DX-PEDITION: Bald Hills Wetland Reserve

TS2000 and ATU tuned to TWR - Moosbrunn on 5910 kHz

This weekend, I have been away with my photography club to Wilson's Promontory, a coastal peninsula to the south east of both Melbourne and Mount Evelyn, approx. 225 km away from my home QTH. 20 photographers and a few spouses stayed on a farm on Friday and Saturday nights, and spent a sunny Saturday exploring and photographing some of the many attractive sights and natural features that the region has to offer.

On Friday, as I was travelling by myself for the trip down to the Promontory, I took three hours to do another mini- DXpedition. I set up the mobile listening post in the Bald Hills Wetlands Reserve, near Walkerville. It's a fairly flat but bushy area with lots of native fauna and flora. It's also an out-of-the-way location. In the 3.5 hours I was there, I only saw one other car all afternoon!

Being somewhat isolated and off-the-beaten-track, you can imagine that the noise floor was extremely low, except for the weak but regular tick-tick-ticking of an electric fence somewhere. Reception conditions were very good. Although we are now well into Spring here, with the Australian Summer only six weeks away from its official start, this location and Friday's propagation conditions provided some mid-afternoon Winter-like DX signals.

On board the mobile shack was the Kenwood TS2000 transceiver, the small MFJ antenna tuner, a sealed lead acid battery and a 40 metre reel of stranded antenna wire. (see photos). The MacBook Air laptop had all the necessary reference data on it as well.

As there were so many stations to log, I have divided the afternoon's listening observations into four time blocks and bands within. Here's a summary of what was heard:

0330-0400 UTC - 2:30pm EDT
41mb
7365 USA. R.Marti - Greenville, Spanish to s/off 0400, fair to poor
7435 Germany. R. Liberty - Lampertheim, Russian, poor

31mb

9265 USA. WINB - Red Lion, PA. English, very weak, s/off 0410. Rarely heard back home, the signal always seems to be quite low-powered. Listed as 50 kW, but is that REALLY the output these days??
9370 KUWAIT. VOA Deewa R. - Kuwait. Pashto to s/off 0400
9410 UNITED ARAB EMIRATES. BBC - Dhabayya. Arabic to s/off 0400.
9420 GREECE. VoGreece - Avlis. Greek
9435 ARMENIA. VoR - Erevan. Spanish - massive signal.
9505 AUSTRIA. AWR - Moosbrunn. Farsi, good signal to s/off 0400. Listed in Aoki and EiBi as s/off 0430, but seems not to be the case, at least on this day.
9535 SPAIN. REE - Noblejas. Spanish - massive signal
9570 ALBANIA. CRI - Cerrik. Mandarin, strong.
9610 IRAN. VOIRI - Kamalabad. Arabic, fair signal.
9620 SPAIN. REE - Noblejas. Spanish, good.

0400-0430 UTC - Add the following:
31mb
9470 RWANDA. DW - Kigali. English news, fair
9645 VATICAN. R. Vatican - SM Galeria. Arabic, poor.
9715 ??? Too weak to ID, possibly Riyadh or Iran.
9770 ROMANIA. RRI - Galbeni. Romanian, v. strong.
9790 CUBA. CRI - Havana. Mandarin, fair level
9810 CUBA. R. Havana. Spanish, good.
9885 BOTSWANA. VOA - Moepeng Hill. English to 0430 s/off. Weak.
9955 UNID. Possibly Prague via WRMI, in Spanish. Weak.

0430-0530 UTC
49mb
5830 USA. WTWW - Lebanon TN. F/in 0520 English.
5890 USA. WWCR - Nashville TN. F/in 0520, a little stronger at fade in than the fellow Tennessee broadcaster on 5830 kHz.
5935 USA. WWCR - Nashville, TN. F/in 0520 along with the others above.
6030 USA. R. Marti - Greenville NC. Spanish 0520+
6060 CUBA. R. Havana. English f/in 0625, weak.
6090 ANGUILLA. Caribbean Beacon. English f/in 0525.
6095 SAO TOME. VOA - Pinheira. F/in via long path 0535 for French to WAf. Weak at this time but got stronger later.
6155 AUSTRIA. ORF - Moosbrunn. German at 0530.

