LOGS / NEWS - DECEMBER 2012 A site mainly dedicated to Mediumwave Dxing |
| 1490 | WSWW | Charlestown, WV | 
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| 1540 | WXEX | Exeter, NH |
5kW / 2.5kW (Or even off at night on Topaz) |
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I have since 1981 had a serious soft spot for Pirate Radio in Waterford, for whatever reason. I have no family connections or anything to Waterford, but always I have held fond memories of the radio scene around the town. I visited Waterford a few times, and had many a good evening courtesy of the lads at Suirside Radio and ABC. I met Steve Silby, Clive Derek, Andy Linton and Andy Green in 2008 after some 22 years. What a fun time. WLR I visited, and met Rick Whelan a couple of times, but because I was surrounded by the guys I knew from the SW stations of the day, my deepest nostalgiac memories must certainly be for both Suirside and ABC Radio. Both are well remembered for also broadcasting on SW, although their mw signals were all heard in Scotland. As was that of WLR. ABC were on 1026 (after a brief period on 729), Suirside on 1332, after a brief spell on 257m, possibly off channel around 1165khz. WLR was on 1197kHz. I even slept in the ABC Production studio one night!! You can imagine my surprise, when I read about a book being published on the subject of Pirate Radio in Waterford!!! Waterford is approximately the size of Killie. Killie has no radio stations. Waterford had 3 stations. There are a set of 4 YOUTUBE videos of the night of the launch of the book, though sadly they are not continous and they cut off in the middle of a good story. But they are well worth watching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH_SbXId-3E&list=PLk3D8Z2H0PeW4mwZZJcF0NUyJwn2vFfjI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xIt6MYagrs&list=PLk3D8Z2H0PeW4mwZZJcF0NUyJwn2vFfjI
The following links may be handy for ordering info and also to read a little about the author. http://makeyourbookreal.wordpress.com/tag/radio-blaa-blaa/ http://www.thebookcentre.ie/contact.html
PC CLEAR OUT: I have finally had to try and make some room in the shack here. What a cluttered mess. In recent times I have gradually changed over to flat panel monitors. Carefully choosing screens that seem quiet with regards to rf qrn generated on the radio. I could not believe the amount of 17 inch screens of the old CRT type that I have gathered up over the years, and refused to get rid of. I always kept them so when I had break downs, I take another off the shelf, and replace. This has worked well for years. But I have recently fell in with such a volume of flat screens, that I have a long supply of spare flat panels now. The room the CRT screens take up is quite amazing. So even though they were stashed in every spare corner, I must have go rid of about 20!! The local charity shop still takes them, thought for how long. Some had been sat in a damp area and needed to dry out. But such would have been the time involved in repairs, those ones were dumped. two were sat in a pals shed, 2 were given to a guy in the pub that wanted 1..lol. Theres a spare as well, I told him. I think I had about 4 workers for the charity shop, and about another 10 with minor focus adjustments needed or eht sparks due to dampness, simply dumped. The only thing was that at the council tip, there was another flat panel there, where I was dumping. It blew in the car window, and lo and behold it works perfectly. It makes you wonder why anyone would throw out a working monitor??? I also began to make a count of the pc towers I had lying around in different corners. I had over 20 or 30 of these as well. No wonder I had to dodge around these things to find other stuffin the shack!! I have began to test and strip them. I just gave the scrappie about 15 metal pc cases already, and many more to be stripped. I am gonna keep a few spare towers, but being honest, I can't get rid of them by selling or even giving them away. They are in general old 1 gig machines that are well powerful enough for a web pc for beginners, but everyone seems to be buying laptops or ipads these days. So I have to draw the line somewhere. I will keep any USB2 machines that will run for example the Perseus. Some may have to be kept as motherboards. After all, if one board sits down, it can be removed from the tower, and replaced. I don't think I need all these spare cases though. I remember the day not too long back that I used to screw motherboards on to a piece of wood, to save buying a case!! Now I really am tripping over them!!
