giovedì 7 febbraio 2013

Glenn Hauser logs February 5-6, 2013

** AUSTRALIA. 21740, Feb 6 at 0047, RA still has VG signal with discussion of sea turtle nesting, as this frequency is about to close; and still better than // 19000. Some further east find 21740 is fading out a lot earlier, as one would expect (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** CANADA. 2749.5-USB, Feb 6 at 0042 UT, since am not getting anything but JBA AM carriers on the MW harmonic band, I settle on this poorly readable marine weather broadcast, in English mentioning Cape Cod, Cabot Strait; back to it at 0103, now in French Canadian with an English accent, about glace (ice), mentions of Cap-Bréton, etc. 0106 gives a 709 AC phone number for John Llewellyn, who must find himself in Newfoundland & Labrador. Closing ID in French and then English for ``Sydney Coast Guard Radio, out`` and off before 0108. So per
http://www.dxinfocentre.com/mb.htm
this was the 0040 UT transmission of VCO in Sydney NS, which had to make way for the 0110 broadcast of VCS-2 in Halifax. Bill can add ``EE/FF`` to VCO too. He shows 2749, but I measure 2749.5 reference frequency on the DX-398 (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) 

** CHINA. 15385, Feb 6 at 0051, VG signal in Chinese, i.e. CNR1 jammer of VOA Mandarin via Tinang, during this hour only, ditto on 17645. This encourages me to look for Firedrake on the higher bands, and I soon find a lot, besides equally inbooming 17495, CRI Cantonese non-jammer from Beijing site.

On the DX398 I have to keep pressing the 5-kHz UP button as rapidly as possible in order not to miss any music as I tune, yet cover as much spectrum as possible before I need to get back to 4835 and 5980 by 0058. Firedrake found:
15800, good at 0052
16600, good with flutter at 0053
17170, very poor at 0053
18180, good with flutter at 0054
18250, fair with flutter at 0054

Not enough time to tune all the way up to 20 MHz, so I check some ranges, 18.8-19.0 and 19.9-20.0 without hearing any, tho some have heard it even just below 20000. In a couple minutes left, down below 15 MHz:

14980, poor with flutter at 0056
14800, good with flutter at 0056
14700, fair with flutter at 0056
13920, fair with flutter at 0057
none down to 12900 by 0058 when I have to QSY
(Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** EAST TURKISTAN. 4980, Feb 6 at 0036, PBS Xinjiang Uighur service, talk in Turkic, and as I meant to mention before, this frequency suffers from some hum and distortion, unlike 5060 in clear Chinese (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** NIGERIA. 15115-15120-15125, Feb 5 at 2052 check, VON DRM is off, unlike yesterday when it ran past 2111; don`t know whether it stopped today at nominal time 2000. Are those with DRM capability checking this out? (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** PERU [and non]. 5980, Feb 6 at 0037, what will happen with R. Chaski, Urubamba, Cuzco, tonight? All I hear at first is Dentro-Cuban Jamming Command pulsing atop CNR1 jammer, Commies vs Commies! At 0059 still the same and I don`t hear the 0100 timesignal, but no more ChiCom.

Now with BFO I can still detect a JBA carrier under the noise, unlike last night, and perceive it cutting off at 0105:25*, the now well-established pattern for R. Chaski, a few sex later each night, even tho I can no longer copy any modulation from it tnx to the bad neighbors in Cuba. What fun! (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** SAUDI ARABIA. 1521, Feb 6 at 0033 UT as I start my evening porch-monitoring session, a 1-kHz het is JBA against 1520 KOKC OKC, no doubt the 2-megawatter in Duba, prime pilot for TA openings at 40 times the power of li`l US stations; but I am going after higher frequencies tonight (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

UNIDENTIFIED. 4835, Feb 6 at 0034, JBA carrier vs CODAR, so maybe it`s R. Ondas del Sur Oriente, Perú, which I have been chasing; at 0058 CODAR and now I can hear two carriers on slightly different frequencies, which fits for Sikkim on 4835.0 and Perú on 4805.03; then by 0059 blasted from 4840 WWCR steel-drum sign-on. However, at 0101 I notice that WWCR is in dead air, which certainly reduces the splash, so on LSB tuning I can barely tell that the two 4835s are still there (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)