Radio Havana Cuba announces frequency changes

Radio Havana Cuba has changed the frequency of its broadcast in English to Central North America at 0100-0700 UTC from 6180 kHz to 6140 kHz. 6180 kHz will now be used in Spanish to Central America. Radio Havana’s morning Spanish language programmes [0000-0500 UTC] are now on two new frequencies to South America: 15120 kHz beamed 160 degrees from Havana, and 15360 beamed 130 degrees from Havana.
(Source: Dxers Unlimited midweek edition 12-13 August 2008/R Netherlands Media Network Weblog)

DXers Unlimited - mid week edition July 26-27

Dxers Unlimited's weekend edition for 26-27 July 2008
By Arnie Coro CO2KK

Hi amigos radioaficionados ! Yes !!! You are on the right frequency… Your radio is now tuned to Radio Havana Cuba's twice weekly radio hobby program, the one and only with the most up to date short wave propagation updates and forecasts...

By the Way ... propagation is rather poor right now, so if you notice poor reception , it is certainly a consequence of the effects of the extremely low solar activity ...

Item two: Radio is a lot of fun, and you can become part of more of it by exploring the different ways that you and I can enjoy the hobby.. for example, normally few of the regular international broadcasts short wave listeners are aware of the fact that radio receivers capable of picking up single side band signals and CW Morse code signals,as well as digital modes will open up a completely new world for them.

That's why I insist on the fact that when you are ready to upgrade to a better radio receiver, ALWAYS, and I mean it amigos, ALWAYS go for a radio that has a beat frequency oscillator and a product detector, the two circuits that make the whole difference, so that you can listen not only to CW Morse Code amateur radio communications, but also to Single Side Band voice, and pick up , with the help of your computer some of the very interesting digital communications modes that are now regularly on the air.

Are you ready to UPGRADE to a better radio ? OK, sure, go ahead, but don't dispose of your present receiver amigos... because owning two radios will allow you to enjoy the hobby a lot more....

Here is why….

For example, you can be taping a program on one radio, for listening to it later, and then continue to explore a specific band for DX at the same time. Some hobbyists have more than 2 or 3 radios, usually devoting one of them for portable work when traveling.

Item three: One of the problems that homebrewers of radios have to deal with is how to find the parts , the electronic components to make them, YES, its becoming more and more difficult , but keep listening to Dxers Unlimited's weekend edition and I will be telling you where to find lots of parts to be able to start up many of your electronic projects .

Item four: Our very popular YOU have Questions and Arnie tries to answer them, a fast tract way of solving your radio hobby related problems... send your questions to inforhc at enet dot cy and also via e-mail Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba.

Then as always at the end of the program, you will be able to hear our exclusive and not copyrighted , in the public domain, HF plus VHF low band , up to 50 megaHertz propagation update and forecast.

I am Arnie Coro in Havana, stay tuned, Dxers Unlimited will continue in just a few seconds.
.........

You are listening to the weekend edition of your favorite radio hobby program, coming to you from Radio Havana Cuba, and here is now you have questions and Arnie tries to answer them... Today's question comes from several listeners, from as far apart locations as Argentina and Norway !!!

Six of them happen to be amateur radio operators, two are short wave listeners, and one tells me in his e-mail that he just took his ham radio license test and will soon be on the air with his own amateur radio station, All of them have asked for my opinion about the HALF SQUARE antenna .

All of them are Dx hunters at heart, and are looking forward to the upcoming increase in solar activity, expected to begin sometime during the next year, while at this moment we continue to see very low solar activity.

Well amigos, once again I must declare myself as n advocate of the HALF SQUARE antenna array, even though, I must emphasize that it is a SINGLE BAND ANTENNA ...

Among the many advantages I see for the HALF SQUARE, is the fact that it is a low cost antenna, easy to install and self adjusting system that will provide the all important LOW TAKE OFF ANGLE essential for working DX. My experiments with HALF SQUARE antennas have gone from the 2 meter band all the way up to 20 meters, and I have not tested on the lower frequencies, because the HALF SQUARE antennas for the 40 and 80 meter bands need rather tall masts that I don't have available at my home QTH.

Anyway, the answer to your question amigos !!!

