RadioIntelligencer

Russ drove up from the Carolinas for our yearly Navy football game in Annapolis.  This year from outstanding 6th row goal line seats Russ, an old college buddy of mine and his 10 year old son and I watched enthusiastically while the Midshipmen took on the Hilltoppers of Western Kentucky University.  Steeped in tradition starting from the Brigade of Midshipmen marching on the field prior to the game to the singing of the Blue and Gold at the end, Navy has returned the past few years as a respectable college football team.  Though their players are not the biggest in college football due to weight/height limits as well as you can’t be an idiot to attend the academy, the Midshipmen maximize what they do have… brains, guts and heart.  They know they have very little hope of ever having a lucrative professional career but play hard for all the right reasons – for love of school, country and the game.   They, as well as the other service academies,  are the last of the real amateurs.

Today was a special day as well at the stadium.  It marked the 50th Anniversary of the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. The Midshipmen played in retro uniforms used in 1959.  A point of trivia about Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, a portion of the proceeds from the 1958 movie Run Silent Run Deep with Burt Lancaster and Clark Gable helped to pay for the stadium.   I can hardly imagine Hollywood doing anything like this today.

It rained pretty much during the entire game and I wasn’t able to take many photos but we all had a blast as usual.     Russ and I talked about radio stuff past and present as well as ideas for the webpage but it wasn’t always about radio.

Navy beat Western Kentucky 38-22.

Go Navy!

Personally I could care less if they do this on FM and it probably would help increase coverage and consumer acceptance but on AM it would be more of a disaster (FUBAR) than it already is right now.

From Radio World

Before he became the new Media Bureau Chief, Bill Lake was involved with shepherding the DTV transition.

In a session at the NAB Radio Show in Philadelphia on Thursday, Lake promised his staff would try to “turn to the power increase sooner rather than later.”

He said it’s a relief the commission doesn’t face a hard enaction date for radio like it did in television, and said of IBOC in general: “We want to promote it and encourage its adoption.”

Recognizing the pending power increase proceeding, now awaiting action by the commission for over a year, he said the FCC would get to it “as soon as we can. It’s not going to languish.”

Tags: IBOC

While driving home today from work and doing the usual channel hoping between XM, AM and FM, I stumbled up NPR’s “All Things Considered” doing a segment on the 70th Anniversary of the National Archives recording of a full broadcast day of WJSV 1460 kHz in Washington, D.C.  You can download the 6 minute segment here. Recorded during the Great Depression and on the heels of WWII, this September 21, 1939 broadcast offers an interesting insight what one might expect to hear at that time on the radio.  Though not mentioned in NPR’s segment, WJSV would eventually become the very well known WTOP on 1500 kHz.  For those keeping score, WTOP today is on 103.5 FM while their sister station WFED occupies the old 1500 kHz frequency.  If you have lots of time to spare, you can download the complete 19 hours of MP3 audio from the Internet Archive here.

Tags: WJSV, WTOP

I was fortunate enough to be treated to the DC chapter of the Society Broadcast Engineers annual picnic.   It was I must say most enjoyable listening to radio engineering war stories and getting to meet a few of the guys who keep the stations in the Washington DC area sounding great and on the air.  One engineer that was there I hadn’t seen since my college days in the early 80s when this gentleman was the engineer on call for the small college class D FM station that I used to hang around.  One of the  highlights included a tour of WMAL’s transmitter site and former studio in Bethesda, Maryland.  Going on the air in 1925, WMAL is one of the oldest stations in the area.   This location first went on the air in 1941 with 5000 watts and remains active today  with 10000 watts day and 5000 watts night.  The towers are original  and as you can see in the photos well maintained to WMAL’s credit.  The old studios are now used for storage and other things but the cigarette stained sound proofing on the walls, steel desks and a few remaining radio artifacts that remain remind you of the long history of service the station has had in the area.  Click here to see more  photos.

Tags: AM, Photos, WMAL

The Herculodge.com radio website has a review of the AM-FM Tecsun CR1100DSP portable.  Well worth taking a look at and reading about the ups and downs he has had with the radio.

Click here to be beamed over to Herculodge!

Apparently so if you ask the FCC.

Washington DC — In the first Congressional oversight hearing since the three new FCC Commissioners took office, all five Commissioners endorsed the Local Community Radio Act HR 1147/ S592, unanimously reaffirming the FCC’s continued support for the bill.

read more at the Prometheus Radio Project

Having worked at LPFM, if you could call it that, while in college during the early 80s, I can not see where having LPFMs on the dial is such a bad thing.  One of the most interesting and entertaining things to listen to on the radio in my opinion are unpolished amateur announcers doing their own thing over the air as well as serving their local community.   I suppose this is especially true  if you live in a large metropolitan area as I do.   I still find it hilarious and hypocritical to this day that when the LPFM rule change was first proposed that one of the largest vocal oppositions to it was National Public Radio (NPR).  Public Radio.. yea right.  Let’s be honest here, though there is nothing wrong with it they are just another big business radio broadcaster.   NPR stations were also one of the first to tout the modern day wonders of the miracles of IBOC not because it was necessarily better or they could serve the public but because their affiliates could increase their revenue streams.  That was a few years ago so it will be interesting how things begin to develop.  In the mean time I’m hoping that LPFM doesn’t get dragged into the nasty Fairness Doctrine debate which I’m afraid in the end it will.

