Hi I guess, for some strange reason, this post failed to get to the list. Hence, reposting it. Harish Kotian
Hi Our member was talking to me regarding radio purchase. This inspired me to pen this down. It should interest those who would want to listen to shortwave radio and don't know how. It should also Help those who are owning the Angel player. The newer Angel pro and its variant do not have shortwave radio in it and therefore, this tips shall not cover it. To use the shortwave radio, you need to understand its nature and this will help you search for stations. Radio propagation: the radio signal ordinarily should reach us by line of sight. This would therefore give a short area where the signal gets picked. For it to travel long distance it travels up into the sky and it gets reflected down by the ionosphere layer in our atmosphere. The ionosphere layer is dense where the sun is. It is at the maximum during the day and weakens in the evening and again builds up in the morning. Another factor to note is that higher the frequency greater is its penetration power into the ionosphere. To put this in a simple way, you will get better signals from long distance on the higher frequency like the 25m and the 19m during the day. On the lower frequency i.e. 31 m and 40 m, you will get signals from nearby places during the day and longer distances during evenings and night. Because the ionosphere layer keeps changing all the time the signals are not consistent and you tend to hear in a wavy patterns at times. How to improve reception: 1 desensitisation of the receiver. When you switch the shortwave band, you will not find a single station. You feel frustrated the radio is no good and you give up. The same problem is with the radio of Angel player. What you need to do then is to keep the radio tuned in a band where you are more likely to pick up some station. You can take inputs from the earlier Para for this. Let the radio be on, for a couple of hours and try to look for stations after that. You will be pleasantly surprised to hear various voices coming out of your radio which you thought was dead. Antennae are really an important component of your radio. The telescopic antennae are not really good enough. You need to boost it a bit. What you can do is to take a wire of about5-10m and preferably extend it to your terrace. For any reason you cannot do that, at least take it close to your window or balcony and leave it loose there. If you are able to pick a crocodile clip, you can screw the metal of your wire into the clip and thereafter use the clip to hold the antennae. If you can't get one, Remove the rubber sleeve from the wire of about an inch, and place the metal of the wire over the antennae. If you can't do any of that, take your radio near the pillar of your building. You are more likely to get a pillar where 2 walls meet. Reception, on MW and SW improves near the pillar. When you are buying a radio, look out for the following: Check if the radio covers the entire shortwave spectrum. It should have good selectivity and sensitivity. Regrettably in most cases, the vendor is unable to help you on this as they are generally ignorant about it. On the shortwave band look for the following bands in metres: 49,31,25,22,17,16 if you get these also it shall be wonderful 60,13,11 The daisy player has a digital radio. Although the software is not optimised, I shall not ramble on it. Select the radio and keep pressing the select button until you get the shortwave band of your choice. Press the second key from left top until it toggles to auto. Thereafter press the right cursor key. It will keep searching for a station until it finds one. Keep pressing the same key for the next station search. It can only move up the frequency and not a decremental search. This is one of the limitations of the software which I mentioned earlier. To add the channel to your favourite list: press the select key on a long press. Similarly if you want to do an automatic channel search you can press the right cursor key for a longer time. Up / down cursor cycles between the saved stations. Noise- Florescent / CFL lamps, mobile chargers, computers make spurious noise on the radio reception. Turn them off if possible. Alternatively use battery instead, this brings down the noise. Try to boost the signal by using external antennae. Please note, these tips apply generally to the A.M radio and not the FM radio. To summarise 1 If the radio is not in use for a considerable time, you need to keep it simply on for a few hours to make it sensitive again. 2 Reception is better during the day on the higher frequency and the lower frequency does great during evening until morning 3 Antennae can improve signal considerably. Happy radio listening. Harish Kotian Clean India Campaign: Let us also chip in! 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