Shortwave Radio - Hardly Asked Questions - The Listeners Guide

Shortwave Radio - Frequently Asked QuestionsPage 1 of 6Frequently Asked QuestionsIn which we learn that in spite of a BBC RadioProduction course, your scribe can't think ofenough linking material to cover the great rangeof topics below. So, we present a listener'scharter...No matter what radio you have, there will seemto be a thousand and one outside factors thatseem to affect reception. So, under a generalheading of "rules are made to be broken", hereare a few more observations. If you have noticedsomething not mentioned here, do get in touch via CONTACT US...Tell Me All About Single Sideband - SSBAll point-to-point operations on land, sea and air use USB.All Ham Radio traffic below 10Mhz use LSB.Therefore, all Ham Radio traffic above 10Mhz use USB.Attempt to tune sideband stations slowly and steadily. Those with a musical background will findgetting the final voice pitch correct is easy. Advances in receiver accuracy mean most sidebandtransmissions are "near enough" on the change of the last kilohertz digit. Portable radio users mayonly have an SSB button that they must use for USB and LSB and they may find final tuning ismore critical than on communications class receivers.If you have an AGC switch, always select the slowest rate for SSB.Some older radios seem to be anything up to 3KHz off frequency when correctly tuned to asideband station. This is not a fault, simply the way the radio measures frequency. The correctway to record the frequency of a sideband station is to state the frequency of the carrier, if only ithad one, the actual transmitted energy being a nominal 1.5KHz above the carrier for USB and thesame amount below the carrier for LSB. The microprocessor-controlled radio has offsets for eachmode programmed in, something of a little white lie to conform to convention, since both modesuse the same filter. In the very expensive professional sector, separate filters are designed foreach sideband, giving textbook - not this one - performance and a "correct" display. Those radiosthat seem badly off channel in the sideband mode are measuring the frequency of the localoscillator needed to tease a signal through whatever filter system they have. Filter selection in theAOR AR7030 scans the bandwidth of the installed filter and sets the offset. As this varies fromfilter to filter. A 7030 user can rest assured they are getting the best resolution from each setbandwidth. And they can test it themselves.Why Bother With A Logbook?http://www.listenersguide.org.uk/faq/11/08/2010

Shortwave Radio - Frequently Asked QuestionsPage 2 of 6Keep a logbook - that is, a written record - of all you have in the memories. Most modernmemories are secure, but a radio is subject to "spikes" on the mains supply and via the antennaduring storms. So with so many memories it is but human to forget what you had in there. If youhave a back-up battery in your radio, the life of these can be so long that they quietly fail and yousay so long to your best programming efforts.Celebrate your radios birthday each year with a new memory back-up battery. It will love you forit. Expect five years from a back-up cell - longer in the latest models.When you have filled the memory capacity of your radio, audition every channel and place yourTop Ten Most Listened To in the channels running from the default setting. This will give you thechance to clear the decks for new findings and leave fewer quiet channels to upset any memorysearch facility you may have. We are always interested in what people listen to on our sets, so youmay like to put you Top Ten on an email to CONTACT US. The senders of the most original listsmay even find themselves on these pages.Try to keep an easily recallable memory channel free to act as a notepad for some unexpectedstation. It can then be called up from time to time, usually on the hour, until it identifies itself.Many of the frequencies in this Guide were tracked down by allocating a block of memories for thispurpose. It works, too...Time and Frequency StandardsUnless you are a radio engineer, do not use the Time and Frequency Standards as a reference forinternal adjustments to your radio. Some are allocated frequencies in a sub-band around a wellknownchannel so you may find yourself adjusting error in rather than taking error out. Somestandards carry phase-modulated data, which can make tuning difficult. Some standard's are forpropagation checking only and are not accurate. Like society, standards vary - but we don'tforesee ANY adjustments being necessary during the life of a modern product.DO NOT ATTEMPT ANY INTERNAL ADJUSTMENTS TO YOUR RADIOIf it was made in the last ten years, it will use a technology that is accurate enough. If it is olderthan that, swallow your pride, check your credit limits and have it set up professionally. Nevercomplain about the cost, you are buying the engineer's experience and the support of hisCompany. You are also subscribing to a team of technicians dwindling in number as no formaltraining in Higher Education exists for the wide range of disciplines found in a moderncommunications receiver. All training is "hands-on" and therefore expensive even though it playson a genuine enthusiasm for his subject by the techie. You are also buying access to spares, manyof which will be special to your radio. Test equipment costs are very high and cannot be writtenoff. As radio designers, if we are to maintain the level of development and support you thecustomer has come to expect, then the test gear will always have to be an order of magnitudebetter than the best receiver we expect to sell. This requires constant investment and research. Ifhe will not offer a warranty on his work, then he is either not sure of what he is doing or your Ol'Faithful radio is about to fall off the twig. If your radio has passed its Listen By date then it is likelyto be of an age during which many new ideas will have come in to play, so see it not as a deathbut a new beginning where you can rethink what exactly you use the radio for and look for thehttp://www.listenersguide.org.uk/faq/11/08/2010