Tags: LPFM

When the original RI began Paul, aka HongKongRadioer, had some of the best radio photos on the net and frankly still does.  Unknowingly he has been one of my inspirations in an effort to up my game in the photos department.  After all who wants to look at crummy pix?  Since then my interest in taking snaps has contiuned to grow.  I’ve posted in the Omnium-gatherum section  some photos I’ve taken of radio gear.  I plan to add more at some point but this is a good start.  You can take a look by going here.

Tags: Photos

I bought a new G3 from the first production run. I had hopes that, since it looks just like the G5/E5 radios that it would match that level of performance and add synchronous detection. However I was sorely disappointed. The radio has been totally re-designed internally and is based on a high tech chip, which although it might be able to perform well, does not in this implementation. I side-by-sided the G3 with my E5 and found performance on the new G3 was fairly miserable by comparison.

One big issue is the synchronous detection, which requires a whoppingly strong signal to lock at all, and when it did lock there was a big change in audio level. It kept slipping in and out of lock accompanied by odd noises and volume changes which rendered the sync useless. Recent reports suggest the sync detection level has been reset in a firmware revision to a more suitable level…whether this actually allows the sync to be useful on this radio however remains to be seen.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, reception on the AM band was poor compared with my trusty E5. In my suburban location 10 miles outside of Hartford, CT the G3’s AM dial was filled with spurious birdies and hets, and frequencies which were free of those noises were hissy compared with the E5…in fact there were few AM signals I would judge listenable on the G3….the E5 brought in many stations clearly which were poor on the G3.  SW reception was closer to what it should be…I noted just slightly less apparent SW sensitivity on the G3 than on the E5. But still…the E5 was better.

So I do hope Eton/Degen can remedy these issues…the E5/G5 (and the Degen DE-1103 upon which they are based) has been my favorite radio in this size group and still it. As long as the G3 doesn’t live up to that level of performance, no number of bells and whistles will make up for that. ..basic performance has to come first.

But I do live in hope and I plan to try another sample from later production once it can be determined that the improved units are actually available…so far no serial number info has been made available. I’ll keep you posted.

Jay Allen

Tags: Grundig

Welcome to the “all new” radiointel! We are hopeful that this new format will allow us to update the site much more frequently. My first new review is about a relatively inexpensive yet remarkably excellent radio…I hope you will check it out…here’s the link to it.

Sangean PR-D5

Also in the works for posting soon, the C.Crane Roberts Revival Radio, as well as the Grundig G3 and G8 radios…all coming soon…promise!

Jay Allen

Tags: Sangean

Welcome to RI version 2.o!  Yes, RI has been pretty stale the past year but after some time learning the Word Press platform, words of encouragement from people who apparently like the page and help from some great radio Ops (more on that later), I am happy to say the new page is now operational.

So what’s changed?

Gone are the mega links to assorted radio pages.  Links go dead every day on the internet and if a webmaster doesn’t stay on top of them it can quickly make the linking page look outdated and sloppy if gone unchecked.  You ought to know if you’ve checked radiointel.com the past year.  Heh!  I’ve kept a few of the “can’t live without pages” and will add a few more but there are other SWL and Amateur Radio portals that do a good job in keeping track of them, I just don’t want to be one of them.  The daily news items too are gone.  They are way too much time consuming to dig up on a day to day basis.   If you want to read about the latest happenings in Shortwave and AM radio then read DX Listening Digest.  Hands down Glenn Hauser does the best job in painstakingly compiling radio news and making them available to anyone who cares to read them.  The man is radio treasure and I don’t know how he does it.  Thanks Glenn! That doesn’t mean there will be no news but just not the day to day stuff.  Plus with the new blog style format Jay and Russ will be able to post their own news items that they find interesting and comment on them.

So where does this lead us?  Jay and Russ have been given the keys to the page and can write about anything they wish and I hope they do as I know they have a lot to share.   There is also blog style comment section that’s available for feedback from readers.   Keep it clean and nice and we will all get along.  We plan to continue to write about our impressions on the radios we get to use and the trinkets and shinney objects that go along with them.  I love radio history and am always looking for radio photo opportunities so I plan on posting more photos on the site.  So who knows what other crazy ideas we may get?

Finally, the new site would not of been possible if it were not for two very important people who patiently mentored me and showed me some of the tricks of the trade.  First is Colin Newell of  DXer.ca, a first class Canadian SWL site.  If you have not visited Colin’s page then you must.  DXer.ca features some great equipment reviews by guys who really know their stuff  as well as featuring two real shortwave celebs… Ian McFarland and Bob Zanotti, who really need no introduction if you’ve been around a radio the past twentyfive or so years.  Second, I would like to thank my Amateur Radio brother Andreas Kristiansen LA8AJA who like Colin was more than willing to share what he knows and answer my insane questions.  Andreas is a devoted DXer and top notch CW op and keeps a great page that you can read here.   Young guys like Andreas give me tremendous hope for the future of Amateur Radio and the survival of the premier mode… CW.    Both of these gentlemen unselfishly gave me their time and expertise that I hope to be able to return the favor one day.  They are testaments to the spirit of the friendship that is a part of our small global radio fraternity.   Thank you fellas!

So this is where we are for at least right now.   Let’s see what happens.  As for me, I am looking forward to the fall DX season and spining the dials.