[Milsurplus] Down the Rabbit Hole...

[Thomas Adams]

Sometimes in fooling around with radio, the obvious is hiding in plain sight.

Even tho the sport of AM Broadcast Band DXing is a dying art (being 
slowly poisoned to death
by IBOC garbage that is definitely NOT "On Channel"...  unless you 
accept ADJACENT channel!),
while pursuing it sometimes you can get a surprise or two.

Alice in Wonderland went down a rabbit hole and made all sorts of 
interesting discoveries...  sometimes
there are OTHER technological rabbit holes that contain interesting 
things, hiding in plain sight.


I was sitting around this evening, listening to the 50 KW of WSM on 
650 KHz rolling into the Madison
area from that big Blaw - Knox tower outside of Nashville, getting 
into a Hank Snow tune I wasn't
familiar with...  and getting jolted by the truly grotesque 
commercial from a local cemetery, saying
"Hank Snow is appearing HERE"!  It reminds ya of the old WKRP IN 
CINCINNATI episode about the new
commercial for the chain undertaking firm...  the cemetery welcomes 
visitors, and offers free maps to
show you the locations of OTHER Country & Western stars in Permanent 
Appearance bookings there!

Somewhere in that grotesque bit of pondering, my eyes roved around 
the room and fell on a whim
purchase from a few hamfest seasons back; a solid state, portable 
marine direction finder that I use
as a portable radio in the summer.

It's a neat little box; it covers the long wave beacon band (the 
thing that hooked me into buying it), AM,
FM, VHF Weather Band, and, oddly, Citizen's Band! On top is a 
rotating ferrite rod antenna mounted on
a huge compass rose, used for taking bearings on LF beacons.

It occurred to me that I'd committed the cardinal sin of battery 
equipment use; at the end of this summer,
I'd forgotten to take out the batteries! Leaking dry cells can and 
will reek havoc on a radio.

I grabbed the little box and turned it on. Thankfully, the batteries 
hadn't leaked, and the radio came to
life immediately.

Instead of my usual action of scanning the beacon band, I flipped the 
radio to AM, and just for grins, I
tuned it to 650 KHz to see if it could match the big Navy RBB on a 
random wire antenna that was hauling
in Nashville.


Yep, Nashville was coming in pretty well, but with some noise. 
Unconsciously, I rotated the loopstick,
and WSM was coming in as well on the little blue box as it was on the 
Navy rig as the loopstick's peak
swung toward Nashville.

It dawned on me that I had been so busy on long wave with this radio 
that I'd never played with the rig
on AM broadcast band. No manual, but I'd quickly discovered that the 
AM band also operated in direction
finder mode as well as it does on LF.

Switching to DF mode and setting the RF gain to the center of the 
meter scale, out of curiosity I took a
bearing on WSM, using the usual method; put WSM in the null of the loop.

Yep, there it was, at about 160 degrees...  but I was a bit surprised 
to note that there was another signal
there that WSM had been obliterating ("Clear Channel" doesn't mean 
diddlysquat anymore...).

Turning down the RBB and listening to the new signal...  it was 
carrying Fox Network. Signal strength
was quite good; an easily readable signal. It was near the top of the 
hour, so I stayed, just in case these
guys STILL observed the time honored, but usually ignored, practice 
of Station Identification.

Yep, they DID do an ID...   KGAB, Cheyenne...

Holy Fecal Refuse..   WYOMING??? On this little crap box Taiwanese 
direction finder???

Wyoming is a HARD one to log on AM, no matter how you slice it! Time 
to hit the Internet...

On the FCC Data Base, it all bore out, Yep, it's Cheyenne, Wyoming... 
8.5 KW nondirectional, but DAYTIME
ONLY.  Keep digging thru the FCC paperwork...

Ah HAH!!!   PSSA (Post Sun Set Authorization) on file. My, that's a 
BIG one; 500 watts, directional. Keep
digging...

Well...  it appears that Clear Channel DOES still mean something; it 
protects the dominant station on the
frequency. My level of respect for the little DF set takes a 
measurable leap; the directional pattern is from
a 3 tower array firing to the NORTHWEST...   toward the Northwest 
Territories of Canada. Wisconsin is
squarely in the pattern's NULL.


Back to the RBB...  the random wire isn't giving me any sort of 
advantage obviously, and careful snooping
reveals a VERY SLIGHT bit of interference from KGAB, completely blown 
away by the Nashville Powerhouse.

For a very long time I've toyed with the idea of erecting a K9AY 
broadband directional antenna for AM and
beacon DXing...  but I've never seriously pursued it. The control 
cable wiring is quite extensive if you were to
interleave two or three of them for more than two directional lobes, 
and the terminating resistor adjustment
schemes to optimize performance at a given frequency are all sort of 
Rube Goldbergish...  stuff like selenium
photocells, and varying the current to an LED glued to the cell 
surface to vary it's resistance!

It may not be optimal, but it appears that there's certainly MORE 
than one way to skin the proverbial cat. A
K9AY would be NICE...  but a used 15 buck marine D/F radio can do the 
job too, it appears.


Too bad that Chief Engineers these days don't know diddly about 
reception reports or QSL cards; THIS one
would be well worth writing for!


Mr. T., W9LBB