** CHINA. Firedrake Jan 21 at 1408: very poor but audible on 8400, 9000; not audible on 10-11 MHz (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** CUBA. 6210, weak RHC Spanish leapfrog mixing product of 6150 over 6180, which therefore must be from the same transmitter site. Next check at 1257, 6210 was gone since 6180 had already closed (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) See also VENEZUELA [non]
** INDIA. 9470, AIR Aligarh transmitter continues to re-degrade, Jan 21 at 1406 now the buzz is louder than the modulation, and somewhat bothering Russian on 9465 from KFBS. Fingers crossed that it will not resume jumping all over the 9.3-9.5 MHz range (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** INDONESIA. 9526-, VOI remains stable here just a smidgin below the 1-kHz-off frequency, Jan 21 at 1357 good signal and modulation with Indonesian song. Unfortunately the last half of the hour is mostly music, so if you want talk content you have to get the first half. 1401 ID, more music; 1402 VOI ID and outro English hour as always giving 100% wrong frequencies, ``9525, 15150, 11785`` and by webcast http://www.voi.co.id Also P-mail street and box addresses, english @ voi.co.id and ``sound of dignity`` tho they now have another slogan I missed earlier. 1403 switch to ID in presumed Malay rather than Indonesian, 1404 hum becomes audible, 1405 warta berita (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** POLAND [non]. 11675, PRES via AUSTRIA, Thu Jan 21 at 1347 in mailbag reply to someone in Netherlands, says PR still has Esperanto on website, tho had to drop broadcasts three years ago despite Poland`s being the birthplace of the artificial language.
This is a time when Multimedia was scheduled, but Slawek Szefs outro referred to it as ``Multi-touch``, a `new hybrid feature` and invited critical comments about the change.
It still shows as Multimedia on the grids here:
http://www.thenews.pl/static/Schedule.aspx
and http://www.polskieradio.pl/zagranica/ramowka/?id=10
Link to Multimedia on the home page goes nowhere, and search on multitouch, and multi-touch finds nothing, but multi touch with a space finds the new info, altho appearing there as a single word! ``MultiTouch``: http://www.thenews.pl/News/?id=124006
``The New Year has ushered in the necessity of introducing some cuts to our program offer, the chief reason being further limited funding of Polish Radio, the public broadcaster of which the External Service is part of [sic]. Presented by Slawek Szefs
``MultiTouch is a temporary (???) compromise solution to the problem. I have decided on a merger of the two programs tailoring it to both audiences' expectations. The premier air times for Multimedia and In Touch with repeats will be preserved not to introduce chaos to our schedule nor to disrupt your listening habits. Hope my decision proves correct.``
So when was In Touch scheduled? Toward the end of the Friday 18 and Saturday 13 UT broadcasts, and the other time for Multimedia was toward the end of the Tuesday 18 transmission.
URL above also has an audio link. So I later went back and listened to the entire hybrid program, as he pronounced his name, which reminded us that the L in Slawek is supposed to be crossed and pronounced like a W, (and of course the W pronounced like a V) even tho PRES does not bother to do that on its English webpages. How do you make a crossed-L, anyway? I can`t find Polish on MS Word 95 insert-symbol and if I did, it would surely come out garble in most places. I can`t even copy the symbol from a Polish-language page without getting a question mark.
On audio archive, after co-host from In Touch walked in, discussed Chopin being a Pole, not a Franc, which I did not hear on SW, having missed the first 22 minutes of the 24.5-minute show. So it must have started at 1324 or 1325.
Back to Thursday at 1349, onward to next feature, very well-written and presented, Letter from Poland, by Anna --- on being an expat, from Poland, who grew up in London and now is back in Poland. It seems West London is overpopulated with Poles, making the schools oversaturated too due to large families, so there is some resentment among the Brits. Says she is half-Bulgarian, to complicate matters further.
I wanted to get her full name, but like Multimedia, the link to Letter from Poland does not work either and have not reached it by searching. The two separate websites as above are not fully integrated and compatible, but if you click on a link from the old page you may wind up on the new page; is thenews destined to replace the other one?? 1355 into closing of this English hour (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** RUSSIA. 6030, good signal Jan 21 at 1258, concluding bit of VOR announcement in English mentioning ruvr.ru, IS, open carrier with hum and off at 1300, clearing frequency for Ming Hui and the Chinese radio war. But VOR is not scheduled here in English per:
http://english.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/schedule
which at 12-13 shows only 11660, 15610, 15470. Nor do any of the online schedules show VOR in any language at that time on 6030. Something new, or a mistake?