Shortwave Radio - Frequently Asked QuestionsPage 3 of 6best new features that address your changing needs.Please learn how to complainCheck that what you see as a fault has not some other cause. Check and double-check themanual. Be concise in correspondence and reasonable on the telephone. The person on the otherend is quite likely to be as keen on radio as you are and like you, is quite human.PLEASE DO NOT RANDOMLY PRESS BUTTONS IN THE HOPE THATYOUR RADIO WILL DO FUNNY TRICKSIt came as quite a surprise to your scribe - who will get off his soapbox after this one - to see howmuch processor programming is taken up with fail-safes and how grimly determined a certain typeof user is to find a key combination the designer has not thought of, in the sole pursuit of lockingthe whole thing up. A reset usually means a loss of memory settings, so best leave alone.Good Old AM - Forgotten But Not GoneNever be afraid to detune an AM station slightly into one or the other sidebands to get bestfidelity. The downside is a display which reads irritatingly off channel with say, the World Servicecoming up on 12097 for example, but you can't have everything.In cases of extreme interference an AM station can be treated as two sideband stations "back-toback"and tuned in very carefully in either LSB or USB, picking off the sideband with the leastinterference. Be a gas at parties by telling your host this is the Exalted Carrier Selectable Sidebandmode or ECSS. She will spontaneously reply that the new generation of receivers offer even higherfidelity by phase-locked detection in this mode and make mental note to save on Christmas cardsnext year.All AM broadcasters are now using some form of audio processing to improve the signal-toatmosphericnoise and interference-ratio. There was a time when the quality of the sound fromyour radio was determined by how much you were prepared to pay for it. Now, in world radio,audibility is the key. And, to be honest, it can sound dreadful. No, the problem lies in the audioprocessing that has slowly changed the sound balance since Abba were in the charts. It startedwith wide-band compression. The BBC lead the field with a limiter that gently reduced the dynamicrange of all audio frequencies present by the same amount, giving an overall impression ofloudness enough to counter reasonable domestic noise. Then came the active systems. A bank offilters carve up the audio into anything up to six pass-bands. These are then compressed atdifferent rates preset by the broadcaster, the reconstituted audio then going for transmission. Inpop radio, some DJs can set their own processing at the desk leading to "double compression"effects which, as they have no musical analogy, can lead to listener fatigue simply due to thesaturation of the sound. Engineers say processing is here to stay. Radio marketing men will tellyou that he who shouts loudest gets the largest audience and so gets to keep the grant-in-aid.That's fine up to a point but with the CD and Digital Audio Mass Storage setting new standards forsource programming and radios improving markedly with each generation - this must be the timefor the broadcasters to reassess their use of processing to allow the final level of fidelity to alignwith the listeners level of investment in equipment. In other words, you'll get what you pay for.http://www.listenersguide.org.uk/faq/11/08/2010

Shortwave Radio - Frequently Asked QuestionsPage 4 of 6With so much choice now in radio, isn't it time to move the technical goalposts?About The Radio SeasonsBroadcasters can change their schedules up to four times a year in the running battle with theionosphere. Lower frequencies are preferred in the Winter, moving up a band or two to get thebest coverage in the Summer.Let Them Know You ListenYour favourite station is just dying to hear from you. If you let them know you are out therehanging on their every word, they will put you on the mailing list for programme information andthe latest frequency releases.If a station can't prove to its government that it has an audience by analysis of its listenercorrespondence then that station ends up in our Where Are They Now? feature, coming soon...When Is It Best To Listen?Lower frequencies are better at night, higher ones better in the hours of daylight.DX, the real long distance stuff, can be heard at dawn and dusk.Where Did That Station Go?Advertising copywriters will remember the "If you see SID, tell him" campaign for British Gas. Ifyou hope to tell him via short-wave radio, then he won't hear you. In our field, SID is a SuddenIonospheric Disturbance and it can take out the entire spectrum for short periods of time. Go aslow as you can in frequency to steer around him, but no ionosphere means no reflected signalsand radio silence. You may hear a faint BBC continuity announcer apologising for this effect. OnlyBush House would apologise for an Act of God....With this in mind, get to know the kind of signal meter readings you would expect from yourfavourite stations under good conditions. By reviewing who is strong and who is not, you can soonget the feel of what areas of the world are open to you at the times it is possible to listen.If you have one, the AGC switch can be experimented with as a buffer to the rapid fading found onhigher frequencies. It is not a cure, it simply can make listening more pleasant.Bob Marley Used To Enjoy Jamming. Should We?With an outbreak of something near world peace, jamming is less of a problem these days.However, there seem to be nations that will always be professionally peeved and don't want you tohear what someone else is saying. If all the tuning tips so far suggested in your fatwa-free Guidehave not worked, then try the station another time. The jamming may be getting to you on adifferent path and may fade to leave clear reception. The same rule can fade the station you want,but this is life's rich pageant.http://www.listenersguide.org.uk/faq/11/08/2010

