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Transcripts for Mann DX, Page One |
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Carl Mann DX: Carl Mann of Omaha, Nebraska is a veteran journalist and radio hobbyist. Carl has been introducing KNLS listeners to the world of distance listening (DXing) for more than a decade. You can review Carl's scripts by clicking on the subjects listed above.
DX loggings are records kept of day to day activities related to DXing. Much like the logs kept by ship captains and transmitter operators, they keep track of details that would otherwise be lost or forgotten over time. Logbooks become valuable journals of a DXer, so it’s important to begin a thorough procedure of logging as early as possible. A good logbook is almost like a DXer’s Diary. What details do logbooks contain? The answer is, whatever you observe. DX details on reception and programming heard make up most of a logbook, but general observations such as band conditions, new equipment and antennas being tested and used, reception reporting, and even specific details learned about stations can be included. Some DXers prefer formatted log pages that have prescribed columns to fill in. The other extreme is simply blank pages where the entries are made according to a personal format and written out in conversational style. Either way, the entries should always begin with the time and date of the event. When logging a station, enter who it is (when known) and details on signal strength, interference, and the programming heard. Be sure to include our own personal comments. Make notes of anything that strikes you as interesting about programs or reception. And when writing program information, be specific; try to include some direct quotes from the announcements. All of this will be useful information when it comes time to look up a reception or even when looking back to a period of time in your DXing life.
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Standard Time & Frequency Stations (STFS)
STFS stands for Standard Time and Frequency Station. They are an unusual hybrid for the DXer: are they utility DX or broadcast DX? They are utility stations since they provide a unique service, but still they broadcast for the general public. Most STFS stations are operated by the government of the country in which they are located. One exception was Australia’s VNG, run by a group of users, but just for a while in the 1980s and 1990s. WWV in the U. S. was put on the air in 1923 and has aired time signals ever since. The time is based on the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado, a timepiece so accurate that it would take thousands of years for it to gain or lose one second. Even though radio waves travel at the speed of light (186 thousand miles per second), a fraction of a second is lost before the signal reaches the listener. A radio wave takes one-seventh of a second to travel around the world. For precision time keeping, this has to be taken into account by the user. It’s natural that a time station will also be a standard frequency station. By keeping count of the radio waves generated each second by the transmitter, an accurate, precise means of frequency measurement is obtained, allowing the transmitter to be a standard frequency beacon on its channel. Some stations provide even more services besides time and frequency. WWV airs propagation conditions and forecasts hourly. Today there are dozens of STFS stations around the world. Some DXers like to specialize in trying to log them. Some identify (ID) every minute, others only on the hour. Some are on constantly, others are on the air only for brief periods during the day. But most are good verifiers and will QSL accurate reception reports.
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Grayline is a propagation condition that briefly exists at a given location. It utilizes the polar path allowing unusual reception conditions between two points on the globe. It happens on frequencies that work best during night conditions and is most frequent in winter months. Under usual conditions, a listener will find reception best on lower frequencies when using the path of darkness. This means stations to the east are best heard during evening, and to the west during the morning pre-dawn hours. This is possible in reverse using grayline. In the winter, with long hours of darkness, it may be just getting dark at the reception point simultaneously with the last few minutes of darkness at transmitter point far to the east. On the globe, this signal is following the area of darkness at the terminator line, that is the line between night and day. This is called the grayline. This special reception condition will only last minutes. In North America the best illustration is that some Chinese stations have been logged during late afternoon hours where usually they only come in during pre-dawn hours. In the Midwest, its possible to hear Chinese regionals on the 6 mHz band at local sunset, but it lasts less than 30 minutes. Also East Europe has been heard at dawn on 60 meters using Grayline.
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Jamming is the intentional interference set up by a government to block listening to a station that government does not want its citizens to hear. During the propaganda exchanges brought on by international broadcasting, some governments wanted to prevent opposing messages to be heard. Competing transmitters were placed on or near the frequency of the offending station in an attempt to jam the message. These transmitters are called jammers. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was believed to be the most active country involved in jamming. Their jamming transmitters would sound like loud, continuous buzz saws, with an occasional Morse code identifier. It was common to hear a station broadcasting in Russian or in an Eastern Bloc language with one or more jamming transmitters competing for the frequency. Jamming lessened as the Cold War wound down in the 1980s, but it does continue. Today’s jammers often broadcast either a grinding, growling sound, or distorted, annoying and unintelligible audio from a programming service. In the Mideast, jammers use quick, warbling tone sweeps, that sounds like bubbles. Sometimes a national station will use its own signal to block another’s message. This is called co-channeling, where the country’s national station pops up on a frequency close enough to interfere with or block the offending outlet, even moving in frequency when the offender moves. The effectiveness of jamming is limited. The ground wave of a transmitter will block an outside station the most effectively, meaning jammers must be near population centers to work efficiently. Jamming signals miss the population their skip zone, an area they skip over during the first skywave hop.
