February 2008 ABDX Journal
Vol 3. Issue 2
Editors Corner:
ABDX membership has grown by 5. ABDX Nation is now 184 members. Newbies, let us know what you are hearing and send in your logs. Your logs are what make ABDX a healthy and active list. We thank all of you who have contributed your logs to this months Journal. There were some very nice catches this month.
As always, ABDX is looking for those
who would like to edit a section or send in a story for publication in the
Journal. If you are interested, email dc2daylight at gmail dot com. I can only
offer those who contribute by editing, free membership and accolades. Of course
membership is free for all but the accolades are what makes the pay worth it
all. Join Jay Heyl, Martin Foltz and me in producing the Journal!
February’s CME was graveyard radio
logs. People are DXing with little pocket radios and some of the catches are
exceptional. February’s CME is for GY DX on 1230, 1240, 1350, 1400, 1450 or
1490.
This month, the big kahuna is Nothing
But Net logs from all over the world. The Pacific Islands are well supported in
this issue. ABDX sure loves NBN logs from everywhere. Let us know what you
listen to on the net.
Check out what Paul LaFrienere is using
for a radio and antenna. This set up got some excellent reception on MW. I was
amazed.
We enjoy seeing our members who have made it to the “Hall of
Fame” for those of us with faces for radio! If you are a member and want to be
in the Rogues Gallery, send your pix to webmaster@americanbroadcastdx.com.
Only submissions from ABDX members will be accepted unless the editor decides the information is so important that it should be added. This will probably be very rare, Should you receive this and you are not a member, go to this URL and tell us a little about yourself and we will consider you for membership.
This is the site to join ABDX.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ABDX/
To join ABDX by mail here’s where to send the mail:
ABDX-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
The ABDX website URL is:
www.americanbroadcastdx.com
or
www.abdx.org
The ABDX CME Journal is available to all at no cost. Please pass it around to your DXing friends and also post it on other lists as well. We want as many as possible to see the Journal so we can grow the DX hobby. Please do your part to keep our hobby viable.
You can get your copy of the journal at www.abdx.org
The February CME Announcement
You wanted GY month so at ABDX, we aim to please.
GY DXers, its your
month. I don't expect much in the way of loggings
but I am hoping all of you prove me exactly wrong. If you do it will make me
happy.
I hope to see you all DXing and sending in logs for
GY month and
prove me wrong.
Its time for the March CME and you can send reports
on anything on
any band and it will be published.
That said, since baseball season is starting, any
baseball on any
band, LF/AM/FM/TV/HF and satellite.
For HF since BBC cut off shortwave to Europe, any
BBC on HF. DX
programs such as World of Radio, DXing With Cumbre
and the like.
March is when the beginning of trop ducting fires
up and any logs via
Tr above 30 MHz are wanted.
And for those who wanted frequency spreads on MW
we'll do 1400-1710.
Maybe a little bit for everyone this month.
Kevin Redding, Phil Rafuse, Powell Way, Mike Richard, Jay Heyl and Martin Foltz the ABDX crew.
The Broadcast Band
Peter Jernakoff –Wilmington,
DE
SDR-IQ and antenna or as listed
Two more new
ones this time using the somewhat under utilized Drake R8B.
16-Feb-08 //
1700 Local // 550 khz. // WSVA // 5 kw day // Harrisonburg, VA
// Male with
ID: "This is News Radio 550, WSVA, Harrisonburg, a
Verstandig(?)
broadcasting station. // New. A 195 mile catch.
MP3 clip can be
found here:
17-Feb-08 //
0001 Local // 560 khz. // WQAM // 1 kw night // Miami, FL //
Male with ID:
"You're listening to Sports Radio 560, WQAM, Miami-Fort
Lauderdale."
Into ESPN Radio Sports Center. // New. A 1002 mile catch with
no sign of
semi-local WFIL.
MP3 clip can be
found here:
http://www.21centimeter.com/21centimeter/Recordings/560-khz_0001-Local_2-17-08_WQAM_Miami_FL.mp3
One from an
early February '08 SDR-IQ capture. Not far, but new.
02-Feb-08 //
1600 local // 1410 khz. // WLSH // 5 kw // Lansford, PA //
Weather report,
promo for the Dutch Trader Show, then into "Dick Clark's
Rock, Roll And
Remember on AM 1410, WLSH, Lansford." // New. A semi-close
77 mile catch.
MP3 clip
available here:
John Cereghin – Smyrna, DE
SRF-59
2/11
I
have a rather strong Spanish station with Latin-style ballads under WWVA under
1170. It faded out at TOH at 1900 Eastern (of course!) but is back now, so
no TOH ID. I think Venezuela has been here in the past, so maybe a good
Latin night?
2/13
WYAL, Scotland Neck NC, 1280, at 1745 Eastern, with
urban gospel, local church announcements from eastern North Carolina, ads with
252 area codes, sign-off at 1800 Eastern. A re-log.
WJST,
New Castle PA, 1280, 1735 Eastern, presumed, heard a "Just Oldies
1280" slogan, which they use, but no legal ID, before they faded into the
mush. Would be new station #659 if it were them and my 89th Pennsylvania
station.
2/20
Commuting
DX this morning in the car about 0830 Eastern pulled in an unidentified station
on 980, mixing with WTEM in Washington DC with bluegrass music, rather strong at
times, but with no announcements or IDs (I had to get out of the car once or
twice and the station did go into a few deep fades), logged in the Dover,
Delaware area. Possibilities? I don't have my materials with me at work
but Google isn't much help. It lists WHAW-980 in Weston WV as a
possibility, as running some bluegrass but their primary format seems to be
mainly classic rock and oldies. May have to try again tonight and
tomorrow.
2/22
New
log last night- WWOW, 1360 in Conneaut, Ohio at 2300 Eastern on Feb. 22, with
EWTN Catholic programming and "Walking on the Water" slogan along with
their ID. Best signal on frequency tonight. My 20th Ohio station.
2/25
New
log this morning on the commute to work- WILK, 980, Wilkes-Barre PA, at 0800
Eastern, with local news and sports, many IDs just as "...on WILK" and
local ads. My 90th Pennsylvania station. Dominated semi-local WTEM
in Washington this morning and no trace of my mystery bluegrass station that
I've been tracking for the last week
John Callarman – Krum, TX
Receiver, Antenna
2/2
Haven't heard call letters yet, but I'm getting a
strong signal on 1500 from another San Antonio area station that appears to be
on with it's daytime CP. It plays lively music, talks of Christiana and
identifies frequenty as "Radio Fabulosa, La Emisora de Los Grandes Eventos."
Spots, in Spanish, for musical groups performing in San Antonio, and did hear
Boerne, Texas in what appeared to be station ID at 9:27 P.M. CST. Did not hear
call letters, though, so I'm not sure if it is still KBRN. KBRN Boerne has been
shown as silent, but it's daytime CP is for 1900 watts with a
north-northwest/south-southeast kidney bean signal. If it uses this signal after
sunset, it's going to make XEDF much more difficult here.
2/6
On 1610 noted with continuous tape ... call
W[N]G97[5] (or WMG97[5 or 9 or maybe 1], Vehicle No. 1 ... mentions that
station is authorized for, among other things, Travelers Information
Service, then gives phone number to call to report any interference the
station may be causing. The phone number (940) 898-5555 connects to FEMA,
presumably at its Denton TX facility, but the gentlemen (two) who
handled the call said they were not allowed to give out any information, even to
clarify the call letters I could hear on their test tape if I were a little
closer.
I'm
not much interested in the TIS signals, but it'll disappoint me if FEMA QRMs
XEUACH at night!!!
HQ-180A
Loggings from yesterday
on the HQ-180A. Mostly locals.
1230 KYPA Los Angeles CA 2/9 1100
PST Korean language, tone at ToH, "KYPA Los Angeles AM 12-30" ID by
man in EE, into mx pgm.
1240 KEZY San Bernardino CA 2/9
1102 PST Spanish language, Radio Nueva Vida slogan, music program.
1240 KSON San Diego CA 2/9 1110
PST Religious pgm, head an station ad to air programs on the station, 12-40 AM
and The Soul of San Diego slogans heard.
1490
KRKC King City CA 2/9 1506 PST country music, nice ID and into more songs.
2/2
Am hearing WQVA
1170 in Carleton, MI under bleed over from local pest WCHB-
1200, with WWVA
nulled. Hearing upbeat SS mx, and just heard
something
between records with a man and woman and a sort of "Swoosh"
sound effect, for lack of a better term.
Nothing new.
All relogs.
1230
WCLO WI
JANESVILLE-BELOIT. 1051 CST.
1 FEB 08. I.D. "Newsradio
1230--WCLO Janesville-Beloit."
1230
WKLK MN
CLOQUET. 1415 CST.
"The Northland's greatest music is on WKLK."
1240
WMFG MN
HIBBING. 1410 CST.
1-FEB 08. "Hibbing's 1240--WMFG.
America's best music."
1240
KICD IA
SPENCER. 0922 CST.
3 FEB 08. "Breaking news from CBS on KICD."
1240
KCCR SD
PIERRE. 0857 CST.
4 FEB 08. Local ads. TOH
I.D. CBS News.
1340
WBBL MI
GRAND RAPIDS. 1123 CST. 1
FEB 08. ESPN promo "here on
1340--The Ball."
1340
WJOL IL
JOLIET. 1500 CST.
1 FEB 08. I.D. '1340 WJOL
Joliet." ABC News.
1340
KRBT MN
EVELETH. 0730 CST.
2 FEB 08. Local ads. Into
local talk program.
1340
KROC MN
ROCHESTER. 0720 CST.
4 FEB 08. Local ads & plethora of KROC I.D.s.
1340
KWLM MN
WILLMAR. 0739 CST 4 FEB 08.
Local ads & one KWLM I.D.
1340
WLDY WI
LADYSMITH. 0742 CST. 4 FEb
08 Local news. Local ads. No I.D.
but many mentions of Ladysmith so I
figured it wasn't Louisville or Miami.
1340
KDLM MN
DETROIT LAKES. 1138 CST. 4 FEB 08. Ad
for Republican caucus. Farm
markets. Weather.
1340
KVBR MN
BRAINERD. 1200 CST.
4 FEB 08. Local ads & "1340--KVBR. Brainerd's business station."
1400
WATW WI
ASHLAND. 1030 CST.
1 FEB 08 NOS. "Memories
1400" slogans.
1450
WHRY WI
HURLEY. 1040 CST.
1 FEB 08 OLDIES. "1450--The
Oldies Station."
1450
KBUN MN
BEMIDJI. 0725 CST.
2 FEB 08. Sports. Local ads.
1450
WELY MN
ELY. 0937 CST.
2 FEB 08. Local ads. "ESPN
1450" slogans.
1450
KATE MN
ALBERT LEA. 0750 CST.
3 FEB 08. "KATE weather forecast."
1490
KQDS MN
DULUTH. 1430 CST.
1 FEB 08. "The True Oldies Channel." AM 1490 slogans. Weather for the Twin Ports."
1320
WISW SC
Columbia. 1535 CST.
6 Feb 08. Suddenly appeared with a call letter I.D. "WISW."
Then into talk program. Disappeared
as quickly as
it
showed up. Big mess on 1320 at this time.
NEW.
1240
WHFA WI
Poynette. 1638 CST.
5 Feb 08. They were in and out most of the day with Relevant Radio.
This one is a pest on overnight recordings.
1240
CJCS ON
Stratford. 1658 CST. 5 Feb
08. Good with local ads and jingle I.D. This
one has appeared a number of times this winter.
1240
WJON MN
St. Cloud. 0742 CST. 6 Feb
08. local ads and I.D. SRS pest.
1340
WLVL NY
Lockport. 1708 CST. 5 Feb 08. Ads for firms in Niagara county.
Promo for something on "WLVL." NEW
1400
WCCY MI
Houghton. 0834 CST. 7 Feb
08. Local ads. I.D. Into NOS music.
1450
WATZ MI
Alpena. 0740 CST. 7 Feb 08.
Local ads. Promo for watz.com
1450
KFIZ WI
Fond du Lac. 0810 CST. 7 Feb
08. Local weather and sports. Numerous
I.D.s Promo for kfiz.com
1340
KTOQ SD
Rapid City 0900 CST.
8 Feb 08. Laura Ingraham. Then
TOH I.D. "AM 1340 KTOQ Rapid
City. NEW. Been looking for this one for a
long time.
Trying to finish South Dakota.
1230
WSOO MI
Sault Ste. Marie. 0748 CST.
8 Feb 08. Weather with
temps in both C
& F. "There's the weather
from WSOO."
1230
KDIX ND
Dickinson. 0836 CST.
8 Feb 08. Local news & ads.
1230
WTKG MI
Grand Rapids. 1747 CST.
9 Feb 08. Local ads.
I.D.s Talk program. This one
is a terrible pest--as are most of the Grand Rapids, Mi stations.
1230
WJOB IN
Hammond. 0850 CST.
11 Feb 08. Local talk and Chicago traffic.
1230
WCLO WI
Janesville. 0830 CST.
17 Feb 08. BOH I.D.
"WCLO Janesville."
1230
WXCO WI
Wausau. 0800 CST.
19 Feb 08. ESPN. Local ads.
TOH I.D.
1230
KGHS MN
International Falls. 0845
CST. 19 Feb 08. Oldies.
"KGHS--the station playing the greatest hits."
1240
KDLR ND
Devils Lake. 0830 CST.
8 Feb 08 Local & North
Dakota news.
1340
KPOK ND
Bowman. 0850 CST.
8 Feb 08. C&W. "Good
Time Radio--KPOK." Calendar of events.
1340
KTOQ SD
Rapid City. 0900 CST.
8 Feb 08. Laura Ingraham. TOH
I.D. "AM--KTOQ Rapid
City." NEW
1400
WKNW MI
Sault Ste. Marie. 1158 CST.
9 Feb 08. Sporting News Radio. Local
ads TOH I.D.
1400
UNID 1725 CST.
11 Feb 08. Ad for
"Stanley Tools available at home centers across Canada."
Has the 50 watt relayer at Sioux Lookout gone to FM?
The other possibilities are too fantastic to mention.
1400
KQDJ ND
Jamestown. 0720 CST.
21 Feb 08. Local sports & ads.
1450
WELY MN
Ely. 0741 CST.
ESPN. They have gone over to
the Dark Side. At least part of the
time. Now owned by the Bois Forte
Tribal Council. Up until 2 years
ago this one was owned by Boundary Waters Radio.Called themselves "End of
the Road Radio" and were 100% local programming.
1490
WODJ MI
Whitehall. 1540 CST. 12 Feb
08. "You're listening to 1490
WODJ AM--Whitehall-Muskegon."
Zenith
Transoceanic 3000-1 with dial face missing.
Antenna: wire hooked to finger stop on rotary phone.
A couple of graveyarders to start off the month
last night and still using the Sony SRF-M37V then
Feb 2/08 3:21 UTC 1450 khz CFAB - Windsor,
Nova Scotia w/ weather forecast; CFAB ID and a local ad fair
Feb 2/08 3:38 UTC 1490 khz WBAE - Portland,
Maine w/ Song "Longer " by Dan Fogelberg and ID "1400 & 1490,
The Bay, The songs you Remember" fair
2/2
If one of your
dogs awakens you at 6:25 am Central because it has to go outside and pee, at
least see what you can hear on the radio. . . .
530 UNID Fading
up around 6:57 am----almost sunrise here----with male voice counting from one to
fifteen followed by a 1000 Hz tone lasting about 10 seconds, then repeating.
Lost shortly after 7:00 am, and not audible here in daytime even on my 900 foot
NQAB (not quite a beverage) longwire. Suspect a Texas DoT road construction
station, although given Clear Channel's
budget cuts
this could be a new format they're trying out. . . .
1630 KRND,
Cheyenne, WY suspect this was the one under KKGM with ranchera music in Spanish
around 6:50 am; brief (seemingly) recorded
announcements by man in Spanish but no definite ID heard. I'm counting in
because L like to "list-log."
Heard at 10:00
a.m. AST Sunday February 3, 2008 on a Collins/Teledyne
R-390A fed by a
LF Engineering M-601C MW active 2 foot antenna linked
by buried
Bury-flex coax 22 feet from the house:
1230 CFGN
Port-aux Basques NL with the usual C&W/talk CFCB/VOCM
network feed -
this is a pretty common and easy catch for me as its
250 watts but
only 200 miles away, mostly over salt water.