SURE, go ahead, try the HALF SQUARE, but be careful with the way you feed the antenna, as you should avoid feedline radiation, and the only way to achieve this is to install a coaxial choke balun right at the feedpoint.
For those of you not familiar with the coaxial choke balun, it is a very simple way of canceling the radiation from the outside of the shield of the cable by coiling no less than six turns of the coaxial cable with a diameter that will depend on the operating frequency.

For the typical 20 to 10 meter bands HALF SQUARE, the coaxial cable coil diameter should be about 20 centimeters or 10 inches, and it is not really critical. The HALF SQUARE antenna radiates on two main lobes,and this you must take into consideration, because you will want to install the antenna favoring the most wanted directions. Or you can do what I did with my 6 meter band HALF SQUARES, just install two of them with a switch , so that I may cover DX signals from all compass headings !!! The HALF SQUARE is easy to build, and also very easy to adjust, but again, I
must remind you that it is a single band antenna. Dxers at this stage of the solar cycle will like to build HALF SQUARES for 40 and 20 as the higher frequency bands are now much less active, to say the least, due to the lower solar activity !!!
......

Amigos, you are listening to Radio Havana Cuba, the name of the show is Dxers Unlimited, and this is not the only show I do here... May I invite you to join me Sundays and Mondays UTC days or Thursdays and Fridays UTC days at Breakthrough, our Science, Technology and the Environment update... a program where you will learn about how Cuba is working to apply the most recent advances of science and the technology to develop the nation, and also to protect the environment for the future generations... You can visit our website at rhc.cu, just that easy, just type rhc dot cu in your browser window and then go to the English page to pick up our program schedule. There you will also find the Dxers Unlimited's WebPages, with the scripts of the most recent shows for you to read... Now here is another of today's topics, as promised at the start up of the program ... how to find parts for your radio hobby projects…

First of all, I recommend that you join a local radio club, and learn about the many activities that radio clubs organize, including, of course, the fleamarkets and hamfests... There at the hamfests you can have a good time, learn a lot about the radio hobby, and explore the many items for sale that radio amateurs usually bring to the hamfest's fleamarkets.

For example, a Canadian friend told me recently in an e-mail that he had bought a plastic bag full of obsolete transistors, no less than 500 of them for just two Canadian dollars... the transistors were a very popular small signal type that could best be described as a sort of universal device, and that bagfull will soon be landing here in Havana, as my friend has donated it to the Plaza Radio Club's beginners project... Similarly you can find resistors, capacitors, printed circuit boards full of highly valuable parts that can be desoldered and recycled very successfully...

Another excellent source of electronic components is recycling old computers of the first generations, as the newer ones have such a high degree of integration that they are not worth the effort. Computer power supplies have proven to be a treasure chest of parts for the parts required to assemble vacuum tube radio's power supplies, as they are always high capacity high voltage electrolytics and silicon rectifiers. My 150 volts DC standard power supply that provides all the needs of the popular REGENERODYNE home brew receiver, uses a lot of parts recycled from an old AT machine switched mode power supply...

You can also look around for old TV sets, fax machines, old radios, computer monitors... you name it !
But be especially careful when handling TV sets and computer monitors, as the cathode ray tubes are really dangerous to work with when you are trying to remove the parts... In that case, don't attempt
to work with them if you are not fully aware of how to deal with the high vacuum picture tubes !!!

Si amigos, yes my friends, oui mes amis, you do need electronic components, nuts and bolts, fittings , PC boards etc. to make your own radios , but they can be found at very low cost or even for free if you know where to look !!!
............

Radio Havana Cuba recently celebrated its 47nd anniversary... And I am studying the possibility of organizing acontest for Dxers Unlimited's listeners that will end in May of 2009, when the station will be having its 48th birthdayt... The contest will be a lot of fun, and as soon as I have the rules ready, you will be learning about it... The idea is to run the contest during the whole period from September to March, from the autumn equinox to the spring equinox, so that everyone participating may have a good chance to win one of the prizes !!! !!!

OK ! Now let me see if there is something else that is missing from today's menu...OK, I found it, I wanted to mention the fact that SOLAR CORONAL HOLES receive designator codes too, like sunspot active regions.

