New Year’s Antenna

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Kevin

I made a new year’s resolution to put up an outdoor antenna in 2025 and this article will chronicle the progress.

Previously I had an MLA-30+ on a balcony, but it was in an inconvenient location for where I really wanted to listen to radio, so I took it down. I have a 20-foot wire up a tree, but I have to go outside to connect to it, and the weather is turning cold. I don’t want to stumble down the sloping outdoor stairs to get to it in the dark and it’s not any fun in the rain.

So, the general plan is to put up a straight long wire antenna from a tree to the house, around 25 feet long. There will be an earth ground and a 9:1 BALUN for impedance matching, plus a lightning arrester. Shielded cable will run from the BALUN to a window where I’ll use one of those under window antenna strips to get in inside. Everything will be shielded between the wire and a connected radio.

This article will be updated with progress. Maybe it will get finished before the ATS-25 max-Decoder radio arrives.

Post 1, January 2, 2025

First thing I did was to take inventory, and I decided I didn’t have enough wire for the antenna, so I ordered some from Amazon (nothing on local Ace Hardware website).

Continue reading →
Posted in Radio | Tagged | Leave a comment

Blog or Die! after 30 years

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Kevin

I’m just thinking about what’s next for this blog.

Blog or Die! was founded in 1995, 30 years ago this month, as a personal blog covering, as the masthead says:

Thoughts and commentary on politics, technology, travel, religion and current events.

Content has evolved over the years. Commentary on religion has gotten its own site. Politics and current events moved to a series a sites (check out the Blog Roll on the right side of the page that includes other sites of mine) when they seemed to be taking over. While I still travel, I’m not really a travel writer. I like photography, but I write about that in a local Facebook group. My writing on technology has primarily narrowed to the topic of radio.

What I have learned is that website readers and YouTube channel viewers like content to stay on a topic and not wander around. While there is a worldwide readership for content about radios, there is not one for “what Kevin thinks about stuff.” It is unfortunate that a blog that has settled on the radio topic has a title that is so generic, but that’s life and I don’t intend to change it. Anyway, I get far more views on social media (as many as a million a month) than I get on the blog anyway. I’m a moderator of the Tesla FSD Supervised group on Facebook and participate in a dozen more.

I’m not sure how the radio topic will evolve in 2025. At this point I’ve completed my first giveaway. I have more radios already than I can share the love with, so I don’t anticipate buying many more after the ATS-25 MAX Decoder, and so new radio reviews will be few and far between. My personal view is that both cheap radios and very high end radios are both a waste of money for someone like me. Right now I’m considering more radio reception report and how-to content for this blog. I have a new year’s resolution to put up an outdoor antenna, and I’ll document that process.

I hope all my readers will have a healthy and prosperous new year.

Posted in General, Social Media | Tagged | Leave a comment

Incoming Radio: ATS25 Max Decoder

Posted on December 28, 2024 by Kevin

I haven’t acquired a new radio in a while. I have great radios already and I have been hesitant to buy something that is a step down from what I have. Perhaps not a step up, but something different is the 4.17 (firmware version) ATS25 max Decoder Si4732 Full Band Radio Receiver FM RDS AM LW MW SW SSB DSP Receiver. The difference from what I have already is obvious from the product photo:

ATS25 max-Decoder

One notable thing is the second antenna on the right that’s intended for Wi-Fi network connection. It’s used to get precise time from the Internet for FT8 signal decoding. The other is the touch screen instead of buttons. The one thing I get that I don’t have is the ability to decode some digital signals.

It’s not really a portable radio in the usual sense, but one could travel with it. A disadvantage is the lack of a replaceable battery.

If past experience any indicator, it might arrive in a couple of weeks from AliExpress. They predict January 4-11. The price is $103.53 delivered. I found them much more expensive at Amazon, but as usual, after buying, I found one on Amazon not as much more as I thought, in this case $111.84 — not sure if the software is licensed, though. Also, others appeared on AliExpress for $0 less. In any case, the dice have been rolled.

Amazon product listings

This is a manual for the older software and here’s a video I watched that helped me decide:

Posted in Radio | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Radio Manuals

Posted on December 27, 2024 by Kevin

Here are links to some radio manuals I have:

Posted in Radio | Tagged | Leave a comment

Cloudy With a Chance of Radio

Posted on December 25, 2024 by Kevin

As the year 2024 winds down we had a warmer day (48°F) and I thought I’d head out to the yard on this cloudy Christmas afternoon for a quick band scan.