1240 WSYY
Millinocket ME with ESPN sports and local weather 1 KW,
farther than
200 miles and mostly over land.
1340 WNZS
Veazie ME with talk - NEW!
1400 CBG Gander
NL with usual CBC Radio One network programing - a
wickedly
powerful graveyarder with 4KW omni! 400 plus miles, some
over water,
some over NL's soil with very poor ground conductivity.
1450 CFAB
Windsor with C&W - its only about 80 miles away and thus
the signal is
pretty good.
1490 WTVL
Waterville ME with an oldies/NOS format - playing America's
Daisy Jane
followed by announcer refering to Waterville and Cool AM -
NEW!
Heard on a
Stromberg-Carlson for Collins R-392 fed by a LF Engineering
M-601C antenna
February 7, 2008 at 10:08 p.m. AST:
1250 WARE in
Ware MA Station ID NEW
The ID just
popped out of the soup, and then back into the soup that is
1250 here.
1215 Virgin
Radio in England coming in nicer tonight than it has for a
while.
Time to check for more TAs.
2/7
This time, I'm
using the Collins/Teledyne R-390A with the LF Eng M-
601C, with the
R-390A on a hair splitting 4 KC bandwidth:
1134 Croatia -
another old friend, but they haven't been coming in like
this for a
while
1089 Talksport
England - coming in quite nicely once I set the mighty R-
390A to ultra
hair splitting 2 KC bandwidth.
765 Switzerland
- beautiful clear signal when set to 4 KC bandwidth
864 France -
weak signal playing French language pop
585 Spain -
weak signal with Spanish language pop
Heard
yesterday, February 10, 2008 at 1:00 p.m. AST on a Drake R8
with a LF
Engineering M-601C antenna:
790 CFNW
Port-aux-choix NL relaying CFCB Corner Brook NL.
CFNW is
1000 watts and
according to Where's That Station, is 408 radio [as
the crow flies]
miles [657 KM] from Stratford PEI.
870 CFSX
Stephenville NL relaying CFCB. 500
watts and 270 miles.
570 CFCB Corner
Brook NL. 1000 watts and 305 miles.
1230 CFGN
Port-aux-Basques NL relaying CFCB. 250
watts and 211 miles.
1400 CBG Gander
NL with CBC Radio One programming. 4000
watts and
437 miles.
590 CJCW Sussex
NB. 1000 watts [day, 250 watts night] and 123 miles.
Getting these
stations here by day during spring, summer and fall when ground conductivity is
better is not unusual with the right receiver and antenna, specially if it has
been raining recently.
Getting them
this clearly, especially in winter when the cold and frost in the ground reduces
ground conductivity, is very rare.
I then
proceeded to duplicate the above with the R-390A, R-392 and the RX-321.
Same antenna, similar results.
2/2
While talking to Pedantariffic Powell Way on the
phone around 10:15pm, I nabbed the station.
They were doing a few commercials and the last spot
before going back into the music was talking about some pastor from some Los
Angeles church, "Sunday's at 10am on 1600 WXVI"
2/16
Heard with a 3 out of 5 on the signal meter
standing in the WABV parking lot......... heard coming out of a song with a
"880 KGHT" liner then the satelitte DJ which is presumably a Salme
"Solid Gospel" product.
2/22 Around 4:00 to 430pm this afternoon (Friday) I
was doing a bit of scanning the radio dial in a Buick Sedan like vehicle while
waiting for my neighbor to come out of the grocery store..
With WABV 1590 temporarily silent, I heard Spanish
on 1590Khz and presume it to be WYSR High Point, NC
On 1350Khz, I heard a liner, "Your Greatest
Hits and Good Time Oldies Station, Z1350" which is WZGM Black
Mountain/Asheville, North Carolina. After the liner, they went back into a song.
WZGm was fighting it out with DWLMA
also
on 1350Khz. DWLMA
is only 20 miles to my east and they were getting torn up!
Also hear with a decent & steady but with some
static with 840 WCEO in Columbia, SC that's 50KW/3 tower Daytimer.
Tuning over to 1700 AM, I heard a DJ talking about
a song then he said "This is WEUP" and into another song.
2/2
1170 Lexington SC
running well after dark with commercials. You don't have accidents when music
and commercials are loaded into the automation.
I heard it all the way to Newberry, but not really well when I got off
the interstate.
1250 WAPZ AL
Wetumpka - 02/22/08 1900 - Montgomery community program, TOH ID, and sign-off
message. Good signal with slight fades.
"...studios of WAPZ.". (IEN-GA)
1080 WTIC CT
Hartford - 02/23/08 1900 - Connecticut Lottery ad and TOH ID. Good signal only
to fade under WKJK in Louisville, KY. "WTIC,
WTIC-HD
Hartford". (IEN-GA)
870 WMTL KY
Leitchfield - 02/24/08 1841 - Country music countdown. Decent signal with fades.
"AM 870, The Moose". (IEN-GA)
Couldn't get to
sleep last night, so I decided to spin the dials - uh, make that punch the
buttons (sorry!) and see what I could hear on my Sangean DT-200V.
All times are CST.
1550
KBRNt TX
BOERNE - 02/03 0036 - Heard an evidently canned ID that said, "Radio
Fabulosa, La Emisora de los Grandes Eventos," then into
music. At 0040, heard male
announcer say "... tu Musica
Favorito ..." This must be the
new KBRN that John Callarman and others have reported hearing.
Never heard definite ID, just the slogan.
1690
KHA926 TX JOHNSON SPACE
CENTER - 02/03 0042 - The new
emergency
warning station at the NASA/Johnson Space Center went into full-time operation
on Feb. 1st using the standard looped transmission. The ID I heard at 0042 and
again at 0045 was "This is KHA926, NASA Information Radio,
broadcasting at
1690 kHz in the AM band."
710 UNID Heard at 0055 on 02/03, most likely Cuban.
Many mentions of Cuba" and "Cubano" with electronic sound
effects. Able to null quite well
under KGNC Amarillo, TX, and KEEL Shreveport, LA.
2/3
After my wife
and I got home from church, I decided to take advantage of some free time and
lay down. Seeing my Royal 705 on
the nightstand next to my bed, I picked it up and started tuning around.
I never cease
to be amazed by this little radio!
I was listening
to KNTH-1070, getting more and more bored with their Sunday afternoon vitamin
programming, so I tuned up just a little and - WOW! - I heard Russian language
programming from the VOA! This was
around 1357 CST.
I quickly
jumped up, tried to find my 2008 WRTH, thinking it might be my very first TP
reception (how foolish!!), but before I could locate it, I heard the station ID
- "KCHN 1050, Brookshire, TX."
I remembered
that KCHN has brokered programming, but it's usually either in Chinese or
Vietnamese. I never knew they had
Russian from the VOA!
So, if you're
REALLY up for a DX challenge, listen to 1050 kHz on Sunday afternoons from
1300-1500 CST for Russian language programming and VOA IDs.
KCHN uses 410 watts! Their
pattern can be seen here:
http://www.fcc.gov/ftp/Bureaus/MB/Databases/AM_DA_patterns/554142-73011.pdf
Tuning around
tonight on my Sony SRF-59, I heard a huge signal in Spanish on 720 kHz around
2132 CST. I oriented the radio for
best reception and was treated with an ID, "La Caliente ... 24 horas ...
telefono ... La Caliente."
At 2134 CST, I
heard an announcement for a school, "... Escuela Publica ...'
I immediately
dug out my Mexican DX references and saw that this was none other than XEDE 720,
"La Kaliente" (notice the 'K' rather than the usual 'C') from Saltillo,
Coahuila.
I Googled it
and found that XEDE is part of the Grupo Imagen network (http://www.imagen.com.mx) and that they have a
sister FM station in Saltillo, XHRP-FM on 94.7. The webpage listed Jaime
Villalobos as the contact person
for both
stations (jvd@imagen.com.mx). One interesting note about the "Cobertura" page -
it lists the call letters for the 720 kHz station as "XHEDE-FM"
instead of "XEDE." Most likely a typo.
Their signal
was only marginal on my Sangean DT-200V. Thanks to a tip from fellow DX'er John
Callarman, I was finally able to snag an ID from XEYJ 940 kHz tonight (06 Feb
2008).
One of the
amazing things about my reception is that I was using my Radiosophy HD-100 HD
Radio on the AM band with the "cheesy" AM antenna attached!
I used my Sony ICD-P320 digital audio recorder, placed in front of the
speakers, to record the audio.
Of course,
local KPRC-950 (the "Radio Mo-Jo") had their IBOC turned off
(thankfully). Had it been on, all I
would have heard from 930 kHz to 970 kHz would have been "hiss."
Here's what I
heard at 2305 CST just as XEYJ's signals started to fade beneath those of XEQ,
which normally dominates the channel here at night:
"A hora la
radio cambio ... Esta es Nueva Cuarenta ... Nueva Cuarenta ... veinte cuatro
horas ... Nueva Cuarenta ... X-E-Y-J A-M estero en espanol ... Coahuila ... A-M
estero ..."
Around 2247
CST, I had heard a block of commercials separated with "Nueva Cuarenta"
slogans. One was for a Casino
(could not make out the location), another was for a children's educational
program on a local television network, another was for a local business in
Coahuila, along with a telephone number (which was spoken too fast for me to
write down, even with tape playback).
Had I been
using a better antenna (like my Radio Shack loop antenna), the HD-100 may have
produced a much clearer, stronger signal!
So, thanks,
John, for the tip. I just wish I
could have copied more of the local data and more of the ID for your log notes!
2/7
Before I get to
the DX, I just want to say ...
GO ATLANTIS!
WOO-HOO! Excellent launch
this afternoon! Believe me, we here
at the NASA/Johnson Space Center were quite happy that we were able to
get STS-122/ISS
Flight 1E into orbit! It's
delivering the Columbus Module to the ISS for the European Space Agency.
Now to the DX
...
1270
KFLC TX
FORT WORTH - 02/07 1806 CST with "Doce Setente AM, La Voz del
Pueblo" ID's and local commercials. Still
on daytime pattern.
I remember this
station as KFJZ back in the late 1970's. They were a Top-40 station then.
2/11
Some more
Mexican DX, this time using my Radio Shack DX-399 (aka Sangean ATS-606AP) and my
Radio Shack Loop (15-1583):
970
XERFR MEXICO
Mexico City, DF - 10 Feb 2146 CST with "Radio Formula" slogan,
then ID at 2157 "XERFR AM 970 kilohertz con 50 mil watts de potencia ... La
Mejor Estacion de Radio Formula ... Cadena Nacional ..."
followed by a spot for 'Banco Mexico' and another spot
that used the words "Los Tres ..." and "Involvidable"
several times. At 2200 CST, another "Radio Formula ... Cadena Nacional
..." slogan, then into "Noticias"
This is a new
station for me!
2/20
thought last evening would be a good night to
listen to RHC, after hearing the announcement re: Fidel Castro during
privious overnight. I tuned in RHC on 9820 at 0100-UT, but the broadcast shut off
w/o warning at 0134 and never did return to the air to my knowlege. Did a cupola
rechecks.
been trying to get in some DXing at rare moments when i feel good enough to sit up to the radio. Kevin is probably well aware our area has been hit with a flu epidemic. shelves running out of cough medicine, grocery stores short staffed, etc. my whole group made a hasty retreat from out of town road trip after we all suddenly came down with it.
2/17
In my market (Laredo,TX), there are no stations
broadcasting in iboc mode. While in San Antonio today, I discovered how awful it
is as far as trying for stations 10 KHz away from the iboc broadcaster. WOW! I
could get WWL New Orleans 870 next to KONO 860 San Antonio with my selective
SONY ICF-S5W and SONY ICF-E10W's, but the iboc forced me to tune off of
frequency, and the interference was nullable on a small sweep of a 360 degree
circle. The Sangean PR-D5 and Sangean DT200VX were not listenable with this case
due to a mix of lesser selectivity and inability to tune off frequency on these
sets. What a dreadful circumstance! That was a quick education on IBOC's impact
for me!
Nice "R.
Poderosa" slogan noted 2248CST 02FEB08 here in Tulsa w/KSTP
phased. New one
for me. Thanks, John Callerman for the tip!
1340 KJMU Sand
Springs, OK noted back on the air 2240CST 13FEB08 with
"Hot
1340" slogan, playing R&B/Urban Contemporary mx
1570 KZLI
Catoosa-Tulsa,OK CP for move from Pryor to Catoosa apparently
on with dual
city ID "Catoosa-Tulsa", "Tulsa's new 15-70" slogan and
standards
vocals (Striesand, Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Perry Como,
Frank Sinatra etc.)
2/5
Interesting
coverage of the Memphis tornado on 600 WREC and
for Arkansas on
920 KARN Little Rock.
As the night
progresses KMOX, WHAS and others could get into
coverage as the
storm front moves east.
2/8
Radio Reloj on
790. logging #343. Have heard them
on 570, 1020 760, and 950
Also hearing a
het on 1521 tonight. Is anyone getting good TA on the east coast tonight?
2/10
Does anyone
know of a station probably in Mexico playing
classical on
1190?
There is one US
station listed but was after their sign off time and the loop was directed
toward Mexico.
New logging
from Mexico 1240 XERO Aquascalientes "Radio Recuredo"
2/17
Also heard 1070 WDIA Memphis. Not new, but not regular.
KHRO 1650 El
Paso Tx Radio Free, playing 50s and 60s oldies. Mixing
with Austin
NOAA WX Radio. 523 Miles Log #348.
Heard on an Eton E1 and RS Loop:
1340 KIKO Globe, AZ 2/3 1029 playing House of
the Rising Sun
1230 KOY Phoenix, AZ 1045 playing songs from
musicals
1240 KJAA Globe, AZ 1049 REL pgm
1400 KSUN Phoenix, AZ 1051 slogan Radio Fiesta
1450 KWFM Tucson, AZ 1101 Cool oldies, playing
Beatles
1450 UNID 1105 Mile High Country [wh0 could this
be?]
1490 KFFN Tucson, AZ 1109 talk about Pats cheating
1490 KYCA Prescott, AZ 1111 u/o KFFN w/ politics
2/4
580 WIBW Topeka, KS 2234 with ID political show
600 KSJB Jamestown, ND 2305 playing C&W
Heard on a
Sangean DT-200V in Chandler, AZ at my sons house.
2/10
1240 KALY
Albuquerque, NM 2/10 1652 with Backstreet Boys and girl
announcing
Radio Disney.
2/16
Heard in a gold
2004 Saturn Ion2:
1350 KCSJ
Pueblo, Co 2/16 1930 with ID during a break in a basketball
game.
Daytime GY frequency scan from Evanston, WY –
2/6/08 – 10:15am
Chrysler AM Stereo / FM Stereo car radio
1230 nothing but splatter
– if KEVA was off I’d probably be able to hear KJQS – Murray, UT
1240 KEVA WY
Evanston LOCAL
Loud and clean in AM Stereo with classic country music
1340 KACH ID
Preston
weak
“timeless classics” satellite format – heard Barry Manilow
1400 nothing – closest
1400 is in Provo, UT – KSRR but couldn’t hear them
1450 KVSI
ID Montpelier
good
standards – (great songs great memories) satellite format
1490 KOGD UT
Ogden
weak
standards – same format as KVSI mixing w/KUGR
1490 KUGR WY
Green River weak
full service – heard music mixing w/KOGD
I live in
Seattle, WA, but heard the following while visiting family in Roosevelt, NJ, 40°13′6″N
74°28′15″W, about halfway between NYC and Philly, on Jan.
25-26, 2008:
660, WFAN, NYC
710, WOR, NYC
750, WSB,
Atlanta
760, WJR,
Detroit
770, WABC, NYC
780, WBBM,
Chicago
800,
CKLW, Windsor
870, WWL, NO
880, WCBS, NYC
890, WLS,
Chicago
1000, WMVP,
Chicago
1010 WINS, NYC
1020, KDKA,
Pittsburgh
1030 WBZ,
Boston
1040, WHO, Des
Moines
1060, KYW,
Philadelphia
1080 WTIC,
Hartford
1120 KMOX, St.
Louis
IBOC noise was
not that apparent, except around WOR, (which effectively killed 700 and 720, and
even made listening to that station on an analog radio unpleasant), so maybe the
tide is turning.
