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cd637299
Guest
ai4i said:
Two words: Shortwave, internet.
cd
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Two words: Shortwave, internet.
cd
C
cd637299
Guest
^ I *meant* that SW was dying in a sense, being replaced by the Web.....I was trying to be clever. My bad.
cd
cd
ai4i said:
HCJB dismantled the SW facility at Pifo, Ecuador, because the area had become subject to the local equivalent of eminent domain due to the construction of the new Quito airport there. No towers would have been allowed, at all.
They looked at moving to land near Guayaquil, but when they priced electricity, the project was dropped. The Pifo site had its own HCJB constructed hydroelectric generation plant, so power was cheap and plentiful... the even lit the adjacent town.
PJB was mainly a MW site, with the 500 kw facility on 800 intended to reach not just many Spanish speaking countries but parts of Brazil. The overpopulation of the AM band and the lessening usage of same made it unproductive to continue to operate at 500 kw.
In both cases, the scarcity of SW receivers in the reception zones in Latin America were the real issue. SW died a nasty death in most places in the 80's when FM became very dominant even in rural areas via repeaters and national networks in many countries. AM / SW radios gave way to AM FM radios, and that was that.
cd637299 said:
For my first four or five years there, I had no refrigerator. There was no need. Every morning, someone went to the market and got the day's supplies, which fed the family, the kitchen and house staff, my driver and bodygard, and even the dogs. There was nothing left over at 7 PM to put in a refrigerator, although it made a nice beer cooler.
I finally got a 'fridge when the manufacturer of those appliances in Quito gave me one. But to this day, I still prefer a Coke at room temperature, not chilled or, heaven forbid, with ice.
Outside of the dry season, it was not uncommon to find thin ice on puddles around my transmitter sites which were above the city. The prime FM site, at 13,000 feet, was really really cold, although only about 10 miles from the Equator.
I never felt any quake of consequence, yet in my first three years in LA I felt the Ridgecrest shaker at 7.1 and the 6.7 Northridge one which collapsed part of my ceiling and squashed my doors closed.
I can't think of a better place to live. We had great schools (I finished HS there and did some college), a great climate, fresh food, nice people, and a lot of outdoor thing to do.
DavidEduardo said:
Last I had heard, PJB had reduced its power to 150 kW, and made its antenna directional toward South America. (Originally it was omnidirectional, and put a decent signal into the southeastern U.S. Radio Nederlands also broadcast programs on 800 back in the 1970s)
TWR was also giving/selling special antennas to help pick up the reduced power signal, according to a Monitoring Times article a few years back.
PJB wreaked havoc on CKLW's coverage, even fairly close to Detroit and Windsor. There are some airchecks available which feature the interference.
charles hobbs said:
Bonaire is a coastal island a few miles off of Venezuela, so as far as radio is concerned, it was already in South America. There are AMs on 800 in Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador and lots more further south. At the 100 kw (not 150) reported for this one, I don't think they can cover much of anything. Skywave on 800 is hopelessly congested, and groundwave perhaps gets a bit of coastal Colombia, but that's it.
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