I was testing an audio stream to a non Perseus user the other day, so he could hear various signals that were coming through. Obviously he did not have to do this if he had a Perseus, due to the server networks available with the Perseus. The Broadwave stream worked pretty easily for a point to point streaming system. Check it out here at www.rich.com.au/streaming/index.html
Updates have been a little slow this month here at the DX Archive / MW DXING web pages. So much to add, and seemingly so little time. When there is nothing to report, I tend to move on to other projects. I had a couple of audio files to update to the November pages, of personal firsts. I also found a blooper back in August I think it was when WAUB 1590 was listed as 1240 on the heading of the page under personal firsts!! Woops. =================================
HARD DRIVE SITS DOWN: I was chatting away last night to some dxers on the Skype chat, when a screaming horrible noise like banshees, the likes of which I had never heard before came from somewhere near my main PC. The noise was traced to a 500 gig Seagate drive used for overnight recordings in recent times. The drive was only used for Perseus files, and seemed to have died in a quite spectacular fashion. But I tried the drive some time later and it was running fine, as well as being perfectly readable. No screaming or anything. I guess however I won't make that drive my regular overnight storage space any more. Yes it happens. Sooner or later a drive sits down. I drum on about back ups here on a regular basis, and this is the reason why. Of course, we can't in reality back up all our Perseus files, if you are like me and keep a mountain of Perseus recordings. The extra cost would be a little prohibative. If the whole MW band was closing down any time soon, I then would buy many back up drives etc. But it may pay to keep a couple of large drives with "prize recordings" copied. On the drive I thought had died, was a collection of recent files from the last week or so waiting to be listened to, including Christmas Eve which was an interesting morning. Also included were a load of ID's recorded from the last months. That was for me the big thing. I did think I had also lost one particular daytimer that was running later than their sched on 1540. There was always something that I hadn't quite got around to backing up. Also for keeps were a few wideband recordings with possible first known UK logs, and personal firsts from this season, as well as overnight recordings from the day of the hurricane!! I have copied over the ID's and am now looking for space on other drives for the rest of the Perseus files, just in case. The drive is an older drive, from 2007, a SEAGATE BARRACUDA 7200 10. I'm sure nearer 2007 than now, I had checked the Seagate web site with the serial numbers of the drive to see if it required the firmware update that some seagate drives around the 500g era required. Obviously Seagate have overcome their problems, as their drives are used every day 24/7 in SKY+ HD receivers. Even when not in use, they are still recording live TV so you can rewind it. A great innovation I hasten to add. But the drives are in use continously. =====================================
Yes, this site is still about MW dxing. In theory. The band conditions for MW dxing have been such this season that interest has not been particularly intense. I have to report little in Dec, although around the festive season, I have piced up a few gems. A few logs are below.
===================================== WORLD DX CLUB CLOSES IT'S DOORS: After many years of operation, the WDXC has closed up shop. I am not a member of the WDXC, but back in the 80's I used to subscribe to the A4 Multicoloured style magazines. I used to listen to the dx programme on AWR as well. I even have a couple of old QSL cards!! It is such a shame when institutions close their doors. Like so many in recent times, including Woolies, Comet, that factory that kept the town in work for 50 years or more, or even the local pub that has been trading for more than a century, sometimes two.. ===================================== MW DXING IN SOUTHERN NJ CLOSES IT'S DOORS: After a few short months, a link in our pages to MW dxing in Southern NJ is dead. The short lived blog was interesting while it lasted, and I wish I had saved some of the stories for the archives here. There was a very detailed first hand account of the Hurricane in October. UPDATE: THIS SITE SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN REACTIVATED.. LUCKY I NEVER GOT AROUND TO DELETING THE LINKS.
===================================== 500kHz CLOSES IT'S DOORS AT YEAR END: The 500kHz area of the MW band is being taken away from radio hams as of year end. Instead a WARC ruling has allocated 472 - 479kHz. Listen for activity on 500kHz before midnight on 31st December. There is guaranteed to be some final beacons heard around these frequencies.
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Norway also closes it's 675 transmitter at year end. Another high power signal gone from the European airwaves. Now we need Holland, Spain, Germany, and the UK of course to take the bull by the horns and close down their MW transmitters!!! =====================================
VOICE OF RUSSIA MW SERVICE CLOSES IT'S DOORS AT YEAR END: Seemingly the large 500 / 800kW transmitter of the Voice of Russia in Germany on 1323 is to close by year end. (Various lists have differing powers) This is more good news for MW dxers. There is also talk of the txer on 630, 1431 and 1494 closing as well. It was reported that 693 will continue. DXers are witnessing a welcome clearance of the high powered mw stations, although there certainly isn't a mad rush to close them. Wouldn't we welcome the closure of 1577, 675, 1008, 1422, 1215, 1089, etc etc.
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