Right now, as I write this, it is night time. It is warm in the house, and moderately warm outside. We've had a bit of a heat wave here in Seattleland after the Fourth, which actually is fairly standard for this region. June is historically cloudy, and all historically clears up after the Fourth.
There have been some recent years that haven't lived up to that norm, of course, but historically that's how the weather here works.
I've been working on two blog articles, one on the Realistic/Radio Shack DX-394, which I've recently re-discovered and fired up, and have used for the past 3-4 weeks, and the other article is on the current state of Solar Cycle 25 -- a cycle which isn't living up to expectations, but is indeed delivering some decent long distance radio signals.
Unfortunately -- at least as it concerns the SW ham bands -- even when this Solar Cycle IS delivering, the ham radio operators are NOT. More on that later.
ALL HAIL THE DEAD 4TH
Being that today is the 10th of July -- my late, Scottish grandfather's birthday -- a man I never met -- the Fourth of July was six days ago. It was a bust, really. The Fourth holidays get worse every year. It used to be a time of celebration. There would be all sorts of indications of people having fun, lighting off sparklers for their little kids to enjoy, backyard BBQ's, etc. But not anymore. This Fourth there were no skyrockets anywhere within half a mile, and -- on top of that -- no evidence whatsoever that anyone within a mile of me was having any patio cookouts or backyard, safe and sane fireworks displays.
No backyard parties with hot dogs, potato salad and pork & beans -- no fountains, no glowing snakes, no spinning wheels -- nothing.
In other words, no celebration.
The Fourth of July was DEAD. I think I saw maybe 20 rockets total the entire evening while being out on my bike, some of them being shot up into the sky from the two nearby hills. Most of them I could hear, but couldn't see. But even at that, the night was fireworks free.
The killjoys have finally killed the 4th.
The one neighbor I encountered last year who was lighting off some safe and sane fireworks for his little girl wasn't doing it this Fourth. I passed his street on my bike, the same time I did last year, and there was nothing. So it seems he didn't light anything off for his little girl this year. Or, maybe he moved away.
The one photo I have posted here, of a distant skyrocket, was taken in a fairly long exposure, hence its being blurry. The rocket was probably 3/4 of a mile away, erupting from behind some trees, on a nearby hill.
I did put my flag out this Fourth -- my newest flag. And no one messed with it! Yay.
That all said, here are some random thoughts during a moderate heat wave. Most are Radio related.
TOUGH TIMES FOR A LOCAL AM STATION :-(
First off, MW and SW radio, which depends on the ionosphere for long distance listening and contacts, has been fair to middling this Spring and Summer. MW is typical for Summer, with a few standouts. Local Renton station KRIZ 1420 has been having transmitter issues, and they've been off several nights over the past few weeks. In fact, they've been off the air the past two evenings.
KRIZ fill a unique niche in the Seattle radio spectrum. They are African American owned, and play black gospel music, and they're fairly loud at my location. But when they've been off the air, I get a mix of KUJ Walla Walla (News-Talk), in the Eastern part of my state, and KITI Centralia (in SW WA), which plays a wide mix of Classic Hits and Oldies. It's cool to hear those stations at night, being that I used to hear KUJ when I was a little kid and I'd always look at the map and try to imagine what Walla Walla looked like. Back then, they played a mix of news and Top 40.
As I write this, because KRIZ is off the air, I'm hearing KITI's Classic Hits and KUJ's Rick Valdes talk show playing on my Sangean PR-D5 right now.
I'm not sure what's going on with KRIZ. They're part of a chain of three stations, two of them in Seattle (KRIZ and 1620 KYIZ) and KBMS in Portland. They're three of the few African American owned-and-run radio stations in the Western US. There's one in Los Angeles, KBLA 1580, which is a Talk station, and I only hear them now and then. I don't know of any other Black-owned radio stations West of the Mississippi. There possibly is one in the SF Bay Area.
In this low revenue climate, I'm not sure how well KRIZ and KYIZ are doing. KYIZ 1620 does seem to have some local and national advertisements, so they must be making at least some money. I've heard some ads on KBMS 1480 as well.