Logged on a
Sony M37V unaided. Meant to bring along the '1103 to check on SW, but forgot it;
oh well, next time.
New catch last night. 780 khz Radio Coro from
Venezuela 1:02 am Eastern. Multiple IDs, and I heard its // on the net, delayed
about 30 seconds. Heard on the 800 with 40 foot longwire N/S.
Checked 1290
about 4:52 p.m.PST 2/7 in hopes of landing KOUU-Pocatello's
recent upgrade
of 50 kw. Haven't heard this call
altho 1 or more of previous calls have been logged back in antiquity somewhere.
Noting the usual SS on KAZA and KPAYs talk show I eventually heard
c&w music plowing thru. At 4:58pm with the c&w atop and ending a song,
instead of an ID I suddenly got a 'poof' and they were outta here.
Bloody engineer couldn't even wait for the TOH ID.
Grrrrr...
Tried 1280 for
KPTQ Spokane, which I've heard under KAQQ a few years
back but only
Salt Lake City there before 5 pm & Eugene & Yakima dominating for the
next 5-7 minutes after TOH.
SS noted
beneath the local on 1260 (still haven't logged new calls-can't
remember what
they are either). SS most likely
1550 had nice Adult Stds plowing thru local KYCY there.
Assume Vancouver WA. KWSU
atop 1250......Sports atop 1460 was no doubt KENO. Looked for KOHI up on 1600
but strong KUBA discouraged me.
Back to Master of Orion.
Yes, first new
catch (albeit a call change) since 9/10/07....
1290
ID KOUU
Pocatello with c&w music cutting thru KPAY/KAZA/KUMA
around 1640 PST
2/16/08. Often atop and at 1653
after finishing a number 'AM Stereo-1290-The Country Cow'. This ID will have to suffice for awhile as they keep going
'poof' at TOH before legal ID.
So mjr, they
certainly appear to still be using AM Stereo.
Tried for
KPTQ-Spokane-1280 at 1700 PST but only IDs heard were from
KRVM-Eugene
& KDOX-Henderson NV. About 3
others in there but didn't
make out any
IDs.
1380
CA KOSS
Lancaster...Tune in 1715 PST found KLPZ Parker AZ solid
atop with
modern c&w music. Several
stations beneath...1718 found Parker dropping power leaving KTKZ atop looping NE
& KOSS atop looping SE....KOSS had about a 5 minute ad break 1720-1725 with
many businesses in the Antelope Valley mentioned as well as a couple in
Lancaster. 1725-back to syndicated talk show-The Neil Bort Show-...Hoped to get
a call letter ID at 1730 break in talk show but (as usual) Lancaster cut power
before the ID. Several stations
left in the mud after KOSS cut power but background QRN too much to ID.
2/7
Re: I wonder
what kind of an arrangement (if any) KCHN has with the VOA to do
that. As far as
I know, the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which governs certain ways
the US handles
propaganda, is still in effect. One thing that act did was
prohibit the
distribution of VOA programs intended for foreign audiences
through US
domestic sources. So I doubt very much if the VOA is either buying
time on
domestic stations or giving permission to such stations to rebroadcast
VOA
programming. 73 Bill Dvorak Madison
WI (NRC-AM)
Is this legal?
(gh, DXLD)
Yes, per
Gartner v. USIA (1989). If the station in Texas can get hold of the
content on its
own accord, it can rebroadcast it. It would be illegal for VOA
to encourage or
facilitate this, though.
See http://www.annenberg.northwestern.edu/pubs/usfa/usfa4.htm
Our local
ethnic station, WUST, 1120, also transmits VOA Vietnamese, or at
least they did
a few weeks ago when I happened to hear it.
Immigrant
communities appreciate the chance to get news about their home
countries in
their mother tongues. Relays of VOA programming on U.S. stations
provide this
public service, at no additional cost to the taxpayers. 73 (Kim
(definitely not speaking for VOA or IBB
here!),
I meant to do a
low-noon MW bandscan close to Solstice, when residual skywave is possible, but
did not get around to it until Feb 4, and by then it was
almost too
late. But I also wanted to check out what makes it by groundwave on
my new caradio,
not confused by skywave. I expeditioned a few miles NW of Enid to a spot near
the junxion of State Hwys 45 and 132 SE of Carrier, where there is a brief
stretch with no adjacent powerlines. On caradio with whip on fender, no DFing
possible.
Main reference
is the 2007-2008 NRC AM Log. Here is some of what I noted,
skipping most
strong and regular signals, between 1815 and 1905 UT, local mean noon being at
1832:
1700: at 1819
``La Indomable, mil setecientos, es La Grande``. Spanish
dominating an
English station, fading in and out. Unlike most of the logs
below, this is
probably skywave, from KBGG Des Moines, listed with ``La
Grande`` but
not ``La Indomable`` slogan.
1690: at 1820,
sports talk. Does not fit for Colorado with All-Kids, or
Illinois with
news/talk, but surely one or the other. Format changed?
1670: at 1820,
weak distorted audio. May be Enid talking house.
1660: checked
this first at 1815, as KXTR Kansas City is easy to recognize with
classical, and
often audible later in the afternoon when skywave has kicked in,
but not now:
ESPN station was dominating with ads for a CPA `downtown`, phone 241-9187 and
281-1003, atop KXTR classical with a SAH; 1818 CNN News; 1825 ID as ``1660
ESPN``. Those phones check for a CPA in Fargo ND, so certainly noon skywave from
KQWB at well over a megameter.
1650 & 1630
blocked by splatter from local KFXY 1640.
1620: at 1821,
sports news, good signal. Presumably KOZN Bellevue NE.
1610: at 1822,
NWS relay with noise, cut off amid weather info, back to usual
loop of local
area attraxions around Great Salt Plains, TIS. This makes it into
parts of Enid
itself if noise is low enough.
1600: at 1823,
at least two stations under dominant KUSH Cushing OK.
1570: at 1825,
two stations, C&W probably KNDY Marysville KS; EZL probably KZLI Pryor OK,
or KTAT Frederick OK.
1540: at 1826,
Rush, over another talker. There are two Kansans here, Parsons
being the
talker, tho KXEL IA might have been in the mix by skywave.
1500: at 1827,
preacher. Must be KPGM Pawhuska OK
1440: at 1828,
weak Spanish, presumably KTNO University Park TX (Metroplex), 15 kW, but CP for
50 in daytime; IBOC QRM, probably from Tulsa KTBZ 1430 ``The Buzz``, 25 kW.
1420: at 1828,
local political ad for Lone Wolf, ``Country 1420, KTJS``, midday
report, from
Hobart OK; IBOC QRM here too on what used to be a clear station on its fringe.
(Quite a number of other small-town stations in OK & KS were doing
local noon news
hours; good to hear these still exist.)
1370: at 1829,
nothing heard; was expecting usual KGNO Dodge City KS.
1360: at 1830,
Ave Maria Radio, devotional by a priest. Two possibilities are
listed on this
frequency with EWTN! KAHS El Dorado KS, and KDJW Amarillo TX. 1831 into talk
show ``The Doctor Is In``, YL with Catholic-oriented advice,
877-573-7825.
Continuous hum on audio.
1320: at 1832,
Radio Oklahoma, weather, ``Newstalk 1320``, so KCLI Clinton;
back to Rush;
over lo rumble, somebody off-frequency.
1260: at 1834,
soul-ish music, but must be KWSH Wewoka, C&W listed.
1250: at 1835,
Spanish, so KKHK Kansas City KS; [WREN Topeka missed].
1240: at 1835,
slow SAH of 1 Hz or less between KADS Elk City OK and KFH
Wichita. For
many years, KADS was off-frequency with an audible het.
1210: at 1836,
Oklahoma news, from KGYN Guymon. Day pattern is non-direxional so reaches Enid
without cheating.
1200: at 1836,
trace of a SAH, I suppose between WOAI TX and KFNW ND altho WRTO Chicago or KYOO
Bolivar MO might be involved.
1190: at 1836,
``AM 1190 KVSV``, Beloit KS, farm news.
1180: at 1837,
Spanish, therefore KYOZ Bellevue NE.
1110: at 1838,
KFAB Omaha NE, VG signal with Rush, and IBOC sidebands blocking 1120 and 1100.
1070: at 1838,
semi-local KFTI Wichita, Paul Harvey at Page 3, so must have
started around
1830. (I`ve noticed he is no longer between 1800 and 1830 on
KRMG 740 Tulsa,
either.)
1060: at 1839,
fast SAH. Closest are Springfield MO and Van Buren AR; none of
the three
Texans are very close. Would settle for Pierre SD. Needs further
checking, but
KFTI 1070 can be a problem.
1040: at 1841,
Rush from WHO Des Moines IA.
1030: at 1842,
no IBOC heard, missing from WHO? Two stations, news / talk over music, possibly
Spanish. KBUF Holcomb KS surely the former, tho KFAY
Farmington/Fayetteville
AR possible. Is KWFA Tye TX (Abilene) on yet? Does 50
kW KCTA Corpus
Christi have any Spanish? Went back and checked this at 1857: talking over hymn,
1858 tentative ID for KWFA.
1010 & 990:
at 1843, blocked by IBOC from KTOK-1000.
970: at 1846,
religion, KCFO Tulsa or KHVN Fort Worth; far enough from local
KGWA 960 to
pull something past it.
950: at 1846,
religion, no doubt KJRG Newton KS, ditto.
940: at 1844,
trace of something under WKY-930 splash, probably KIXZ Amarillo
which I have
heard before somewhat west of Enid; no Kansans.
880: at 1845,
plug for KRVN.com Lexington NE, mixing with a weaker station,
probably KJOJ
Conroe TX, (which is Vietnamese, but not enough audio to tell).
850: at 1846,
Paul Harvey, so KOA in usual pre-noon timeslot; slow SAH with
talk station,
no doubt KJON Carrollton TX, hijacked from Anadarko OK, but at
least that
benefits KOA here.
840: at 1846,
something there, but an unexpected line noise peak here, surely
KTIC West Point
NE, previously heard daytimes when it was something else.
Rechecked at
1905, ad for Nebraska lottery.
830-730: due to
noise and running out of time, skipped over, but nothing
unusual
expected.
720: at 1847,
ad for Grand Central Station episode on The American Experience,
WTTW, so
definitely WGN. Of all the Chicago `clears` this is the only one still
with a clear
daytime shot to OK at well over a megameter, certainly by
groundwave tnx
to our excellent conductivity. Fortunately KSAH Universal City
(San Antonio)
TX does not bother in the daytime like it does at night, constant
SAH battling
with WGN.
710: at 1847,
Rush mixing with another talker. Per NRC AM Log, KGNC Amarillo TX is the one
with Rush, not KCMO Kansas City.
700: at 1848,
ads in English mixed with Asian language, 214 area code, so KHSE Wylie TX (Metroplex),
blocking any hope of WLW daytime.
680: at 1849,
rodeo talk about NFR, presumably KFEQ St. Joe MO.
670: at 1850,
religion, from KLTT Commerce/Denver CO, another long-haul daytime groundwave
which can also be heard within Enid given low-noise location; trace of something
else, presumably WSCR Chicago, which as WMAQ used to make it clearly on cold
winter days` groundwave.
660: at 1851,
KSKY Dallas, talk, with IBOC from WWLS-640 bleeding over here 20 kHz up.
650 & 630:
ruined by WWLS IBOC; WSM and KHOW might otherwise make it.
620: at 1852,
KMKI Disney Radio, Plano TX, music.
610: at 1852,
KCSP Kansas City, sports, marred by IBOC from KMKI.
600: at 1852,
two weak stations with SAH, probably WMT Cedar Rapids IA and KTBB Tyler TX. This
is a relatively clear frequency for daytime DX.
590: at 1853,
KXSP Omaha NE with sports, over something else, probably KLBJ
Austin TX.
570: at 1853,
usual mix of KLIF Dallas over WNAX Yankton SD. Unfortunately
almost
co-linear and can`t null out one or the other.
560: at 1854,
Rush, presumably KWTO Springfield MO, seems with IBOC QRM; is that KLIF 570 now?
No IBOC heard on 580, with WIBW strong.
550: at 1854,
KFRM Salina KS, very strong as usual, but with something else
underneath;
KCRS Midland TX heard previously, but KLLV Breen CO might be
possible now.
540: at 1855,
usual mix of KDFT Ferris (Metroplex) TX in Spanish over KWMT Fort Dodge IA in
English
The Whole Earth
6348 CLAND. Echo of Hope
(P) 1220 Music and talk by YL making it thru
the co-channel DPRK Gov't Censor Station.
(Barton,AZ 2/6)
7445 TAIWAN Radio Taiwan Intl.
1145 with Jade Bells and Bamboo Pipes px
and closing out EG bx at TOH. 24443 Dropped
off at 1200.(Barton,AZ 2/6)
6285 NORTH KOREA Voice of Korea
Long lecture by YL at 1020; music. More
praise of great leader with audio sounding a
little better than usual. Good- i'll call it 45434. bx was in English. (Barton,AZ
2/6)
7220 ----?------ R. Svoboda
at 34423. 1030 .YL in Slavic lang. Good ID by male at BOH. Sounds like current
events pgm to 1100 close. Have heard before - refs
here don't show transmitter location, only a couple
of possibles. * * wish i had the flypaper memory some have.
6010 MEXICO
Radio Mil at a nice level 6:40 am with "Musica de Mexico" program and
female announcer, into music like that played in better Mexican restaurant
chains like El Torito, Chi-Chi's, etc.
** AUSTRIA. Ö1,
13730, Feb 1 at 1400 going from English to German, just as QRM
from CRI via
Cuba`s dirty 13740 transmitter starts modulating. Needlessly
complex
English/Deutsch language schedule from Austria at 1305-1400 per EiBi:
13730
1305-1320 Mo AUT
Radio Austria Int.
E Eu
13730
1305-1320 Tu-Fr AUT Radio Austria Int.
D Eu
13730
1305-1330 SaSu AUT Radio
Austria Int.
E Eu
13730
1320-1345 Mo-Fr AUT Radio Austria Int.
D Eu
13730
1330-1335 SaSu AUT Radio
Austria Int.
D Eu
13730
1335-1400 SaSu AUT Radio
Austria Int.
E Eu
13730
1345-1400 Mo AUT
Radio Austria Int.
D Eu
13730
1345-1400 Tu-Fr AUT Radio Austria Int.
E Eu
Otherwise at
0500-1830 it`s all in German. Per HFCC, 13730 switches from a 160 degree antenna
to 0 degrees (or non-direxional?) at 1200
** BRAZIL. I
would have preferred to hear CMBF`s classical music, but 6060 cut
off at 0702 Feb
2, uncovering R. Tupi, Curitiba, with full ID mentioning a
ZY-call on MW,
plus SW frequencies 9565, 11765 and 6060
** COSTA RICA.
The 40 kW ELCOR transmitter testing at Guápiles, as Raúl
Saavedra has
found out, is still being heard on 5954, Feb 1 at 2320 check with
music, but too
much Okeechobee 5950
** CUBA.
Another try to hear something else after RHC 0700* on 49m: Sat Feb 2
on 6060, heard
R. Musical Nacional, CMBF network opening ``Por Primera Vez``
apparently
newly acquired classical recordings, giving program address of
Apartado 6659,
Zona-6, but transmitter cut off at 0702*, uncovering Brazil,
q.v.
** GABON. On
the lookout for resurgence of the Africa Numéro Un harmonic on
19160 --- Feb 1
at 2023, I could get a weak carrier slightly above on about
19160.3, but no
audio. There seemed to be a second carrier slightly above that
--- and nothing
much else in this frequency range. Is the fundamental also
off-frequency
to the high side? Hilife music on 9580.1 or so, did not seem as
much as needed
to match but maybe within the margin of error of my indirect
frequency
estimating system with the DX-398. Further chex needed. In case you
think 20+ UT is
a bit late for 19 MHz from Gabon, last year during good
openings it was
being heard even past 2200, as I suppose the higher frequency
was propagating
well enough to escape the tropical night
** NEW ZEALAND.
RNZI, 17675 analog, holding its own against unnecessarily close neighbor CVC
Chile 17680, Friday Feb 1 until 2055 with ``Spectrum``
interviewing a
yacht builder, then into latest advisory about Cycle Gene
battering
Futuna with 945 hektopascals of low pressure. See:
http://www.rnzi.com/pages/news.php?op=read&id=37783
Strangely, this
does not seem to have been making world news. 2058 Vanuatu
music break,
2100 timesignal, World & Pacific News. I was wanting to confirm
Mailbox at
2035, but this was an off-week for that fortnightly show
** SOUTH
CAROLINA [non]. Brother Scare, 13810 via Germany, with big produced opening at
1400 UT Feb 1, music mixed with bits of Alex Scourby`s Bible readings, and R.
G.`s dire declarations.