Then checking WRTH 2010y: 6030 is in the frequency pages as VOR Samara, but I don`t see it for any language until 1300. And for English at 12-13, WRTH shows a different set of frequencies, 7340+DRM, 7350, 9695 and 11660, the last being the only one in common!
Go back and look at the VOR online sked as above: yes, it is dated ``October 25, 2009 – March 27, 2010`` but the lower frequencies make more sense in the winter, so I lean toward the WRTH version. Furthermore, HFCC B-09 does NOT show 15610 or 15470 for VOR, but it does show 11660 and 7350. So VOR`s own online schedule portrays summer frequencies with a winter date --- don`t you believe the rest of it! Meanwhile, 6030 remains a mystery (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** TURKEY. 12035, VOT English at 1330 via Çakirlar site, has become totally useless: Jan 21 at 1341 tho S9+10 signal with flutter, just barely modulated, unreadable. So much for Live from Turkey, the Thursday edition. Recheck at 1409, just as bad, so check Emirler // 15300 at 1411 where modulation is OK, but colliding as usual with RFI in French, slightly stronger than RFI, but too much QRM and fast SAH to be listenable. Discussing the future of Cyprus.
So VOT strikes out due to incredibly incompetent engineering at the transmission level and at the frequency planning level, wasting 1000 kW and causing harmful interference to a fellow SW broadcaster. We can only wait for A-10 to start at Marchend, when VOT plans to go back to last summer`s frequencies timeshifted to 1230-1320, 15450 and 15520. But they never learned their lesson about 9830 to North America, colliding with RTTY at 2200, planning to use it again too.
Later retrieved LFT on the one-day archive, from the right margin of
http://www.trt-world.com/trtinternational/en/news.aspx?dil=en
finding it did not start until 31 minutes into the transmission. Seems LFT now has a weekly(monthly?) report from Michael Daventry in London reviewing the Turkish press there, where there are nine highly competitive newspapers. Seref Isler admitted that altho he is half-English, has lived in London and visits often, he was not aware of them. Otherwise the hosts apologized for laughing all the time, so not much other significant content (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U K [non]. 9410, BBCWS via WHRI, Jan 21 at 1241 apparently Newshour going from an item on how to dispose of bodies, to one about an ornate elephant-and-dragon clock at the Science Museum. Unsolid signal with flutter, and at 1247 check, better on // 11860 via GUIANA FRENCH.
Perhaps they have French if not Creole at 1215-1230 after Spanish?
This setup replaces all-Spanish during the hour, the last half-sesquihour of which was archival or music fill anyway, certainly expendable but it takes a 7.0 earthquake for BBC to get knocked into broadcasting something more timely within its last remaining Western Hemisphere SW broadcast. Don`t get used to it, since likely to revert to the old pattern once the aftershox are over. And we can resume hearing classical music fill after 1233 on M/W/F.
17780, just as I tuned in at 1414 Jan 21 heard a couple words from BBC in English before it cut off. Mistake? No, Hausa is scheduled here via Ascension at the odd time of 1345-1415 (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U S A [and non]. On Jan 21 I turned on and tuned in early enough to check the new, temporary(?) VOA Creole relay via Bonaire on 6135: at 1236 good signal. At 1244 got to 31m in bandscan and before I could reach 9660 to confirm // from Greenville, found it already on new 9505! Ex-9660. As we outpointed early on, extending 9660 past the original 1300* would collide with RRI Romania in German, and evidently IBB eventually reached the same conclusion. 9505 in the clear is an echo apart from 6135 due to satellite delay. At 1301, RRI German was unimpeded on 9660, tho ACI from 9655 CRI.
At 1326, 6135 had weakened a lot into the daytime, but still audible vs T-storm noise between here and there as spring is oncoming (there was even a tornado watch in OK last night and local lightning made us close down for a few hours); giving phone numbers and e-mail addresses. 1328 VOA jingle, 1329 a snippet of ``We Are the World``, VOA English outro until 1329:30, open carrier and off at 1330, exactly the same instant as 9505 did so.
