KEN'S DX DIARY AND LOGS - TUESDAY 26th JUNE 2012

ALIVE AND WELL:

No worries, I am still alive and kicking here. There has been little to report on really in the last little while. Rather than having nothing to say, I chose to say nothing!! I have been working on the archive section of this site, scanning all the old Anoraks UK weekly reports, from the 1980's. This has been very successful, and has attracted a large amount of traffic so far.

I am also busy with a local history archive, so to say I have been idle would certainly be untrue.

 

SPORADIC E SEASON??? WHERE??

Only a few short openings have been noted here so far this season. Highlights have been a very brief fade in of Jordan on E3 tv, an English station called Bay FM broadcasting to Spain, heard on a couple of channels, 89.2 and 98.5, The audio clips are not sorted out as yet. This season, I couldn't say we have had any particularly exciting long strong all day openings any time I have been at the receivers. Another thing of course is the fact that most of the European countries have now switched off their band 1 television transmitters, and apart from the odd R1/ R2 signal, there has been very little seen.

 

DIAGONALE 1630 HEARD REGULARLY:

Station from Argentina, Diagonale 1630 is one of the few regulars here this summer. Rebelde 1620, and unid SS on 1640 have been heard a few times as well, and the PR station on 1660. I have been using the westerly beverage for the Latin's, but conditions have not been exactly wonderful here. With the North American antenna, VOCM 590 was quite respectable at 0300 the other night, although this can hardly be classed as a great dx catch..lol

Diagonale 1630 15th June 2012 at 0305

 

MW DXING ON THE DECLINE HERE, BUT CERTAINLY NOT A DEAD LOSS:

I have not done too much SW dxing in the last few years. Since the "invention" of the Perseus in fact, my mind has been carried away with the MW band. During the last year however, the MW band seems to have taken a dive as far as Transatlantic dxing goes. Even in the winter months here, I had the opportunity to use the field across from me as an antenna farm, but the beverage erected at great effort I hasten to add, proved to be a noisy affair. Local QRN has certainly risen here in the last couple of years. There are so many of the wandering carriers all over the band (switch more power supplies??) that some frequencies are pretty hopeless.

It is NOT, I repeat NOT a dead loss or anything. It is just very much noisier than it used to be. I have been to locations in the town, where listening to strong local stations on MW indoors is a task!! Now that location, on the west coast of Scotland, would for me, be a dead loss. At the weekend there, I gave the SW a whirl.

 

NORTH AMERICAN SW PIRATES AND SSTV LOGGED:

On Saturday night, I decided to record 6.8 - 7.0 in the hunt for some of the North American pirates that use those frequencies. As I was going out for the night, which I often do, the Perseus was set to record from 0000 - 0400 GMT. Antenna used was a half wave dipole for top band, which is pretty high and in the clear. The results?? I have logged two stations so far in the files. The stations heard all broadcast in SSB, although from time to time an AM station is heard.

One of the most powerful signals in the mid 1990's was Radio Metallica Worldwide, which used to come on the air on AM. I will have some recordings made at the time, but finding them could be a problem.

Anyway, a few logs from the last two Saturdays.

 

WOLVERINE RADIO:

Wolverine Radio, heard many times before although unfortunately they never do any shows. This station has only ever been heard here with non stop music, and a rather poor sounding "Microsoft Sam" computer generated voice id. They were often heard around 6850 a few years back, but on Saturday night they were strong on 6950USB. They were first noted around 0220ish with Sinatra style music, TANGERINE!! They were heard past 0333, with close down around 0338. Signal was kinda fading by that time here, maybe because we were well into daylight by that time.

A little treat was in store from Wolverine Radio. I discovered from reading a web board, (THE FREE RADIO CAFE) that there were a couple of Slow Scan TV images transmitted. It has also been a few years since I tried any SSTV, but after searching the web again, I found the software I had used in the past, MMSSTV113A.exe. (search google for this)

At 0243 and 0333 the following two images were transmitted.

The above image shows Tangerines, and the words WOLVERINE RADIO at the bottom, and the image to the right has a top hat and wand in front of a red curtain, with the same caption at the foot. That was about the best I could achieve here, but there were some photos up on line from North American dxers, which were a bit clearer.

