OK via Es

Wednesday morning, I did the weekly shopping. I had the car radio tuned to WLNG on 92.1 MHz and as I descended from Compounce Mountain down to ESPN-land, I lost WLNG and heard two other stations vying for the channel.

Five minutes later (1345 UTC), I arrived at my first stop and sat in the car trying to identify the stations, one Spanish, the other English. I had no luck identifying the Spanish station, but I did ID the English station: KTBT in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, transmitting 27kW, 1300 miles to the west-southwest!

A Dog's Life

Here is a photo of Daisy, one of the occupants of this QTH. She went to the beach today, while I cleaned the garage! Lucky dog!

WWV 25 MHz in the log

Since posting this story about WWV's experimental 25 MHz broadcast, I have been checking 25 MHz regularly. Saturday morning (June 23 at 1513 UTC), I finally was able to hear it here in Wolcott, CT. Signal was an S-6 with the 80-meter inverted Vee antenna and barely audible with the HyGain 18AVT/WB-A vertical antenna. Receiver was an ICOM IC-R8600.

ICOM AD-55NS AC Adapter

When I purchased my ICOM IC-R8600 receiver, I also purchased its AC adapter, the ICOM AD-55NS.

After using the pair for a few days, I was not happy. The AC adapter generated noise that I could hear across the LW and AM bands and beyond. As expected, the noise was much worse when the receiver’s preamp was enabled.

The noise went away when I swapped the AC adapter with an MFJ 25 Amp switching power supply, so I shipped the AC adapter back to the dealer for a replacement (assuming that the unit was defective) or for a refund (assuming that the unit was not defective).

The dealer tested the unit and said it was operating "normally" and was not defective, so I received a refund which I used to purchase an Astron MS-35M 35-Amp linear power supply. Admittedly, the Astron was overkill for the IC-R8600, but I also needed it to power other equipment in the shack. And so far, I have not detected any noise being generated by the Astron.

In the mail...

This arrived in the mail today!

Marconi's Daughter Visits Dad's Cape Cod Radio Site

Art, W1AWX, shot this video of Princess Elettra Marconi visiting her father's Cape Cod radio site on May 31, 2018. Marconi built his first U.S wireless radio station on Cape Cod in 1902 and his station made the first radio transmissions from the U.S. to England in 1903.