** U S A.
Brother Scare still going on WWRB 3185, Feb 1 at 1334 check, not yet
on 9385. FCC
B07 and HFCC B07 show WWRB on 3185 only until 1300 UT, then 9385, both 100 kW at
340 degrees. Barring unpublished changes, it would not be the first time a US SW
station has overstayed its welcome on a certain frequency.
Oh oh, the WWRB
Global 3 schedule at
http://www.wwrb.org/schedule/global_3/combined.pdf
shows the
transition at ``9:00 am`` which would be 1500 UT. Timezone is not
specified on
the WWRB schedules! But Manchester is well within the Central zone west of the
boundary with Eastern
** U S A.
Tuning across WBCQ 7415, Friday Feb 1 after 2000 UT, I was quickly
informed that
FDR, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were all ``communists`` ---
Enough of that
crap. Per sked, it`s Money Talk, ``Started in July 2004, as a
spin off from
Financial Survival 2000. Hosted by Jim and Eric Cedarstrom,
a.k.a. Patriot
Trading Group.`` Pushing gold is their thing for the gullible.
Checking WORLD
OF RADIO 1393 on Area 51 show, Friday Feb 1 at 2348, I found that frequency had
varied up to 5111.4-CUSB
** U S A [non].
Seems CVC Chile has got back on frequency 15410.00; Feb 1 at
1407, Radio
Farda via Morocco was dominating, but no audible het as in previous few days;
maybe a lite SAH, hard to tell with propagation fading too
** ANGUILLA.
DGS missing from 6090, Feb 9 at 0707 check, uncovering some
extremely
distorted talk, perhaps two stations mixing. Is Nigeria this bad like
it is on some
other frequencies? 11775 also missing Feb 9 at 1445, but on when
rechecked at
1500
** CHAD.
Everything back to normal? 4905 heard again Feb 8 at 0630 with usual
music, 0641
announcement; heavy CODAR QRM
** CROATIA [non
non]. V. of Croatia, 6165, 0700 Feb 9 with ID, news in English,
34533, some
CCI, but frequency is totally blocked by huge widespread signal
from Bonaire
until 0657* By 0704 already back to music
** CUBA. The
DentroCuban Jamming Command continues to cause immense and totally unnecessary
collateral damage to non-exile broadcasters. Feb 9 at 0703, XEPPM6185 was
putting in a very good signal with a cantata --- but bubble jamming could be
heard on the frequency, also spreading to 6190 (but not heard on 6180 with
Brasil, and maybe RHC carrier still on). The only time 6185 `needs` to be jammed
is at 0200-0400 with R. República, but at least one jamming transmitter on a
given frequency can often be heard ticking away during what should be off-hours.
(And I see that the RR and consequent DCJC QSY to 6185 from 6100 still hasn`t
made it into EiBi or Aoki, despite first discussed here months ago.) During
0200-0400, of course, 6185 is a total loss for R. Educación and its would-be
listeners.
After 0700 Feb
9 I also tuned around 49m looking for other spurious Cuban
jamming and
found some, around 6135, which would be another leftover from Radio República
at 2200-2400; this bothered NHK on 6145. On the lower side the jamming merged
with jamming-like DRM on 6125-6130-6135 from Sines, 40 degrees during this hour.
Also heard some
lite jamming around 6085, which might be explained as a mix of
the heavy, and
not left-over DCJC against Martí on 5980 and 6030, another 50
kHz higher.
6030 in particular was broad, with spikes extending well past 6025
and 6035
** JORDAN. R.
Jordan, 11690, reactivated a few days ago, heard here Feb 8 at
1440 with
Arabic pop music, 1446 announcement by YL in French; Jordan strong
enough to make
RTTY on lo side evitable simply by tuning slightly to hi side.
1500 timecheck,
ID in French by OM. Had a SAH of about 4 Hz, presumably with
HCJB scheduled
until 1500, altho no audio heard from it; but SAH still there at
1530; 1537
phone call on the air
** U S A. MW
report of the WABV-1590 DX test, WAIK heard instead: see DXLD
8-017; Daytime
MW bandscan: see DXLD 8-018; also on MW DX lists (gh)
** VENEZUELA
[non]. Sat Feb 9 sat on 11680 from 1500 waiting for RNV CI via
Cuba to appear.
Carrier finally on at 1505:40 and program joined in progress at
1506. Unlike
previous Saturdays, no English, all in Spanish to 1522 tune-out.
Great way to
build an audience! Also, RHC 13680 carrier stayed on until 1510*
** AFGHANISTAN
[non]. An mp3 file of R. Solh music, 29 minutes, 6836 kb, 32
kbps, 22 kHz,
recorded in late January at 1419-1459 UT on 15265 via UK, with
announcements
removed, is now available for all to enjoy at
http://www.w4uvh.net/sohl0801.mp3 If anyone
can identify any of the music,
please let us
know as it would be nice to obtain CD quality recordings of it.
The second
piece is partly in English
** EGYPT. Altho
I was hearing R. Cairo via ABZ site on 6290 some minutes before 2400 UT Feb 9 as
I tuned by, at 0005 Feb 10 I found a strong carrier, but
extremely weak
and distorted modulation on 6225, nothing on 6290. 0000 is when the Arabic
service is scheduled to switch 6290 from ABZ to ABS site, the latter with its
terrible modulation, as we have noted before, and also with a
considerable
overlap between the two sites. This time on 6225, there was some
yelling and
applause, but the modulation so weak and distorted I could not even
be sure of
language, let alone pull a definite ID, but circumstantially it
appears that
Cairo has moved from 6290 to 6225 for the service after 0000,
which remains a
total waste. We shall hear subsequently whether this was a
mistake, fluke,
or permanent change
** MEXICO. R.
Educación, 6185, 0001 Feb 10, sign-on as SW station XEPPM on
6185, with
current date and time, power 10 kW, live announcement in Spanish,
and then the
same in English --- a good time for monolinguals to DX them tho
they
occasionally throw in English IDs elsewhen. It`s a shame they don`t put a
little more
effort into some real English programming.
Show following
sounded like ``Su casa y otros viajes`` or was it ``carta`` but
neither makes
much sense. Program schedule
http://www.radioeducacion.edu.mx/carta_programa.pdf
does not match, just
showing ``RFI``
at 6 pm Saturday. Not clear if besides the sign-on, the SW
programming is
partially or totally identical now to MW 1060 XEEP, but no sign
of a separate
SW sked on the website.
Nor can I any
longer find detailed playlists minute by minute they used to have
on website
bookmarked at http://www.radioeducacion.edu.mx/HojaProg1.html
nor any trace of it on the site map, tho they have added a lot of text material
and
the latest fad,
podcasts. Maybe playlists are now for Registered Users only?
But no
explanation of what benefits RU`s get!
** VENEZUELA
[non]. Sunday Feb 10 made my habitual check for ``Aló,
Presidente``
frequencies via Cuba, vs mainstream RHC programming. At 1426 found the A,P
lead-in show from RHC, ``Mundo Siete``, week in review, both on 11680 and 11670!
11670 was much weaker than 11680, and the two were out of synch, so from two
different transmitter sites. Meanwhile, 11875, which had been one of the A,P
Sunday-only channels, was missing, with only a weak WEWN audible. Apparently,
RHC finally got our message that the 14-15 hour was colliding with WEWN and
moved that transmitter to 11680. However, at 1514 recheck, 11875 was on, after
WEWN had left. I wonder if they announce such a frequency change around 1500?
A,P also on // 13750 very strong, making a reverb with 11680. Also on 13680, but
barely detectable in skirts of CRI via Sackville 13675. At 1456, 17750 was
starting to fade in with WYFR dominating, trace of Cuba.
Meanwhile,
mainstream RHC was as usual on 11760, 11805 and 12000 around 1430, closing
around 1500; I noticed that 11805 was off the air before the others had
finished.
I was already
hearing the blustery voice of Hugo Chávez Frías at 1435, so
apparently he
was rarin` to go. His timezone change may have affected his
habitual
startup time, tho it would logically be later in real time, not earlier
Just to follow
up, Rick may have been right in his original log of
Guatemala ----
73, Glenn Hauser
** GUATEMALA.
4799.75, R Buenas Nuevas, 1235, 02/07/08, Spanish. Male
announcer on
tune-in with commentary and a couple of near-immediate IDs as "Radio Buenas
Nuevas" amid his talk. Slight heterodyne from something on or near 4800
(XERTA??), but too weak to tell what it might have been. Fair/good (Mark
Schiefelbein, MO, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
Oh oh; RBN may
have figured it should assert its rights to 4800 vs XERTA which moved from 4810
during RBN inactivity. But be very careful, as XERTA in religionist programing
could also mention ``buenas nuevas
True, and it
does bear further monitoring. I didn't stay with it very long once I noticed the
PNGs were coming in, but whoever it was on 4799.75 was not audible in a quick
recheck made between 1300-1400 (which would jibe with the listed 1000-1300 for
RBN in Aoki). (Mark Schiefelbein, ibid.)
** GUATEMALA.
4799.79, Radio Buenas Nuevas, 0415-0433*, Feb 8, local
religious
music. Spanish talk. Closing announcements with ID at 0432. Poor signal in
noise, CODAR QRM and slight het from presumed Mexico 4800. Thanks to Mark
Schiefelbein for tip
4799.8, R
Buenas Nuevas, 1238-1350+, 02/08/08, Spanish. Male announcer
playing music
with a couple of "Radio Buenas Nuevas" IDs between songs, then long
dialogue by M/F announcers with brief pauses like they were reading off a
script. Theme music with longer RBN ID mentioning meter bands, some further talk
with low audio, then back to the tunes after 1300, with occasional longer talks
to 1350 fadeout. CODAR QRM much worse than yesterday, making speech difficult to
follow. Frequency seemed to drift a little. Fair/poor (Mark
Schiefelbein,
MO, DX LISTENING DIGEST)
Excellent log!
Have them at 1250 with *very weak signal*, YL. CODAR major problem but Mexico is
off and on schedule on 4800, seems off at the moment. 4799.816 drifting, Radio
Buenas Nuevas, thanks! M. Schiefelbein log. Noted from 1230 to 1308, same YL as
before, marimbas on the hour, om ID after the hour (Bob Wilkner, FL, Cumbre DX
via DXLD
** GUATEMALA
[and non]. Radio Buenas Nuevas 4999.9 [sic, means 4799.9]
was off the air
1100 this morning 10 February. Mexico was off 4800, same time (Bob Wilkner, FL,
Mosquito Coast DX News 10 February 2008, via Cumbre DX via DXLD)
** EGYPT. Re
DXLD 8-019: UT Feb 11 checked again for R. Cairo in 48 mb, which frequency in
use? No signal audible on 6225, and only a very weak signal on 6290, presumably
Cairo back to where it is scheduled. As for 6225, it is in
EiBi schedule
for Cairo at 16-18 in Turkish 18-19 in Russian; but in Aoki at
16-19 Turkish,
19-20 Russian. They do not agree either on the sites. EiBi says
both are via
Abis, while Aoki says Turkish is Abis, and Russian Abu Zaabal.
Anyhow, this
partially explains how RC could appear on 6225 by mistake at a
later hour. And
see DXLD 8-006, where 6225 was reported last November at 1733 in Turkish with
``horrible audio``
** GERMANY
[non]. DW Amharic service has been coming in well in the 1400 UT hour, such as
Feb 11 at 1450 on 15620 via Rwanda, discussion of Barack Obama, clips in English
and German into Amharic voice-over. So this is of some
interest in
Ethiopia? No jamming heard on this frequency, but I wonder if that
is the case inside Ethiopia
** KOREA NORTH
[non]. 5985 via Yamata, Japan, Feb 11 at 1428, ``Kochirawa
Shiokaze desu``
ID by YL thrice within a sesquiminute in closing over usual
piano music.
Lite het no doubt from Myanmar, which is never strong enough to
get here even
after Shiokaze is off at 1430
** SAUDI
ARABIA. Have been enjoying the music on BSKSA, 15435 just after 1500 UT Feb 11
and 12, a.k.a. Call of Islam, but it starts fading out by 1515 or
1520 as they
get back to talk
** U S A. WWRB,
9385, Feb 12 at 1418, with Brother Scare more distorted than
usual and
splattering down to 9230 and up to 9465, especially bothering fellow
US stations on 9330, 9355, 9370
** CANADA. Feb
14 at 0615, found harmonica album cuts on 6045; first thought of reactivated
XEXQ quickly extinguished as I realized that KBS World Radio in
Spanish to
Europe via Sackville is scheduled here --- and that`s the same fill
music CD RCI
used to play in snippets when they were still relaying CBC in the
mornings and
had to cover local breakaway times after news on the hour. So
KBSWR feed was
lost, replaced by this, which ran without announcements until
0629* RCI IS
once and off. Checked subsequent KBS relays via Sackville, and
they were back
to normal: 1430 in Korean on 9650; 24 hours later at 0625 Feb 15 in Spanish on
6045
** CHAD. RNT,
4905, Feb 14 at 0634 check, singing and talking in Arabic?
Unseemed
French; CODAR QRM. Fadeout should be getting a bit earlier as solstice
approaches
** COLOMBIA.
5910, Feb 14 at 0639, ``Están escuchando HKI79, Marfil Estéreo,`` lively
songs; lite splatter de WBOH 5920. That`s the FM callsign, HJDH being listed in
WRTH for both 5910 and 6010
** CUBA. This
day`s defects at RHC: Feb 15 at 0634, found 6000, 6060 and 6180 all very
undermodulated as Arnie Coro`s ``news`` update in telco-quality audio was
ending; briefly higher-fi YL announcer re-introducing him for Breakthru, science
capsule which ran only until 0640; was about CFLs imposed by the government on
every household for energy conservation and the fact that no incandescent bulbs
are made in Cuba; all must be imported. At this time, a
quick echo
developed on 6000, but not on the other frequencies, making me
wonder if two
transmitters/sites were running simultaneously on 6000, with
their different
audio feed delays from the studio. As for the RHC undermod,
that helped
reduce adjacent QRM to XEPPM 6185, so I welcomed it
** EQUATORIAL
GUINEA. 6250.0, R. Nacional, Malabo, 0602+ Feb 14 heard what sounded like
timesignal, but surely not that far off; fair with ute QRM. 0604
R. Malabo ID,
frequency 6250, news. 0607 mentioned 6250 again and 20 kW power, something about
``emisiones de prueba`` -- test transmissions; news sounders frequently,
timecheck at 7:08, news of EqG, 0611 TC for 7:12 ``hora oficial de la República
de Guinea Ecuatorial``
** GERMANY
[non]. In case you didn`t get my correxion to previous report, time
on the unjammed
DW Amharic 15620 log was 1450, not 1350
** HAWAII [and
non]. Monitoring 5000, Feb 15 at 0645 I found that WWVH was on top, then WWV,
then barely audible Spanish, no doubt YVTO. Instead of
propagation
info at :45 from WWVH, all I heard was 3 seconds of tone and then
only ticks
until the next ID cycle before 0646
** INDONESIA.
VOI active again, and no doubt temporarily, on 9526, Feb 16 at
1402 with
Korean hour running late, brief English announcement that Korean had
ended and
Indonesian was starting; that also ran late with music until 1504,
minute of
deadair to 1505*. Not back on at 1530 check when they used to start
the gamelan IS
and ID 6-minute loop
** TURKEY.
Checking the VOT webcast, Tue Feb 12 at 2337 allegedly also on 5960, for
possible replay of 2000`s Live from Turkey, not so, but instead Question of the
Month, and the announcer axually spelt out rather slowly Yenisehir with a
cedilla! Progress
** CANADA
[non]. Rod Hembree via WBCQ 9330, as I tuned by, UT Feb 17, 2008 at 0003 with
weather warning for southern Ontario, dated Sunday June 3 around 8:30 pm ---
very, very useful, now. Checking the perpetual calendar, Sunday June 3 could
have been as recently as 2007!