Now, as always at the end of the program, here is Arnie Coro´s Dxers Unlimited´s , exclusive and not copyrighted HF plus Low Band VHF , from 30 to 50 megaHertz, propagation update and forecast.
The geomagnetic field is expected to be very quiet during the next three to five days, and the solar flux will continue to be at the bare minimum levels of between 65 and 67 units… No geomagnetic disturbances are expected during the next three days….. Long distance medium wave (AM) band propagation along east-west paths over high and upper middle latitudes is going to continue to be poor, propagation along north-south paths is fair.

I expect more Sporadic E events to happen from now until the end of the month, with some of them sending the maximum useable frequency curve up past the FM broadcast band and even into the 2 meters amateur band for very short periods… Amigos , I hope to see you all back here at the mid week edition of Dxers Unlimited next Tuesday and Wednesday UTC days and don't forget to send me your signal reports and comments about the show, as well as any radio hobby related questions you may want to know about. send mail to inforhc at enet dot cu, or VIA AIR MAIL to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba

(Arnie Coro)

DXers Unlimited - Weekend edition March 8-9

By Arnie Coro CO2KKH
Hi amigos radioaficionados around the world and in space , you are all most welcome to the weekend program of Dxers Unlimited, coming to you when once again solar optical observations show a spotless solar disc !!! Zero sunspots during four of the past six days until March the seventh…and nevertheless I see reports of 10 meters band openings between Namibia, callsign prefix V51 and Southern Europe, something that can be explained by the typical enhancement of trans equatorial propagation that happens as we approach the spring equinox of the Northern Hemisphere.

So, Saturday and Sunday I will be keeping a close watch on both 10 meters and 6 meters for South American stations that are surely going to be coming in to the Caribbean from Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile , Bolivia and Brazil… TEP, or Transequatorial propagation is one of the most interesting modes of Ionospheric propagation that incidentally was discovered by radio amateurs more than 50 years ago…Item two: Got a recent report of Radio Guama, the Pinar del Rio provincial network heard in Texas on 990 kiloHertz, their main station located near the city that has the same name of the province, Pinar del Rio. Radio Guama is also on the air on FM, so I expect to see reports of their FM broadcasts when the spring-summer sporadic E season starts…Item three: Also about Cuban AM broadcast stations between 900 and 1000 kiloHertz, right in the middle of the classic AM analog radio´s dials…

On 900 kiloHertz Radio Progreso´s 50 kiloWatts located in Holguin province can be usually heard in the Caribbean, Central America ,the USA and Canada by nulling the Mexican station on the same channel XEW, that according to some sources runs a very high power transmitter on that frequency. Many years ago, the Chief Engineer of Radio Progreso Cuban National Network, Carlos Estrada , visited Mexico City to attend an International Radio Broadcasting Conference, and he came back very impressed by the XEW 250 kilowWatt transmitter that used a Doherty type linear amplifier. Doherty and Terman-Woodyard linear amplifiers are now part of broadcast history, because practically all if not all of today´s new transmitters are built using solid state devices that operate with rather low voltages .

The solid state power output stages are modular, so in case one of them fails the transmitter still stays on the air at reduced power output, something broadcasters appreciate very much…More about AM broadcasting in a few seconds when Dxers Unlimited´s weekend edition continues. I am Arnie Coro , radio amateur CO2KK in Havana……….

Si amigos, sure, AM broadcast band Dx season for this winter is about to come to an end, but if just gives way to the spring equinoctial DX season that brings in some very nice openings too, especially at just after local sunset… With the extremely low solar flux that we are observing nowadays, I expect a very nice AM band spring equinox DX season to be starting up by next week… Now, more about Cuban AM stations in the 900 to 1000 kiloHertz segment of the AM broadcast band… on 910 kiloHertz here in Havana , we have Radio Metropolitana, a local capital city station that is on the air 24 hours , and on that same frequency 910 kiloHertz we also have Radio Cadena Agramonte from Camaguey city, that can be heard very well all over eastern Cuba due to its transmitter´s excellent location.

