CYCLONES ON THE LOOSE

Cyclones On The Loose

Over the past two days, tropical cyclones (a.k.a. typhoons or hurricanes in other parts of the world) have approached the Australian coast in two separate places at the one time. But...it's THAT time of year for such meteorological events here in OZ. The one on the eastern coast is hitting the populated coastal regions as I type this post. The cyclone in the north of the country is also building significantly.

So far this summer, cyclones have not bothered us - our cyclone season should have begun several months ago. The sudden appearance of these two events indicates that the waters around the tropical coasts are appreciably warmer at this time of the year - up to 26˚C in some areas. Therefore, intense low pressures can form rapidly and without much warning.

You can expect to hear the ABC stations on the tropical bands devoting their programming to cyclone reporting, emergency plans and news updates. Listen out for the following stations:

2325  VL8T - ABC Tennant Creek
2485  VL8K - ABC Katherine
4835 VL8A - ABC Alice Springs
4910  VL8T - ABC Tennant Creek
5025  VL8K - ABC Katherine (usually operating during our daytime but could extend schedule if required).

There may also be changes in programming from Radio Australia during this time. Additionally, mediumwave DXers could watch out for Queensland and Northern Territory stations with 24 hour cyclone emergency information.

Here at Mount Evelyn, reception conditions over the last two days have been especially noisy, making listening exceedingly difficult. Continuous lightening from the storms in the north of the country act like the old spark radio transmitters....only these transmitters are very large (!!), easily propagating their electrical impulses across the entire shortwave and mediumwave spectrum. However, I have managed to hear a few signals that may be of interest to you:

5939.7  BRAZIL. Voz Missionária - Camboriú, SC. Over the past couple of months, this station has drifted even further away from its nominal 5940 allocation. Much of last year, I noted it between 5939.8 and 5939.88 kHz. Portuguese religious talks at 0940, poor signal at this time of the year for us, but will improve as we approach the winter months. Feb 17.

6020   VIETNAM. VoV - Buon Me Thuot. Network 4 Minorities Service with Western style ballads at 1205 with anncts in an unidentified local language. Talk at 1220, then at 1224 a lovely but long traditional indigenous song accompanied by native instruments. Local instrumental music, sounding almost Indonesian in style at 1234. Monitored to past 1240 at a fair level but with heavy QRM from adjacent channels. No sign of AIR-Shimla nor CNR listed here at this time. Feb 18.

9395   USA. Global24 - Okeechobee FL. Music programming with no anncts from 1015 to past 1045 with Bach's Air in G, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and other classical items. Poor signal on Feb 19. They are branding themselves as a global SW station. But for most of the 24 hours we rarely hear them at Mount Evelyn. Rather than being stuck on 9395 kHz all day, it's a pity they can't be frequency agile and adapt to changing propagation conditions. I know they are not interested in transmitting to all three of us listeners in Australia, but if they targeted different parts of the world on a variety of frequencies, we might have a hope of hearing at least one or two transmissions at a reasonable level.

9400.38   PHILIPPINES. FEBC - Iba. Mandarin to EAs at 1004 with a strong signal. Quite a long way off frequency this evening, Feb 19

13630   UZBEKISTAN. CVC The Voice Asia - Tashkent. Hindi service to SAs at 0635 with what sounded like a mailbag style program. A bright song heard at 0645. Interestingly, the announcer included many English words and phrases in his dialogue. Generally a weak signal at this time. Later, I came back to the frequency at 0920, but the signal had not improved during the intervening three hours. CVC can be heard at this time now that R. Australia has vacated the frequency, although the signal was weak and covered with summer atmospherics on Feb 19.

15160   KOREA REP. KBS World Radio - Kimjae. Korean service to ME at 0940, fair signal on Feb 19.

15200   GUAM. KTWR - Agana. The Madurese language service to Indonesia at 0930. Then the interval signal at 1000 to start the Sundanese program, fair signal on Feb 19. The Madurese language is spoken by about 15 million people in Madura Island (off the northeastern coast of Java, near Surabaya city), in eastern Java and several other islands in the region. 

21510   IRAN. VOIRI - Kamalabad. Suddenly on 5 minutes before the scheduled 1020 s/on in the middle of an Arabic talk. Then into English with ID at 1019, piano theme at 1020, anthem at 1023, and Qur'an prayers at 1025. Fair signal on Feb 17.

73 and have a great weekend everyone,

Rob VK3BVW