We still don`t find any fill-in frequency between 1330 and the next scheduled Creole broadcast at 1730, but checking http://author.voanews.com/english/about/frequenciesAtoZ_c.cfm
the Creole schedule for 1230-1330 has been changed to 9505. It still refuses to show the afternoon transmissions we have axually been monitoring the past week, 1930-2100 on 15390, 2100-2200 on 13725! Are they secret, perhaps put on by Greenville as a public service without informing Washington? (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U S A. Haven`t heard WTWW testing the last few days on 9480 or 5755, so I asked George McClintock how things are going. He says a long test period is scheduled for Saturday Jan 23, times here changed to UT:
1600-1900 9480
1900-2200 9475
2200-2400 9480
0000-0400 5755 [UT Sunday]
``All this assumes that we have no problems. This will be a test to see how the transmitter and other equipment hold up with extended transmission time.`` (Glenn Hauser, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U S A [non]. Correxion! Yesterday`s report showed 9940 instead of correct 9440 for this which I now repeat: YFR in unknown Asian language, Jan 20 at 1418 along with big buzz, something you would expect from India rather than listed Novosibirsk, RUSSIA; Aoki still shows this as English, the initial language on this new transmission. At 1430 was spelling out Family Radio URL. Meanwhile at 1415, Camping still in English, Open Forum on 9485 with more flutter but no buzz, and that is due south from Irkutsk (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** VENEZUELA [non]. 11705, RNV via CUBA transmitter is in terrible shape, only the worst for the Bolivarian allies! Jan 21 at 1249 big S9+22 signal but very undermodulated, in fact hard to hear beneath continuous scratchy audio breakup which was also splattering plus and minus 15 kHz. RNV ID heard and then sports(?) report. If RNV ever monitored their own broadcasts, which they obviously do not since they don`t know the real times and frequencies, they might hurry up and get their own Calabozo SW site going --- but then the Cubans are assisting them with that, so it may turn out just as incompetent (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
UNIDENTIFIED. 9394, 2-way Spanish SSB, Jan 21 at 1335, with splatter from Brother Scare/WWRB 9385. Usual dreary conversation about who knows what (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ###
** CUBA. 6210, weak RHC Spanish leapfrog mixing product of 6150 over 6180, which therefore must be from the same transmitter site. Next check at 1257, 6210 was gone since 6180 had already closed (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) See also VENEZUELA [non]
** INDIA. 9470, AIR Aligarh transmitter continues to re-degrade, Jan 21 at 1406 now the buzz is louder than the modulation, and somewhat bothering Russian on 9465 from KFBS. Fingers crossed that it will not resume jumping all over the 9.3-9.5 MHz range (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** INDONESIA. 9526-, VOI remains stable here just a smidgin below the 1-kHz-off frequency, Jan 21 at 1357 good signal and modulation with Indonesian song. Unfortunately the last half of the hour is mostly music, so if you want talk content you have to get the first half. 1401 ID, more music; 1402 VOI ID and outro English hour as always giving 100% wrong frequencies, ``9525, 15150, 11785`` and by webcast http://www.voi.co.id Also P-mail street and box addresses, english @ voi.co.id and ``sound of dignity`` tho they now have another slogan I missed earlier. 1403 switch to ID in presumed Malay rather than Indonesian, 1404 hum becomes audible, 1405 warta berita (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** POLAND [non]. 11675, PRES via AUSTRIA, Thu Jan 21 at 1347 in mailbag reply to someone in Netherlands, says PR still has Esperanto on website, tho had to drop broadcasts three years ago despite Poland`s being the birthplace of the artificial language.
This is a time when Multimedia was scheduled, but Slawek Szefs outro referred to it as ``Multi-touch``, a `new hybrid feature` and invited critical comments about the change.
