Rainy February

A moody sky in early morning.

Although Winter seems to have passed us by here in Seattle, it seems we're definitely into Spring mode.

Beauty bushes green with buds during the second week of February.

Spring usually means rain -- and I'll call it Spring, because the temperatures are similar to Spring, and some of the bushes are beginning to bud out already -- and so far, this Spring has been typical: 50 degrees (around 6C) and rain.

The cloudy February sky reflected in a shallow pool of water at street's edge.

Last weekend was Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is generally a day of enjoyment for those who have committed partners, and a day for the rest to endure. However, on rare occasions, there are things that bring a smile to anyone's face, and one of those things I saw recently was a house in a nearby neighborhood where a guy put up Valentine's Day lights!

A house in a nearby neighborhood with Valentine's Day lights!

I also found a Valentine's balloon that got away -- about a mile (Km and a half) from the nearest developed area. It had to float over several stands of trees, the river, and maybe a hill or two before it landed where it did in the brush by my favorite cottonwood tree.

The one that got away -- a Valentine heart balloon stuck in some brush at a park -- the balloon had to float about mile or more from the nearest houses or businesses.

In late January I took some photos of the Seattle skyline and harbor area with my Nikon; some of them came out better than I thought they would. Seattle is known for its coffee and software industry, but for decades the backbone of Seattle was the Duwamish River corridor.  Most of the photos I already put up on my blog post last week.

The Seattle Skyline (in the far distance) from Interstate 5.

The Duwamish River -- named after the local tribe of Native Americans -- is where the shipyards are located; the Duwamish River is where Boeing built its aircraft factories; and the Duwamish River is where numerous industries located during the early 1900's -- and many of them are still there.

The industrial Duwamish Waterway during a late, rainy afternoon in late January.

Aside from the weather, it's been life per usual here. I'm still doing a lot of writing, but my music has taken a back seat to everything else. My radio DXing hobby has been mostly shelved because conditions have been crappy and I'm sort of bored with it at present.

West Seattle's "Junction" business district on a rainy evening in late January.

I'm looking forward for the rains to stop, and the sun to get warmer. But that will take time. One thing I've learned over the past several years is to enjoy the seasons as they come. I used to hate the rainy season because it was no fun to go out and ride a bike when its raining -- but since I've been taking daily rides on the Trail most mornings I just slow down and look at nature, and it makes it more pleasant.

Happy February.
CC 2-17-2016

Våren -- Spring is already here

 Rainy windshield, First Hill in Seattle, the last week of January, 2016.

Our Winter here in the Seattle area didn't last long. The past few nights and mornings have been between 38-42F (around 4-5C). We haven't had a freeze since just after New Year's. The trees and bushes aren't budding yet, but there are more Spring birds chirping and singing, and I even heard a Northern Flicker (our local woodpecker) tapping on the metal chimney of someone's house a couple mornings ago.

Fog over a pond on a cloudy, misty morning in late January.

Lately we've had a lot of rain. And a lot of cloudy weather. But it's fairly warm for us, for this time of year. It's even been 60F during the day here. Not bad. Back East, people are having another Winter storm.

A picture of the Duwamish River, and the spires of the Seattle Skyline are in the far background, at the very center of the photo.

Personally, work has been picking up, and that's good.

I still have been working out, and have reached one of my goals, benching over 200 pounds (91 Kg) this week, and that feels good also. I intend to keep going until I max out. My bench will only support so much weight safely, so I may need to buy a new bench this year.

The Seattle harbor and skyline during a rainy afternoon in late January, 2016.

I am still working on my action novel. It's about 250 pages and gaining. Hopefully, it will be ready to publish on Amazon Kindle some time this summer.

I have two other books in the works -- one of them already half done. They will have action also. The one I have about half done is an action sort of novel featuring some homeless guys. I got the inspiration from seeing what goes on with many homeless in my area, and from knowing some people who would be homeless if it weren't for the good graces of their families. The rest of the inspiration was from talking to friends about some of the industrial jobs that a lot of people have to take in the Green River Valley -- some of which have poor safety conditions, bad hours, and low wages. Of course, a lot of that second novel is little more than pure fiction. But most novels are. :-)

A pair of ducks has adopted a local pond. Hopefully, they will stay.

Meanwhile, nationwide, the country is getting into election mode, which means that my Facebook newsfeed is heating up with lots of political crap.

