** COLOMBIA. 5910.500, Sept 29 at 0559, JBA carrier with trace of modulation, presumed HJDH Alcaraván Radio reactivated, ex-closer to 5910.3v. Nothing heard till now on almost nightly bandscans. Had been missing for a couple months due to multiple problems described by QSL manager Rafael Rodríguez R., via Manuel Méndez, in DXLD 18-39: electrical supply, damaged transmitter, copper theft and bridge washed out! Nothing heard from the other HJDH, 6010, The Voice of Thy Conscience (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** CUBA. 6000 = 6165, Sept 28 at 0220, both RHC English frequencies are just barely modulated. Something`s always wrong at RHC (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** CUBA. 6060, Sept 28 at 0559, this RHC English frequency is off, and so I think is 6100, or JBA; 6165 is S9 & undermodulated; 6000 is S9+10 and best; at 0600, 5040 at S9+30 with distorted modulation just before cutting to dead air. Something`s always wrong at RHC (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** CUBA. 7360, Sept 28 at 2336, big blob of S9 to S9+20 distorted music centered here, // RHC 11760. Must be the 7330 transmitter which is missing. EiBi shows that one this hour only is Bauta site, while before and after in 21-04 UT span it`s Bejucal --- which means it may have been in whack on nominal 7330 except during this hour. Something`s always (very) wrong at RHC (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** CUBA. 5040, Sept 28 at 2351, RHC English is distorted with clicking; // 11880 has different distortion and is aclickous. Something`s always wrong at RHC (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** HAWAII. 5000, Sept 29 at 0604, WWVH announcing that marine weather broadcasts during certain minutes will be discontinued October 31; contact info. Did not hear whole thing, so not sure if done deal. Presumably also applies to WWV; they make such announcements at :03 and :04 past the hours, at least (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** KUWAIT. 11629.757, Sept 28 at 1405, poor in Arabic talk: another of MOI`s off-frequencies, nominal 11630 at 1300-1600, 250 kW at 230 degrees from Sulaibiyah. At 1426 in Qur`an; I guess that`s about vespertime (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** NORTH AMERICA. 6930-USB, Sept 28 at 2326, unID pirate with protest folksong, S4 about even with noise level; 2329 off or pause; retune 2330 to hear synthom enumerating testicle sizes of various creatures starting with Greek god statues, countdown to an insect as percent of total weight. How enlightening. Also as UnID in this thread:
https://www.hfunderground.com/board/index.php/topic,46344.0.html
Off at 2352 recheck; others say it was off by 2337 (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** NORTH AMERICA. 7465, Sept 28 at 0253, YHWH on here again tonight,
S9 but undermodulated (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** OKLAHOMA. Re: KWTV repacking starts --- KWTV ``9`` OKC, tests on RF 25 continue, seen mostly weekdays, but not nights or weekends. Photo as first seen, and I know I need a better camera setup; this one has a hard time auto-focusing on the screen.
http://www.w4uvh.net/KWTV25TEST.jpg
On Sept 26 I had a good view of the NE OKC antenna farm; must have been at least 10 high towers. It would be interesting to see a map of exactly which stations are on which, FM, TV, and whatever. Meanwhile more replies have come in to my original report, from Doug Smith, of W9WI.com in Tennessee, Sept 25 on the WTFDA gg:
``KWTV received Special Temporary Authority to transition early, in Phase 1. They seemed concerned they wouldn't be able to swap out antennas in time in Phase 2.
They received a permit at the end of June for an "auxiliary" physical 25 facility, 1000 kW @ 331 m (on the same tower as the "main" physical 25 -- and the pre-repack physical 39 -- but 147 m lower).
I believe you're seeing that auxiliary facility. I think they plan to operate on that facility for a while (how long I have no idea) while they remove the existing RF 39 antenna and replace it with one for RF 25.
The FCC put out a Public Notice a couple of weeks ago warning repacked stations they are not to program both channels at the same time. They did however say it's fine to run test patterns on the post-repack channel while programming the pre-repack facility.
Looking at other OKC-market stations --- As Chris Lucas says, every station that's moving (except KWTV) is moving in Phase 2. In general the FCC is trying to move every station in a market in the same phase, but they couldn't always accomplish that.