And here in Havana, on 950 kiloHertz we have the 10 kiloWatt Radio Reloj, the easiest Cuban station to identify because it sends out the letters R R on CW many times every day… You will hear a one per second pulse and the RR on CW from all of Radio Reloj´s network stations… Cuba is now using its national fiber optics cables backbone distribution network, as well as the several microwave radio relay systems, so many times you will notice that Radio Reloj´s signals on different frequencies have a slight time delay due to the coding and decoding process of the digital systems used by the fiber optic equipment…

By the way, this last item answers a question sent by listener Jeff, from Toronto, who asked why he could hear on two radios slightly different audio from Radio Reloj on 950 and 1020 kiloHertz…Now here is our next item… a special or amateur radio operators that are getting ready for the spring equinox DX season… Don´t expect this season to be a record breaking one… solar cycle 24 has not shown any more signs of activity after the tiny high latitude sunspot, and cycle 23 continues to provide many, many days of zero sunspots…

Anyway, during the spring equinox HF propagation conditions will certainly improve, and I expect that the 20 and 17 meter bands take a turn for the better starting in about a week or two from now…Another news item for radio amateurs has to do with the 60 meters band, that is now slowly becoming available to ham radio operators in some countries, although the trend is to authorize the use of specific frequencies, in other words, that the telecoms administrations want to keep radio amateur operators on the 5 megaHertz region of the HF spectrum tied to channelized operation, in order to avoid conflicts with primary users of that very much sought band of frequencies. 60 meters should be particularly useful for handling emergency traffic when the 40 meters band closes up for near vertical incidence skywave propagation, the mode used to communicate at short distances on the HF bands during emergencies.……..

You are listening to Dxers Unlimited´s weekend edition, coming to you from Havana. Now here is ASK ARNIE, la numero uno, the most popular section of the program according to your e-mail messages, letters, fax reports and when some of you visit here in Havana and have the opportunity to talk to us about our programming…

ASK ARNIE today is answering the question sent by listeners in Canada, the USA , the UK and Germany about DRM , Digital Radio Mondiale, the digital system that several stations are using now on the international short wave bands.Well amigos Mark, Charlie, Ian and Rudolph… DRM continues to be a source of controversial opinions among the world´s mass communications researchers, but there seems to be a consensus about the waste of resources that DRM is causing to the broadcast organizations, many of which are openly talking about severe budget limitations. It is quite contradictory to watch how an international broadcaster spends money in transmitting using DRM signals that have practically no listeners, while at the same time cutting back programs and language services that do have a well established audience, fully equipped with short wave radios that are working perfectly well…

The worst thing that is happening now is that there are no DRM capable receivers available at a competitive cost… and event the DRM receivers that do exist are as hard to find as the proverbial extinct DODO bird… If DRM wants to really survive, it must find financing for producing a high quality low cost receiver that could flood the world marketplace… That should be the number one objective of the DRM Consortium if they really want DRM to be successful… Instead of encouraging broadcasters to waste their limited resources in buying new DRM capable transmitters and put them on the air for many hours every day with no listeners picking up those broadcasts at the other end… someone must advise the Consortium about both basic marketing and audience research…

Just recently a well known Cuban senior engineer and university professor commented to me that the DRM basic transmission mode for short wave was showing very poor performance even at what he described as ideal distances for HF broadcasting. Professor Jose Angel Amador played back to me recordings of DRM broadcasts from the Montsinery site of Radio France International , that showed frequent totally silent periods as propagation conditions changed abruptly between Montsinery and Havana, changing from single hop to double hop back and forth.Professor Amador´s findings coincide very well with what I witnessed several years ago in South Africa when experimental DRM broadcasts from the Sines, Portugal site were sent beaming to Johannesburg… instead of the slow fading typical of such a long path multiple hops propagation observed with AM signals, the DRM was either heard with good quality or just vanished , making it impossible to follow the program content because of the silence periods…

The Montsinery to Havana path studied by Professor Amador is just another solid evidence that even if and when receivers are available, DRM broadcasts on short wave are much less reliable and less user friendly than standard AM and even than Single Side Band suppressed carrier signals !!!Your comments and opinions of DRM are invited… send them toarnie@rhc.cu .cu>, again arnie@rhc.cu and if you wish them to be put on the air just tell me in your e-mail. I do believe that it is about time that broadcasters that are testing DRM without listeners bring those tests to an end in order to save energy and reduce radio frequency pollution, as well as CO2 emissions that result from the generation of electricity that is wasted powering up those DRM transmitters…