It still shows as Multimedia on the grids here:
http://www.thenews.pl/static/Schedule.aspx
and http://www.polskieradio.pl/zagranica/ramowka/?id=10
Link to Multimedia on the home page goes nowhere, and search on multitouch, and multi-touch finds nothing, but multi touch with a space finds the new info, altho appearing there as a single word! ``MultiTouch``: http://www.thenews.pl/News/?id=124006
``The New Year has ushered in the necessity of introducing some cuts to our program offer, the chief reason being further limited funding of Polish Radio, the public broadcaster of which the External Service is part of [sic]. Presented by Slawek Szefs
``MultiTouch is a temporary (???) compromise solution to the problem. I have decided on a merger of the two programs tailoring it to both audiences' expectations. The premier air times for Multimedia and In Touch with repeats will be preserved not to introduce chaos to our schedule nor to disrupt your listening habits. Hope my decision proves correct.``
So when was In Touch scheduled? Toward the end of the Friday 18 and Saturday 13 UT broadcasts, and the other time for Multimedia was toward the end of the Tuesday 18 transmission.
URL above also has an audio link. So I later went back and listened to the entire hybrid program, as he pronounced his name, which reminded us that the L in Slawek is supposed to be crossed and pronounced like a W, (and of course the W pronounced like a V) even tho PRES does not bother to do that on its English webpages. How do you make a crossed-L, anyway? I can`t find Polish on MS Word 95 insert-symbol and if I did, it would surely come out garble in most places. I can`t even copy the symbol from a Polish-language page without getting a question mark.
On audio archive, after co-host from In Touch walked in, discussed Chopin being a Pole, not a Franc, which I did not hear on SW, having missed the first 22 minutes of the 24.5-minute show. So it must have started at 1324 or 1325.
Back to Thursday at 1349, onward to next feature, very well-written and presented, Letter from Poland, by Anna --- on being an expat, from Poland, who grew up in London and now is back in Poland. It seems West London is overpopulated with Poles, making the schools oversaturated too due to large families, so there is some resentment among the Brits. Says she is half-Bulgarian, to complicate matters further.
I wanted to get her full name, but like Multimedia, the link to Letter from Poland does not work either and have not reached it by searching. The two separate websites as above are not fully integrated and compatible, but if you click on a link from the old page you may wind up on the new page; is thenews destined to replace the other one?? 1355 into closing of this English hour (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** RUSSIA. 6030, good signal Jan 21 at 1258, concluding bit of VOR announcement in English mentioning ruvr.ru, IS, open carrier with hum and off at 1300, clearing frequency for Ming Hui and the Chinese radio war. But VOR is not scheduled here in English per:
http://english.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/schedule
which at 12-13 shows only 11660, 15610, 15470. Nor do any of the online schedules show VOR in any language at that time on 6030. Something new, or a mistake?
Then checking WRTH 2010y: 6030 is in the frequency pages as VOR Samara, but I don`t see it for any language until 1300. And for English at 12-13, WRTH shows a different set of frequencies, 7340+DRM, 7350, 9695 and 11660, the last being the only one in common!
Go back and look at the VOR online sked as above: yes, it is dated ``October 25, 2009 – March 27, 2010`` but the lower frequencies make more sense in the winter, so I lean toward the WRTH version. Furthermore, HFCC B-09 does NOT show 15610 or 15470 for VOR, but it does show 11660 and 7350. So VOR`s own online schedule portrays summer frequencies with a winter date --- don`t you believe the rest of it! Meanwhile, 6030 remains a mystery (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** TURKEY. 12035, VOT English at 1330 via Çakirlar site, has become totally useless: Jan 21 at 1341 tho S9+10 signal with flutter, just barely modulated, unreadable. So much for Live from Turkey, the Thursday edition. Recheck at 1409, just as bad, so check Emirler // 15300 at 1411 where modulation is OK, but colliding as usual with RFI in French, slightly stronger than RFI, but too much QRM and fast SAH to be listenable. Discussing the future of Cyprus.
So VOT strikes out due to incredibly incompetent engineering at the transmission level and at the frequency planning level, wasting 1000 kW and causing harmful interference to a fellow SW broadcaster. We can only wait for A-10 to start at Marchend, when VOT plans to go back to last summer`s frequencies timeshifted to 1230-1320, 15450 and 15520. But they never learned their lesson about 9830 to North America, colliding with RTTY at 2200, planning to use it again too.
