DXing from The Wash

There's a place I visit occasionally near Holbeach St. Matthew. The site has some old WWII coastal defences and some useful metal fences, handy for securing antenna supports, and borders the RAF Holbeach Air Weapons Range. On a recent visit I was impressed at the strength of shortwave signals on my Tecsun portables so I though it might be worth trying a larger antenna.
I've got a Datong AD370 active dipole supported by a telescoping carbon fibre fishing pole, putting the dipole up at 5m above the ground level. The Datong needs a supply of 12v at 150mA which on this occasion was provided by a small SLA battery.

After setting up, I listened from 2100 to 2359UTC, concentrating on 60 meters and 49 meters. Signals previously heard at home were stronger than at home and the noise level was definately lower! Some nice new catches too.

Here are the recordings

6040kHz at 2122UTC (pres) Rádio Evangelizar. 700Hz beat note.

4885kHz at 2139UTC

and 4885kHz again at 2329UTC

5940kHz was interesting,

firstly at 2156UTC

then a second check at 2244UTC.

5995kHz at 2233UTC. Mali is the only station listed broadcasting here in French.

6130kHz could this be Lao National Radio at 2255UTC?

Myanmar on 5985kHz at 2308UTC

6060kHz is listed as Super Rádio Deus é Amor on 6059.8 at 2337UTC.

6120kHz also lists Super Rádio Deus é Amor at 2353UTC.

And again at 2355UTC.

Thanks for listening!

Comments

Tecsun R-9700DX Teardown

I've seen a lot of favourable comments on this analogue SW radio via various YouTube channels, along with it's sibling the R-9710. Sold in some (USA?) markets as the Grundig Yacht Boy 250. Exact specifications and schematics have evaded me so far, however I did find a teardown and comparison at RadioIntel.com from which I've borrowed this photo: Photo from http://www.radiointel.com/review-review-tecsunr9700dx.htm It appears to use dual-conversion on shortwave with a fixed crystal local oscillator (see the 10 crystals above the bandswitch). One feature is that the tuning on the short wave bands tune the opposite direction to the AM and FM bands. Here's my (incorrect) guess of how it works. AM band IF is 450kHz (from the orange block filter) AM local oscillator tunes 975kHz - 2160kHz. The image of the AM band (1425kHz - 2610kHz) is used as a tuneable first IF for the shortwave bands. Each band is 600kHz wide so it probably uses 2000kHz - 2600kHz. The SW ba...

Tecsun R-9710 Teardown

Although I've been itching to get my hands on the Tecsun R-9700DX, I wasn't really aware of it's smaller sibling, the R-9710 until I saw this review on the Two Hands and a Radio YouTube channel. Two Hands made the observation that the shortwave bands tune in the opposite direction to the AM and FM bands, which made me go and do a quick check other Tecsun analog radios. I found the R-9700DX also has this inverted tuning feature so some Googling later and I've located a teardown of the R-9710 plus other sets. The original article is in Chinese but you can view it through the magic of Google Translate . R-9710 teardown from http://www.leowood.net/sbdp209.htm Note it has eight crystals around the bandswitch for that fixed-crequency first local oscillator. Add the schematic found at http://www.fmdiy.com/ReadNews.asp?NewsID=305 More dead links to maintain unfortunately.

Tesco RAD-108 AM/FM/Shortwave portable radio review - American Style

I sent one of the RAD-108s over to Two Hands and a Radio for a YouTube review. Update - looks like 2H has taken his YouTube channel down so this is no longer available. Here is mine, a poor substitute. It didn't do too well on the American AM broadcast band, probably due to tuning in 9kHz rather than 10kHz steps!

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