sabato 15 maggio 2010

Glenn Hauser logs May 14-15, 2010

** BRAZIL. 11815, R. Brasil Central, with good signal May 15 at 0520, but modulation is a bit rough. With BFO on, however, carrier sounds stable. Really peppy music for the nightmiddle, 0524 timecheck as ``duas e vinte-quatro``, plugging some event coming May 28, 0525 another TC as 2:25, ID. I have the impression they are well aware of their nationwide audience on SW far beyond Goiânia. MUCH better signal than R. Bandeirantes on 11925v (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
 
** CHINA. Firedrake May 15; all in parallel, unlike yesterday.
 9380, very good at 1223, HF audio even QRMing WWRB/BS on 9385; but 9380 gone at 1344 check
10300, good at 1237, fair at 1347
10420, good at 1347
11500, good at 1238 and at 1347
12730, good at 1349
12960, good at 1349
None others found higher or lower.
Not much propagation from E Asia above 13 MHz today. Solar flux for May 14 was only 70, and on May 13 it dropped to 69! Despite SWPC predixions of 75, rising to a peak of 80 May 26-31, we can still hope (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** RUSSIA [and non]. Unless it`s a mistake, VOR has taken pity on its poor North American listeners struggling to get a listenable signal out of Far East Russia. May 15 at 0411 I am astounded to find the excellent signal on 9735 from the GUIANA FRENCH relay in English instead of Spanish! Yet another program reminiscing about GPW/WW II; history must not be forgotten, but it seems the Russians are a little too reluctant to get on with the present, 65-70 years later.

It`s // 13775 from DVR which is about one second ahead of 9735. 13775 is sufficient here at the moment, but markedly weaker and much less reliable. 0429 notice some audio dropouts on 9735. Next check 0516, 9735 is off.

9735 had been in Spanish at 01-05, and that`s what all the schedules still say, including the just published WRTH A-10 Update. VOR website still does not show 9735 in English as of May 15:
http://english.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/schedule/
Why am I not surprised?

It`s at 320 degrees and one of the targets has always been conterminous USA, so it`s about time they put our primary language on this transmitter! But is it only at 04-05, or starting earlier? Further chex necessary.

It would also be interesting to research and compute how many hours of NEW programming (other than news) VOR produces each day/week, since there are so many repeats scattered thruout the 24-hour schedule. I.e., if one listened every day for, say, two hours, would one hear everything? (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** U S A. 17362-USB, May 15 at 1300, robot YL advertising Shipcom, phone number and rates for calls to CONUS. Then notice of a missing vessel, last known position, callsign JE6BF, brief traffic list? QRZ and off at 1303. Per
http://www.yachtcom.info/MarineSSB/index.html
this is WLO Mobile AL (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** U S A [and non]. 9955, WRMI with WORLD OF RADIO 1512 at 1344 check Saturday May 15, mixed with pulse jamming. Tnx a lot, Arnie! Perhaps we are supposed to be grateful it`s only the pulsing, allowing some readability instead of the full wall of noise (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** VENEZUELA [non]. As in DXLD 10-19, we found two reports of RNV on wrong frequency, wrong time; were there changes? Maybe this happened on the log dates in question, but not when I checked both these out UT May 14-15.

13680 already on with OC at 2255; 2259 starts RNV IS, and by then // 15250 also on with equally bigsig. This hour mixes elegant Spanish with broken English. Next check at 2403, both already off as supposed to be, rather than still after 0000 on ``15245``.
 
At 0003 I check 6060 and find a weak Spanish signal there which is // 6110, 12020, 5970, i.e. RHC, not RNV as had been reported here after 0000 with a clip to prove it; I guess it was a switching error/runover of which RHC is so capable.

Also, since 5970 was in fact on contrary to sked, still a good thing RNW had saulted to 6140 for the 0000 Dutch via Bonaire.

11705, May 15 at 1240, I think RNV is missing; only a weak signal in music, Asian? Much weaker than VOK on 11710. But at 1246 I can tell 11705 is in Spanish and 1249 RNV ID. It`s both undermodulated and underpowered. RHC normal on 11760, but 11730 and 12030 are also poor
(Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

UNIDENTIFIED. 18528-SSB, 2-way Spanish with test count, 1306 May 15. I was looking for second harmonic of WINB on 18530, but despite Es boost on WWCR 15825 and 13845, WINB not audible (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ###