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LOGS / NEWS - JULY 2012 A site mainly dedicated to Mediumwave Dxing |
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I recorded 6.9mhz again on Saturday night in the hunt for North American pirates. Again Wolverine Radio was powering out over any others heard recently. What a great signal on USB on 6950, closing with an SSTV transmission around 0300. I have included an audio clip, as well as the SSTV part, which should be playable using MMSSTV113A.exe (search google)
CAPTAIN MORGAN SHORT WAVE was also heard on 6925 AM around 0200
I recorded 0400 last night, and was pleasantly surprised to hear some MW dx from across the pond again. The last night I recorded during the week, showed virtually nothing. Yes, I have only heard common East Coasters to use a well worn phrase, but there was an abundance of signals!! And can you call WOOD, Grand Rapids a common East Coaster. Well it is certainly a common every day station, yes. East Coast?? Well it was only a catch phrase, used in the dx community for years to describe summer band conditions. So what was heard?? Below are some that were logged. There were others in the mud. As you can hear on the montage, signals at this time of year are particularly poor.
950 CKNB BAND 1 AND 2: I seemingly missed a band 2 opening to the east the other day, Thursday I believe. I had the FM tuner switched on, but volume off. I came into the shack at one point and saw there had been RDS but signals were gone by the time I noticed. I had been in and out the shack quite a bit. I do like the Eastern openings, probably because they are rarer than Southern openings to Spain and Portugal. This year for me has been a complete wash out as far as sporadic E goes. But at least I did manage to log a few stations. I speak as though it is the end of the season. Well it may be.. But then again, it may well have more to offer. Who knows.
Since the bands have been pretty poor here, both MW and VHF sporadic e, I have been belting on with archive work. A recent aquisition here has been an old 1920's book I was bidding for on ebay earlier in the year, but was hopelessly outbid. The ebay auction made almost forty quid!! I found the same book for a tenner on Amazon, with another one available also at 40 odd quid!! So I am pretty pleased with the buy. Now I have got around to scanning and creating a pdf file with the said book. Some of the text is quite advanced to be called a boy's annual!! There are a couple of interesting listings within, of both European stations, as well as British stations on MW. (Pages 36 and 48) There are also some good plates of antennas of 2LO, as well as others. It historical wireless is an interest to you, then this is surely worth a read.
WEATHER REPORT FROM SW SCOTLAND: The weather conditions here in Scotland this summer must be getting on for one of the wettest. Or maybe it only seems like this?? I had to do a google search today to find out what the strange glowing light in the sky actually was. Yes, we should be used to wet weather coming from the SW of Scotland, but it doesn't help when every other day seems to be like autumn. And time is slipping past. Soon it will be Autumn and another summer will be behind us, with no real recollection of days in the sun, with a cool beer sitting by the river, or hillwalking, or whatever. No wonder some of us become ex pats!! I have not even had the big short troosers on so far this summer, bar maybe a couple of days in March and possibly a day in June!! And June, I am uncertain of.
PERSEUS SERVER UPDATE - JULY 2012 I will have my Perseus server on line more regularly from this summer, as I have the spare box mounted next to the web PC. It will not be on line 24/7, but at times that suit me!! Remember a few things though.... 1: Normally it will be connected to a 500m MW beverage and preamp, so don't expect great results on SW. If I see SW frequencies being used, I may change to a top band dipole or something, but only if I am around to see what is being listened to. 2: The beverage / preamp combination works better here with 10db att on. I tend to keep it on all the time. It is just enough to stop slight overload on some frequencies. 3: Please use only 125khz sampling. The web pc is only a single core PC. I may be using the web as the server is being used, and draining resources, and hence, possible stuttering may occur. 4: I am not interested in allowing access to anyone that has their own Perseus server passworded. If I am around and see any of them using it, I will cut them off. There was one on the Isle of Wight in July 2012 that was passworded for example. 5: Anon users may also find themselves being cut off. If I take the time to make my receiver live, the least that users can do surely is give their name and QTH, for no other reason that curiosity. As a final observation, I had someone sitting on a completely empty 49mb channel for an hour or so recently. What were they up to?? What was the point?? Had they collapsed and died in front of the PC, while tuned to my server?? This seemed odd to me. I was sitting with another receiver waiting for something to start testing, but no, nothing.. It is such a pity there is no chat box incorporated, like that in dx tuners is it, the receiver sharing network??
Davie H up the street today received a couple of Canadian TV channels on band 1 with sound and video, and sound on 87.7 from ch A6?? The best I could do here was hear some snatches of kids programming on 59.740mHz. I also received a reasonable CBC id. Check out Davie's videos. http://band1tvdx.blogspot.com/
At this stage I am usure why I couldn't pull in any video today. Update: The video Davie had was not perhaps what I would call armchair quality. I too had some shadowy but non usable video signal!!! Davie's was somewhat stronger than mine all the same.
For a time Belarus on R1, as well as 1+1 Ukraine were coming through on TV, while of R2, RTL (Hungary) and Lithuania TV were both fighting it out. OIRT band was open to Eastern Europe for a little while. During this opening, I had a Radio Delta, which seems to be Italian. Of course many Italian band 1 transmitters are off air nowadays, so if there is a lift to Italy, who would know, unless it reaches band 2. (Well there are hams on 50mHz of course)
I still find it quite amazing that we are being witness to the demise of international broadcasting as we know it. Radio Netherlands made it's final broadcast on 29th June from 19-21UTC on 6065kHz, the old Radio Sweden channel. I took the liberty of recording a 100khz Perseus file for that duration as a keepsake. Both Radio Netherlands / Nederlands and Radio Sweden were firm favourites with SW listeners and dxers. Both stations carried excellent dx programmes in their day. But just what is left on SW?? Or who has thrown in the towel?? Well lets start with Radio Norway, Radio Sweden and Radio Finland, and Radio Denmark. How many more of the well known English language stations are no more?? Bulgaria, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, France etc. I wonder if anyone has produced an accurate listing??
AMERICAN PIRATES AGAIN: Captain Morgan SW was heard here on Friday night / UTC Saturday around 0200-0241 on 6925 AM. They announced a gmail.com address of captainmorganshortwave. Again, as with Wolverine Radio the other day, this transmission seemed only to be music and canned voice ids. No programmes!! I seem to remember the North American stations I used to hear in the 1990's always seemed to have programmes and comedy or music with announcements and presentation??? However on Saturday night, absolutely nothing was noted!! Conditions were really poor!!! Remember that July 4th is coming up and is usually a hive of activity, as is Halloween. Sunday night was a dead loss also.
SPORADIC E - MASSIVE STRONG OPENING TO SPAIN AND PORTUGAL: After my complaints the other day that we haven't had much sporadic e this season yet again, on Thursday 28th June the band was wide open to Spain, right up to 108 for a few hours. I was fortunate enough to be able to be by the receiver for the opening. Loads of stations were heard, and loads of RDS was noted as well. A few audio clips are included below.
Radio Nord Revival has been heard on SW 5895kHz. It has an odd characteristic, in the fact that is broadcasts in LSB + carrier mode. There is no USB content.
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