I was spinning around the 20 meter band this evening looking for entertainments and was not disappointed. The band is quirky this time of night (in my experience) and sometimes you find interesting signals.
Radio Havana Cuba [1] broadcasts in AM on 14.295mHz which is right in the thick of the internationally designated 20 meter band. It’s kind of a jerk move, but it is the official voice of the Cuban government [2], and so it is what it is. You certainly can’t fault the music selections which are truly lovely.
In slightly related news, I’ve wired the radio into my soundcard so I can do some recording as I come across things that intrigue me. So I captured a few snippets to share here. First is RHC‘s signal captured as AM radio [3] on 14.295mHz:
Tuning as AM, RHC’s signal is pretty copyable. However you can also hear a mush-mouthy male voice blah blah blahing all over the pretty music. It’s really difficult to copy the guy’s voice because he’s broadcasting an SSB signal, also on 14.295mHz.
Given the time of day, the 20 meter band is squirrelly like I mentioned earlier. One thing you’ll hear a lot is signals fading in and out (QSB). In the middle of this recording the ham radio QSO fades all the way out and only comes back right at the end.
But we’re ham radio operators and so it’s the QSO that most interest us. What’s kind of fun is turning the table, so to speak, and tuning 14.295mHz as SSB instead of AM [4]. In this snippet you can copy the QSO much more readily although RHC fades in and out:
You’ll also notice that you’re only hearing one side of the conversation now. The distant station isn’t rising above the background noise so we get a nice musical interlude in the middle of this snippet even though we’re not tuning AM. The station operator mentions the band dipping for him as well.
That contact ends shortly after I recorded the second snippet. And then, because it sounds wistful and a little lonely, here’s the station calling CQ [5] with the dulcet tones of RHC playing on in the background:
[1] http://www.rhc.cu/en
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Havana_Cuba
[3] http://www.blackfez.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/20140922-RadioHavanaQSOonAM.mp3
[4] http://www.blackfez.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/20140922-RadioHavanaQSOonSSB.mp3
[5] http://www.blackfez.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/20140922-WW5DD.mp3
