening capability (Icom R-70, R-71a, IC -735,etc, etc  -  big roof top antennas, blah, blah.All long gone . How the "mighty" hath fallen ).
 
I am now limping along with a "well  built" but INDOOR "40 M  1/4 wave "  square   and a deluge of QRM. My Dx440 and 803a ( which are all I have left )are "good" receivers. But obviously NOT   anywhere close to what I used to have.These rigs have a "BFO" , but no separate filters . When tuning SSB they are kind of pain to use. On   exalted  carrier for  AM they  completely fall flat and are essentially useless- I do MUCH better in AM. For how little is left on HF I have yet bothered to try an inline trap. I am probably 90% on the AM broadcast band now digging out what I can.

I really miss the PBT, notch and U/L SSB filters on the Icoms. You could do some amazing things using those controls.

I am really old school and much prefer listening to what I can  direct on my rigs . But I do  occasionally go onto SDRs at times (or even worse, streaming ) when condition are impossible or I am away from home.

Oh well, boo hoo for me  , moving on with what I have left. I have MUCH bigger problems in my life  now than poor radio reception.

It was a good run though.

Thanks Again,

de NQC

[n2avh]

My only issue with SDRs is that they don't seem to be very good receivers.  I guess that's a big issue

[NQC]

Hey N2AVH,

SDR’s can do some absolutely astounding things at times, compared to an analog box ( ie R-71a , etc).

BUT an SDR is a lot like any radio: It’s only as good as the location , propagation and antenna allow.

And like a box, perhaps some SDR’s are not as good as others.

Additionally, at least in the early days of SDR’s , I had HEARD that the  noise of the PC itself could get into the audio.

Not sure how big an issue this was or if it could have been resolved in later versions.

And smashing this one last time, at least in MY case, if the “ receiver “ ( box OR SDR ) isn’t at MY QTH , it isn’t quite the same.

But on the UP side, you can get a lot closer to desired signals compared to your own QTH , which may simply be impossible to copy “ direct “ on your own antenna and your box or SDR.
 

I have listened to  weak
European “ traffic” on the Twente SDR when I didn’t have a PRAYER of hearing it direct.

So , kind of a mixed bag.

de NQC

[n2avh]

I agree that they're impressive, but I think that if you put me in Lima (or Twente or Westminster MD) with an FRG-7 I would have better results than those SDRs do, except for their synchronous AM upper/lower function which is very cool.

[NQC]

Hey N2AVH,

Interesting.

That could be a cool  experiment to try.

de NQC