However, KYIZ, KBMS and KRIZ obviously face the same hurdle all AM and FM stations face today: A lot of younger demos have drifted to Spotify and Pandora, and the older demos don't count when it comes to radio ratings. I'm not saying this out of personal preference, but it's fact. The big ad agencies that buy time on Radio stations to sell stuff couldn't care less about any demographics over age 50, and especially if you're African American and over 50 they won't advertise to you. They only want to advertise to younger people.
It's one reason the AM radio stations are hurting -- most AM listeners are over 45-50, and advertisers don't care about them at all.
So these African American radio stations have to depend mostly on local businesses to advertise. And small businesses in general are hurting these days because of the inflation and overall state of the US economy. It's tough for any small radio company these days, and I imagine it's not much different for the owners of KRIZ, who are obviously dealing with transmitter issues. I wish them well.
Here is KYIZ 1620's website, for those interested in checking out their programs.:
Here is the website for Portland's KBMS 1480, owned and run by the same African American radio company.:
COMPLAINT: SUPERFAST MORSE CODE GUYS, TRYING TO BE BAD
Now we shall move on to ham radio -- something I've been monitoring a lot lately, especially since I fired up my DX-394. And I've got a couple complaints about you hams.
Sometimes I wonder if some of you are really thinking when you use the ham bands and send CQ.
First off, there have been countless times I've heard superfast CW (Morse Code) in the lower sections of the 20 Meter Ham Band, and a lot of those signals are watery sounding (super fast fading) because they're coming over the Polar region from Europe, and they sound quite fadey and watery because of the Auroral Radio Zone.
This means that these superfast CW dudes are sending at a rate where the fading is cutting off and muddling a lot of dits and dahs, sometimes eliminating whole characters, and it's making their CW unreadable to any other ham who doesn't have a massive beam and the ears of a bat. And even some of those fast CW readers probably have difficulties reading the missing characters -- especially when those characters are all hastily run together with no breaks between the words.
I've also heard -- domestically, as well as DX stations -- stations tapping out a CQ in superfast, 20+ word-per-minute Code, and when a guy responds at a slower rate, the superfast guy never slows down -- which is rude, of course, but the superfast guys often are rude, on the air, and sometimes rude online when they're advising newbies. I suppose they think they've got something to prove.
One thing I've noticed, especially since using my DX-394 -- which is a very good receiver for Morse Code -- some of these superfast CW guys send CQ, and no one answers. No kidding. The other hams probably can't read what you're sending because of the Polar fading. Or maybe you shouldn't be using a 'bug' or paddles, sending 20+ words per minute because your CW sucks. Maybe you should use a straight key and slow down.
Note to the superfast CW guys with the paddles, bugs, and keyers: slow the F down already. Who are you trying to impress? Do you want to get contacts, or are you just trying to show off? Do you not understand what it sounds like 1000-5000 miles away -- after your signal has bounced off the ionosphere, affected by fading and the Auroral Radio Zone, or travelling through the Polar warble and then some static, QRM, and RFI?
And this leads to another observation: In the ham radio world, there seems to be this obsession with 20 w.p.m. + speed, as if sending and receiving ultra-fast Morse Code makes you super-bad, a real macho man. I've read comments on some ham forums where guys say "you can't have a decent QSO (conversation) slower than 20 words per minute" -- which is absolute bullshit.
On one ham forum, some veteran hams were trying to convince a newbie -- a guy who said he could barely read Code at 7 words per minute -- that he needs to strive for that 20 w.p.m. level, or he won't be competent on the air. One of these guys even told the newbie he had to learn all these arcane punctuation marks in Morse Code -- characters I've NEVER heard being sent over the ham bands in my several decades of listening.
You don't need to have speedy CW to hold a convo. I've heard plenty of guys having convos using CW at slower speeds. I think a lot of hams forget that the 'key' to using a Code Key is COMMUNICATION, not trying to impress other people with your ability to send speed.
And face it -- if you have monitored the Code sections of the ham bands, you are destined to hear a lot of sloppy sending. And the sloppy sending seems to always happen when a guy gets on his paddles or bug and sends faster CW than he can send cleanly -- where he tries to impress the world with his fast sending, and the dits and dahs and spaces in-between all run together, where you can't tell one character from another. Maybe these guys think they're impressing somebody, but they're just showing guys like me that they'd be better off using a straight key and slowing down.
