RADIO, Shortwave and Amateur

[dgriffin]

I was thinking it might be good to start a thread for each hobby. No hard and fast rules, just a wee bit of organization.

So I'm starting a radio thread.

[rrogers40]

Welp my one little shortwave radio that I had gotten was crap- so I'm trying to find a new Desk Top Size one that I can connect to my speakers. I wouldn't mind a retro-analog type that would go with my Pioneer SX-750 Receiver. Any suggestions?

[wilum47]

Jul 21, 2008 15:21:57 GMT -5 rrogers40 said:

Welp my one little shortwave radio that I had gotten was crap- so I'm trying to find a new Desk Top Size one that I can connect to my speakers. I wouldn't mind a retro-analog type that would go with my Pioneer SX-750 Receiver. Any suggestions?

Might look good with my Pioneer SX-990 Receiver!

[dgriffin]

It's unfortunate, but most of the small shortwave receivers on the market today are indeed crap. You need to spend at least 200 to get something decent, and even then you need to be careful.
The old radios ... we affectionately call them boatanchors because of their size and weight ... sound superb and are great casual shortwave listening. (However, I do use them in amateur radio, too.) But at their age ... 50 years or so ... I have found I spend time fixing them, even though they were built quite well. (Capacitors age out, etc.)

Since English is tending to disappear from the shortwaves these days, it is best to get a frequency guide (from the Internet) and to specifically tune to stations when they are broadcasting in that language. This means you'll want a digital reading dial. Witihout it, you won't find much of what you're looking for by just tuning around, except the religious broadcasters. I find myself listening to music, though, so language often doesn't matter.

My modern radios are probably priced beyond what you would want to spend. The best little radio for around $200 used to be the small "tabletop" Radio Shack DX 394. I've had one for a number of years. They're always for sale on eBay, too. Here's a link to one that recently sold.
tinyurl.com/6xvxv6
Buying a used radio is always problematic, of course.

And, for the fun of it, here's a couple of photos of the boatanchor corner of my shack. The top photo is of receivers and transmitters from the 1950's. Radio's in the lower photos are from the seventies. (I don't have a corner for each decade ! , they just line up that way by the way I use them.)
The gray faced radio in the bottom photo on the bottom right is my pride and joy, a Telefunken ELK 639, built for the German Navy in 1969. It came New In The Box! It took months of trolling the European eBays and marketplaats like 2dehands, but I finally located one last year. Sort of expensive getting it here, I'll admit.

[stoney]

Nice shack, Dave!

Just some trivia: Do you know what "Willco" means, as in Roger Willco??

[dgriffin]

I've never heard "roger wilco" said on the air in my almost fifty years of amateur radio, only the simple "roger."
Roger is a special "phonetic" (a voice version of a letter of the alphabet) for the letter R, which means "received" when sent in Morse code.

I looked up "roger wilco" on Wiki and found:
"A phrase from two-way radio used as a voice procedure. It combines "Roger" (meaning "Received") and "Wilco" (meaning "will comply"). The letter R had been Morse code shorthand for "Received", and over the radio it became "Roger" in the RAF phonetic alphabet."
I hadn't known what "wilco" meant.

I'll add that "roger" is used as a phonetic only when it means the affirmative "received." If I were phonetically spelling the word "fur," I'd say "foxtrot, united, romeo." That is, "romeo" is the standard phonetic for the letter R, unless it is used for "received".

Phonetics are sometimes controversial in the hobby (stop me just before you fall asleep.) Standard phonetics are more helpful than folks realize. Non-standard phonetics are often confusing and sometimes insulting. There was a guy whose callsign ended in DOI who used to sign as "Dumb Old Indian." That went over reasonably well until around 1970.

When using voice (e.g. microphone), hams are discouraged from using all the arcane codes and stuff that has come to be attached to amateur radio. And in emergency and message passing voice nets, all of it except for spelling phonetics is outright banned by serious net control stations.

Q-codes are very old and very popular among hams. They are much overused in voice work, especially by hams (who are some of the most boring people on earth) who don't have much to say. But in CW (Morse code) work, they are essential to speedy communication.
Some common Q-codes are QTH (location), QRM (interference), QSB (fading), and QRS (send slower). Also, QRP (lower power), QRO (higher power) and QRN (static.)

Additionally, we use common abbreviations, that is they are common to the hobby, not always to the rest of the world. See if you can ferret out the meaning of this transmission that I (N2CHI) would send to a fellow up in Marcy (provided we can work that close in some night) whose callsign is K4LV.

K4LV de N2CHI
R R R ES FB UR NEW XCVR
OK UR WX
HR WX IS CLDY ES RAIN WID TEMP FALLING TO 52F
NW USING OLD ANT
SO PSE RPT MY RST
HW CPY?
K4LV DE N2CHI
K

(I didn't put them in, but at the end of each line above, instead of a period, we usually use a break character, which are the two letters BT sent together as one character.)

Had a good nap?

Next Lesson: How to laugh in Morse code.

www.windsweptpress.com/shareweb/tesla clean.jpg[/img]

[stoney]

I got "Now using old antenna" & "How copy?", but I don't want to tax my brain this early in the day.

What's "de" mean?

I've heard K4LV many times. He was running for, I think. President of UARC before WS2W & his followers conducted a coup. I told you, 2 meters is just like a soap opera. lol!

[dgriffin]

Jul 23, 2008 10:46:39 GMT -5 @stoney said:

I got "Now using old antenna" & "How copy?

Hey, that's pretty good, Stoney!

K4LV de N2CHI
k4lv from n2chi (de is French for "from.")
R R R ES FB UR NEW XCVR
RRR - why we sometimes triple the R for Received I don't know.
Fine Business (on) your new transceiver. Fine Business is a figure speech from World War One (or earlier) that is sort of like "Good Show" or "Alright!"
OK UR WX
OK your weather. OK, I received and understand your weather report.
HR WX IS CLDY ES RAIN WID TEMP FALLING TO 52F
Here weather is cloudy and rain with temperature falling to 52 farenheit. (When contacting other parts of the world, we would use centigrade.) "ES" is Spanish for "and" (I think.) ET would be shorter (and French, and actually mean "and" in French), but could be confused with the letter "A."
NW USING OLD ANT
Now using old antenna
SO PSE RPT MY RST
So please repeat my RST. RST is a signal report, a three digit system where the best is 599, quantifying Readability, Strength and Tone (of the cw signal.)
HW CPY?
How (do you) copy (this transmission)?>
K4LV DE N2CHI
(k4lv from n2chi)
K
Go ahead.

[stoney]

Thanks, I just learned a lot. But I thought "de" meant "of" in French.

[dgriffin]

You may be right, Stoney. Takes me back to Sister Majestyeria's French class at Utica Catholic Academy. That poor woman would get upset all the time and piss off a stream of French like a freight train. We never understood her, of course, and we had no confirmation of our suspicion she was cursing us until an exchange student from Germany (who spoke French) sat in our class one day. As "Sister Magic" steamed up to full throttle, the poor girl began to cry and blubber in French until the nun realized what was happening. The girl spent the rest of the semester in Sister Hymenentum's Study Hall.

At any rate, us hams ain't much cultured. Maybe du would have been better, but I think de can be either of or from, depending upon how it's used.

Oh, yeah, to laugh in Morse code, we send the letters H and i repeatedly. didididit didit didididit didit didididit didit. Has a bubbly sound.

[stoney]

I understand Morse code isn't even necessary to know anymore.

[dgriffin]

That's right, gone for good,about a year or so ago. You still need to pass an exam of technical knowledge, FCC law and operating practices.

[stoney]

Roger, and 73s to you!

[frankcor]

What is the meaning of "5 by 5" when asked how you are receiving?

[dgriffin]

Over the years, a number of Reception Report systems were developed, used and many thrown away. Hams use the RST Code (Readability, Strength, Tone) with the top numbers of 599. CB'ers use just the RS and their top numbers are 5 and 9. An example of a more sophisticated system is the SINPO numbers for shortwave BROADCAST (distinguished from 2-way) reception. SINPO quantifies Strenght, Interference, Natural Noise, Proopagation and Overlll merit ... or attempts to. Those top numbers are all 5's. A shorter version, SIO, has a top rating of 555.

My understanding of "5 by 5" (never used in ham radio) is that it is a measure of Strength followed by Readability. So "5 by 5" is synonymous with "excellent" and the system may come from either aircraft communications or police radio. I couldn't find a definitive article about its history on the Internet. Wiki says it is "arguably" derived from the SINPO system.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_by_5

SINPO System:
www.inwit.com/inwit/links/shortwavereceptionreport.html

I have some partial transcripts of Amelia Earhart's radio transmissions on her last trip. I'll check them, but since she never established communications with her attending ship, the Itasca, I don't know if signal reports were given.