Sunday, January 31, 2010

UADX E-Newsletter 31 January 2010

I have in front of me what I believe is the last edition of UADX dated July 1993, before the Internet era and the order of the day was duplicating paper, wax stencils and snail mail. We were often hindered by space problems and postage costs. We surface as we have often done again and this time I hope it will be for some time. Looking at the Editorial I see my good friend and main stay of UADX, Gerrhard asking me the question “Victor have you completely deserted the DX hobby in favour of Ham Radio?....I know it is difficult to devote time to two hobbies and earn your bread. It is not for me to announce the closure of UADX, so I shall patiently wait until you surface again or announce the closure of UADX yourself. I only had hoped that we would make the 150th issue” wrote Gerhard Werdin from Islamabad on 17th June 1993,. And in response Victor G. says “Gerhard I don’t think I will ever announce the closure of UADX. That will be the last thing I will do friends. I think UADX will be laid to rest only with yours truly. Hi! So never ask that question again. Yes we shall falter, go into hibernation but God willing we shall surface again as we have done!! It is amazing that when you sit at the type writer with the stencil in it , how that old romance flows into your veins and the same excitement I felt way back in 1967 comes rushing back” (Late Note January 2010..I got the same thrill as I finished this edition a little while ago!! The bones may creak, memory failing, eyesight not that great but the romance of radio still calls strong! GvG)

Read the complete edition of the Newsletter here .

Eclipse Monitoring 15th January 2010

by G. Victor A. Goonetilleke

From COLOMBO, Sri Lanka. As most people would know there was an Annular Eclipse of the Sun which was observed between South India and the Northern half of Sri Lanka. While many viewed the eclipse through shaded /smoked glass, Xray papers and many other devices, I viewed the eclipse from my home at Piliyandala (18km SE from Colombo) through the dials of my radio receiver, inside my shack with headphones on staring at the S-metre while scanning the Medium Wave and Shortwave frequencies below 7 MHz. My brother Ron 4S7RO and myself (4S7VK) made a similar observation somewhere in 1984 around 2.30 p.m. in the afternoon with tremendous results. Unfortunately, most of the stations that we observed on 2-7 MHz range, have now left short wave and thus there was very little to observe there. The 1984 Eclipse which ran across Central India gave us HF/SW signals from longer distances compared to the January 15th Eclipse which was only about 100 km north of Colombo. The problem with sky wave is that there is a dead zone between the ground wave and the first hop when we are so close to the eclipse.

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Saturday, January 30, 2010

Vatican Radio via Tashkent

Due to poor reception from Dushanbe, Vatican Radio moved the site on 7585 kHz at 1430-1550 UTC to Tashkent from 29th January 2010. Reception is much better than Dushanbe.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

FEBA uses 7485 kHz for Bengali

Due to cochannel interference FEBA Radio via Tashkent w.e.f 17th January uses 7485 kHz replacing 7365 kHz at 1500-1530 for their daily b'cast in Bengali.