IGNORE THE WATERFALL -- USE YOUR EARS
One other thing I've noticed while tuning the 20 Meter Ham band is that I'll hear DX stations from Europe, either sending CQ in Morse Code, or even on Sideband, and no one answers them, or very few hams answer them.
So, here I am, listening on a Radio Shack DX-394 and a 25 ft. indoor wire, and I'm hearing stations that others in the US and Canada -- many of whom probably have better equipment than me -- either aren't hearing or don't care to try to contact.
It's uncanny. Sometimes I think it's because the EU station may be sending or calling CQ outside the General privilege regions of the 20 Meter band, reducing the chances of a US ham -- who isn't Extra or Advanced Class -- to be able to respond. Other times I think it's possible that too many hams are using their waterfall display to find DX, instead of just tuning the effing band and listening.
One time I mentioned this on a ham / radio hobby forum. The general response was "it takes too long to tune every channel in the band." What a load of BS. I can switch my DX-394 to 1 kHz steps and tune through the entire 20 Meter Ham band in maybe 15 seconds, and hear where the strong signals are, and where the DX is. Then I zero in on the DX. I can also hear the DX easily, as I always use headphones, and I actually LISTEN.
I don't have a radio with a waterfall display, but whenever I've seen pics of waterfall displays, there are a lot of very faint looking signals that seem to be mixed in with the static. Just looking at the display, it's hard to tell if a signal is a DX station, or a bit of RFI or a static crash.
If someone is depending on just a waterfall, how many DX signals are they missing? I have read comments by hams who check the DX maps and DX hotspots on websites, but those are not specific to your location -- and nothing beats actually TUNING and LISTENING.
USE YOUR TRANSMITTER: SEND A CQ.
My last gripe about amateur radio is one I think a lot of hams out there probably agree with: there are not enough active ham radio operators. The US right now has over 750K ham operators, but you wouldn't think so by listening to any of the bands -- from 160 Meters to 2 Meters. The activity just isn't there.
Too many hams either gave up -- like a guy in my neighborhood who took down his antennas last month -- or they just don't bother to get on the air. There also apparently are a lot who use digital ham transmissions like FT8, where the computer does all the work for you and it's less painstaking -- no tuning (it's all done on one or two channels per ham band), no careful listening. You don't have to listen at all, in fact. There is no Morse Code to decipher, no straining your ears to hear the other guy's call sign -- it's all automatically done by computer.
FT8 is great for visually impaired hams, and guys in locations with antenna restrictions, but it's killing the hobby. The guy in my neighborhood told me that any time he switched on his radio he heard nothing. I understood his pain. A lot of times I didn't hear much, either. But I stuck with it, because I tune each channel in the HF ham bands, to see what's out there. The guy in my neighborhood who gave up had a really nice, new rig which had a waterfall. I think that may have been part of the problem -- he may have been depending on the waterfall display, which doesn't really show you the DX, and then there was the fact that there aren't enough ham operators actually calling or sending CQ, and seeing if anyone responds.
The propagation can be UP, with the HF ham band activity DOWN. Because no one is listening, and they're not calling or sending CQ.
It's a bad cycle of operation, because -- in my view, anyway -- it's killing the hobby. Dead bands are not an indicator of a vibrant hobby.
Tune the radios, guys. If you're licensed, call CQ now and then. If you hear that DX station while actually tuning your rig, try to answer him.
Life is short. Use the spectrum!
MY OLD SCANNER WORKS!
THE RAILROAD BANDS AREN'T WORKING.
In the Summer of 1989, I was working as a janitor, and at the time I was doing OK financially. Janitor's pay wasn't a lot, but the cost of living wasn't anywhere as high as it is now. I had a Realistic Patrolman SW-60 that I used to hear the VHF Low and High bands, but was interested in getting a scanner. So I got one -- the Realistic PRO-34, which, at the time, was Radio Shack's top handheld scanner. I am certain I bought my PRO-34 in late Summer of 1989.
The PRO-34 would run on 6 AA batteries, and it worked off of rechargeable AA's, too -- and it even would charge them.
I had a lot of fun with that scanner, actually. I heard the police channels -- both Renton, SPD, King County, and State Patrol. Hearing the police channels gave me extra respect for what police go through. One evening there was a man who had a gun, and was going to off himself, in his car, near the 405 interchange with State highway 167. The police were able to talk him down and get him to be evaluated. A lot of the talking to the guy was over the VHF Police radio.