I use ATS scans on my radios quite a bit to find stations efficiently and then go through the stored memory locations to see what’s on. I have the idea that it saves time. But there are some gotchas with ATS scans besides the obvious problem that some radios have, storing more noise than stations (like my Tecsun PL-660). One of problem is that I have to be careful when scanning close to the hour or half hour; a station on the scan might have signed off by the time I try to listen to it, or another station might have signed on and I’ll miss it. A station might have faded in our out.

Today I’m not using ATS, but rather a different feature of the Qodosen DX-286, AUTO tuning mode. With AUTO mode it’s not necessary to do a band scan first — just tune the radio in AUTO mode and it will stop on the next station. There’s no problem missing a station that just signed on. The DX-286 has a setting to play the station for a set time and then go to the next, but I have set mine to just stop. The radio is silent when scanning, and all you hear is the station found. AUTO tuning can be done both with the tuning knob or the up and down buttons. While technically this is muting, the operator doesn’t perceive it that way. The perception is station, station, station….

I made a video of the scan here near Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. The radio was fed by my 20-foot wire up a tree (WUT) antenna. The scan started with CFRX, 6070 kHz in Toronto, Canada. Lower than that in the daytime doesn’t make much sense because not much is on and there is significant noise below that on shortwave where I live. The clock is set accurately for the video (patting myself on the back for remembering how to set the clock). I also used a tripod this time.

Skip to 2:35 for the stations (the first part just repeats the text above).

Posted in Radio | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Qodosen SSB?

Posted on December 21, 2024 by Kevin

You can tell from articles here at BlogOrDie! that the Qodosen DX-286 is among my favorite radios. When I went on my vacation earlier in the year I took my Tecsun PL-330 only because it supports SSB and I wanted to take a shot at some aviation weather transmissions (and that was successful). If my DX-286 had SSB, I would have taken it.

I participate in several shortwave-related groups on Facebook, and I occasionally see the comment that the DX-286 looks interesting, but the lack of SSB is a deal breaker.

So it was with some interest that I saw a comment online that pointed to the Qodosen website where I found:

Hello, we will be releasing SSB models later, so stay tuned!

Well, isn’t that interesting?

Posted in Radio | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Free Radio!

Posted on December 16, 2024 by Kevin

There may no free lunch, but there is a free radio, offered here on this blog to a lucky commenter.

Qodosen DX-286

Early on, Qodosen sent me 2 DX-286 radios for review purposes. I use one of them almost every day, but the other languishes in a box. That ain’t right, so I am giving the radio away free to a reader of BlogOrDie!

How to participate:

  1. Leave a comment below that says you want to be considered for the free radio.
  2. Include your working email address on the comment form. Note that email addresses left on comments are not visible to the public. Your email address will not be used or sold for any purpose except arranging your prize delivery. You do not have to use your real name on the comment.
  3. You do not have to pay any fee or do anything beyond expressing interest to get the radio. You just have to be lucky.

Note: Comments do not appear until your first comment is approved. Don’t worry if you don’t see your comment. I’ll approve all of them before picking the winner.

How it will work:

  1. One entry per person.
  2. I will randomly select one entry from the comments left by midnight December 31, 2024, Eastern Standard Time.
  3. I will announce the winner as an update to this post.
  4. I will contact the winner by email, requesting your real name and shipping address. Addresses must be located somewhere with regular mail service from the USA.

Note: Batteries not included

Update 1:

At midnight (unless I fall asleep and it’s in the morning) I’ll make sure that all comments are approved. Then Microsoft Copilot will generate a random number between 1 and the number of comments there are. If the comment is mine or from someone who didn’t ask to be included, I’ll just generate another random number until I get an eligible comment.

I will reply to your comment announcing that you’re the winner and send you an email, requesting your name and shipping address. It will come from my Gmail account. Once I have the address I will ship the radio within a day or two, and email you the tracking information.

Update 2:

Well, I did fall asleep. Happy new year. Congratulations to reader Safak, who is the winner.

Posted in Radio | Tagged | 27 Comments