Later retrieved LFT on the one-day archive, from the right margin of
http://www.trt-world.com/trtinternational/en/news.aspx?dil=en
finding it did not start until 31 minutes into the transmission. Seems LFT now has a weekly(monthly?) report from Michael Daventry in London reviewing the Turkish press there, where there are nine highly competitive newspapers. Seref Isler admitted that altho he is half-English, has lived in London and visits often, he was not aware of them. Otherwise the hosts apologized for laughing all the time, so not much other significant content (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U K [non]. 9410, BBCWS via WHRI, Jan 21 at 1241 apparently Newshour going from an item on how to dispose of bodies, to one about an ornate elephant-and-dragon clock at the Science Museum. Unsolid signal with flutter, and at 1247 check, better on // 11860 via GUIANA FRENCH.
Perhaps they have French if not Creole at 1215-1230 after Spanish?
This setup replaces all-Spanish during the hour, the last half-sesquihour of which was archival or music fill anyway, certainly expendable but it takes a 7.0 earthquake for BBC to get knocked into broadcasting something more timely within its last remaining Western Hemisphere SW broadcast. Don`t get used to it, since likely to revert to the old pattern once the aftershox are over. And we can resume hearing classical music fill after 1233 on M/W/F.
17780, just as I tuned in at 1414 Jan 21 heard a couple words from BBC in English before it cut off. Mistake? No, Hausa is scheduled here via Ascension at the odd time of 1345-1415 (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U S A [and non]. On Jan 21 I turned on and tuned in early enough to check the new, temporary(?) VOA Creole relay via Bonaire on 6135: at 1236 good signal. At 1244 got to 31m in bandscan and before I could reach 9660 to confirm // from Greenville, found it already on new 9505! Ex-9660. As we outpointed early on, extending 9660 past the original 1300* would collide with RRI Romania in German, and evidently IBB eventually reached the same conclusion. 9505 in the clear is an echo apart from 6135 due to satellite delay. At 1301, RRI German was unimpeded on 9660, tho ACI from 9655 CRI.
At 1326, 6135 had weakened a lot into the daytime, but still audible vs T-storm noise between here and there as spring is oncoming (there was even a tornado watch in OK last night and local lightning made us close down for a few hours); giving phone numbers and e-mail addresses. 1328 VOA jingle, 1329 a snippet of ``We Are the World``, VOA English outro until 1329:30, open carrier and off at 1330, exactly the same instant as 9505 did so.
We still don`t find any fill-in frequency between 1330 and the next scheduled Creole broadcast at 1730, but checking http://author.voanews.com/english/about/frequenciesAtoZ_c.cfm
the Creole schedule for 1230-1330 has been changed to 9505. It still refuses to show the afternoon transmissions we have axually been monitoring the past week, 1930-2100 on 15390, 2100-2200 on 13725! Are they secret, perhaps put on by Greenville as a public service without informing Washington? (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U S A. Haven`t heard WTWW testing the last few days on 9480 or 5755, so I asked George McClintock how things are going. He says a long test period is scheduled for Saturday Jan 23, times here changed to UT:
1600-1900 9480
1900-2200 9475
2200-2400 9480
0000-0400 5755 [UT Sunday]
``All this assumes that we have no problems. This will be a test to see how the transmitter and other equipment hold up with extended transmission time.`` (Glenn Hauser, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** U S A [non]. Correxion! Yesterday`s report showed 9940 instead of correct 9440 for this which I now repeat: YFR in unknown Asian language, Jan 20 at 1418 along with big buzz, something you would expect from India rather than listed Novosibirsk, RUSSIA; Aoki still shows this as English, the initial language on this new transmission. At 1430 was spelling out Family Radio URL. Meanwhile at 1415, Camping still in English, Open Forum on 9485 with more flutter but no buzz, and that is due south from Irkutsk (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
** VENEZUELA [non]. 11705, RNV via CUBA transmitter is in terrible shape, only the worst for the Bolivarian allies! Jan 21 at 1249 big S9+22 signal but very undermodulated, in fact hard to hear beneath continuous scratchy audio breakup which was also splattering plus and minus 15 kHz. RNV ID heard and then sports(?) report. If RNV ever monitored their own broadcasts, which they obviously do not since they don`t know the real times and frequencies, they might hurry up and get their own Calabozo SW site going --- but then the Cubans are assisting them with that, so it may turn out just as incompetent (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
UNIDENTIFIED. 9394, 2-way Spanish SSB, Jan 21 at 1335, with splatter from Brother Scare/WWRB 9385. Usual dreary conversation about who knows what (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ###
