The Way We Were

Here is a classic copy of The Guide from 1999. See how much has changed, how much remains the same but above all, enjoy the nostalgia:

So where do all the rejected stations go?

Down the GROUND wire into God's good earth. In many instances, this is via the earth lead in the mains cable and the plugs third pin.

THIS LEAD IS FOR ELECTRICAL SAFETY AND SHOULD NEVER BE REMOVED.

The problem is this path is shared by every other electrical appliance in the house, some of which will be fitted with suppressors which will now be using the same path to earth electrical noise. Nobody has ever taken the time to have a word with this interference, suggesting it should only go to earth without seeing your radios ground lead as a way into the set where it now finds itself in series with the aerial signal and so a part of it. Hence, more noise...

The answer is to add extra earthing as per the suggestions in the instruction manual. This will often shorten the earth path and make it more effective. After a wet Saturday afternoon doing manic Dracula impressions with large earthing stakes, you may feel your attempts at getting a good earth are better than the bloke who wired your house and a strong desire to cut the earth lead in the plug.

NEVER DO THIS. THERE IS A LEGAL REQUIREMENT FOR SAFETY EARTHING.

Some have found using a piece of coax left over from the antenna installation as an earth lead has some advantages.

A Co-Axial Earth

The wire core and the outer braid are connected together at the earth spike outside. In the radio room, only the inner core is connected to the GROUND point on the radio. As we have come to the sorry conclusion our earth lead is actually a part of our aerial, any interference picked up in the earth path is conducted to ground by the outer braid, leaving the centre core path "in the clear".

If we have problems with mains-borne interference, one answer is to allow our signal earth and our safety earth to ground in separate paths. If we are to maintain the integrity of our safety earth we can build in a high impedance "barrier" at signal frequencies in this path and take our station earth to ground from the radio side. This is nothing new. They were using isolating transformers as an end to common-mode noise back in the Thirties. These devices are now back in the accessory market. Forgive the wry smile of the old timer - the more things change to improve, perhaps, the more they stay the same.

Actively Seeking Signals

Over in Smug Corner sits the owner of a portable receiver. He knows - and we have to admit - that the performance of these sets is on the up. Flat-dwellers can forget all that has gone before and not bother about the politics of outdoor antennas and buy a portable happy in the knowledge that it will perform very well. They can also see if this is the hobby for them or check out local interference by getting one of the many entry-level sets coming out of China and still have FM stereo to fall back on if the bands are quiet.

Don't you just hate it when that happens!

Yet they still enjoy their listening without all the discussion and installation of any special aerial array.

How do they do it? The telescopic rod antenna on the portable is all they are using...

Remember what we said about any length of wire or rod antenna acting as an aerial as long as you can match its end-impedance to the tuning circuits in the radio? This is what the portables have done for years. The telescopic whip and the impedance transforming electronics form the basis of The Active Antenna. This is already a part of the portable, but if we separate them to allow the whip to be sited for best reception, if we go for pure design with less thought for cost and power consumption to improve IP performance, we start to have a real solution for those who do not have the space for a conventional antenna. If you are rowing the Atlantic in a dingy this year, your dealer can supply an active antenna to receive from, but not send to, dear old Blighty.

If you have the space for any kind of wire aerial, then do it.

Experiment to your hearts content, but just do it. To get an active antenna to turn in a real performance equal to our much maligned "bit of wire" can lead to an investment near to the cost of the radio itself. Circumstances alter cases, so with the wide range of active devices available now, performance will not be compromised too much for the spatially-challenged. But do choose carefully…

Meanwhile in the snug of The Duck and Fruitbat, your scribe relaxes with several pints of Old McReekie's Intestinal Purge ready for some real radio. Just what are the Wild Waves saying?

The set is bought and installed by the book, the neighbour is already on to a legal beagle after seeing the antenna. But no matter. Time to turn on, tune in and drop out with the New Zealand fatstock prices.

Propagation

In which we learn The Sun provides The Mirror for all the news we will hear;

Engineers can place the blame many millions of miles away. As the seminal work, The Hitch-hiker's Guide to The Wireless, the one true reference puts it;

"In the innermost reaches of the Galaxy, near the unfashionable Western arm of Ursa Minor, lies a small unregarded little yellow sun. Some ninety million miles from this, in an orbit whose shape after several thousand millennia is the prototype for the rugby ball, sits a much smaller blue-green planet called Earth. The sun sends its warming rays, so God says, to ionize the rarefied upper atmosphere into layers for two carbon-based ape descendants, Mssrs Appleton and Heaviside to discover. Long after this, just after the invention of Rugby football, Marconi found that if you chuck enough radio energy at one of these layers, some of it will come down at a tremendous distance, so giving birth to short-wave radio. All this served to do no more than upset God a deal, since it was His idea in the first place..."

So there you have it - with all due credit and apology to Douglas Adams.

The current radio conditions are an Act of God. If this sounds like a cop-out, then we can only blame the insurance companies who have used the line for years.

In addition to the daily and yearly life of the sun as we see it from Earth, it also has a life of it's own. This is the eleven year long sunspot cycle. Without getting into heavy physics, the radiated energy from the sun rises and falls in this period causing a corresponding rise and fall in the ability of our ionosphere to act as a mirror reflecting far-away stations to our radio sets. In the guidance notes for ship's radio officers, it generally accepted that the cycle will see three years of rapid growth followed by eight years of gradual decline - rather like the economy. It's interesting to note that a ships "sparks" - a radio professional - has this trained into him in one paragraph. The hams - radio amateurs - find the topic all pervading, the subject of nearly every net and bulletin board. If you were just about to call to say that as a radio ham I am generalizing again, I write this as the holder of an amateur radio callsign; G8YQL - see you further down the log. Much further...

This is the twenty-third cycle since records began - the sun has been at it a little longer - and conditions are making a good recovery. The mean sunspot count, the most understandable indicator of solar activity is rising steadily - back in the hundreds as I write this. Add to this effects caused by solar flares, a storm on the sun and not a Seventies fashion statement, storms in the Earth's magnetic field and you have a recipe for a radio disaster or great listening. Conditions are that variable. But for the casual listener, you and I dear reader, there is but a shift of emphasis to higher frequencies and the ionospheric quirks that annoy the professionals so, become our interesting catches.