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Amateur Radio Operators, nicknamed “hams,” are doing what they enjoy on their own time and expense. Hams were around at the dawn of radio, and were instrumental in the exploration of wireless communication. They were among the first to establish distant communication on shortwave, and the first to explore single sideband. It’s because of this inquisitive exploration that hams are assigned specific portions of the radio spectrum for their own use providing they pass their government’s stringent testing. It’s not all experiments with new circuits and components however. Hams communicate for pleasure as well as during emergency situations. Hams are found on their own band of shortwave frequencies, on 80, 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, and 10 meters in the shortwave portion of the radio spectrum. Frequencies of these bands start at 3.5, 7, 10.1, 14, 18, and 21 mHz. DXing the ham bands is a valuable experience for any DXer or SWL. After regular listening, the propagation characteristics of the different portions of the shortwave spectrum become more obvious. Writing hams using the Call Letter Book can net a collection of QSL cards from all over the world. And if the interest in ham radio is strong enough, you may decide to study for the test and get your own license and equipment. Amateur Radio Operators make for some very interesting DX. They operate from just about anywhere in the world providing DX catches from countries and areas not served by regular broadcast or utility stations. They operate at one thousand watts or less, and can be on the air anytime. They identify frequently, and being fellow radio enthusiasts, many understand the importance of your QSL request.
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The Solar Cycle is the period where the number of sunspots on the sun’s surface go from minimum to a peak number and back again. More sunspots mean improved high frequency reception and possible radio disruption. Since the sun is the engine that drives the earth’s ionosphere, it’s activity is monitored to help forecast shortwave reception conditions. This means counting sunspots, giving out more electromagnetic waves, which in turn strengthens the earth’s ionosphere making for better propagation on higher frequencies. Also with sunspots comes the increased chance of solar flares, which create problems with the ionosphere. The solar cycle lasts approximately 11 years. It has been as long as 13 years and as short as 9 years. Once the minimum of sunspots is reached the rise to the peak is fairly quick, with the descent being slower. Some solar cycles have produced better conditions than others. The peak in 1958 allowed 5 watt citizen band transceivers on 26 mHz to communicate around the country. Earlier, during a solar cycle in the early 1940’s, low power transmitters on Rommel’s Nazi tanks in Northern Africa could be heard during daytime hours in the U.S. Less was known about high frequency propagation then, and the German’s communications in the 27 to 33 mHz region were unknowingly heard worldwide. For the DXer, the solar minimum was reached in 1996, meaning it is again on the rise. More international broadcasters will be selecting higher frequencies as conditions improve up there, allowing for less congestion on the lower frequencies around 49 and 41 meters.
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Solar storms occur when a solar flare from a sunspot releases extra electromagnetic waves, along with high-speed particles of gas. This in turn affects the earth’s ionosphere and its ability to propagate shortwave signals. It happens most often during peak periods of high sunspot activity. There are two kinds of storm disruptions: Ionospheric disruption and Geomagnetic Storms. The ionospheric disruption can last minutes to hours. A solar flare, which is like a tongue of flame reaching out from the sun’s surface, will release a burst of electromagnetic waves that in turn can activate the ionosphere. The ionosphere can reach such high levels that the maximum usable frequency can go up into the very high frequency ranges of 30 to 50 mHz. But meanwhile, the D layer, the level that absorbs radio signals, also is increased, and will create a shortwave fadeout on skywaves in the lower portions of the shortwave band. What follows is a geomagnetic storm. The sun is constantly releasing atomic particles that stream to earth as the solar wind, normally caught up in the earth’s geomagnetic field. During solar disturbances, these particles are released at much higher speeds than normal. Still, they take 20 to 40 hours to arrive, and when they do, the earth’s magnetic field is whipped around like a weathervane in a storm. This, in turn, disrupts the ionosphere. Signals from and passing through the polar regions experience the heaviest disruption and will vanish first. These disruptions may last hours or even days, depending on the level of the storm. At night, solar storms create what medium wave DXers call the auroral effect. In middle latitudes during such a period stations from the polar directions vanish allowing clear reception of rarely heard signals from the equatorial direction.