My point of view is that if a station puts a signal on the air that can be heard somewhere, the energy and resources invested are well worth the effort… but why waste so much resources sending out DRM broadcasts that nobody can hear ?.…..This is Radio Havana Cuba, the name of the show is Dxers Unlimited and here is now our next item… our antenna topics section, that today will be devoted to folded vertical grounded monopole antenna as a small footprint option for radio amateurs wanting to operate their stations with a low take off angle antenna. My experiments with the folded vertical grounded monopoles started just recently after reviewing several technical papers about this type of antenna that is more and more becoming the de facto standard for AM broadcast band transmitting installations.

It was quite clear from the conclusions of the technical papers that the folded vertical grounded monopole could become a very nice antenna for amateur stations , especially those operating on the 160 , 80 and 40 meters bands… I am now in the process of gathering the materials to build and install a folded vertical grounded monopole antenna for the 20 meters band, a sort of scale model to test how it works as compared to a standard quarter wave vertical antenna with elevated radials that is going to be used as a reference at the same site, at CO2KK my ham radio station… As soon as the new test antenna goes up and results can be analyzed, you will hear about them here at your favorite hobby program…

Dxers Unlimited that is now coming to an end today with our HF plus low band VHF propagation update and forecast. Very low solar activity, zero sunspots, but due to the approaching spring equinox, we will be witnessing somewhat better propagation conditions especially around local sunset… See you all at the upcoming mid week edition of Dxers Unlimited next Tuesday and Wednesday UTC days amigos !!!
(Arnie Coro/R Havana Cuba)

Hot Spot DXing: Raul Castro New Cuban President

HAVANA, Cuba — Cuba's parliament named Raul Castro president on Sunday, ending nearly 50 years of rule by his brother Fidel but leaving the island's communist system unshaken. In a surprise move, an old guard revolutionary leader was named No. 2, suggesting that major changes are not likely anytime soon.
Continued story at Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,332158,00.html

Raul Castro Named Cuban President
Cuba's National Assembly unanimously votes to confirm Raul Castro as president to replace his brother Fidel.
BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Raul Castro Becomes Cuba's Leader

Drudge Report: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8V0T0N84&show_article=1

Profile: Raul Castro
BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5234790.stm

Raul Castro takes over as Cuba President
Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/

Radio Havana Cuba - shortwave services
All times UTC

English
0100-0200 6000 6180
0200-0300 6000 6180
0300-0400 6000 6180
0400-0500 6000 6180
0500-0600 6000 6060 6180 9550 11760
0600-0700 6000 6060 6180 9550 11760
2030-2100 9505 11760
2100-2130 9505 11760
2300-0000 9505 9550
(Gayle Van Horn/Monitoring Times SW Guide)

Arabic
2030-2100 11750 11800

Creole
0100-0130 9550
2130-2200 5965 9505
2230-2300 5965 9505
2330-0000 5965

Guarani
2230-2300 17705
2330-0000 17705

French
0000-0100 9550
0130-0200 9550
2000-2030 9505 11760
2130-2200 9505 11760
2200-2230 5965 9505
2300-2330 5965

Spanish
0000-0100 5965 6000 6060 6140 9600 11760 11875 13760
0100-0200 5965 6060 6140 9600 11760 11875 13760
0200-0300 5965 6060 6140 9600 11760 11875
0300-0400 5965 6060 6140 9600 11760 11875
0400-0500 5965 6060 6140 9600 11760 11875
1100-1200 6000 6180 9550 9600 11760 11805 12000 13760
1200-1300 6000 6180 9550 9600 11760 11805 12000 13760
1300-1400 5000 9550 11760 11805 12000 13680 15370
1400-1500 9550 11760 11805 12000 13680 13760 15370
2100-2200 9550 11750 11800 13760
2200-2300 9550 11750 11800 13760

Portuguese
2000-2030 11750 11800
2200-2230 17705
2300-2330 13760 17705
2330-0000 13760

Quecha
0000-0030 17705
(DX Mix News # 505 via Alokesh Gupta

DXers Unlimited - Weekend Edition February 16-17

Radio Havana Cuba
DXers Unlimited - Weekend Ediiton

by, Arnie Coro CO2KK

Hi amigos radioaficionados all around the world, and also greetings to those radio amateur operators now in orbit around Planet Earth.