** COLOMBIA.
Hadn`t heard much on 6010 lately, but Feb 16 at 0733, YL English ID as ``The
Voice of Your Conscience``, then guitar music, dominating
frequency, SAH
maybe from XEOI under; but at 0741 HJDH to open carrier
audiblizing
weak music station under, presumably Radio Mil
** COSTA RICA.
5954, ELCOR transmitter test, checked Sat Feb 16 at 2315 with
nondescript
music amid heavy QRM; recheck at 2335, no carrier detectable
** EGYPT. R.
Cairo, 9465 to NAm, at 2320 Feb 16, last part of news by YL. It
was fairly
intelligible, but modulation not up to par; went into feature
program at
2325, which was much less intelligible, so moved on
** INDONESIA.
Re previous report: ``VOI active again, and no doubt temporarily,
on 9526, Feb 16
at 1402 with Korean hour running late, brief English
announcement
that Korean had ended and Indonesian was starting; that also ran
late with music
until 1504, minute of deadair to 1505*. Not back on at 1530
check when they
used to start the gamelan IS and ID 6-minute loop``
Date was wrong
above: Feb 15! Sure `nuff, gone again on Feb 16 around 1440
check
** NETHERLANDS
[non]. 7380, Feb 16 at 2325 Indonesian talk over constant bed of music from the
20s or 30s; thought I briefly heard a hint of the RNW IS, but program continued
past 2330, music having changed at 2332 to ``Winter
wonderland``.
This is via Madagascar, and I suppose the Indonesians must be
longing for
snowy Holland
** U S A.
Contrary to a recent report that New York Radio was off the air, I
found it going
as usual, ID Feb 17 at 0640 on 6604-USB with aviation weather
for places such
as Atlantic, Pittsburgh, St. Louis; and also on // 3485 checked
at 0644
** U S A [non].
CVC A Sua Voz, 15410 via Chile to Brasil, UT Sat Feb 16 at 2340
with truncated
classical music pieces, such as Copland`s El Salón México,
introduced by
hard-sell announcer. Really a strange program, off-putting to the
classical
aficionado who knows how long these pieces are supposed to run;
outroed at 2357
as ``Sem Limites`` for Sexta-feira, then QSY announcement to
11745 and off.
This appears on the sked as M-F only, but has been appearing
regularly on
Saturdays too: so it`s a replay of the Friday program. BTW,
Limites in
Portuguese is stressed on second syllable, unlike Spanish Límites
** AFGHANISTAN
[non]. R. Solh, 15265 via UK, 1452 UT Feb 18, exactly same music as always, and
rather poor signal today, but with additional problem: Spanish 2-way SSB on
15266.5, probably drug runners or poachers
** ALBANIA. R.
Tirana, 13640 to NAm, Tue Feb 19 at 1539 with reports about
independence of
Kosovo, US recognition thereof, etc. Good S9+20 signal reaching SINPO 45444 but
somewhat overmodulated and distorted; better than being undermodulated. 1549
music break, 1552 mailbag reading several reception reports with their SINPOs;
1558 theme, open carrier, 1558:30 bit of IS, open carrier again until off at
1559*
** CANADA. CRI
via Sackville, 15230, Feb 18 at 1453 in English with frequent
audio dropouts,
unlistenable. Is anyone paying attention? Why is it so hard to
maintain a
clearly modulated feed from Beijing to Sackville?
** CUBA. 15710,
Feb 18 at 1450 check, NO jamming at all! Have they finally
turned it off?
Why was it ever here?
** INDONESIA.
Another morning I wish I had been tuning earlier: Feb 18 at the
late hour of
1415, on 4790 island music, also CODAR and SSB QRM, best Indo
signal on band,
then 4605 with different music; 4750 had only a very weak
carrier, maybe
not Makassar
** IRAN. 7380,
Feb 18 at 1432 Qur`an with long pauses, 1434 into M&W talk in S
Asian language.
Qur`an on the half-hour is a clew toward Iran, and indeed when
uplooked later,
it`s IRIB Kamalabad in Bengali
** MAURITANIA.
ORTM must be back, after missing a few weeks: 4845, Feb 18 at 0633, Arabic talk
and characteristic string music; QRM from ute pulsing 40
times a minute,
but no CODAR on this frequency. At this hour was somewhat
stronger than
Chad 4905 in French. Also Feb 19 at 0719 check, French talk still
audible on 4845
** NIGERIA.
Waiting in the car at a grocery parking lot, I tuned around on the
portable DX-375
with its intermittent whip antenna connexion, and found only a
few strong
signals on 19m, including, going off the air just a few seconds
after I tuned
in, V. of Nigeria, 15120, 2058 UT Feb 18, sign-off in English
with address,
adequate modulation. Not the place for WBCQ to be in A-08
** U S A. WWRB,
9385, again splattering Brother Scare down to 9330 at 1435 Feb 18, and also up
to 9410 a few minutes later. On 9385 itself, distortion. Why is it so hard to
get a clearly modulated signal from Walterboro to Manchester and
beyond? Maybe
he should start by speaking in a normal tone of voice. Yeah, sure
** AUSTRALIA
[and non]. R. Australia, 7240, 50 degrees from Shepparton to
Pacific, is a
good reliable signal here after 1400, and usually hams avoid it,
but Feb 20 at
1519 I was hearing a QSO precisely on frequency, so they could
give their BFOs
a rest, but I should think it would have been tough to talk
with RA mixing
in. Were they QRMing it deliberately? One of the calls was
N5MUF, using
the obvious fonetix, who per ARRL lookup is: BRUMFIELD, THOMAS R, N5MUF
(General), Pearl, MS 39208
** CHAD. RNT,
4905, still having problems. Fairly good carrier at 0608 Feb 20,
but talk barely
modulated
** CUBA. RHC,
the UT day after Fidel finally resigned, Feb 20 at 0610-0625 or
so, checked
6060 and heard nothing at all about that, not even mentioning
Fidel. Did not
rate among top three news headlines, starting with something
about US forces
in Iraq. Perhaps instruxions on just how to play this somewhat
momentous story
were slow to trickle down, so they just said nothing. Wait till
he really dies
--- maybe then RHC will pull out all the stops, tho it may take
a while to find
out, following their Soviet models. 0611 topic: sister cities
Quito and
Cienfuegos
** GUATEMALA.
R. Verdad, 4052.4 (or at least a smidgen below 4052.5), Feb 20, 0550 playing
Johnny Cash`s Were You There? slow hymn, joined by a soprano harmonizing, June?
0553 dead air; 0554 Lord`s Prayer in English; 0555 sign-off until 5 AM (1100
UT), ``good night from your speaker (preacher?), Edgar
Madrid``, then
hymn to waltz beat, 0557:30 YL Spanish sign-off, 0558 National
Anthem by band
and choir running several verses to 0602:30 and carrier stayed
on a while
longer. Rated S9+12 on my E-W longwire to FRG-7, or SINPO 35333.
Modulation was
somewhat muffled, fuzzy thruout. One should really monitor TGAV and report on
their real eighth anniversary, Feb 25
** MAURITANIA.
ORTM, 4845, which I had heard a couple recent nights, was
missing again
Feb 20 at 0607; just the constant utility pulsing on same
frequency
** MEXICO.
XEYU, Radio Unam, 9599.3, quite good with continuous classical
music, `cello
et al., Feb 20 from 2235 until at *2311:30 hit by Vatican Radio
on 9600.0
joining program in progress, then IS at 2314, producing a bad het
making both
unlistenable
** POLAND
[non]. And I do mean non! Checking 9660, scheduled for PRES 2200-2300 back to
Europe via GUIANA FRENCH, 250 kW, 40 degrees, analog, all I heard was an
unmodulated carrier at various chex between 2210 and 2235. Something must really
be wrong at Montsinéry, as a number of other transmissions were moved away from
there, and it seems this one should be, or has been?
** U S A.
Robotic female voice on 4396-SSB, Feb 20 at 0605, weather for Gulf of
Alaska. Audio
was choppy with clix; also, she ignorantly transformed 4:00 pm
into ``four
hundred PM``, at least twice. Can`t they do better than this? I see
numerous logs
on this frequency in UDXF forums of WLO Mobile AL, tho more
likely
geographically I would expect its robotic sister station KLB in Kent WA.
Their website http://www.shipcom.com/frequencies.html
does not match what I
heard. It shows
WLO, not KLB on 4396, and at 0600 is supposed to be for the
Caribbean;
offshore Alaska supposed to be at 0800, apparently meaning direct
from WLO, with
no specific schedule given for KLB which is ``Enhanced Coverage of the Pacific
and Alaskan waters`` and might have been relaying if I had checked 4405
** GUIANA
FRENCH. Cf previous report under POLAND [non]. PRES via Montsinéry, 9660,
achieved some modulation this time when checked Feb 22 around 2230, Polish talk.
Signal read S9+20, but still badly undermodulated, no comparison in loudness to
other similar signals on band, e.g. Spain direct on 9630, S9+25 loud & clear
** INDONESIA.
RRI, 9680, with gamelan orchestra at 1430 Feb 21, rather like the loop they used
to play on VOI 9525 after 1530. But as always on 9680, with
co-channel QRM,
in Chinese:
Per EiBi we
have a four-way collision here:
9680
2200-1500 INS Radio Rep. Indonesia 4
IN SEA
9680
1100-1800 TWN Radio Taiwan Int.
M FE
9680
1100-1500 USA Voice of America
M FE /PHL
The fourth
being mandatory Chicom jamming against RTI and/or VOA!
A somewhat
different timespan pixure emerges from Aoki, all 1234567:
9680*CBS TAIWAN
1100-1800 Chinese
100 352 Taipei
TWN
12124E2509 CBSC b07
9680 RRI
Jakarta 2200-1300
Indonesian 250 316
Jakarta-Cimanggis
INS 10651E0612 RRI
9680*VOICE OF
AMERICA 1100-1500 Chinese
250 349 Tinang
PHL 12037E1521 IBB b07
This showing
RRI off at 1300, not the case per my log today. And the * meaning
both CBS and
VOA are jammed. This multi-collision is a no-win situation for all
concerned. I
bet they haven`t worked it out either at the latest HFCC in
Malaysia
** KOREA NORTH
[non]. JSR, best heard in quite a while, Feb 22 at 1425 on 5985, in English with
several YL IDs as ``JSR, Shiokaze, Sea Breeze,`` contact info over habitual
piano music to 1430* SINPO 34443, only trace of the Myanmar 5986v het
** U S A [and
non]. I was pleased to be able to hear intonation resembling my
own on weak but
unjammed WRMI 9955 signal, Feb 21 at 2322 check during
scheduled WORLD
OF RADIO airing at 2300 Thursdays. Thank you, DCJC, for
relenting at
this time. To be sure it wasn`t a propagational anomaly, I found
grind jamming
against Martí was still audible on 9565
** U S A. WBCQ,
7415, Friday Feb 22 before 2300 with old 78s on Behaviour
Night,
enjoyable music à la Marion`s Attic which he also plugged; after 2300
Bluegrass State
of Mind. As always, much better signal here than on 5110,
during Area 51
bihour, which on Fridays seems to have settled at 2300 on
International
Radio Report from CKUT, previous Sunday, and at 2330 WORLD OF RADIO. Axually on
5111.2 or so, and IRR did not start until 2303, cut off
before quite
finished so WOR did not start any later than 2331
** U S A. 5850,
Feb 22 at 2307 heard a program ending at this strange time,
giving
1-800-YESHUA1 phone number address in Lodi (with a long I), New Jersey;
2308 WHR ID.
Also caught my attention because the S-meter was fluxuating
slightly with
modulation, so reduced carrier? Seems unlikely; maybe just a
selective
fading fluke. Later looked up on sked and it`s WHRA with:
2305-2308 UT
Mo,Tu,We,Th,Fr Nice Jewish Boy Jonathan Cahn 5.850 MHz
BTW, the World
Harvest Radio website http://www.whr.org has a
new look, but the basic navigation around the schedules seems to be the same
** CUBA. The
DentroCuban Jamming Command continues to pollute the bands with totally
unnecessary jamming. Dirty noise pulses at the rate of exactly two per
second have
been noted on frequencies which at completely different but limited
hours are used
by Radios República and Martí. Perhaps the DCJC in its paranoia thinx that
with the self-demotion of Fidel from CEJ to a mere Comrade, and the fueracubans`
stepped-up salivation for The End of Communism, such stations are liable to
expand their broadcasts on known frequencies. Unlikely, I say, as they are
locked into well-established schedules, but if they do, jamming could be quickly
expanded to match. Until then, leave the poor frequencies and their other
innocent occupants and neighbors alone! Specifically, UT Feb 23, the
2/second noise
pulses as monitored [along with the real times that opposition
stations are
on]:
At 0712 on
6100, very strong [RR was reported back here in DXLD 8-024 by Ron
Howard in the
0300 UT hour, but Feb 24 at 0225 check I find it still on 6185,
nothing on
6100; they are now switching from 6185 to 6100 at 0300; announcement heard at
0259 Feb 24 on 6185, said at 9 pm (really 10 pm EST!) they were moving from 6185
to 6100, and so they did after a break of 10 or 12 seconds. I guess this means
6185 is in use by RR only at 0200-0300, ruining XEPPM one hour less]
At 0713 on
7365, weaker, unseems exactly synchronized with 6100, but hard to
tell with this
kind of programming [0000-0400 RM]
At 0721 on
6155, same but weaker, vs Austria, and bothering CBC on 6160
[0000-0200 RR]
At 0730 on
9825; still/again at 1431 check [0000-0300 RM]
At 1417 on 6030
[2200-1200 RM]
You might think
that these noise pulses of two per second are not like the
heavy Cuban
jamming normally heard on RM, RR and WRMI frequencies. But the frequency
matchups cannot be coincidental. I think this is because we are only hearing a
single transmitter rather than the usual multiple overlapping
transmitters to
form a `noise wall`
** MAURITANIA.
4845 on the air again Feb 23 at 0709 check in Arabic talk, low
modulation
level
** NETHERLANDS
[non]. We were wondering whether RN is really running two DRM transmitters at
once now from Bonaire, as in the DRM DX schedule, for Sat/Sun 1700-1857 UT: Yes,
Sat Feb 23 at 1745 there was 17600-17605-17610 to NAm, and barely audible
17695-17700-17705 to SAm.
At 1850,
15310-15315-15320 to NAm quite strong and 17600-17605-17610 to SAm. First hour
in Spanish, second in English.
BTW, the 17605
at 1700 in Spanish is explicitly for Brasil, a slight mismatch
in target and
language. Are there any other Spanish broadcasts to Brasil in
particular? You
might say, ``close enough``, but RN does have a Portuguese
sexion which
has not been on SW for years and Brazilians should not be expected to settle for
Spanish; this would seem to be the time to bring back RN
Portuguese on
SW, at least these two hours a week. BTW2, it seems the
manufacturer,
source of these two new DRM-capable transmitters is still
confidential;
why?
** COSTA RICA.
REE relay, Cariari de Pococí, nominal 5965, axually on 5964.0
putting a big
het on Vatican Radio 5965.0, with which it normally mixes a few
Hz apart, Feb
24 at 0620. I had first noticed the het a couple nights earlier
but at first
assumed one of them was running a tone test instead. So this
collision has
gone from bad to worse
** CUBA. More
defects Feb 24 at RHC: at 2305 found 17705 in French; at 2323
also in French
on 13760, but NOT // --- was one of them Creole? No, listened
carefully:
regular French. Then I realized that I was hearing the same
interview, two
speakers on both frequencies, but not synchronized. Focusing on
a key word, I
found that 13760 was running 28 seconds behind 17705. But what is supposed to be
on these frequencies during this semihour? Per confusingly
laid-out
currently-dated schedule at
http://www.rhc.cu/espanol/frecuencia/frecuencias-espanol.htm
both are
supposed to be in Portuguese!
Then at 2329 I
am tuned to 5965, and hear RHC ID in Esperanto and 2330 opening program with
usual list of times and frequencies for this weekly broadcast: UT Sunday 0700 on
6000, 1500 & 1900 on 11760; 2330 on 6140 & 9600 --- omitting the very
frequency I was listening to, 5965, which had a VG signal! It`s supposed to be
in Creole. Esperanto also audible on 6140, but barely, in the skirts of the DCJC
and R. República on 6135, so a good thing it was also on 5965; and Esperanto
heard on 9600, but bad het from XEYU, and did not notice Vatican Vietnamese at
this time.
