[HCDX] KBC wet string experiment

["Robin Banneville" <robin_ban@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi to all the readers of HCDX

It's been a while since I've reported on this website and I realise that this is not serious DX, but last Saturday evening, (15th,Sept.), just for fun, I thought I'd experiment by making an antenna out of a 3m length of wet string and see how well The Mighty KBC could be received. KBC broadcast a regular commercial tansmission every Saturday evening from 22.00 - 23.00 utc, on 6255 kHz to Europe and the World via a 100kW relay in Lithuania. I was actually quite happy with the result.

To achieve reception I decided to keep things simple. I soaked the string in tepid salt water for 24 hours so that it would be totally saturated. Then I simply wrapped the string around a banana plug which I then connected into the center of the 50 ohm PL-259 socket on the back of my elderly (but trusty) Lowe HF-225 receiver. The other end of the string was fastened to a rubber band which I hooked onto a tree in the middle of the garden. As the weather was fine, I decided to do the test in the garden to avoid any "homemade" electrical interference.

At first I thought the antenna was a duff. Little, if anything, could be detected on 6255 kHz at 22.00 utc. I tried several different arrangements, but still nothing, just a faint hint of a carrier. At this point, about 22.05 utc, I turned on the Roberts portable so as not to miss the broadcast totally. Here KBC was around 35544 using the telescopic aerial.

Then a thought struck me !!! The aerial switch on the back of the Lowe was in the wrong position. I switched it to the correct position and "POW"... KBC were playing "Motorbiking" loud and clear at around 22.22 utc. Well, actually not loud and clear, but certainly audible. Happy that I now at least had a result, I began to dance around the garden. Then I stopped dancing around the garden before my next door neighbour telephoned for the "men in white coats" ...

Okay, so the needle on the "S" meter still read nothing, but the overall SIO I was hearing was somewhere between 122 and 133. A fair amount of noise, but no QRM and clear enough to hear "Teenage Kicks" at 22.27 ish. Also clear enough to hear the reception reports at around 22.40 ...

Now there was just one thing left for me to prove, I had to make sure that the signal that I was receiving was in fact coming in through the string and not just through the banana plug. So I detatched the string and, to my relief, the reception all but disappeared. Success.

Pictures of the test in "action" and this report on the KBC forum, can be found on the KBC website - http://www.kbcradio.eu/

Best 73's
Robin
Guernsey (Channel Islands) UK 

 
__________________________________________________________________________
Sent via Cable & Wireless Guernsey system at cwgsy.net


 
                          
---[Start Commercial]---------------------

Preorder your WRTH 2007:
http://www.hard-core-dx.com/redirect2.php?id=wrth2007
---[End Commercial]-----------------------
________________________________________
Hard-Core-DX mailing list
Hard-Core-DX@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx
http://www.hard-core-dx.com/
_______________________________________________

THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed
and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License
published by Michael Stutz at 
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/dsl.html