I heard a few Aircraft on the Air Band, including a couple military flights going in and out of Boeing Field. That was cool.
I also heard a few cell phone calls. Back then, only well-to-do people had cellphones, which looked like an old, wireline cordless phone handset. They had an internal battery, and they were heavy. Even though my scanner had all of the cellphone frequencies blocked, you still could hear them, because the cell frequencies would bleed over onto the nearby, legal, unblocked 800 MHz channels. This may have been because the cell systems of that day ran a lot of power. The convos would come and go in bits and pieces, because all the calls were sent using a 'trunked' system, meaning that the phones would be handed off from frequency to frequency -- by the cell system -- on an as-needed basis.
Which meant you'd hear maybe 15-30 seconds of a convo, and then it'd cut off, as the system switched it to another frequency. The longest snippet of cell phone convo I probably heard was 45 seconds or so.
I never heard anything spicy. I heard a couple guys talking about their business, heard a guy and his girlfriend arguing. It was a bizarre glimpse into the future, although at the time I had no clue just how connected the world would become through use of the cellphone.
Last, but not least, I used the scanner to monitor the Railroad Frequencies. Now, that was fun! Being that I grew up next to a major railway line, and my Grandma's house was within three blocks of a multi-track railway line, I always had an interest in trains. And the scanner picked up all the activity. You could hear the trains calling the dispatchers. You could hear the BN and UP trains getting permission to cross the other's tracks at the junction near Renton, which was called Black River Junction -- this is where the Union Pacific tracks crossed over the Burlington Northern's two mainline tracks.
Every train that crossed that junction had to call the dispatcher. If it was the BN railroad, you heard a lot of trains calling for the "Centralia North" dispatcher, and the UP trains called for the dispatcher that was based in Omaha. The trains would often have to clear their movements on a section of track. So, if you were a railfan -- as I was at the time -- a scanner was a handy tool. I'd pull up at a legal parking spot near the mainline, and listen for the trains to request permission to cross over the other railroad's tracks at Black River. Within 5-10 minutes, that train would appear. It was pretty cool.
I could also hear this activity from my home, which was 6 miles or more away. On my scanner I also heard the signal guys and Maintenance-of-Way guys, who would call and get clearance to use a section of track. I'd hear track inspectors.
The main Railroad 'road channels' -- 161.160 MHz, 160.515 MHz, and 161.100 MHz -- were always hopping with activity. Even at night I'd hear the trains calling the dispatcher -- all with my scanner, using its rubber duck antenna, 6 miles from the nearest railroad track. I got to know the trains by their indicator -- CSSEZ (Chicago to Seattle, UP); SECSZ (Seattle to Chicago, UP), 696 (BN, Seattle to California), PDSEZ and SEPDZ (UP, expedited between Seattle and Portland); the UP's UPS mail train, the UP Garbage train, the UP local that worked the Valley at night -- I could hear all of them.
I stopped using my scanner around 1993. I don't recall exactly why. I think my rechargeable batteries stopped holding charge, and it got to be a pain to battery up the radio all the time with 6 AA's. Other life also got in the way. The Scanner went into the closet, and stayed there for years.
So -- fast forward to 2024. I found my PRO-34 in the closet, just sitting there.
I plugged in the 9 Volt adaptor, and fired it up.
IT WORKED! I was getting hiss out of the speaker!
Then I had to remember how to program it to receive, search, etc. I found a Users Manual on the internet, and looked it over. Then I programmed in the Weather channel, 162.55 MHz.
I was hearing NOAA Weather Radio. Cool.
So I figured out how to Search the range of MHz where the Railroad Band is (160-162 MHz, basically). I had it search the spectrum for maybe an hour. Nothing.
I went online and found the local Railroad frequencies. I plugged one of them in -- UP's road channel, 160.515. I turned down the squelch, so I could hear the weakest transmission if needed. I let it idle, unsquelched, on 160.515 all night, while I worked on writing in the den.
I heard absolutely nothing. And even after four hours of listening to these channels, during the next weekday -- I got nothing.