KAUT-TV 40=>19; moving to a tower across Britton Road from KOCO-TV.
KETA-TV not affected [already on 13]
KFOR-TV Stays on 27 but has applied to move to the same Britton Road
tower as KAUT. No action yet from FCC.
KOCB Not affected [already on 33]
KOCM 46=>16; moving to a tower on Ridgeway Road just southeast
of KOCO-TV.
KOCO-TV Not affected, just a useful landmark :) [already on RF 7]
KOHC-CD 45=>31
KOKH-TV Not affected [already on 24]
KOMI-CD Stays on 34 but has permit to move to the KMZE-FM 92.3 tower
west of Sharon. (station licensed to Woodward)
KOPX-TV 50=>18; moving to the same Britton Road tower as KAUT.
KSBI Not affected [already on 23, but still underpowered]
KTBO-TV Not affected [already on 15]
KTUZ-TV Not affected [already on 25]
KUOK Not affected. Went temporarily dark around July 20th.
(Woodward)
KUOK-CD Stays on 36 but has permit to increase power to 15 kW.
KUOT-CD 19=>21
KWET Not affected (Cheyenne) [OETA way off in western OK, not OKC!]
KWTV-DT 39=>25
Oh, regarding the bar/dot/beep --- That serves a couple of purposes.
Firstly, the motion proves you actually have a working circuit :)
Digital transmission paths buffer frames in memory -- which means if the path fails, one or more pieces of equipment will continue to display the last complete frame received. So instead of going black, the picture will freeze.
If there's no motion, you don't know it froze!
Secondly, lip sync. In analog TV, the sound and picture are transmitted simultaneously. There are two separate paths.
In digital, there is only one path. The signal is transmitted in "packets" of 188 bytes of data. A packet may be part of a frame of video, or it might be part of a frame of audio (or it might be some program guide data, or part of the station name display, etc.).
The receiver stores these packets and has to be told when to display each one. You want a frame of video displayed on the screen at the same time the associated bit of audio plays out the speakers (there are "Presentation Time Stamps" to take care of that).
The transmission methods inside the TV station are very different but still usually involve sending bursts of audio and video down the same wire.
Having the sound beep at the same time the dot reaches a predictable place ensures the time stamps are working properly so the sound and picture line up when an actual program is broadcast. (We can generally deal with the sound arriving "too late" -- that happens in real life, because light travels faster than sound. Having the sound arrive "too early", on the other hand, doesn't happen in nature and is VERY apparent!)`` (Glenn Hauser, Enid, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U S A [and non?]. WORLD OF RADIO 1949 monitoring: confirmed Saturday September 29 from just before 1231 on Unique Radio, NSW via WINB 9265V, fair with usual wobbling carrier, altho if carefully centered one may listen in SSB.
NOT confirmed, Sat Sept 29 in 1431-1500 period on Hamburger Lokalradio, 6190-CUSB; rather very weak Chinese talk and music via UTwente SDR. Alan Gale, England, did not hear even that:
``Hi Glenn, Yet another HLR no-show by the look of things, I didn't hear anything at all on 6190 kHz this afternoon, and no sign of the Chinese station either. I also checked 7265 at various times as well just in case, but nothing on there either. Channel 292 was coming in okay [6070 Germany] so it doesn't look like a propagation issue. Alan`` ---- Next:
1930vUT Saturday WA0RCR 1860-AM non-direxional
2130 UT Saturday WBCQ 9330v [maybe, or 2330?] to WSW
0300vUT Sunday WA0RCR 1860-AM non-direxional
1030 UT Sunday HLR 9485-CUSB Germany to WSW
2130 UT Sunday WRMI 7780 to NE, 9955 to SSE
2330 UT Sunday WBCQ 9330v [maybe] to WSW
0300vUT Monday WBCQ 5130v Area 51 to WSW
0330 UT Monday WRMI 9955 to SSE
2330 UT Monday WBCQ 9330v [maybe] to WSW
0030 UT Tuesday WRMI 7730 [or 1950?] to WNW
Full schedule including AM, FM, webcasts, satellite:
http://www.worldofradio.com/radioskd.html
(Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U S A. (7490), UT Sat Sept 29 from 0000, WBCQ webcast with `Allan Weiner Worldwide`. Altho he ``doesn`t want to get political`` (really?) starts right off still supporting Kavanaugh and denouncing Democrats-Socialists-Communists. I leave it to John H Carver, Jr., for a fuller report:
``Show started on time on 7490. Comments over the theme song this even were, Run for cover, No one is safe, I've had it, If you have a penis you're in danger. Pens immediately with comments about the hearings for the new Supreme Court Justice.
