Mount Evelyn DX Report

A17 SCHEDULE CHANGES Lots of them!! The new A17 transmission season began last weekend. China made many modifications to its transmission schedule, along with the BBC and others. But why do radio stations need to make any changes to their schedules? At the start of the B16 season, I wrote a post that might give some insight into all this frenzied movement around the radio dials, which you can read here -  How to Identify Changes in Station Schedules It's been a busy week here at Mount Evelyn with family commitments, but I've managed to monitor some of the changes during my waking hours. Here's a few I've confirmed already: NOTE :  Frequencies in kHz, Times in UTC ABBREVIATIONS : NF = New Frequency, ex = deleted frequency, QRM = interference, // = another or parallel frequency used at the same time, As = Asia, SEAs = South East Asia, etc. Af = Africa, WAf = West Africa, etc. Eu = Europe, EEu = Eastern Europe, etc. NAm = Nth America, ENAm = Eastern Nth Ame...

STATION NEWS Week ending March 25, 2017 ALBANIA Radio Tirana has announced it is closing down the shortwave service from the start of the A17 transmission season, i.e. March 26. The station has had a few technical problems with their transmitters in recent months. GABON For those of us interested in shortwave history, the British DX Club has just released an excellent and very detailed chronological outline of the high powered shortwave transmitters of the Africa No. 1 station at Moyabi, which was located more than 600 km south-east of the capital Libreville. Entitled The Moyabi Story - The History of Gabon's High-Power Shortwave Radio Station at Moyabi 1979-2013 , this 11-page document has been compiled and updated by Tony Rogers. It also contains some excellent photos of the transmitter site. Utilised by a number of international broadcasters during its lifetime, including Radio Japan, Adventist World Radio, Radio France International and Swiss Radio International, ...

TECSUN S-8800 - THE BIRDIE PROBLEM Recently, Tecsun announced and released onto the market the new S-8800 receiver. Thomas Witherspoon K4SWL at the SWLing Post has indicated that sensitivity, selectivity and audio fidelity are very good for this new unit. BUT.....in a post on February 12, 2017, entitled Tecsun S-8800 update , Thomas discovered that his new S-8800 has a serious fault, which could potentially drive radio enthusiasts mad! In tuning around the dial, he found the radio has many "birdies". In the same post, he notes that Bertrand Stehle F6GYY also found birdies on 4 spots in the mediumwave band and 63 frequencies across the entire shortwave spectrum. Not good! In reading the comments that followed Thomas' post, I noted that a few writers seemed a little confused about what a birdie is and how it differs from radio frequency interference. Hopefully, the following explanation will shed some light. The term "birdie" is, I guess, derived f...

STATION NEWS AND THE LOG BOOK Week Ending March 18, 2017 STATION NEWS VATICAN A number of online news reports have surfaced over the past week concerning the closure of Vatican Radio's shortwave service, as mentioned in our Station News post last week . Apparently some African bishops expressed dismay because services will be no longer available to poorer and disadvantaged regions of the world, i.e. no Internet, poor mobile phone reception, no access to satellites, etc. They have asked the Vatican generals to reconsider their decision until appropriate alternatives can be found. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Hey! ABC! Are you listening? Here's a link to one such news report:  Bishops in Africa Request for Restoration of Vatican Radio Shortwave Services . SPAIN Some international broadcasters will be making frequency changes from March 26 as the A17 transmission season gets underway. Radio Exterior de España (REE) has released its schedule for the new se...

BEHIND THE CURTAIN Preview of an Exciting New Book by Mark Fahey Many readers of the MEDXR blog will know Mark Fahey, an Australian radio communications enthusiast who has visited North Korea on many occasions. His personal research and insights into all things North Korean have been well documented in many places. Mark describes himself as an eHealth Clinical Informatics Specialist / Digital Media Developer, Author and Publisher, and a communicator and strategic thinker driven by a passion for introducing new technologies to healthcare. He is also a regular plenary speaker and presenter of visionary solutions at international medical, scientific, technology and broadcasting conferences. I am delighted to announce that Mark has released his Preview Behind The Curtain ebook in the iTunes Store as an Apple iBook for both MacOS and iOS devices. This book has been years in the making, is highly interactive with many audio and video examples, and is very accessible. ...

RETRO RECEIVER REVIEW #9 Click on the photos for an enlarged view SELENA VEGA B206 by Craig Seager VK2HBT Given that East-West tensions continue to simmer under the surface, with the Russian annexation of the Crimea region in recent years, and talk of unorthodox “participation” in the election of Donald Trump, I thought it might be appropriate to revisit the heady days of the Cold War, and an interesting receiver offering from the Soviet Union. Around about the time the Japanese manufacturer Yaesu was promoting its now venerated FRG-7, and many Australian DXers were having trouble letting go of their trusty valve Trio sets, some attention began to turn to a transistor portable that was receiving some good references out of Europe.  In fact, local DX club bulletins of the time spoke positively about the Selena Vega B206, as examples had started to make it to these shores in the late 1970s, and demonstrated performance that benchmarked relatively well against other ...

The view from the outdoor radio shack. The radio is tuned to 9405 kHz, listening to FEBC's Mandarin service. WEAK SIGNAL DX DAYTIME MINI BAND-SCAN February 20, 2017 A short holiday on the Mornington Peninsula (about 1:30 hrs drive from Mount Evelyn)....and, of course, the Tecsun PL680 came along for the ride! The receiver was connected to a 55 metre (180 feet) long wire antenna strung out at mostly head height across the coastal vegetation.  The aim was to see how many signals could be copied in the 49, 41 and 31 meter bands between 2330 and 0115 UTC (10:30am and 12:15pm AEDT). As we are still very much into the summer season here in south eastern Australia, usually at home these bands are almost dead at this time of day during this time of year. So, it was pleasing to catch some (mostly) weak signals right on the coast at the Flinders Ocean Park. Today's radio shack...very pleasant conditions! The manmade noise levels proved to be very low here on this...