It turns out that the Railroads were mandated by the government to narrowband their FM mobile (and other) radios. Which makes their FM signals weaker. Consequently, they are much harder to hear. It sucks, really. It also seems odd that the government would mandate a system that made it harder for a trainman on a 10,000 ton, mile long train to hear other trains, or the dispatcher. I suppose they all had to buy new radios with more 'pull' to them.
Either way, compared to 30 years ago, Railroad Scanning is DEAD.
I also dug up a Uniden Bearcat BC550A scanner a guy gave me in 2010. I fired it up. I had to download the manual to see how to work it. The BC-550A is actually a really fast search-scanner, and so I programmed it to search -- repeatedly -- between 148-174 MHz, which includes the Railroad Band.
Nothing. Just the weather channel on 162.55.
I realise that there are still a lot or radio hobbyists who like to scan the cops, fire, ambulances, businesses, Marine, Airband, and the like. I have been able to hear the Air band OK on my scanners, but it is sort of boring. But compared to 1989-1993, the entire spectrum is dead. The 2 Meter Ham band? Compared to 1989, it's dead. VHF Marine? Dead. The Police have mostly moved to 800 MHz, trunked systems, and one needs a new, trunking scanner, where you download playlists off the internet to tell the scanner where to scan.
In the old days, you'd just switch on your scanner to hear all kinds of cool stuff. It was pretty simple. Not any more.
I have the distinct feeling I won't be getting back into the scanning hobby. It's just not fun anymore.
It is fun that my old Scanner still works, though. I remember using it on the night of the Fourth, 1989. I don't think I heard too much, as I was going out that night with my GF at the time. But that's why I fired it up this time, on the night of the Fourth of July. To see if the scanner still works, and if there was anything out there.
All I heard was the Weather channel.
That's the breaks.
THE REALISTIC PATROLMAN SW-60 RIDES AGAIN!
Just before finishing this article, I took a short clip of my Realistic Patrolman SW-60 receiving what probably is CNR-1 from China in the 19 Meter Band. Here's the clip.:
My 1988 Realistic Patrolman SW-60 AM-FM-SW-VHF Lo-VHF Hi-UHF radio tuned to a Chinese CNR-1 station broadcast in the 19 Meter Band, probably either 15360 or 15410 kHz, just before 1400 UTC. When the broadcast ended, it was abrupt, at the top of the hour, when a woman said "Beijing" after some time pips, and the signal cut off mid-sentence -- not long after this recorded clip ended.
The antenna used is one plugged in the back of the radio, using a Motorola jack. It is a longer whip antenna than the whip antenna that is part of the radio. It was a separate antenna I bought at Radio Shack in 1990. The loading coil on the external antenna makes it effective into the high SW spectrum. I was surprised I got any SW at all, being that the radio is old school, transistor technology. But it's proof that even the Multibanders from the 1960s-1990s could, and still can, bring in SW signals. This radio is really good on the MW/AM band also.
There's really nothing much else to add here. I'll probably post the article on the DX-394 pretty soon, as I've re-learned all the tricks to using it properly for SW, MW and Ham band listening, so that everything on using the receiver can be covered in the article.
There aren't a lot of articles on the DX-394 on the internet anymore. It was a big deal back in the late 1990's, and there was still interest in the radio in the 2000's, including mentions on radio forums and eGroups (it even had its own eGroup), but a lot of webpages, internet forums and email talkgroups, and receiver reviews have gone the way of the Dodo over the past 10 years. Some of it might only be found on the web archive sites like the Wayback Machine.
The internet, like everything else, is changing.
But I'm certain there are still a few DX-394 users, or people who have come across these radios, and maybe they'll find the DX-394 article useful. I'll post it within a week. All it needs is a bit of final editing and some pics.
A pic I'd forgotten that I had taken of a bumblebee in a Rhododendron blossom earlier this year, some time in May. For some reason, Rhodies attract a lot of bumblebees. When it's quiet out you can hear them buzzing while they go from flower to flower. I think I took maybe eight or nine shots trying to get a bee in focus, being that they move around so much.
Until later, my friends and readers,
Peace.
C.C. -- July 10th and 11th, 2024.
August 10th, 2024: I added the link to the ZTwins' and KBMS's websites (KYIZ 1620, KBMS 1480), one of the African American stations mentioned in the article.
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