41mb

7295 FRANCE. R. Algerienne - Issoudun. F/in around 0435.
7405 USA. R. Marti - Greenville, NC. Spanish. F/in around 0425.
7555 USA. WEWN - Vandiver. Opening at 0558 with a capella hymn, for the Spanish svce.

25mb

11510 MOLDOVA. Denge Kurdistanya. Kurdish, fair to poor level.
11520 USA. WEWN - Vandiver, AL. English, Good
11560 BULGARIA. R. Miraya. English programming with ID for the Miraya Breakfast Show 0532, groovy African music 0533, then listeners emails/SMS/ letters read out. Interesting programming on Oct 11, fair to good signal. Later noted at 0502 with news in Arabic. Still lists in HFCC as Kichinev (Moldova) but others believe this is currently Kostinbrod (Bulgaria). I dunno!!
11625 VATICAN. R. Vatican - SM Galeria. French, strong.
11650 VATICAN. R. Dabanga - SM Galeria. Arabic, frequent IDs, good level.
11660 IRAN. VOIRI - Zahedan. Arabic.
11670 IRAN. VOIRI - Sirjan. Azerbaijani, good.
11700 FRANCE. RFI - Issoudun. French to EAf
11710.75 ARGENTINA. RAE - General Pacheco. Surprised to hear this, much harder at home QTH at this time of day. Argentine pop songs in the Mandarin service at 0440, fair to poor signal, but quite readable, Oct 11. S/off around 0500 to make way for CRI's English to ME.
11735 D.P.R.Korea VoK - Kujang. English with revolutionary songs, poor.
11760 CUBA & IRAN. R. Havana (Spanish) & VOIRI-Kamalabad (Arabic) sharing the freq at 0450. Cuba was the strongest.
11780 BRAZIL. R. Nacional - Brasilia. Portuguese, good.
11850 GERMANY. R. Liberty - Lampertheim. Russian from 0500.
11860 IRAN. VOIRI - Kamalabad. Turkish, strong.
11870 USA. WEWN - Vandiver AL. Spanish
11905 VATICAN. VOA - SM Galeria. Kurdish from 0500, good.
11915.17 BRAZIL. R. Gaúcha - Guaíba. Weak at 0510. Has been only rarely heard here this past winter.
11930 BELARUS. R. Belarus - Minsk. Belarusian.
11940 IRAN. VOIRI - Kamalabad. Dari, fair to good level.
11955 AUSTRIA. AWR - Moosbrunn. 0500-0530 service in Hausa to WAf. Good.
11970 FRANCE. NHK - Issoudun. 30 min service to SAf in English from 0500. Great signal.
11980 TURKEY. VoT - Emirler. Turkish.

0530-0600 UTC

60mb

5025 CUBA. R. Rebelde - Havana. F/in 0545 with lively songs, weak and rapid fading but strengthened by 0616. Good early f/in for this time of year.
5040 CUBA. R. Havana. FS to CAm in English, f/in 0545, weak level but good to hear it with very low noise floor, unlike at the home QTH.

49mb

5909.91 COLOMBIA. R. Alcaravan - Puerto Lleras. Appears as soon as TWR-Moosbrunn s/off at 0559. Fair level with many Colombian songs and a good catch this early in our late afternoon in Spring.
5910 AUSTRIA. TWR - Moosbrunn. 15 min Polish service to Eu noted at 0550 to s/off 0559, fair signal.

31mb

9565.10 BRAZIL. Super R. Deus é Amor - Curitiba. Weak to fair level, 0540.
9665.70 BRAZIL. Vox Missionária - Camboriú. Weak at 0535 but readable.
9819.1 BRAZIL. R. Nove de Juhlo - São Paulo. Fair level.

So, this is a listening location I will keep mind for future reference when I visit this region of Victoria again.

This has been a longish post, but I hope you found it of some interest! Here are some photos (in a greatly reduced size) of a few of the views of the Promontory.