SOME MW DXers READ MY BLOG / PR-D5 and HEADPHONES

I notice that my MW DXing articles get read by a lot of people. I have a few more of those articles in the works. On that front, I've been turning on the radio at least once a night, and tuning around. The only new station has been KWKW 1330, an ESPN Deportes station from Los Angeles, which I logged on my Sangean PR-D5.

Göteborg, Sweden have their Elverommet (a building with a large mural of their river on the side of it)... Seattle has its equivalent: The South Park Transfer Station!

I re-learned that I need to use my old Radio Shack headphones with that radio (I've since updated my PR-D5 article, adding a section about headphones). The PR-D5, being a mini-boombox, has a loudness circuit, which boosts bass at low volumes. It is part of what gives the PR-D5 a big sound through the speakers. But if you have bassy headphones (like my Sonys, which I got with a Sony SRF-59 headset radio), the bass will cover some of the highs, and you can miss ID's on stations on crowded frequencies.

Tåke på vannet... Ghostly fog over the local Beaver's Pond.

My old set of Radio Shack headphones -- which broke last year and I rewired for mono, using speaker cable -- are excellent for DXing and distance listening. They have clarity, but not a ton of bass. And they don't emphasise the midrange like some cheap headsets can do, which just gives you listener's fatigue -- I get zilch listener's fatigue with these headphones. For a while I misplaced them. Now that I found them again, I'm using them with the PR-D5 more.

Finally, I got a decent picture of a duck that wasn't blurry. Taken the first week of February.

My PR-D5 is so good on MW I usually don't need an external loop to DX with it. It's light enough to hold in my hand and turn from side to side, angle it slightly, etc. -- strengthening some radio stations and weakening others. One morning a week ago I heard an unidentifiable Spanish station on 1650 khz. My external loop only boosted the signal by about a db or so -- I still couldn't read the language 100%, but I heard "kilo" and "ahora" -- definitely Spanish. There is a distant Deportes station on that frequency, but this station didn't sound like Deportes at all.

I don't understand a lot of Spanish, even though I took it in high school. But sometimes I'll listen to the Spanish speaking stations to see if I can understand anything.

The last week of January we had some rains... One of the small local creeks, which comes down off of a hillside, got muddy, turning the frog pond yellow.

The only other languages I can read are Norwegian and Swedish -- Norwegian a bit better than Swedish (I took Norsk in college and learned Swedish on my own, as they are related languages). The only way I can hear those languages is through online listening, by logging in to NRK or Sveriges Radio, which -- thankfully -- do not 'geofence' their broadcasts. Jeg kan ikke forstå dem når jeg høre dem, men jeg kan lese dem OK.

ESPN Deportes stations like KWKW 1330, KTRB 860 (in the Bay Area of California), KBRO 1490 (across the Puget Sound from me) etc. are fun to listen to because the announcers are very peppy, and the bumper music is lively -- sometimes rock, sometimes hip-hop oriented pop. I understand the language just enough to know that they usually talk about Mexican soccer and European soccer. NFL football isn't that big amongst US Hispanics, unless they are 2nd or 3rd generation. The farthest Deportes station I've logged is the one in El Paso on 1650, KSVE.

SUPER BOWL SUNDAY

On a sports related note, I enjoyed the NFL Super Bowl earlier this month. As most of you probably know, the Super Bowl is a very big deal here in the U.S., even with people who aren't into NFL football. This year it was a game between the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers.

As it turned out, it was a tough game. The Denver defense kept Carolina from doing much. Carolina's quarterback got 'sacked' about seven times, losing the ball a couple of times. Before the game, a lot of sports experts were all saying Carolina was going to win. But during the game, they were barely able to move the ball.

It wasn't a high scoring game, but was a fun game to watch.

I'm not much for 'selfies'. As close as I'll get to one. I'm all dressed up to watch the Super Bowl.

Hope all have a great February -- and Happy Valentine's Day, if you're into that....
CC  2-13-2016

Medium Wave DXing with the REALISTIC DX-370

As I have mentioned previously, one of my hobbies is Long Distance MW radio listening. And one of the radios I use frequently is one that is hardly ever mentioned in MW distance listener circles, the Realistic DX-370.

