April 5th 2013
I am so stoked to have the Hammarlund HQ-150 working again. Last week it just stopped working and would not produce very much sound at all. When it was in the AVC position the s-meter would also go full scale and produced a slight humming sound through the speaker. I took it off the work desk and was going to dig into it,
but after wiggling tubes around a bit it suddenly started working again. I can only assume that the 12AVQ which works as an audio amp has a bit of a loose connection at the socket. Will have to figure out if the socket is bad or the pins on the tubes are just bent.
Ok, so this was a pretty exciting week on the shortwave bands that included a CME on Apr 5th around 17:30 UTC that attenuated some of the signals but was still able to pick up Radio Kuwait around 11:am on 13.650. It was all in Arabic so I dont have a clue as to what was being said, but the music was rather interesting. They also have an English broadcast on 15540 KHZ around 1800 UTC but I have not been able to hear them yet at that time or frequency.
Another fun station to listen to is Voice of Greece in the early evening time 00:00 UTC on 9420 khz. The broadcast that I can hear is all in Greek although they also include Spanish Albanian Polish and Russian at different times of the day. The folk music they play is very entertaining as well as interesting.
And of course I just can not forget to include Radio habana Cuba in the mix. This is another one of my favorites to listen to in the early evening time. There English broadcasts are vey entertaining as well even if they do have an anti-american agenda. It would seem that we have been really unfair to them. One of the neat features is the DX report, where they talk about propagation and other ham radio related topics. They also feature local music that can be fun to listen to.
What can be said about the Voice of Korea english broadcasts that you wouldnt already expect to hear. The announcer spouts off anti-american propaganda as he talks about how we are all imperialists and are attacking them with our S. Korean allies. They can be heard around 9:30 in the morning for about 30 minutes on 9980 khz. The announcers all sound stereotypical N korean with very broken english as they bash the United States and S Korea.
And remember that if you are going to listen to the shortwave bands on your ham radio that these stations that I listed are all in AM, so be sure to switch to that mode as well as open up your receive filters to get the best sound quality possible. If you dont have a shortwave radio then they can be found for under 20 dollars now over at Amazon.
I am so stoked to have the Hammarlund HQ-150 working again. Last week it just stopped working and would not produce very much sound at all. When it was in the AVC position the s-meter would also go full scale and produced a slight humming sound through the speaker. I took it off the work desk and was going to dig into it, but after wiggling tubes around a bit it suddenly started working again. I can only assume that the 12AVQ which works as an audio amp has a bit of a loose connection at the socket. Will have to figure out if the socket is bad or the pins on the tubes are just bent.
Ok, so this was a pretty exciting week on the shortwave bands that included a CME on Apr 5th around 17:30 UTC that attenuated some of the signals but was still able to pick up Radio Kuwait around 11:am on 13.650. It was all in Arabic so I dont have a clue as to what was being said, but the music was rather interesting. They also have an English broadcast on 15540 KHZ around 1800 UTC but I have not been able to hear them yet at that time or frequency.
Another fun station to listen to is Voice of Greece in the early evening time 00:00 UTC on 9420 khz. The broadcast that I can hear is all in Greek although they also include Spanish Albanian Polish and Russian at different times of the day. The folk music they play is very entertaining as well as interesting.
And of course I just can not forget to include Radio habana Cuba in the mix. This is another one of my favorites to listen to in the early evening time. There English broadcasts are vey entertaining as well even if they do have an anti-american agenda. It would seem that we have been really unfair to them. One of the neat features is the DX report, where they talk about propagation and other ham radio related topics. They also feature local music that can be fun to listen to.
What can be said about the Voice of Korea english broadcasts that you wouldnt already expect to hear. The announcer spouts off anti-american propaganda as he talks about how we are all imperialists and are attacking them with our S. Korean allies. They can be heard around 9:30 in the morning for about 30 minutes on 9980 khz. The announcers all sound stereotypical N korean with very broken english as they bash the United States and S Korea.
And remember that if you are going to listen to the shortwave bands on your ham radio that these stations that I listed are all in AM, so be sure to switch to that mode as well as open up your receive filters to get the best sound quality possible. If you dont have a shortwave radio then they can be found for under 20 dollars now over at Amazon.