I am unsure if Wolverine Radio has an email address.

Wolverine Radio clips with two ids and sample of music approx 0230 6950USB 24th June 2012

Wolverine Radio 23 minute clip, as a demonstration of the loud and clear signal the station throws into Scotland, 0230 6950USB 24th June 2012

 

THE BALTIC SEA RADIO - UPDATE:

The station heard on 6920 LSB was identified as The Baltic Sea Radio, initally sounding like THE VOICE OF FREE RADIO / THE BOSS OF FREE RADIO?? It was heard on 6920 LSB, as well as around 0130 on 6900 also LSB. The address was given as balticseapirates <a t> gmail <dot> com

A station was heard on 6920 LSB, although the SSB was a little difficult due to having a strong CW station right in the middle of the SSB signal. I was not able to make out the email address for this one. There seemed to be some Chinese talk or something similar, but music played included Boney M Rivers of Babylon, Rasputin, Daddy Cool, Ma Baker, and Baccara Yes Sir I can Boogie.

So this in fact turned out not to be a North American pirate, as first thought.

The Baltic Sea Radio approx 0120 6920LSB 24th June 2012

 

HARD TACK RADIO:

This station was heard on Saturday night / Sunday morning 17th June 2012 GMT at 0050 - approx 0100 on 6925USB. There was an email address.. hardtackradio <a t> gmail <d o t> com

I guess it was this log that inspired me to change the antenna system a little and cable the Perseus into the top band dipole for recording on a Saturday night, if I am out.

I am really not certain why I have not been taking advantage of the summer time reception conditions for the North American pirates before this.

Hard Tack Radio 17th June 2012 0100

 

SPIRIT RADIO 549:

The long awaited MW transmissions of Spirit Radio from Dublin have come on line as of last week. The signal on 549 from the former UCB site near Emmyvale, in Co Monaghan is absolutely powerhouse signals here, even on a clock radio, or any other crap portable. What a shame that 550 will be gone as a dx channel again. The signal is too strong to let anything past it I believe. Audio from this new service seems somehow overly processed or something. Maybe it is processed twice. Once for their web stream, which we assume the MW site is fed by, and again at the MW site??

As the name suggests, it is religious based, and not exactly the kind of station that could be described as listenable.

KEN'S DX DIARY AND LOGS - FRIDAY 1st JUNE 2012

PHONES AND BROADBAND DOWN:

I was wondering why I couldn't connect to the web today. Rebooted a few times and then thought, let's lift the phone. Dead. So what was wrong. Well a digger was working on near the phone pole where the thick underground wire goes. They had already pulled the cable out the ground by the time I went around to see. I was hoping that they had sliced a wire or something that I could have joined up myself. But no. The cable looked fine, and must be broken up in the junction box on the pole or inside the thick cable. Job for the phone company sadly.

 

RADIO TT 365:

MANX Radio is again on the air for the TT week. Motorbike racing. AM 1368 is carrying the racing, as well as web streams. There are always little quirky amusing inclusions in the programmes, eg someone has stolen a dozen pints of milk. Police are taking it as a serious inconvenience. The cream of the police force seemingly were investigating!!! LOL.. I have never went to the island for TT week. I believe it would be a great week, especially if the weather was reliable.

 

SPIRIT RADIO ON 549 - ANOTHER QRM SOURCE:

Nothing more heard from Spirit tests on 549. Maybe they have given up!! A report one of the boards suggested there was a large carrier on 567 at one point, but I am not sure how reliable that was. Most folks on the board in question are anon. So who knows.. Below is a sample of their very compressed sounding audio. Compressed in a bad way I must say. The old optimod in Nova days had a lot to answer for. What superb audio quality Nova had with 50kW on 738..Ah yes, those were the days.

120526_0400_549_spirit_radio_crap_audio.mp3

 

WEATHER REPORT:

At the end of May, we had a mini heatwave, starting a week past on Tuesday, and last weekend was spent basking in the sun, barbeque, beers etc. But since Wednesday I think it was, the weather has broke again, and we have had some rain and overcast days. Let's hope it brightens up for the holiday weekend. All too often in the west, this may well be the end of our summer!!!!