RHC on 6000 had
special coverage, presumably replay of the earlier National
Assembly
session designating Raúl Castro as leader, but underneath R. Praga via Canadá
with weather in Spanish at 2332, a perpetual collision.
The 6000
special, which on a weekday would be Mesa Redonda, was found // 9820 and Rebelde
5025. At 2338 this paused to play the national anthem. A woman had been
speaking, and then she introduced another woman, the youngest deputy of all, an
18-year-old who swore in the 500+ delegates, who had racked up a 97% attendance
quorum. I wonder how many of them dared to vote against Raúl?
I rarely hear any pirates here in Southern
California but I did hear something on Saturday night.
UNID
6925U, 2/24/08, 0039 t/in to very weak signal,
woman talking and then into a jazzy tune. Only in for a couple minutes and then
gone, barely above the noise. (Foltz-CA)
I looked on FRN and there were loggings of WAPR
(Automated Pirate Radio) at this time with this programming. Anyone have an
email address? I would love to get a QSL for this one. I have a WAV file
No
column this month
QTH: Hendersonville/
Gallatin city line Radio- DX 398 with the good ole close hanger
Feb 7 2008
13:23 97.5 WZZP Hopkensville, KY
gave address of www.z975.com
and a ad for a busness located on
"Church sreet in Dover" NEW! (Slate-TN
Feb 8 2008
14:32 101.7 WKOM Columbia, TN
ID "WKOM" (Slate-TN )
Feb 11 2008
9:36 103.9 WKZP Mcminville, TN Mc
Minnville ment and WX report rain and t'stroms tomorrrew for area
liner "the Bull" calls have chauged was WTRZ
(Slate- TN )
9:39 101.7 WJLE Smithville, TN
ads for Midwest insercuce of TN , Med Life, and the Get help line.
WX rain and t'stroms for Mcminville area tomorrew poss ending in
snow showers. and then id "This is WJLE Smithville"
(Slate-TN)
Notes- Not bad for Feb really enjoying
the preseason as you will here in TN .
2/22
With Very local WZLA 92.9 temporarily at 600W ERP instead of 6000W ERP I was able to hear "Oldies KSX".. 92.7 WKSX from Johnston, South Carolina about 45 miles to my Southeast. WZLA is normally licensed for 6000 Watts with a tower about 2 miles east of town, but they are using a 300W Backup into 4 bays, producing the 600W ERP. Their 3000W Main Transmitter (6KW ERP into 4 bays) is a Bext and has a major software problem. It's sitting on Bext's "bench' now awaiting repair.
2/2
KOOL-FM 94.5
and 94.5-2 now in IBOC and both have oldies.
2/23
88.5 KLKA
Globe, AZ 2/23 1845 Globe, AZ with K-Love programming. New!
#465 on FM.
Since the local MW was talking about the outage of
WX radio in Melbourne, I checked it out when I got home. I was able to bag a new
one with my Reecom R-1630:
02/12/08 1905EST 162.500 KPS505 Sumterville, FL
I almost snagged one that was on the Melbourne
frequency, but it faded away before I could get an ID.
I will also reiterate my opinion that CFLs suck
when it comes to interfering with radio. My WX radio shares an end table with a
lamp that has a 3-way CFL in it. I had a lock on a signal and could hear the
weather report just fine, with very little apparent interference. I turned on
the lamp to better see what I was doing and the signal just disappeared. There
wasn't a hint of it left. I turned the lamp off and the signal popped right back
in, perfectly readable again. Admittedly, the antenna was within 18" of the
CFL, but that's still quite a bit of noise to make the signal completely
disappear like that.
Fooling around
with the PSR-500 scanner I logged a new NOAA WX station
tonight. I did
get a somewhat better antenna than the stock rubber ducky, but I still don't
think it's optimized for the WX freqs. I need to get a regular whip antenna to
see what this new radio can really do.
2008-02-19 0145EST 162.450 KHB32 Tampa
Bay
Logged another new WX station last night. I think
this is my best so far. 85 miles and the station is supposed to be only 300W. I
didn't get a full ID, but I heard references to St. Augustine and Flagler and
caught the final "22" on the ID. This is the only station in Florida
with an ID ending in "22" and it happens to be very near St. Augustine
and Flagler.
2008-02-20 0135EST 162.425 WNG522 Palatka, FL
I have to say the more I play around with WX
station reception on this PSR-500, the more impressed I am with its sensitivity.
I'm still using a rubber ducky antenna from Radio Shack that I know is far from
optimized for 162MHz. I've ordered a collapsible whip that I should be able to
adjust to a length far better for 162MHz. I'm very interested to see what pops
up when I start using that. I also can't help but wonder what I could hear if I
got one of these,
only tuned for WX instead of trains. But I'm thinking that might be just a bit
overboard for WX radio.
Anyway, last night I heard the Fort Pierce NOAA WX
station. That's 300W from just about 100 miles away. I didn't hear the call
letters, but they did mention transmitting from Fort Pierce.
2008-02-25 0120EST 162.425 WWF69 Fort Pierce, FL
No TV DX this
month…
This month we have quite a few
articles on Internet radio sent in by Kevin along with some comments by
others. The article
on Whole Wheat Radio is a long one, so be prepared if you want to read it. Thanks
to all for the submissions for this month’s column.
RMU launching online radio station
Fri Feb 1, 2008 7:21 am (PST)
RMU launching online radio station
Friday, February 01, 2008
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Robert Morris University will launch RMUradio.com, a
student-run online campus radio station, on Monday.
Based at the Moon campus' Academic Media Center, the station -- at www.rmuradio.com
-- will feature music, news, sports and specialty programming, including a
call-in sports show, Hispanic music, poetry and simulcasts of programming from
campus cable station RMU-TV.
Robert Morris seniors Dan Murtha and Ron Hendrickson launched an Internet
station in 2006 and approached the university with the idea of starting an
official campus station.
During Monday's ribbon-cutting ceremony, the station will broadcast from noon to
2 p.m. It may be several weeks before the full programming schedule begins.
Eventually, it will broadcast about 10 hours of programming a day, with students
as hosts.
-- Adrian McCoy, Post-Gazette radio writer
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08032/853852-42.stm
KUWY 88.5 FM
Fri Feb 1, 2008 7:22 am (PST)
The Met Opera Radio Broadcasts Begin Saturday on Laramie
Classical Station
Jan. 31, 2008 -- The Metropolitan Opera Radio Saturday matinee broadcasts will
debut Saturday, Feb. 2, at 11:30 a.m. on Laramie's all-classical KUWY 88.5 FM,
with a performance of Richard Wagner's “Die Walkure.”
This is the Met's 77th season of world-class opera heard over the Toll
Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network, says Roger Adams,
Wyoming Public Media program director. He says the opera will be heard at 10:30
a.m. the following Saturday, Feb. 9.
Listeners can visit www.classicallaramie.org
for a schedule and other information about the Met broadcasts.
The longest-running classical music series in American broadcast history, with
Margaret Juntwait in her fourth season as host, brings the world's greatest
singers, conductors and artists to millions of radio listeners throughout the
United States, Canada, and Europe.
“We are proud to bring the Met to Laramie,” Adams says. “The Met
broadcasts from New York connect with a long-standing audience and new listeners
by providing thoughtful intermission features and interviews that capture the
excitement of live opera."
KUWY, Classical Laramie 88.5 FM, is a service of Wyoming Public Media from the
University of Wyoming, which operates the statewide Wyoming Public Radio (WPR),
the Classical Channel HD on KUWR-FM in Laramie and Cheyenne, KUWC-FM in Casper,
KUWJ-FM in Jackson, KUWL, Jazz Laramie 90.1 FM as well as associated Web sites,
podcasts, and streaming Internet audio.
For more information call Adams, (307) 766-4240.
http://www.uwyo.edu/news/showrelease.asp?id=20280
UL Monroe to be on 99.3 and Internet
Fri Feb 1, 2008 7:25 am (PST)
ULM finds new radio home for 2008 baseball slate
News-Star news services
The ULM Athletics Department has announced a new radio partner to broadcast its
regular season and postseason baseball games this season: The Peach, 99.3-FM.
Veteran play-by-play man Bruce Hanks will call all the action as the Warhawks
begin their second season in the highly competitive Sun Belt Conference.
The Peach is set to carry more than 70 percent of the regular season games on
the radio while the remaining games will be streamed live over the Internet. All
of the Warhawks Sun Belt games, in addition to series with Southern Mississippi,
Louisiana Tech, Grambling State, Centenary and Creighton can be heard on 99.3
FM.
"We are excited to begin a partnership with The Peach 99.3 for the 2008
baseball season," ULM athletics director Bobby Staub said. "To have
the complete 56 game schedule available either on the radio or on the Internet
is a tremendous marketing and recruiting tool for our baseball program."
ULM opens up the season Feb. 22-24 in Thibodaux for a three-game set with
Nicholls State. Following a single game at Southern Mississippi on Tues, Feb.
26, the Warhawks open the home schedule the very next night, Wednesday, Feb. 27,
against Louisiana Tech.
Season tickets are now available for the 2008 home season, which features 28
games. For more information or to purchase tickets call the ULM ticket office
Radio station is now available on the Internet
Sat Feb 2, 2008 7:42 am (PST)
Radio station is now available on the Internet
ATLANTA, Texas—KPYN Amen-900 radio is now available to listeners anywhere in
the world at www.amen900.com
The change is just one of many recently finalized at the Atlanta- based radio
station, including an implementation of a new programming schedule.
The schedule, which has kept its most successful program, “The Original
Trading Post,” intact, now includes talk show hosts Mike Gallagher, Bill
Bennett and Dennis Prager along with complete coverage of local high school
sports, Texas A&M Aggie sports and
Dallas Cowboys games. There are also special segments like the Orr Auto Ranch
Show, Live with the Atlantian and Food For Thought.
The station has been owned since 2005 by Robert and Meghan DelGiorno, who say
its greatest asset is its local appeal.
“Amen-900 tries to cover what the citizens of Cass County want to know about
and provide programming that matters to our listeners,” said DelGiorno in a
prepared statement. “We want to keep Amen-900 Cass County’s leader for news,
sports and weather.”
For more information, call Lisa Thompson, news director, at 903-796-2817.
http://www.texarkanagazette.com/news/localnews/2008/02/02/radio-station-is-now-available-on-the-in-46.php
Re: Radio
station is now available on the Internet
Posted by: "Paul B. Walker, Jr."
Sat Feb 2, 2008 12:07 pm (PST)
It used to be a Jimmy Swaggart-Family Worship Center
Church radio station, was the sister to deleted KALT-1610 Atlanta, Texas.
Posted by: "Paul B. Walker, Jr."
Sat Feb 2, 2008 12:11 pm (PST)
And for anyone interested.
Here's a "Conga Line" Style ID from The Son Life Radio Network
http://www.walkerbroadcasting.com/jsm.mp3
Apparently when they add a new station, they don't redo the ID.. they just
tack it on at the end... kind of like The La Nueva Cristiana Network run by
Paulino Bernal in South Texas.
Internet changing how you listen to radio
Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:42 am (PST)
Internet changing how you listen to radio
Posted By Saitz, Ray
Updated 4 hours ago
I've always been a big of fan of radio. Many people see radio as merely a
jukebox that plays a musical soundtrack interspersed with advertising and
chatter. However, many other people prefer a station such as CBC Radio One with
a format that highlights a wide range of interests from news to entertainment
and provides insightful interviews, documentaries, and fascinating programs.
Yet, no matter what type of radio format you prefer, the Internet is changing
how everyone will listen to it in the future.
The prime factor determining whether you listen to a particular station has
always been how far you are from the transmitter. But with a good Internet
connection the limitation of distance ceases to be a factor and you can listen
to radio stations from all over the world. Apart from the broadband connection,
you'll need a sound card and speakers on your computer, all pretty standard
equipment.
The only difficulty may be in finding a radio station. If you know the name of a
good one, you can do a Google search for its website. Otherwise, you can browse
the selections at a site such as RadioTower (www.radiotower.com), which has a
searchable database of more than 4,000 radio stations that broadcast on the
Internet.
A major problem with radio is that it's such a transient medium. Many of the
great radio programs I hear come and go, preserved only in memory unless I was
ready with a tape deck. Luckily, this problem faded when radio converged with
the Internet and a phenomenon called podcasting made its appearance.
The term podcasting is an amalgam of Apple's revolutionary portable music player
the Ipod and the word broadcasting. In essence, a podcast is an Internet audio
broadcast produced in the mp3 format by a major entertainment network, or an
individual with a laptop. The audio file can be downloaded and listened to on
any device that can play an MP3 file, which could be your computer, any portable
music player such as an Ipod, or even a cell phone.
It's also possible to burn it to a CD and play it on any home or car stereo.
Plugging into the podcast phenomenon is not overly difficult and, best of all,
it's usually free. The best place to get some first hand experience is at CBC
Radio's Podcast site (www.cbc.ca/podcasting). Apart from the huge selection of
podcasts, you'll also find the
Getting Started section which will assist you in how to download and play a
podcast. If you're wary of downloading anything, left click on the podcast file
name and Windows Media player may open and play the file without saving it.
The most advantageous way to take advantage of podcasting is to subscribe to a
feed, which means that any new programs will automatically be downloaded to your
computer when you turn it on. To do this you will need to download a podcatcher,
such as Juice (http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net) or Doppler
(www.dopplerradio.net). Links to get these programs, and instructions for using
them, are at the CBC site. You can search for podcasts to which you can
subscribe at a directory such as Podcast (www.podcast.net) or Podcast Alley
(www.podcastalley.com).
However, you can get everything from an easily searchable list of podcasts, a
podcatcher, and a player, all in one application. Itunes (www.apple.com/itunes)
is the free software for both Windows and Mac computers that lets people buy
music downloads from the Itunes store, but it is also a gateway to thousands of
free podcasts, including all of the CBC radio offerings. When you find a podcast
you want, a click of the mouse will download and play it and, if you wish,
subscribe and set a download schedule. Also, whenever you visit a website with
an Itunes subscription button, you only need to click on the button to subscribe
to the feed.
Radio will never be the same.
Ray Saitz, a Peterborough resident and teacher, writes a weekly column on the
Internet. He can be reached at rayser3@ cogeco.ca.
http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=898910
NBN: Whole Wheat Radio
Thu Feb 14, 2008 9:49 am (PST)
http://wholewheatradio.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Organic broadcasts
With Whole Wheat Radio, Talkeetna’s Jim Kloss sows the seeds of what might be
internet radio’s future
Story and photos by Katie Hecker
Jim Kloss slides out from behind a barricade of soundboards, computers,
microphones, and wires. Dodging folding chairs, cast-aside bunny boots and
crawling children, he makes his way to a digital camera set up on a tripod to
snap a few shots of traveling troubadour Randall Williams.
“This is amazing,” he says, almost to himself, as he rushes past. Once he
has his photos and the break between sets is coming to close, he dims the lights
again and heads back to his command station. All that illuminates the large
room—which smells of fresh baked bread and vanilla—are strings of decorative
lights and the occasional candle. A few of the 25 or so audience members are
finding their seats again, refilling their glasses with Kloss’s homebrew, red
wine, herbal tea, or coffee. In the lit area that passes for a stage, Williams
fingerpicks the opening notes of one of his traveling songs. Kloss, back behind
the soundboard, sits still for a moment and surveys his little patch of
creation.
Kloss is the founder of Whole Wheat Radio, an internet radio station webcasting
from just off the Talkeetna spur road. Tonight, the Wheat Palace—the
approximately 48- by 36-foot two-story log cabin that both Kloss and Whole Wheat
Radio call home—is playing host to the most recent WWR house concert. And
Kloss is in charge of, well, everything.
He’s a blur, padding quickly around the log cabin in his stocking feet, bright
orange hooded sweatshirt and fleece patchwork hat with his gray hair peeking out
at the edges. He runs from camera to soundboard and back again. He takes his
headphones on and off, joking with Williams between songs, monitoring the
in-house and online sound and typing reports to the audience tuning in at
www.wholewheatradio.org.
They’re listening from Pennsylvania and Mississippi, California and Texas.
They’re listening from pretty much anywhere, in fact, except Talkeetna.
“I don’t have a firm number,” Kloss says, “but I’m sure it’s 95
percent-plus that are Outside listeners.”
