YouTube Report - BBC ANTARCTIC MID-WINTER BROADCAST

Photo by Mtpaley at English Wikipedia [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

BBC ANTARCTIC MID-WINTER BROADCAST

YouTube Report - June 21, 2019

On this dismally cold and rainy morning, I stumbled out of bed for the annual BBC event at 2130 UTC (7:30am here), which is beamed to the British Antarctic Survey team for their on-base winter solstice celebrations. While the broadcast arrives here just on sunrise, there is no actual rising of the sun in Antarctica resulting in 24 hours of darkness. So, the BBC broadcast which includes taped wishes and good cheer from the families of the base residents I am sure is very much appreciated by those scientists and researchers working down there.

I suspect that reception of the broadcast was very good in Europe. But that's not the target area!! Shortwave propagation can be notoriously unreliable in Antarctica, so getting the signal down there is the real challenge! At least my location in south-eastern Australia is in the right part of the world. In fact, as I write this, we are currently under a low-pressure system that is dragging up extremely cold air from the Antarctic.

On this occasion, the broadcast was not well received here at Mount Evelyn. Two of the three frequencies were poor, with the best one turning out to be 5875 kHz via the Woofferton transmitter site. My Yaesu FTDX3000 transceiver got a good workout trying to dig up the three frequencies out of the mud. Here's my YouTube video of a small portion of the 30-minute broadcast:




It is pleasing to know that the BBC can provide a choice of three frequencies. I hope that reception for the BAS team was good.

73 and have a great weekend everyone,

Rob Wagner VK3BVW