The Realistic DX-370 -- like most Radio Shack portable radios -- was made by Sangean. In many cases Radio Shack just put their name on a Sangean radio and marketed it in their stores. In the case of the DX-370, they combined two versions of a Sangean model -- the ATS-800 and 800A -- to sort of make their own model.

When it first came out, the DX-370 was intended to be an 'entry level' model of digital readout SW radio. The larger DX-390 (a Radio Shack re-branded Sangean ATS-818) was more expensive and had more features, including SSB and a tuning knob. The 370 was more of a bare bones radio (less memories, no SSB, no tuning knob, less SW frequency range), but still was worth the money, as it worked rather well.


The DX-370 is a Sangean ATS-800A with Sangean ATS-800 firmware and features, but unlike either the Sangean 800 or 800A it tunes all the way up to 1710 khz on the MW band. The DX-370 was made in Taiwan.

The Realistic DX-370, a digital portable radio made in the 1990's. It was a budget Sangean digitally tuned AM-FM-SW radio. As you can see from this picture, the LCD display doesn't like 60F or less temperatures (106.1 Mhz is a local pop station in the Seattle area).

The DX-370 is a digitally tuned radio, but you just use the up and down buttons, which can tune very fast if needed. They speed up the longer you press down the up or down tuning button. This can take some getting used to for someone used to a tuning knob or direct-entry buttons. You have very little muting while tuning the radio.

Like the Sangean ATS-800, the DX-370 covers AM, FM, and SW in two "bands", on going from 90 meters to 41 meters, and the other SW "band" covering 31 meters up to 13 meters.

Like the Sangean ATS-800, and unlike the Sangean ATS-800A which the DX-370 is built upon, there is no 9 khz switch, which sucks if you want to take it overseas.

But the radio is actually capable of tuning in 9 khz steps -- one evening I turned my DX-370 on and it was tuning the AM band in 9 khz steps for some reason! It's the only time it's happened in the years I've had the radio. Obviously it was a microprocessor glitch, but it shows that there probably is a diode or resistor somewhere on the DX-370's PCB that keeps it locked in 10 khz mode. If it just had a switch added, it would probably tune in 10 khz or 9 khz steps -- the two khz standards for the MW band around the world.

The DX-370 has the best MW selectivity of all my portables except my Sangean PR-D5. It has the same ceramic filter used by the Radio Shack DX-398, as well as the same TA7758 IF chip.

It has narrow selectivity (sounds like maybe 5-6 khz bandwidth?) on the AM band, but it's not so narrow that the AM or SW bands sound muddy. The trebles are suppressed somewhat, but it has a full, listenable sound. And it has a pleasant sound through headphones, with more treble available than my PR-D5.

My DX-370 with the back off. I hard wired the FM/SW whip antenna to the terminal on the radio's PCB to keep it from ever breaking down or glitching. That's the white wire you see on the right side of the picture. I also added back-to-back protection diodes, which I ran between the whip antenna terminal and the negative side of the battery -- which also can be seen. The radio's 120mm loopstick can be seen, and also my power jack diode repair (diode soldered over the jack, extreme lower right of the radio's PCB) can be seen. I plugged in the wrong power supply by accident once -- it was the wrong polarity -- and fried the original power jack protection diode. I was lucky in that -- at that time -- I was unaware of how easy it is to wreck surface mount PCB connections. :-)

I use the DX-370 a lot because it is small, handy, tunes quickly, sounds good through headphones, it is probably the easiest Radio Shack or Sangean digital portable on AA batteries (especially for a digitally-tuned SW portable radio -- designed to work with 6 Volts, it can work on 3.6V according to specs). It has a clock -- which is handy -- if you want to check the time while listening you just toggle the middle button from radio to alarm to clock and back. It has an alarm which I think I've used once -- the alarm will switch on the radio or give you a piercing tone.

GOOD ON FM

The DX-370 is also is pretty sensitive on FM (it has a TA7358 FM RF amp chip). One Christmas when I took it with me to northern Louisiana I was able to hear FM stations from as far away as Longview and Nacogdoches, TX, as well as Texarkana, Arkansas. I would turn the whip and get two different FM stations from 100 miles or more away, in full stereo. It was amazing.