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For the DXer, the most important announcement is the station identification, or for short, the station ID. It’s necessary for the correct logging of the station and for a reception report. But DXing means coming across many signals where a possible or likely ID is often determined by means other than the definite announcement. How does a DXer log a station where the ID is not fully heard, or heard at all? A log entry still needs to be made. In fact, keeping notes on unidentified stations may help in future detective work in identifying the station. The ID can be logged in one of four ways: positive, presumed, tentative, or unidentified. The positive ID is the definite announcement identifying the station. A presumed ID is a station the listener recognizes by its programming or announcer’s voice or name, but without the positive ID. The tentative ID is a station where logic and detective work indicates its identity, but no other proof is heard. And the unidentified station is the mystery, providing only vague clues to its source. It’s important to indicate the stage of identification of your logging. Conditions and schedules change frequently on shortwave. Even the best DXers can be mistaken as to a station’s identity without hearing the full ID. Another trap is the “list logging”. This happens when a listener identifies a station by checking a frequency list then logs it with certainty.
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Stations that operate in secrecy are called clandestine stations. They broadcast opposing or hostile political programs to neighboring or nearby countries, or even from inside their own country, sometimes on a regular schedule. Since shortwave can cross political borders without censorship, it was found to be a useful tool for presenting opposing political views. In 1939 Italy began political broadcasts to North Africa. Britain countered by forming the BBC World Service. Propaganda broadcasts quickly became widespread during World War Two, continuing long afterwards into the Cold War. But it isn’t just government operated stations that send out political programs. Clandestine stations, some funded by governments, others run by rebel forces or political groups, operate undercover to keep from being found or to conceal those behind the message. Some Clandestines are similar to pirate stations: unlicensed, on the move, shifting frequencies and schedules to keep from being located. Others use professional studios and transmitters of a secret, host government or organization. Also similar to clandestines are covert stations that apparently send secret messages with no identification, often using a 5-digit code for each letter. Also called “numbers” stations, they have been monitored for years in mainly English, Spanish, and German. Clandestines, or “clannies” as they are nicknamed, are a challenge for Dxers. They identify only by name or slogan and may have irregular broadcast schedules. The only other clues to identify the station are the language and programming message. Often the best logging will only indicate no further facts with just a guess as to the location of the transmission. In the other extreme, some of the more open clandestine operations have been known to QSL.
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The simplest way to describe the radio spectrum is as the continuous band of radio frequencies from the bottom to the top. It would encompass all wavelength bands from long wave measured in hundreds of meters to waves so short they are measured in nanometers, or one-billionth of a meter. Shortwave is in the lower portion of this spectrum. Wavelengths on shortwave measure from approximately 100 to 10 meters. A wavelength is the distance between radio waves that leave a transmitting antenna. The velocity is always the same at any frequency, that is, at the speed of light, or 186 thousand miles per second. But at higher frequencies, more waves are broadcast each second, reducing the distance in between each wave leaving the antenna. Since this distance becomes shorter at higher frequencies, the higher frequencies being developed at the time were called shortwave. The official grouping of these frequencies varies among radio users. Mediumwave technically is 300 to 3 thousand kHz (or 3 mHz), and the shortwave band picks up from there to 30 mHz. But most users tend to classify the standard AM broadcast band, which is now 530 to 1700 kHz, as the mediumwave band, and call frequencies above that up to 30 mHz as shortwave. To round out our look at the spectrum, frequencies below the mediumwave bands are called longwave, or sometimes VLF for Very Low Frequency. The next band of frequencies above shortwave is called VHF, for Very High Frequencies. There are bands going well beyond VHF. The higher frequencies tend to behave more like light, traveling only line of sight and unaffected by the ionosphere. These frequencies are used for microwave relays, point to point communication, radar, satellite uplinks, and even for cooking and medical purposes.
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The New Life Station is pleased to provide transcripts online for a number of KNLS programs. Please note that all scripts are the property of World Christian Broadcasting and/or SeedSower Productions. They are provided here for your personal enjoyment only and may not be disseminated in any fashion without prior written permission.