Angela, Allan and Tom in the studio with Robert in the background. Eighteen minutes or so are devoted to the problems in the government, the problems in congress and excessive taxation. TimTron speaks up from the background to balance the discussion and suggests that we make a clean sweep of Congress and replace everyone.
Phone call at 0019 with comments and questions about the superstation. Answering the first question asked, says that the concrete pad supporting the new antenna is underground on the bedrock and is forty by forty feet and twelve feet high. Lots and lots of rebar in the pad. Allan said they would be posting pictures of the prep work done on the concrete pad. He said they had been taking pictures since the first scoop of dirt was picked up and they would eventually release all of the pictures online in some sort of an album.
Allan also said that all aspects of the station will have manual, analog backups per his instructions so a broadcast is not halted because of a digital failure somewhere in the chain.
He also mentioned some of the problems he had with putting the station together. When he called about a transmitter that big, the transmitter company didn't believe him and it took a while to convince them that he was serious about it. He mentioned that it took six months for the power company to take him seriously about the power requirements for the new station. In fact, he had already made plans to bypass the power company and generate his own power for the station. Upon hearingthis the power company finally decided to talk to him. He had planned to build two diesel generators and some underground fuel bunkers.
Another phone call at 0045 from Freddie about rewiring Monticello, battles with the power company and the transmitter company and their not believing him in the first place.
Quick prayer at 0058 and show was off at 0059. Dead Frog Radio beginning at 0100. Robert announced that the `Dead Frog`this evening was a two hour live show and that next week the show would probably only be an hour and after that depended on whether or not money could be raised to buy more airtime. John Mid-North Indiana``(Glenn Hauser, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U S A. 7730, Sept 28 at 2334, WRMI with Indonesian Bible readings from Alameda; are these running at random? Surely not with any likely target areas in mind (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U S A. 5950, Sept 28 at 2341, more off-kilter programming from this WRMI: toward end of a `Wavescan` with old Harold Sellers logs, i.e. Sound of Hope 6370 at 1117, which was on June 22! So it`s the same stale episode heard the last week or two. But also happens to include something timely by chance: Wolfgang Bueschel about Radio Nikkei`s reduced schedule effective October 1. 2346 greeting Graham Bell in South Africa who heard WS well via Zambia; next week`s feature topic to be 2YA; Zimbabwean music fill.
But this time not followed by another WS. Instead, at the odd time of 2350 switches to `Francisco y Ernesto` dialog, i.e. Frank & Earnest in Spanish. Meanwhile there has been het from Pio XII Bolivia 5952.4+ (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U S A. 9350, Sept 28 at 2355, rock music at S7-S5. Despite poor signal now (like neighbor 9475 WTWW), this must be WWCR-2, scheduled 20-24 UT thru October; earlier in afternoon it blasts in. Slow-loading pdf program schedule shows at 23-24 UT Friday`s it`s `The Last Radio Playing` (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
UNIDENTIFIED. Trans-Atlantic JBA MW carrier search, Sept 28 at 0237-0244: 531, 549, 585, 639, 684, 729, 747, 774, 837, 855, 936, 999, 1008, 1017, 1044, 1107, 1125, 1134, 1215, 1269, 1305, 1539, 1575. One of these times, I`ll go thru the listings and display the most likely sources (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
UNIDENTIFIED. T-A JBA MW carrier search, Sept 29 at 0615+: 1305, 1269, 1215, 1152, 1134, 1125, 1116, *1107, 1098, 1089, 1044, 999, 936, 882, 837(2), 774, 747, 711(2), 693, 684, 639, 621. *stronger; (2) at least two carriers beating (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
UNIDENTIFIED. 7385-7390, Sept 28 at 0552-0554* tones sweeping up and down roughly across this range (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
This report despatched at 1742 UT September 29
