GREAT DAYTIME RECEPTION CONTINUES

MORE Good Daytime Reception!

The layout of this week's MEDXR Blog is going to be a little different because …….well…..just to be different!!  :-)  I'm listing the logs in time periods as noted during the course of the week. Let me know if you find this layout useful or helpful.

2330 to 0230 UTC:
This listening period is around my late morning and into lunchtime. The sun is high in the sky! During this time, the 25 metre band is pretty much dead on most days in high summer. So, it was nice to observe a few Asian signals making it through to my receiver.

11740   INDIA. AIR - Panaji, Goa. Fair signal with Tamil service with a talk which mentioned Pakistan several times, then an energetic song at 0030, Feb 6.

11840   CUBA.  R Havana, weak with Cuban music at 0023,  Spanish ID at 0025 on Feb 6

11855   PHILIPPINES. R. Veritas Asia - Palauig. Sinhalese service with talks at 0020, weak but readable on Feb 6.

11920   GERMANY. HCJB - Nauen. Portuguese service with talks at 2330 and fading fast on Feb 5.

11955   SINGAPORE. BBC - Kranji. English to Indonesia at 0015, fair to good on Feb 6.

12005   SINGAPORE. R. Australia - Kranji. Burmese to SEAs at 0010, at about the same strength as BBC Kranji to Burma on 12025 kHz. Feb 6.

12025   SINGAPORE. BBC - Kranji. Burmese service with many mentions of Myanmar in the news program at 0005, fair signal on Feb 6.

12055   PHILIPPINES. FEBC - Bocaue. Talks in the listed Palaung language and hymns at 2340. Full ID and station address at 2344. Weak but readable on Feb 5. Palaung is spoken by around half a million people in Burma, and small pockets of Thailand and China. There are three versions (dialects?) of the language, and the one being broadcast by FEBC is the "Pale" language. It's interesting that stations such as FEBC make efforts to reach out to people who have such a small language footprint on the globe. From 2345, the broadcast changes into Tai-Lu, another minority language spoken by around 700,000 people in China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, and including 5,000 people in Vietnam. I suspect there are not many web sites catering to the needs of speakers of Palaung and Tai-Lu. I also expect that the vast majority of those listeners don't have regular access to the Internet. Hence, shortwave radio still serves a very useful purpose!!

17760   AUSTRALIA.  HCJB - Kununurra. Perhaps this should be called "Constipated Kununurra" because it seemed to be having technical difficulties getting its signal out when first noted at 0145 for its Hindi service. Lots of random broken transmission, often off for 20 secs and then on for 2 secs. Monitored this for around 15 min but it never got any better. Unusual because this outlet seems to have been reliable in the past. Good level signal strength when it was there.

Later……As at 0218, it suddenly seemed to fix itself for the Gujarati service. Unfortunately the Hindi listeners have missed out today. Feb 7.

Then this received later in the day:

From the HCJB Kununurra Broadcast Technician:



*Broadcast Report 07/02/2014*



This morning's broadcast suffered lots of interruptions because of a combination of tuning problems and a rare case of transmitter control malfunction that inhibits proper alarming. We would usually catch this problem when working out there, but with the creek in high flood this is not possible.

     

* affected programs: Rawang (raw), Duhdim Nun (cnh), Hindi (hin), English (eng), Nepali (nep), Marathi (mar), Gujarati (gui)

     
* UTC lost broadcast time: 1 hour 50 minutes (0030-0220)

    
 * target area: South East Asia



Via Shelley Martin at HCJB Global Australia…………………..



For international DXers following this post, at this time of year the far north of tropical Australia receives its major rainfall - usually 100's of millimetres every week…..and the occasional cyclone. The place becomes awash with water! The creeks mentioned above become raging rivers!  We hope Kununurra doesn't get washed away!   :-)

0500 to 0630 UTC:
Here are some stations noted during my late afternoon local time. There's quite a variety of signals appearing from Europe, Asia, Africa and even South America. It was good to hear Greece still operating, although 9420 seems to be off-air.

7475   GREECE. VoGreece - Avlis. First noted at 0530 but barely audible and the // 11645 kHz was much stronger. But within an hour the reception was reversed, with 7475 being the much more dominant signal. Greek pops noted after anncts at 0616, nothing heard on 9420, Feb 7.

11510   MOLDOVA. R. Denge Kurdistana - Kichinev.  Kurdish songs at 0503, fair to poor but improved over the next 2 hours, Feb 7.

11580   PAKISTAN. R. Pakistan - Islamabad. Service the ME and NAf with a music program and Urdu anncts at 0510, fair to poor signal on Feb 7.

11645   GREECE.  VoGreece - Avlis. "Guitar hero" music with Greek rock songs in a live concert setting, first noted at 0525 with a fair signal. No anncts noted in 15 min of listening. Running // 7475 but barely audible there as that band was not quite open yet to Europe. Nothing heard on 9420, Feb 7.

11780   BRAZIL. R. Nacional Amazônia - Brasilia. Brazilian pop songs, anncts and several IDs, fair level at 0535, Feb 7.

11995   GERMANY. VOA - Biblis. The 1-hour Kurdish service to ME first noted at 0543, till s/off 0600. Fair level on Feb 7.

12070   RWANDA. DW - Kigali. English news to SAf 0512, into Portuguese 0530, good signal Feb 7.

12095   SEYCHELLES. BBC - Mahe. Very weak signal at 0547 with the EAf English service. Planned to exit shortwave in March, so get it while it's there! The broadcast shifts to the Meyerton transmitter for the continuation of English at 0600. Feb 7. Read the announcement about the planned closure of BBC Mahe by clicking on this BBC link! 

1930 to 2030 UTC:
Due to the current higher solar flux numbers this past week (read my last blog post), 16 metre band stations during my local breakfast time have been coming through quite well. Here's a sample list from this week.

17550   KUWAIT.  R. Kuwait. Arabic radio play at 2015, good signal, Feb 5.

17670   INDIA.  AIR - Site unknown, assumed Delhi. Strange! First tuned in at 1941 which should have been the final moments of the English to EAf service (scheduled s/off 1945). But just an open carrier. Then right on 1945, an ID, and news in Hindi. Unfortunately, I got called away at 1950, so I didn't get a chance to follow this up, but it was gone when I came back to the radio by 2010. There is a 1-hour Hindi service scheduled to s/on 1945 on other freqs, so perhaps a switching error? Feb 5

17775   USA. KVOH - Rancho Simi CA. Spanish but extremely weak at 1940 on Feb.

17790   USA. R. Africa (WRMI) - Okeechobee FL. English preaching 1937, fair level on Feb 5.

17850   SPAIN. REE - Noblejas. Spanish at 1935 to CAf, fair level on Feb 5

17885   ASCENSION IS.  BBC - Ascension. S/on 1930 with the news in Hausa for the 30 min service to WAf, weak signal on Feb 5.

Thanks for reading this report. Have a great weekend everyone,

73's,  Rob VK3BVW