Mount Evelyn DX Report

PROPAGATION REFLECTIONS  PLUS DX QUICK TIPS September 29, 2020 Sometimes, I wonder why international broadcasters select certain frequencies for their target audiences. It can leave me scratching my head! Take Radio Free Kashmir (RFK), a relatively new clandestine station on the scene. This broadcaster leases time from Radio Romania International via the Tiganesti transmitters.  The station is not audible in Australia when it operates between 0330-0430 UTC on 7355 kHz on Saturdays and Sundays only. Way too much daylight between Tiganesti and Mount Evelyn for propagation along that track at 7 MHz. Which is fine because I’m not the target audience for RFK. The Indian subcontinent, South Asia is where the signal needs to be heard. Take a look at the great circle signal path (126˚ beam heading at Tiganesti). At 0330 on September 27, most of the path between Tiganesti and South Asia is in daylight. Indeed, at the start of the transmission, it is 9:00am in Delhi. So we can expect th...

  The new Voice of Vietnam logo DX QUICK TIPS Ron Howard and Rob Wagner  September 17, 2020 MONITORING NOTES FROM USA Thanks to Ron Howard (Asilomar State Beach, Calif., USA) for his always reliable and detailed observations of broadcasters in the Asia and the Pacific. Ron's equipment includes a CommRadio CR-1, and the antenna is a 30m long wire. ⭐ 3325   INDONESIA. Voice of Indonesia, via Palangkaraya , 1102+, Sept 13. An unusual day here, as NBC Bougainville was off the air and VOI actually had audio at a very respectable level; tuned in to hear Chinese; Japanese was after 1200+; English segment was 1300-1400; news (ex-PMs Tony Blair and John Major item about Brexit; Russian elections being held now; etc.); ended the news with the distinctive patriotic song "Garuda Pancasila" (aka: "Mars Pancasila"), which was composed by Sudharnoto (who for a time worked at RRI Jakarta), with lyrics about the loyalty of all Indonesian people to Pancasila as the only ideology ...

  NOISE, NOISE, EVERYWHERE, NOISE (This post is an edited version of an article I wrote for "The World of Shortwave Listening" column of The Spectrum Monitor magazine - August 2020 issue. Further details on this excellent publication are available at www.thespectrummonitor.com ) Autumn colours on the local "rail-trail" near my home. Mount Evelyn is a semi-urban, semi-rural location about 45 kilometres east of Melbourne, the southeastern part of Australia. When we retired ten years ago to this lovely mountain region known as the Yarra Ranges, noise levels on the shortwave bands were quite manageable. At times, it might rise to perhaps an S3, but hanging a variety of antennas cut for a mix of bands and erected in different directions certainly allowed for some flexibility and control over the local man-made noise. Previously, we lived in a highly urbanized environment where 24-hour S9 noise levels prohibited any SWL or Ham activity from home. But moving to more spacio...

  One of the young announcers from RTV du Mali DX QUICK TIPS September 5, 2020 This week, a new antenna has been added to the "Mount Evelyn antenna farm" - a 95 meter (312 feet) long horizontal loop in a (sort of) a squat rectangular shape. It stretches out across the creek in the gully with supports from a huge gum tree, a willow tree, a fence and an aluminimum pole. I'm still running tests on it and comparing it against my 10 MHz inverted vee and the 14 MHz double bazooka. But the new loop certainly boosts up signals across most of the shortwave spectrum! 👍👍 3945   VANUATU. R. Vanuatu - Entem Lagoon. Bislama talks and discussions at 0735, fair signal. The station’s “accidental international service” continues with uninhibited harmonics happily radiating on 7890 and 11835 kHz. The 25mb harmonic propagates quite strongly at 0500 with its slowly swishing surge/fade/surge signal, characteristic of propagation across this distance (3150km between the txer and my Mt Evelyn ...