That means about 950 of the station’s approximately 1,000 registered listeners
are not from Alaska. The station doesn’t officially broadcast on the AM/FM
dial, but a hobby antenna does send the signal to a limited area (we’re
talking a few hundred feet). If you’re within that range you can pick up the
station on a traditional radio; for those of us outside that small radius, the
only way to listen is to tune in online.
In college, Kloss was as interested in video games as he was in going to class.
Majoring in geology at Bowling Green State University in the 1970s, he spent the
bulk of his spare time and spare cash on pinball.
When one of his professors assigned a project that required a trip to the
computer center, Kloss made the trip begrudgingly. He wasn’t, and still claims
not to be, a computer guy.
When he arrived at the center, he happened to sit next to someone playing an
archaic Star Trek video game. It was the ‘70s, so even the now-laughable
graphics of the Mario Brothers were a decade away. At the time, though, Kloss
was intrigued and tried the Star Trek game himself.
It was the end of his pinball career.
“Now all my money, instead of going to pinball, would go to beer,” he jokes.
“I would get a little tanked up and go into the computer center and play Star
Trek.”
Kloss thrives on knowing how things work and soon learned about and accessed the
source code for the game; from there, it was a short hop to changing the code in
his favor. He would rig the game, then get his friends together to play so that
he could summarily demolish them.
“I realized I could program myself to always win,” says Kloss. “That’s
why I really started to like computers. I realized I could, you know—” he
pauses.
“Control people?” I ask.
“That’s exactly it,” he whispers. “I could control people!”
Kloss picked up a minor in computer science. This unlikely combination is the
kind of paradox that defines Kloss: he’s equal parts tree hugger and techie;
he speaks of community and sharing with the same passion with which he talks
about digital distribution and intellectual property.
After college, Kloss took a job with Texaco working in the oil fields near
Midland, Texas. It wasn’t long before his interest in technology trumped the
geologist in him; he moved in from the oil fields to a desk with a computer. He
eventually left Texaco, who wanted him to have a full-fledged computer science
degree before he could advance
professionally. From there, he returned to his home state of Ohio to work for
Wendy’s IT department, which “didn’t mind at all” that he only had a
minor in the subject.
15 years later, the neglected geologist came back to haunt him.
“I realized that if I wasn’t careful, I would end up doing that the rest of
my life, and never doing the outdoors stuff, the stuff that I really love,”
says Kloss.
Following in the footsteps—literally—of generations of
wanderers-looking-for-meaning, Kloss quit his corporate job in 1991 and went to
hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.
He met Esther Golton on that trek, and the pair began a classic trail romance.
After the hike was over they settled in a backwoods cabin in Maine, paying for
the archetypal “simple life” with two or three months of work helping
friends with various computer issues. In 2001, when logging encroached on their
cabin, Golton and Kloss followed another dream and headed north and west to
Alaska.
Not knowing where they would settle once they arrived, the couple found their
new home by accident.
“There was a girl doing community service on the Parks Highway,” Kloss says.
“We asked her where a good place to find a cabin would be, and she told us to
go to Talkeetna.”
As luck would have it, a man was trying to find someone to look after his cabin,
20 miles north of Talkeetna. Two years later, Golton, a musician, wanted to be
closer to town in order to be able to play for audiences more regularly. Once
they arrived in Talkeetna proper, Kloss realized he would need something to keep
him busy.
“I’m not a builder, I’m not a carpenter. I don’t have any of those kinds
of skills. I do computer stuff, and I didn’t have anything to do here. So
[Whole Wheat Radio] was something for me to do.”
Kloss had discovered his love for the microphone as a volunteer at Talkeetna’s
local public station, KTNA, and dreamed of creating a show called the Whole
Wheat Radio Variety Hour.
“I’m actually quite a shy person,” Kloss insists, “but that’s why I
like the microphone. I can talk all I want.”
The problem was that there were things at KTNA that he wasn’t allowed to say.
That, coupled with the fact that he wasn’t getting enough of a computer fix,
pushed him to start a station of his own. He realized that there was something
to digital distribution of radio; as he puts it, “Airwaves are going to go
away. People are going to get their radio from digital transmission.”
So he and Golton started Radio Free Talkeetna, an online station that played
mainstream music that Kloss and Golton liked: The Who, The Beatles, “stuff
like that.”
When he discovered that he was required to pay royalties to play these songs,
Kloss was disappointed.
“I thought, ‘Gee, I just want to play music. I don’t want to have to pay,
I don’t want to set up a business; I just want this whole thing to be
fun.’”
Rather than throw in the towel, he and Golton decided to turn to independent
music recordings from musicians who have “retained the rights to distribute
their music, royalty-free,” he explains.
Golton thought that this moment of redefinition was a good opportunity to remove
their association with Talkeetna, at least in name.
“The town didn’t know or much care that this little internet station existed
in its midst,” says Kloss. With that, Radio Free Talkeetna was reborn as Whole
Wheat Radio.
Next they made an appeal to Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls. Kloss described the
project to her, and she responded by sending what would become the bulk of the
station’s library for a while: a box full of albums from her record label,
Daemon Records.
“That started things rolling,” says Kloss. “More people started tuning in,
more artists found out about it and started sending us their own CDs.”
Now, Kloss estimates that he receives 15-20 albums a week from artists around
the world.
Randall Williams is one such artist. He discovered Whole Wheat Radio “by
accident, when I googled myself,” he tells me. Williams was born in Louisiana,
raised in Columbus, Ohio, spent 10 years living in Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Now, he says, the closest thing he has to home is his van. Williams’s promoter
had sent his CD to the Whole Wheat Radio, and he had become a favorite among
listeners.
“I was amazed,” he says. “I had over a thousand listens and all these
fans. I looked at the site and my head started spinning with all the
possibilities.”
Williams believes that Whole Wheat Radio is tapping into the new direction of
business growth: associations, “click-throughs” as he calls them; it’s
Amazon.com, for example, suggesting that if you liked The DaVinci Code, you’ll
probably like City of the Sun. Whole Wheat Radio lets you know that if you like
Emily Kurn, you should check out Marian Call. It’s a similar arrangement, but
one that’s developed and maintained by the listeners themselves rather than by
a for-profit company.
Although Kloss might cringe at the comparison, the easiest way to understand the
current incarnation of Whole Wheat Radio is to think of it as the musical
offspring of Wikipedia and Facebook. Users sign up, log on, and create a profile
if they’re so inclined. From there they can chat with other users, post artist
biographies, rate and “tag” songs—that is, mark them as acoustic, rock,
flute music, upbeat, etc.; anything to help other Wheatheads discover new music.
It’s like Last FM, but specializing in non-commercial, ad-free programming.
Kloss designed, built, maintained and aired the original Whole Wheat Radio
website with Golton out of their 24- by 28-foot cabin in East Talkeetna—The
Wheat Hole, they called it. It was a consuming task, and Kloss’s autonomy and
complete control of the site were robbing him of free time.
“I had written custom software and I was the only one who could come in and
really do anything on the website,” Kloss tells me. “Well, that was great,
except that my entire life was sitting behind the computer.”
Early in 2006, Kloss realized he had to find a different system for maintaining
the website—particularly because he and Golton were on the brink of moving
themselves and Whole Wheat Radio to the Wheat Palace. He wanted the new building
to be a public space, and realized that he would have to hand over some control
of the website in order for that to happen; he appealed to his listeners to
shoulder some of the responsibility.
“I just woudn’t have the time to, you know, make coffee and talk to people,
sweep the floors, all that kind of stuff,” Kloss said. “I just cannot sit
there and do all this techie stuff all day long, so the wiki was a godsend for
me”
Some users of Whole Wheat Radio’s first format didn’t feel the same way.
When he made the switch, Kloss initially lost listeners. They found the new site
confusing and cumbersome.
But with the increasing ubiquity of Wikipedia, more and more people who
discovered Whole Wheat Radio recognized, and were familiar with, the structure.
Kloss says that he has more than made up for the initial loss in listenership.
“We just moved to a much bigger server, so now we could probably have 150, 200
[listeners],” says Kloss. “Before, if we had fifty people chatting at one
time the server would really start to bog down.”
Now that a larger audience is participating in Whole Wheat Radio, Kloss’s
duties have shifted from building the site to simply maintaining it. In the
morning he starts the fire, feeds the dog, and then logs on to check what
Wheatheads were up to last night. He fixes links, categorizes artists, and is
generally “making sure the site isn’t falling apart,” as he explains it.
Beyond that, Kloss increasingly depends on Whole Wheat Radio listeners to keep
things operational. And by and large they are stepping up to the plate.
They’ve helped him navigate the wiki software, setting up a more organized
homepage. They built artist
pages and song descriptions. If vandalism occurs, it’s corrected almost
immediately. The vast majority of the listener contributions to the site are
legitimate and well intentioned.
But that doesn’t mean that Kloss is ready to entirely relinquish his post at
the helm. Recently, he’s had to deal with a spate of quarrels in the site’s
chat rooms, and that worries him.
“I’m not willing to give up total control, or give up control at this point,
until I am certain that the people I’m giving up control to have the same
vision and mission that I’ve got.”
On a bright, cold Saturday afternoon in January, Kloss is stationed in front of
his computer when a friend and I arrive at the Wheat Palace.
“Hey! That must be Katie!” Kloss bellows from around the corner.
He offers us coffee, Costco pretzels, peanut M&Ms and asks if we’d like to
heat water for tea. As the afternoon wears on, he offers us a beer and suggests
a few good places to grab dinner.
When I ask him about where Whole Wheat Radio is going, he focuses on what’s
happening in the station’s physical space. He gets excited about teaching
computer classes to some of the less-than-tech-savvy residents of Talkeetna. He
talks enthusiastically about artists performing house concerts, upcoming wine
tastings, and hosting a caucus site for the February 5 presidential primaries.
He imagines a café, maybe a wine bar.
In other words, he talks about a lot of plans that have nothing to do with the
website. While implementing the wiki format may have forced him to sacrifice
some control over Whole Wheat Radio, he seems to have found a new energy in the
vibrant community that’s growing around him; he likes computers, he likes
music, and he likes his friends-and he’s managed to create an organization
that brings all three together in his living room.
Talkeetna resident Kris Perry exemplifies the Whole Wheat Radio that Kloss
envisions. Perry says was listening to the Randall Williams concert in his
kitchen when he thought “you know, I should head down the road and check it
out.”
It’s that exact combination of virtual and real worlds that Kloss gets excited
about—and, he reminds me, at the heart of it is the music. It’s what keeps
him interested and invested.
“If this was just MySpace or Facebook, I wouldn’t have any reason to get up
in the morning. I’d go to San Francisco and make money—make a lot of money,
thank you very much—for my programming skills.”
For now, he’ll stay in Talkeetna. He’ll try to balance his time between
visiting with neighbors who stop by to use the internet and have a cup of
coffee, and the Wheatheads from across the web who are chatting online. He’ll
continue to navigate between the spaces he’s created.
calendar@anchoragepress.com
or
khecker@gmail.com
Wave of jazz rolls into N. Y.
Sun Feb 17, 2008 9:28 am (PST)
Wave of jazz rolls into N.Y.
Saturday, February 16th 2008, 4:00 AM
With WQCD (101.9 FM) now playing rock music, smooth jazz
station KTWV (94.7 FM) in Los Angeles is reaching out to New Yorkers who would
still like some Grover Washington in their lives. The Wave has been running
spots on CBS stations here inviting New Yorkers to check out www.947thewave.com
. "We feel the appetite for
smooth jazz is still very strong in Gotham City," says KTWV veep Dan
Weiner. At 101.9 FM, there is still smooth jazz on the HD2 channel, which
listeners can pick up with an HD radio. Weiner hopes to get fans who listen
online and would like their smooth jazz from a station that's been doing it for
two decades - almost exactly as long as WQCD did.
AROUND THE DIAL: Christine Lavin guest-hosts "Sunday Breakfast"
Sunday, 8-11, on WFUV (90.7 FM), joined by Phoebe Kreutz ("Avenue Q").
... Daulton Anderson features "gospel music of the civil rights
movement" during his 10 a.m.-3 p.m. show on WLIB (1190 AM). ... Norm N.
Nite is the "radio great" Sunday night, 7-10, on WCBS-FM
(101.1). ... Dan Romanello's "Group Harmony Review" at midnight
tonight on WFUV will feature roots vocal groups of the '40s-'50s. ... John
Lithgow reads poetry tomorrow at 4 p.m. on WNYC (820 AM). ... Oscar Brand plays
campaign songs by people who didn't win, tonight at 10 on WNYC. ... WAXQ (104.3
FM) and Snapple are promoting blood
donations. Check www.pleasegiveblood.org.
Hawaiian Music thats NBN!
Tue Feb 19, 2008 7:53 pm (PST)
For some real mellow traditional Hawaiian Music from KKNE
940 go to http://am940hawaii.com/ and
check it out.
It makes me think of the years I lived on Oahu.
NBN from American Samoa
Wed Feb 20, 2008 11:13 am (PST)
http://www.khjradio.com/home.php
Re: NBN
from American Samoa
Posted by: "Phil Rafuse"
Wed Feb 20, 2008 11:24 am (PST)
Yes 93 KKHJ. The KHJ Boss magic lives on.
Robert W. Morgan and The Real Don Steele would be proud.
Phil
Tina Delgado is ALIVE
Re: NBN
from American Samoa
Posted by: "Paul B. Walker, Jr."
Wed Feb 20, 2008 1:43 pm (PST)
Larry Fuss has an EMPIRE out in American Samoa.
He's got, as you know, KKHJ-FM 93.1 Pago Pago (Pronounced Pango Pango)
He's rebuilding WVUV-AM and moving it from 648 to 720Khz
He's going to be building a new AM, KKHJ-900
He's reportedly buying a full powered FM Construction Permit
He's got an LPTV station on Channel 30
He's got two cable tv channels, one is music videos and one is local
information
he's opening a BBQ Restaurant in Pago pago.
Oh and here's something you might like:
http://www.walkerbroadcasting.com/kkhj.mp3
It's a Dual Station Legal ID that Larry sent me sometime ago. Can you spot the
second ID?
NBN KGUM from Guam
Wed Feb 20, 2008 11:40 am (PST)
http://www.k57.com/
NBN from where "Anericas Day Begins!" Hafa Adai!
NBN: US Mariana Islands Trust
Wed Feb 20, 2008 11:48 am (PST)
KWAW 100.3 Saipan
http://www.magic100radio.com/HTML/NewMain.html
Re: NBN:
US Mariana Islands Trust
Posted by: "longwave@comcast.net"
Wed Feb 20, 2008 12:21 pm (PST)
United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana
Islands.... a trust no more........I know I'm just being a PIA.
But I'm streaming it as I type it...Thanks for the cool links Kevin
Keith McGinnis
NBN: USVI streaming audio
Wed Feb 20, 2008 12:12 pm (PST)
WDHP Christiansted, USVI with Island music
http://www.reefbroadcasting.com/
Caribbean gospel music WEVI-FM St. Thomas:
http://www.wevifm.org/
WIUJ St. Thomas,.
http://nyc01.egihosting.com/9876
WJKC Christiansted
http://www.isle95.com/
WMNG Christiansted classic rock
http://www.mongoose1049.com/
WVIQ Christiansted Adult Contemporary
http://www.sunny995.com/
WSTX Christiansted
http://www.wstxam.com/
Get your Caribbean Islands fix!
At CBC Radio 3, podcasts reach global domination
Thu Feb 21, 2008 9:29 am (PST)
February 21, 2008
At CBC Radio 3, podcasts reach global domination
By Blaine Kyllo
On a wall in the Vancouver offices of CBC Radio 3 hangs a
map of the world with pushpins sticking out of it. Each pin represents a person
who has written to Grant Lawrence, host of The CBC Radio 3 Podcast. When the
Georgia Straight interviewed Lawrence earlier this month, he proudly pointed out
pins marking faraway places such as Iceland, Germany, India, and Easter Island.
One listener, Lawrence reflected while sitting on a couch in the Radio 3 lounge
area, had downloaded the podcast to her iPod in an Internet café in Mongolia,
and then listened to the show hundreds of feet underground while working in a
uranium mine. When she’s on hiatus, she lives a few blocks from Lawrence in
the West End. Canadians can be found everywhere in the world, and for many of
them The CBC Radio 3 Podcast is a lifeline to their home country and its unique
musical culture.