Recently a listener asked for the complete detailed list of the the more than 83 ways that you can I can enjoy amateur radio, and practically all of them are available to almost anyone, except one that is exclusive to space travelers...because as you are surely aware not many of us have the opportunity of flying into Earth orbit !!!.

Enjoying our radio hobby may prove to be as inexpensive as searching for DX on the AM broadcast medium wave band with a low cost receiver, or as expensive and sophisticated as organizing and participating in an amateur radio DX expedition to a very remote location... Between those two extremes, there are more than 80 ways of having a good time with our radios amigos !!! Here is an excellent example.. become an ultra low power amateur radio operator... just recently an American ham was able to design and homebrew an ultra low power rig, that was built using a Zener diode as its active device... No, this is not a science fiction show... amigo Mike, AA1TJ experimented with a Zener diode that he operates as a broadband noise generator, and then proceeded to filter the radio frequency noise with a quartz crystal, converting it into the narrow bandwidth of an 80 meters band signal... Amazing.. , sure !!! But amigo Mike has done several other ultra low power or QRP sub P experiments that have allowed him to reach the ultimate goal of communicating under the criteria of one million miles per Watt of input power...

Congratulations to Mike AA1TJ, an excellent example of the many experiments that a dedicated radio amateur can do when both know-how and the interest in operating homebrew equipment go together... And talking about home brew equipment... be it a simple radio receiver or a sophisticated digital synthetized ham radio transceiver... there is nothing like operating a piece of radio equipment that you have built with your own hands... My 2 Watt transmitter , a crystal controlled rig that I like to operate on the 30 meters or 10 point one megaHertz amateur band, is a good example of what I am talking about... each time I finish a two way contact on the very interesting thirty meters band with the 2 Watt solid state homebrew rig, I feel a very special pleasure, as I know that the two way contact was possible thanks to spending many hours experimenting with recycled electronic components from TV sets, computers and even an old FAX machine to turn them into an effective 30 meters band transmitter...

Now please standby for a few seconds, as the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited continues after a short break for station ID...

.......
You are listening to Radio Havana Cuba, the name of the show is Dxers Unlimited and yes, we do QSL, we do thank you all for your reception reports and send back a nice QSL card to confirm that you have heard our station... Send your signal reports, comments about our programs and your radio hobby related questions to arnie at rhc dot cu... again arnie at rhc dot cu, or VIA AIR MAIL to Arnie Coro , Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba...

This is our weekend edition and now here is item three:

Solar activity continues to be at extremely low levels, with no sunspots seen for a very long period... scientists are now beginning to worry about what is really happening som 93 million miles of 150 million kilometers away from Planet Earth inside our nearest star... the SUN... According to some recently advanced criteria the present solar cycle 23 may extend well into 2008, with the upcoming cycle 24 not really showing up its first continuos sunspots active regions until next year... At the present time solar scientists are just scrutinizing the solar disc to try to find active sunspot regions that simply are not there..

Item four: Low sunspots or no sunspots are suppsedly the ideal condition for low frequency Dxing, and already 160 meters band operators are trying to improve their DX entities count to make the best possible use of propagation conditions on 160 meters that won´t return until at least nine or ten more years... Although operation on the 1.8 to 2.0 megaHertz amateur band requires large antennas, during the present period of very low ionospheric absorption due to the extremely low solar activities some ham radio operators are achieving amazing results on 160 using short vertical antennas and the proverbial inverted L, the most popular antenna among the 160 meters band operators around the world... Let me add that the very good propagation conditions on 160 will continue well into the end of March, and that similarly good DX conditions will be also enjoyed by 80 meter band operators..

.............................
Si amigos, this is Radio Havana Cuba, the name of the program is Dxers Unlimited, this is our weekend edition, reaching you on Saturdays and Sundays UTC days and yes we do QSL, we do verify reception reports with a beautiful QSL card that I am sure you will keep in your collection and show to your friends for years to come.

