By Arnie Coro, CO2KK
Hi amigos radioaficionados around the world, I am Arnaldo, Arnie, Coro, radio amateur CO2KK, your host here at Dxers Unlimited, our twice weekly radio hobby program... And here is item one, good news coming from Geneva , Switzerland. TheSecretary General of the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations specialized agency has taken his amateur radio license test and is now a licensed radio amateur operator, Dr. Hamadoun Touré, Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), received his Amateur Radio license October 8. Touré, now holds the call sign HB9EHT. He was born in Mali, Africa. He has a Master's Degree in electrical engineering from the Technical Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications of Leningrad and a PhD from the University of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics of Moscow. Congratulations to Dr. Toure that add his prestigious name to the hundreds of world personalities that are also amateur radio operators.... And of course, when you hear on the air HB9EHT from Switzerland, where he lives, give Dr. Toure a call and have a nice two way QSO with him...
Item two: The Radio Amateur's Academy program of the Cuban Federation of Radio Amateurs is now in full swing, with hundreds of participants all along the Cuban archipelago. Some of the students are there in order to prepare to upgrade their ham radio licenses, but the great majority are newcomers to the hobby that will take the test required to be able to obtain an amateur radio license and callsign...
Item three: A single 1.5 volts battery provides power to a unique regenerative solid state radio receiver, that has exceptional sensititivity and selectivity.... No, it won't provide output to a loudspeaker, but the volume on the standard walkman or similar headphones is more than adequate... The receiver uses very few parts, and none of them are hard to find.... as a matter of fact, I just completed another one made with totally recycled components removed from an old VCR Betamax machine, that by the way are a treasure chest of parts for your radio hobby construction projects...
More radio hobby related information coming up in a few seconds, after a short break for station ID...
I am Arnie Coro in Havana, back with you after a short musical interval...
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Si amigos, this is Radio Havana Cuba, the 100 percent QSL station, since the very first test transmissions using our telephone poles supported antennas, and a Gates One Kilowatt short wave transmitter way back in early February of 1961... You can send your signal reports, comments about our programs, and radio hobby related questions to arnie@rhc.cu or VIA AIR MAIL to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba. Now item four: Ham radio operators around the world getting ready for the upcoming contests. In some particular cases, preparations have been in progress for a long time and include transporting equipment and operators to far away exotic locations with rare callsigns that attract a lot of attention from other contest participants. But you don't need to spend a lot of money and fly far away from your home QTH to enjoy an amateur contest. For example, several Cuban contest enthusiasts have done very well by installing additional antennas that are up just for the contest. Among the most popular antenna set ups are the half square verticals that provide very low vertical take off angle using two not too tall masts. My half square beams were used by a Canadian contest station that operated from rare CQ Zone 2 very succefully. The Canadian hams with my good friend Bob Chandler VE3SRE as one of the organizers of the DX expedition for a CQ Radio Amateur Magazine Worldwide Contest, used masts made of thick wall PVC pipes for their 20 , 15 and 10 meter bands half square vertical antennas. By the way, just recently a Dxers Unlimited listener asked why the ham radio contests only take place on the old bands, 160, 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 meter bands , and the answer is that the so called WARC bands 30, 17 and 12 meters are rather narrow frequency assignments, and in the case of the 10 megaHertz band, it is shared with other radio communications services... so, the organizers of amateur radio contests decided by consensus not to use those bands for the contests...
According to another good friend CO2JD Charlie Oscar two Juliet Delta, Juan Carlos Molina, an excellent CW operator that has won several contests, operating on 40 meters at this phase of the solar cycle gives the participant much better chances of achieving many contest points and multipliers from local sunset to about an hour or an hour and a half after sunrise. Juan Carlos has also operated on 80 meters , but he makes many more contest points on 40 meters.
For your information, my favorite contests are the VHF - UHF ones, that sometimes provide fantastic contacts, while other times are absolutely boring, when no band openings happen... But, if you stay on monitoring six meters during a VHF contest, a sudden sporadic E opening that may last an hour or even less, can send your contest score way, way up !!! Amateur radio contests are one of the more than 81 ways that you and I enjoy this wonderful hobby of ours amigos !!!
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The Sun continues to be at a standstill, with many days, one after the other without a single sunspot.... and consequently, the daytime maximum useable frequency curve stays below 20 megaHertz and even lower...
Now item six.... SPRAT magazine the G QRP Club journal is a wonderful source of practical technical know how... George Dobbs, radio amateur G3RJV, the founder of the G QRP Club has written hundreds of articles that will now be available in a new compact disk compilation. Visit the G QRP Club's website for more information about the club's activities. QRP means operating with low power, and hams around the world consider 5 Watts as the maximum power that will keep your station within the QRP or low power definition. The use of the now extremely popular PSK31 keyboard to keyboard digital communications mode has opened up new frontiers for QRP operators worldwide, as PSK31 contacts are possible using extremely low power outputs to the antennas !!!
And talking about QRP, my lowest power amateur radio transmitter runs milliWatts but I have already made several nice two way CW Morse Code QSO's on the 20 meters band using my QRP RIG running at the 100 milliWatts or one tenth of a Watt power output level... I have even received several excellent 559 and 569 reports from stations in the US and Canada, and a 339 report from a station in France...
QRP operation is a lot of fun and a real challenge to your operating skills !!!
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Dxers Unlimited's weekend edition coming to you via shortwave and also via Internet streaming audio from 05 to 07 UTC. We are also on the Hispasat One D satellite transponder 79 vertical polarization, again from 05 to 07 UTC , but soon we will also be on the satellite with a second channel for our English language programs.
Now, ASK ARNIE, la numero uno, the most popular section of the show...answering a question sent from the Republic of South Africa, by listener Desmond in Pretoria... Des ASKS ARNIE, when we should see at least some recovery of the HF propagation conditions, because, as he rightly quotes in his e-mail message, his receiver picks up practically nothing above 20 megahertz these days. Well amigo Des, according to my good friend Angel Gonzalez Coroas, Cuba's number one sunspots expert, we very probably will see more sunspots by the end of next year... Angel says that the forecasts for cycle 23's final months were basically wrong, and that it is now , from July to December of 2007 that the solar cycle is going trough its period of minimum activity. And he adds that the rise in the number of sunspots will be starting to significant by July of 2008, but not earlier...
And now amigos as always at the end of the show, here is Arnie Coro's Dxers Unlimited's HF and low band VHF propagation update and forecast... Solar activity is expected to continue at very, very low levels, and the geomagnetic field will be also very quiet for the next few days. Ionospheric absorption will be at a minimum. Expect daytime maximum useable frequencies on the best North -South circuits not to exceed 21 megaHertz, but Transequatorial propagation may provide nice openings on the 10 and 6 meter bands from South America to the Caribbean, Mexico and Southern United States, and from Africa to the Mediterranean region... See you all at the mid week edition of the program amigos... and don't forget to send your signal reports and comments about my show to arnie@rhc.cu, I surely appreciate them very much amigos !!!