Another shot of the DX-370 with the back off showing the protection diodes (surrounded by thick, clear shipping tape) that I added to the radio because I'm not 100% certain it has them otherwise. The white wire hardwires the FM / SW antenna because of the way it's attached to the main PCB. I prefer my radios to have their whip antennas hardwired where possible. If you look carefully in the upper left hand side of the PCB you'll see "ATS-800A", which is the Sangean board the DX-370 is made from.

The DX-370 is one of my best FM radios, both in sensitivity and the rich, full sound you get through the headphones. It has FM in stereo through headphones, which is very nice. The memories are quick to program and very easy to use -- you get five memories on each band.

The back of the DX-370. AS you can tell, it's an updated model (the "A" in 20-211A designates an updated version of the radio). The back also says it tunes from 535-1705 on the MW band, which is a mis-print: the radio definitely doesn't tune in that range (unless the microprocessor glitches). It tunes MW from 530-1710, using the North American MW standard. It's an example of the DX-370 being unique to Radio Shack: it is an ATS-800A circuit board with ATS-800 features and North American X-band added on MW.

USING THE PROXIMITY EFFECT WITH A LONG WIRE ANTENNA ON SHORTWAVE

I also use my DX-370 to scan through the 49, 41, and 31 meter SW broadcast bands at night to see what's on. It tunes quickly up and down the band, and it's fairly sensitive off the whip. If you're in a low signal area, you can use it with a longer wire by clipping a wire to the DX-370's whip antenna, using an alligator clip. I often use a 25 ft. indoor wire (about 8-9 meters) with my DX-370, by alligator-clipping the antenna to the radio's whip.

If your wire antenna is longer than 25-30 feet (8-10 meters), you can place the radio's whip antenna near the wire antenna's feedline, using the "proximity effect" to boost signals to the radio. That way you can use a longer wire with the radio without overloading the DX-370's RF circuits. When I had a 100 ft. wire, I was able to hear much of the world this way without overload to the radio.

For example, one early evening a few years ago I heard Tunisia fade in and out on 41 meters. With just the whip, I could barely hear the station. When I placed the whip near the 100 ft. wire's feedline, it came in readable enough to catch an ID. The proximity effect is useful if you have a small radio with no external antenna jack. And one plus is you never have to worry about static charges frying an RF amp transistor.


The DX-370's LCD readout doesn't like the cold. If it gets down below 60F/10C it tends to fade on some of the characters.

It has a 120mm x 7 mm MW loopstick, which is probably very adequate if you are in a high signal area. If you're in a low signal area like I am, an external loop will make the radio shine on AMDX -- which it does.

I tend to use my DX-370 the most, of all my portables, for MW DXing, because of its convenience, quick tuning, smallish size, full sound through headphones, and good selectivity. As I live in a low signal area, I usually use an external loop with it when DXing. But I have read accounts by other radio aficionados who have used this radio in high signal areas without an external loop, and they have had good results.

GOOD MWDX RADIOS IF YOU CAN FIND ONE -- OF IF YOU ALREADY HAVE ONE

Although I haven't priced any of these radios recently, I think they are probably fairly inexpensive online, as they weren't "fancy", high end models with a lot of memories or extra features. A quick search shows some DX-370's for sale as low as $40 online, used.

For those of you who live overseas, where the DX-370 apparently wasn't sold, the Sangean ATS-800A undoubtedly has the same performance (as the DX-370 has an 800A board inside), and I would suggest you try it out on MW with a loop and see what you hear. I've seen some Sangean ATS-800A's for sale online at moderate prices.

A lot of DXers might even have one one of these radios around and haven't thought about using one to DX the MW band with. In my view it's well worth it to try it out on the MW band, especially if you have a loop. And when you're tired of MW DXing, switch it over to FM. The sound is really good (on headphones -- it has a fair sound through the speaker) -- and a DX-370 pulls in a lot of FM signals, too!

ADDENDUM, Dec. 1st, 2019:
I've noticed a couple comments to my article here, which is cool -- it means there are others using this useful little radio for MW DXing. Unfortunately, it seems to be difficult to respond to comments directly. In one of the comments, a reader asks if there is a service manual available for the DX-370. As far as I know, they are hard to find. I have been unable to find one in any of the online manual websites. Perhaps a service manual for the Sangean 800A would work -- I haven't looked for one of those, and I'm not sure how easy those manuals are to find. 

Information on these 1990's-era radios is unfortunately a bit rare.
73
C.C.