Shortwave Radio - Frequently Asked QuestionsPage 5 of 6Pump Down The VolumeJust because you know the dictionary definition of an attenuator, don't feel it is an act of defeat touse one. With two million watts used by some European broadcasters, we are getting signalstrengths that can light small torch bulbs. If you are getting a "60 over 9" on the signal meter thenby all means record it in the log, then switch in the ATTN to bring it down a bit, This will drop thesurrounding stations by an equal amount giving clearer reception and bring the fades of thewanted station into the AGC range of the radio.Got It Taped?SEX, LIES AND AUDIOTAPE - Most radioswe have encountered so far have aRECORD jack. If yours has some form ofphase-locked detection, then a bit of coaxto the LINE IN on the music centre - dearold fashioned thing that I am - can dowonders for dear old AM. Then being ableto make tapes is about the best log you cankeep - the writer's Vortexion machine was alittle over the top. "Lies" refers to theextremes of propaganda you could record,so far off the mark that they become funny."Sex" is another Guide by Masters and Johnson. We never understood why it took two of them towrite it...PLEASE DO NOT GO LOOKING FOR SPURIOUS SIGNALS......YOU WILL ONLY FIND THEM - This is the latest sensation to sweep the nation. You spend an armand a leg on a radio, short-circuit the antenna socket - the clever ones will do this with a carbonresistor of equal value to the impedance presented at the socket - then tune very slowly throughthe entire range of the set in USB, listing every whistle you can hear. And we admit it. There aresignals to be heard. A manufacturer worth his salt will report the "worst" of them in the manual. Asynthesised radio works by constant comparison of the frequency you are tuning to a referencesignal - a crystal or fast VCO - actually inside the set. This creates a little signal of its own. Theprocessing required to make that comparison and make the radio easy to operate also produceslots of little signals all their own. If we want our radio to have the range to cover the whole HFspectrum then yes, there will be points on the dial where it will "hear itself". Modern design andlayout has reduced these to a level equal to the noise floor so in fairness to the designers, I nolonger regard them as a problem.Modify equipment at home? Please don'tDO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME - We have over twenty years product development experience sincethe days when a short-wave radio meant an ex-Service receiver that needed extensive mods tomake it work in a domestic environment. Over twenty years in compiling research in what isneeded in a changing market and delivering it at a reasonable price. We do feel that due to thehttp://www.listenersguide.org.uk/faq/11/08/2010

Shortwave Radio - Frequently Asked QuestionsPage 6 of 6changes in all the technologies used in a modern radio, modification at home will lead to moreproblems than the original "idea" set out to "solve". If you want to be a part of the radiorevolution, use the radio for a little while, think long, hard and reasonably about what you feelcould be improved and write a concise letter to the set maker. The pen is far mightier than thesoldering iron and cheaper, too.I THINK THEREFORE I SCANOr not as the case may be. Some portables give the impression that "tuning around" is a thing ofthe past. They have adopted clever scanning systems that seem to do away with the tuning knobonce and for all. It pains your writer to admit it, some work very well, but pre-set scan levels canmean they "scan over" the low level DX stuff. So, for real band searching - go manual. They aregood for checking general band conditions, however.Filters - Which One When?Most modern radios will decide as a part of the Mode selected, which is the best filter for the job.Some may have a WIDE/NARROW switch. Wide is best for broadcast speech and music, narrow forSSB use. You may have a range of bandwidths to allow you to filter out what you can as conditionsdeteriorate. Filters are the last bastion of experiment in radio, so do not hesitate to talk to yourdealer about the options if your radio is designed to take them.Mad Dogs And EnglishmenIn a very informal review of all the stations heard during the compilation of this Guide, only about18% are in English at any one time.The format of an English transmission by an international broadcaster usually consists of News onthe hour followed by a topical commentary then a feature programme. Once this "rhythm"becomes familiar, along with interval signals and station IDs, then identification while in a foreignlanguage becomes easier.Just A ThoughtA debating point from many years at the Human/Receiver Interface. In spite of all that has gonebefore on the ionospheric effects on reception, the effects of localised weather systems seem to gounreported. Users of the Astra satellite already know how heavy precipitation - rain and especiallysnow - can affect their reception of Bart Simpson by screening the dish. Over many years yourobserver has seen how cloud-filled barometric "lows" seem to improve reception up to about 7Mhzin the area affected, returning to the norm for the season as the weather improves.http://www.listenersguide.org.uk/faq/11/08/2010