Item five: At the request via e-mail of several Dxers Unlimited listeners here is once again... what really happens everytime when I arrive at RHC Studio 6,and my sound engineer of many years now, Jose Costa Pupo, sets the audio frequency equalizer according to my own optimized frequency response curve... The shape of the curve is optimized specifically for my voice, so you won´t hear audio below 250 cycles per second, or above 3000 cycles per second...

And sure, it does sound much better under difficult propagation conditions... Pepe as we all here call Costa Pupo, also boosts the frequency range from 500 to 1500 kiloHertz by 6 dB over our reference, to further boost the talk power of RHC transmitters when Dxers Unlimited is on the air So what you actually hear is just your´s truly optimization of the audio frequency response to achieve the best possible reception of voice signals via short wave...

Item six: Our popular antenna topics section today will attempt to clarify things for listener Ben from Montana... Amigo Benjamin listens to our 6180 kiloHertz transmitter and wanted to improve his antenna for the 49 meters band. As he tells me that living out in the countryside gives him lots of room to install antennas, here is my advice. You can certainly improve your reception of the segment of the short wave spectrum from five to ten megaHertz by homebrewing the large size version of my FAN DIPOLE antenna. The length of each leg of this antenna is 20 meters and each side requires of three wires that fan out from the center insulator so that when they reach the end insulator they will be spread 5 meters in other words amigo Ben, your wide band fan dipole will have a center wire, and then the upper wire ends up two and half meters above the center wire, while the lower wire ends up two and half meters below the center wire of the dipole.

The antenna is fed using a one to one broadband balun and 50 ohms coaxial cable. If you will only be using the antenna for receiving only , this arrangement will work very well , but in case you want to use if for transmitting, then the antenna must be fed with a 300 to 450 ohms impedance balanced transmission line of at least fifteen meters in length, and then at the end of that balanced line, you must install a pair of balanced to unbalanced transformers or BALUNS, that can be switched remotely from the shack. One of the BALUNS is a one to one device and the other one is a four to one unit. From the BALUN´s low impedance coaxial line output you can run the coax feedline to an antenna tuner... In my practical experience such broadband antenna arrangement will provide you with an excellent receiving and transmtting system...

BUT , let me add that in order for this antenna system to be really effective it must be installed at least at a minimum height above ground of six meters, or better yet, you will want to install it at 10 meters minimum height above the sorrounding terrain. At my home QTH,here in Havana, I have a half size version of this antenna, that works well from about seven to twenty nine megaHertz, but having using the full size version at ham radio contests sites, I can assure you that the full size FAN DIPOLE with its 40 meters overall length is an excellent antenna for receiving between 3 and 10 megaHertz. If you do homebrew the antenna and install it amigo Ben, keep me up to date about the results that you achieve during this period of very low solar activity when low band Dxing is plentiful ,and of course I also want to know how much does the reception of our 6180 kiloHertz transmitter improves at your location...

...................
Now the weekend edition of Dxers Unlimited continues via short wave and from 05 to 07 UTC we are also on the world wide web via streaming audio from http://rhc.cu.... Just before going QRT, here is Arnie Coro´s HF plus low band VHF propagation update and forecast.

It seems like the tail end of solar cycle 23 is going to last for at least several more weeks... the most recent forecasts call for extremely low solar activity , rock bottom solar flux near 70 units and lower, with very few sunspots to be seen for at least six more weeks... so ,again for your information short wave propagation conditions will be limited to the lower frequency bands, with daytime propagation reaching only up to 18 or 20 megaHertz, while the night time maximum useable frequency on some paths will dip even below seven or six megaHertz , amazing as it may sound , but something typical of extremely long periods of very low solar activity.

Amateur radio operators that enjoy the use of the 160 meters band will be able to work some nice DX during the rest of February and early March... something that they will share with AM medium wave broadcast band Dxers, they both will be enjoying what could possibly be described as the best propagation conditions for the AM broadcast band and 160 meters for many years to come... I do Hope to have you all listening to the mid week edition of Dxers Unlimited , Tuesday and Wednesday UTC days, and don´t forget to send me your signal reports , comments about the program and radio hobby related questions to arnie at rhc dot cu, or VIA AIR MAIL to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba...