General – Page 9 – Engineering Radio

Ukraine

I have been watching and listening to the news from Ukraine. It is somewhat horrifying to see the wanton disregard for human life. It is especially concerning when combatants begin shelling a nuclear power plant. A breach of one of those reactor containment buildings might have contaminated a wide swath of eastern Europe. Such an act demonstrates that the Russians no longer seem to care about anyone, themselves included. A man can be very dangerous when he has nothing left to lose.

I have known many Russians over the years through email exchanges, video chats, and meetings in person. People seem to be celebrating with glee over the sanctions but it just makes me sad. Obviously, the war of aggression is wrong. However, you cannot conflate ordinary citizens with the terrible acts of their government, whether in Russia or anyplace else.

Roskomnadzor is has removed almost all outside sources of information from the Russian internet. As of this writing; CNN, BBC, Facebook, Twitter, and Google (YouTube) have all been banned. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty still exist, however, they are either on FM or use the internet for distribution.

I have to wonder if the VOA is going to step up with some shortwave broadcasts to the region. I know that the BBC has restored two frequencies so far. I believe that the European VOA relay sites have been shut down. That means either leasing time with someone or using Greenville. That is a long way away from eastern Europe, however, HF propagation is currently good and those old Continental 420As could use a little workout. Looks like they still have a row of curtain arrays aligned along 30-40 degrees true North.

Continental Electronics 420A 500 KW Shortwave transmitter

As the Chief Engineer of Radio Australia once said, HF will get through when nothing else will.

In the meantime, it might be a wise idea to dust off those old cold war contingency plans and review them. It appears a new iron curtain has arisen, stretching from St. Petersburg to Odessa.

Radio Guide; The Magazine

As some of you may have noticed, recently I have been writing some articles for Radio Guide. There are several good reasons for this, but the most important one is education. I believe that terrestrial radio will be around for a few more years. As others have noted, there are fewer and fewer broadcast engineers. Those that understand high-power RF and all its intricacies are fewer still. It is important that a cadre of knowledgeable broadcast engineers carry on.

The internet is a great thing. However, it depends on cables of some type to exist. As we know, cables can be damaged. In addition to cables, there are routers, core switches, servers, and so on. All of that equipment can fail for various reasons. People have been working hard to improve the resiliency of the internet. That is a good cause, to be sure. However small it may be, there is still a chance that the internet can fail. Worse still, this can happen during some type of natural disaster or other emergency. Thus, during such an emergency, Radio can and will function as a vital information source provided that the station is on the air and has a program feed. That is also a good reason to keep the current RF STL paths in place as much as possible.

The Radio Guide articles are a great way to pass along some of that hard-earned experience to others. I also want to put supplemental information here for those interested to download. Things like charts, forms, pictures, videos, etc.

What I am planning on is to list the articles here, then put links to any supplemental information provided below that subheading.

A bit of good news?

We were doing some overnight maintenance on one of the class A AMs in New York the other night. The aged Automatic Transfer Switch on the electrical service entrance needed to be replaced, thus the power to the entire facility needed to be cut while the old switch was removed and the new switch installed.

During this period, we took the opportunity to do some maintenance on the main and aux towers. All went well. We also notified the National Radio Club that the station was going to be off the air so that their members could log some rare DX. My thought process here was that we might also find a few daytimers who were still on the air or a DA night who was operating with their daytime facilities. A quick look at MW list shows that there are several such stations on 770 KHz:

Alas, the answer was no, nobody was on the air who should not have been. Reports from Cape Cod, Massachusetts; New Foundland, Canada; Manassas, Virginia; West Union, South Carolina; and southwest, Ohio have Cuban and South American stations on the air (Radio Artemisa, Radio Rebelde, Radio Oriental) but all of the east coast daytimers are off.

The 180-degree main mast for WABC is in good shape. You can deride AM and say it is outdated. However, it still gets out and covers vast distances.

Resurrection of a different sort

I just finished a full alignment of my Kenwood R-2000 receiver and tonight I am treated with the pleasing tones of “Jazz from the Left,” on WRMI. Jazz from the left means the west coast sound, ~~aka Smooth Jazz~~ as I am given to understand. I spent some time on the west coast and beyond. I have fond memories of those years.

It is amazing to me still, that a simple AM receiver demodulating +/- 4.5 Khz audio bandwidth from 1,057 miles (1701 km) away can sound that good. That is being received directly; no Internet Service Provider, no satellite service, just a transmitter, and a receiver.

There is an art to all this, which is being forgotten. A few minutes with a manual, a volt meter, a tone generator, and a non-conductive screwdriver can bring something that was neglected back to life sounding as good as the day it left the factory 35 years ago. Try that with your very expensive iPhone 10,000,000x! Of course, you will need those tiny pentalobe tools to get the screws out. Apple would rather you return your expensive i device to their expensive i store so that their i geniuses can fix it for you.

I don’t know, maybe I am an old fart. Perhaps the right to repair the appliances that I purchased and therefore should own is an old-fashioned point of view. After all, all of these corporations have my best interests at heart, right?

I recommend you support your not-so-local shortwave stations by listening to and supporting their programmers. Even in 2021, there are still many shortwave broadcasts that are worth listening to!