Monday, January 27, 2014

Anti-Cuban station from Guatemala

Guatemala City, Guatemala

Dear amigo Michael,
Just read the discussion about a now defuncty station in the TopNews Bulletin, and could not resist to tell the amazing story that follows.

Some time when the US sponsored anti-Cuban station known as La Voz del Cid was still on the air, a team of Radio Rebelde's sports commentators and an engineer from the station traveled to Guatemala City to broadcast a sports event that was going to take place in that Central American nation.

They went early to the stadium and installed the solid state portable audio mixer with its two commentators positions, hooked it up to the two phone lines that connected to the local phone company in order to send the audio signals to Cuba on one 4 wire circuit and with the other two wire circuit keep in touch with the Radio Rebelde Master Control in Havana.

But they could not make that hookup that had worked very well at many different locations to operate properly. They complained on the two wire direct line to Havana that there was a very loud audio signal in Spanish that leaked through without the possibility of removing that audio at all. They placed the telephone mouthpiece next to the local monitor at the mixer board and it was then that we realized that the audio was the infamous "program" from La Voz del Cid.

We asked the engineer to look around the stadium for towers or masts with an antenna hanging between the two and a ladder type open wire transmission line coming down from the center of the antenna...

Sure enough, from the top row of the grand stand of the stadium they could see the two steel masts that supported the antenna of the short wave station used by La Voz del Cid, the cause of the interference to the audio mixer board.

The highly capable engineer always carried in his tools kit and accesories ferrite ring cores (toroids) so he proceeded to place them at the proper places (microphone input, telephone lines input and output and the headsets of the commentators ... in order to remove the RF coming into the equipment from the nearby short wave station.

So, they were able to broadcast the sports event and the Cuban audience was very happy with the transmissions...

Of course that it was very interesting to learn, first hand, that the "clandestine" station was located not far from the center of Guatemala city, operating under the protection of the government of that country at
the time.

73 and DX
Your amigo in sunny La Habana  Cuba
Arnaldo (Arnie) Coro
Host of Dxers Unlimited radio hobby show
Radio Havana Cuba
(Prof. Arnaldo Coro Antich-CUB, via pres Michael Bethge-D wwdxc Jan 18)

La Voz del CID recording:
http://www.hueppelshaeuser.de/radios/Clandestine84_LVdelCID_hm.m3u
http://www.kurzwelle-historisch.de/qsl/qsl_Clandestine84_LVdelCID_hm.html
(Manfred Hueppelshaeuser-D)
)BC-DX/Top Nx 1147)
QSL/Gayle Van Horn/Teak Publishing)