The term podcast comes from combining iPod (the Apple computer term that itself
comes from “portable on demand”) and broadcast, and refers to the content
and distribution. A podcast is a program— usually audio, but increasingly
video—that can be automatically syndicated to an audience. The first podcasts
appeared in 2004, but the format’s surge in popularity in 2005 led the editors
of the New Oxford American Dictionary to declare podcast the word of the year
that year.
The CBC Radio 3 Podcast was a first for the public broadcaster. Steve Pratt,
director of radio digital programming and CBC Radio 3, thought there was a good
fit between the New Music Canada Web site (radio3.cbc.ca/nmc/), which is
produced by Radio 3, and the newfangled distribution method. “We wanted more
people to hear the music,” Pratt told the Straight in a downtown coffee shop.
The artists who were streaming music on New Music Canada owned the rights to
their material, so Pratt and his team developed a waiver that asked for
permission to podcast that same music.
“Steve Pratt is always thinking way ahead of the game,” Lawrence said. When
Pratt suggested that he host a podcast, Lawrence’s response was, “What the
hell is that?”
“When I first got here,” Lawrence reminisced, “you edited interviews on
reel-to-reel tape and cut it with a razor blade and taped the tape together.”
Despite his reluctance, Lawrence started hosting the new program. After a couple
of weeks of shows had been produced and made available through a few podcast
directories, iTunes came calling.
Lawrence’s show was one of the only music podcasts that had legal rights to
the music being played, Pratt explained, and the Apple initiative was doing
everything it could to promote sales of the now-ubiquitous iPod. iTunes promoted
the CBC Radio 3 Podcast by putting it on iTunes Stores’ front pages in
territories around the world, and the downloads went from 400 to 20,000
overnight.
“The thing that blew us away,” Pratt admitted, “is that it’s all over
the world. We realized half our downloads were coming from outside Canada. There
are fans of indie music around the world who just like that music, and we’ve
got a great reputation around the world for a killer music scene.”
“For whatever reason, it’s clicked with people,” Lawrence said. “Radio
is a fairly intimate genre, and the podcast is even more intimate because
generally people listen on their headphones, so it’s straight into their
head.”
His podcast was the only CBC offering for about 18 months, but as the show’s
popularity continued to grow, more Radio 3 podcasts were introduced: Sessions is
an in-studio series with Canadian bands hosted by Tariq Hussain; New Music
Canada Track of the Day is, well, a track of the day; and The R3-30, a weekly
chart show hosted by Craig Norris and producer Pedro Mendes, has picked up steam
in the past year. Each week, Pratt said, between 100,000 and 120,000 Radio 3
podcasts are downloaded.
In the past year, there has been an explosion of CBC podcasts, from both radio
and television. Most, like Definitely Not the Opera, Quirks and Quarks, the
Hour, and the National, simply strip out elements that the CBC doesn’t have
permission to podcast, and
repurpose their broadcasts in podcast form. The CBC Radio 3 podcasts are
different because they are produced specifically for that purpose.
“We are a world leader in podcasting,” said Pratt, who in addition to being
the head of Radio 3 is also responsible for all CBC Radio podcasts. “There are
about 50 podcasts that you can get from CBC, and they are all doing really well.
There’s a growing audience every week that chooses to get their CBC
programming that way. We feel like we’re doing a pretty good job.”
Although CBC programming decisions don’t rest on how “podcastable” a
potential show is, Pratt said that from day one of program development, “We
talk about the different platforms that a show can live on, and we talk about
music rights, we talk about the way the show can be produced so that we can put
it out as a podcast as well as a regular program.”
New CBC Radio shows like Search Engine and Spark typify this kind of thinking.
These shows, Pratt said, were created with multiple platforms in mind: Web site,
podcast, and radio show. “We’re trying to take advantage of the fact that
they are shows, but they live in a lot of different places,” he said. Other
shows, such as Between the Covers, only exist as podcasts.
The problem, Pratt said, is that government funding for CBC Radio doesn’t
cover new-media initiatives. Ironically, the dramatic success of the podcasts
has threatened their very existence, because the CBC found that it couldn’t
afford to continue making them. This Catch-22 wasn’t about to stop Pratt,
though. “For us, we feel like this is the future,” he explained. “This is
how a whole new group of people are connecting and having their primary
connection to the CBC. We need to be here.”
Surveys indicated that not only did audiences value the podcasts, they wanted
more of them. However, they didn’t want to pay for the podcasts. They were
fine, though, with the idea of sponsorship, so Pratt came up with a plan to fund
the podcasts in this way.
Listeners, he explained, have given feedback that they appreciate that the
sponsor is helping the CBC to produce podcasts.
But you won’t hear sponsorship messages on the Radio 3 podcasts because
there’s no system of paying royalties to artists. Pratt said that until the
CBC can find a way to compensate artists, Radio 3 won’t be making money off
the music podcasts. But his team is working at devising a way for the artists to
benefit even more from exposure on the Radio 3 podcasts. “One of the things
we’ve heard from the audience is that they want to buy the music easily,”
said Pratt, “because there’s not a lot of places to buy this music,
especially when you get outside Canada.”
Despite not being compensated for their songs being podcasted, the Radio 3 shows
have become an essential channel of exposure for Canadian musicians. “Every
artist,” said Lawrence, “from Feist on down to AIDS Wolf, has seen the
benefit of what the podcast can do for them.” The waiver, though, gave some
artists pause. Lawrence admitted that it probably seemed like Radio 3 was asking
for a lot, wanting to play the songs for free. “What helped,” Lawrence said,
“was when the Arcade Fire said, ‘Yeah, you can. We see the benefit of
that.’ As soon as we started playing bands like the Arcade Fire and the
Weakerthans and the New Pornographers, it opened the floodgates.”
As a founding member of Vancouver band the Smugglers, Lawrence is no stranger to
the Canadian independent music scene. He believes that because more people can
hear Canadian-made music, the size of the audience for that music has grown.
“There are a lot of very successful independent Canadian bands,” he said,
and the difference between now and when he was playing with the Smugglers is
access to the music: “MySpace, podcasts, YouTube. Campus radio was limited,
because if you drove as far as North Van you’d lose the signal. In this new
age, a podcast you can take anywhere in the world. The Arcade Fire had tracks on
MySpace about three months
before their album came out. There’s just more accessibility, and people share
it.”
The numbers support Lawrence’s claim. Certification of gold records in Canada
is performed by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. Selling 50,000
units of a CD in Canada nets a gold award; a platinum comes with 100,000 units
sold. In the last seven
years, there hasn’t been a significant increase in the number of gold or
platinum albums by Canadian artists, but what has changed is the range of
artists achieving gold status. In 2001, for example, Nickelback, Diana Krall,
Our Lady Peace, and Sum 41 went gold. In
2007, gold albums went to the likes of Patrick Watson, Bedouin Soundclash,
Feist, and the Arcade Fire.
The difference between CDs and digital albums is also interesting. According to
Nielsen SoundScan figures for Canada, the top-selling CD in 2007 was Josh
Groban’s Noël, while the top-selling digital album was Feist’s The
Reminder. The Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible was number four on the digital-album
list. There is an obvious difference between what people are buying in
bricks-and-mortar stores and what they’re purchasing on-line.
Lawrence said the biggest impact his podcast has had is that he no longer has to
explain what Radio 3 is. “The podcast was our first real bona fide success
that crossed over into mainstream,” he said. “We’d been waiting a long
time for something to click.” According to Pratt, what helped was thinking of
Radio 3 as a content group, rather than a division defined by any particular
platform. “We’ve really focused on being experts in new Canadian music, and
we want to be where it matters to our audience.” On the Web, on satellite
radio, or on podcast, Radio 3 is there.
Despite his early reticence, Lawrence has become a believer in podcasts: “I
really treasure the show. We have a fantastic audience.” He talks about the
audience’s passion for the music and the show, their patriotism for Canada,
the fact that podcast listeners are
people who seek out new things and are on the go. He thinks the podcasts tap
into a collective consciousness. That his podcast has clicked with people, to
the point where there have been close to 10 million downloads, continues to
surprise him.
“We had one girl walk across Spain while listening to the podcast,” Lawrence
said. “They all send us pictures too, so we have all these pictures of all
these people doing these amazing things all over the world, and we’re the
soundtrack to their life.”
http://www.straight.com/article-132929/at-radio-3-podcasts-reach-global-domination
Public radio station changes signal
Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:35 am (PST)
Public radio station changes signal
By Jon Ruhlen - The Hutchinson News - jruhlen@hutchnews.com
DODGE CITY - On Tuesday, radio listeners in Dodge City attempting to find
National Public Radio had to move a little farther down the dial than they used
to.
High Plains Public Radio stopped broadcasting on its Dodge City translator
frequency, 92.9 FM. That frequency is now broadcasting a Spanish-language
station.
However, HPPR's signal in Garden City can still be picked up in Dodge City on
91.1 FM. The station upgraded its transmitter and raised its antenna from 700
feet to 1,000 feet last year, said HPPR executive director Richard Hicks.
The signal isn't quite as strong as the 92.9 translator signal was. It can be
picked up clearly on car radios and newer stereos, but people indoors or with
smaller radios might have difficulties with the signal.
"Service is available; it's just not as convenient as it was," Hicks
said.
HPPR has broadcast throughout western Kansas and into the Oklahoma and Texas
panhandles for years through a network of transmitters and translators. But
translators - lower-powered retransmitting devices - are not protected
frequencies under Federal Communications Commission rules.
Therefore, when a Kentucky-based company, Radioactive, bought rights to the 92.9
frequency in Cimarron, HPPR had to quit using that frequency.
Station officials had hopes for a bid to purchase a new frequency in the Dodge
City area when the FCC opened a filing window for noncommercial stations last
fall. Although the HPPR bid was initially approved, it had to be abandoned when
92.9 moved the station from Cimarron to a stronger tower near Dodge City. The
move meant there would be possible interference between the two signals.
Another issue is the fact that there's just not much room left on the dial.
"The noncommercial spectrum includes not just NPR stations, but all
not-for-profit broadcasters, which includes all the religious stations. The
spectrum is quite crowded in Dodge City," Hicks said.
He said the network has little choice but to wait for another filing window to
open at some point in the future.
"When another filing window opens is really anybody's guess," Hicks
said. "It won't be real soon."
HPPR also broadcasts via the Internet at www.hppr.org.
http://www.hutchnews.com/Localregional/radio2008-02-22T21-27-26
Radio Poderosa 1500AM KBRN. Live Studio Camera/Audio Feed!
Sat Feb 2, 2008 8:32 pm (PST)
For anyone who was following the conversation between me
and John and got
a little confused. here's the address:
http://www.radiopoderosa.com/
There's a live video camera in the studio which brings up a combined video/audio
stream.
And that’s it this month.
73’s, Martin
Shortwave
Radio. The long and the short of it.
By Ken Denmead February 06, 2008 | 10:37:00 AmCategories: Radio
And Kids
A cross-post from reader Matt Comstock's blog:
My son is working on his Radio merit badge. I’ve
had a shortwave radio for years, but I’ve never figured out when to listen and
where on the dial to look for stations. This gave me a reason.
This has been a lot of fun.
I’ve listened to Radio
Havana Cuba - they were talking about the School of the Americas, aka
the School of the Assassins (see http://www.soaw.org/)
I learned that China has been having some trouble
with snow on China Radio International.
I listened to a discussion of aboriginal
displacement on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that
sounded a lot like our own country’s history and Native Americans.
I listened to a couple of folks talk of the strange
things they’d eaten, riffing on the upcoming Year of the Rat on Radio Taiwan International, “Rat’s not
that bad.” They also noted in response to a listener’s letter, that the
reason they were off-the-air the other night was due to radio-jamming by
mainland China!
I heard a really really really bad cover of Radar
Love on Radio Nacional de España.
Here’s a couple of really good site for finding
out what’s on:
http://www.primetimeshortwave.com/
Here’s a really detailed discussion of radio
propagation and the ionosphere: Introduction
to HF Radio Propagation
A good book for schedules is Passport
to World Band Radio.
When you think about the radio vs. the web, it’s
hard to imagine that shortwave could last. In fact many countries no longer aim
their broadcasts toward the US (BBC
, Deutsche Welle) and I wonder if that’s
not part of it: online radio and podcasts are much cheaper than a huge antenna.
But no one can tell what you’re listening to on
the radio. And you can’t get web access everywhere yet.
Combine HF with the web and Open Spectrum gets
interesting? Or becomes amateur radio?
I am having a blast! My son? Not so much. What are
some good ways to pique a kid’s interest in Shortwave - or should listening to
static be its own reward. That is, if he’s not interested so far, will he ever
be?
Interestingly, he’s way more interested in
Amateur radio and actually talking to
people than in simply listening. I guess this is similar to our differences
in playing computer games - I like playing against bots, he likes playing with
foul-mouthed wackos online.
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/02/shortwave-radio.html
BROADCASTING: WHY AM STATIONS ARE DISAPPEARING
RADIO SILENCE: Kingston, Ont., is the
latest city to lose its AM radio stations, but it likely won't be the last.
Tired of stagnant revenue and tiny profits, broadcasters are jumping to the FM
dial every chance they get
GRANT ROBERTSON
MEDIA REPORTER
February 6, 2008
Almost
30 years of Ray Bergstrom's life have been spent as a disc jockey on AM radio.
But the most agonizing music selection he ever made came last month when he
chose Roy Orbison's It's Over to be
the final song played on Kingston's 960 AM.
Oldies
960 was abandoning AM for the smoother-sounding - and far more profitable - FM
dial. The station, owned by Corus
Entertainment Inc., would r emake itself as Lite 104.3 FM, and in January
the AM station signed off for good, sinking into a static abyss.
It
is a growing reality in the radio industry these days as broadcasters seek
regulatory permission to flip AM stations to FM, where profits and audiences are
bigger and the signal is more reliable in urban centres.
The
industry has seen the trend coming for a long time, but Kingston is ahead of the
curve. When Oldies 960 jumped, so did the other two AM stations in town. For the
first time since the dawn of radio there, AM is off the air.
"For people like me who
grew up in the sixties and fell in love with AM radio, it's the death of
something near and dear," Mr. Bergstrom said as he programmed adult
contemporary tracks for Lite 104.3's afternoon show.
Bittersweet
in so many ways for the industry, since most broadcasters see little future in
AM outside of the largest urban centres where news, talk and sports stations
find success, but music formats struggle to make a profit.
Most
of Canada's biggest radio broadcasters have either been approved to flip at
least a few of their AM stations in certain markets, or are awaiting clearance
to do so. Some other small Canadian cities, such as Thunder Bay, have also seen
t he AM dial fall silent.
Figures
kept by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission indicate
there were 178 commercial AM stations at the start of 2007. This is outside of
the CBC, which is a public broadcaster. However, at least a dozen stations a
year have been seeking to flip.
Were
it not for limited space on the FM dial in major markets, coupled with
restrictions on how many FM stations a company can own in any one market, AM
stations in Canada would be dwindling even faster, several broadcasters say.
In
addition to Corus, Rogers Communications
Inc., CTVglobemedia Inc., Pattison
Broadcasting Group Ltd. and the CBC are all looking to switch wherever
there's an unclaimed frequency.
"This
is going on in markets everywhere, and it's safe to say that everyone with AM
operations that hasn't found a profitable niche is looking seriously at doing
something about their AM stations," said Duff Roman, acting head of radio
for CTVglobemedia, which acquired CHUM Ltd.'s radio network last year.
At
stake is the profitability - if not the viability - of a station. The average AM
station makes $118,000 a year, while the average FM station pulls in $659,000.
Not surprisingly, the number of AM stations has been steadily eroding. The 178
AM stations represents a 40-per-cent drop from the 287 that existed a decade
earlier.
Meanwhile,
FM stations have more than doubled to 419 from 192 in 1996, owing to a mix of
stations moving over from AM and a willingness by the CRTC to grant licences for
new FM stations.
A
move by the CBC to shift several of its AM stations to FM, or at least operate
them simultaneously on both dials, has sped up the trend, some executives say,
since the CBC takes big audiences with it when it moves to FM.
"The
fact is, about 80 per cent of all people under age 54 do not listen to AM,"
said John Hayes, president of Corus Radio. "The CBC has been very effective
in moving their services to FM because they know that's where the audience is.
So we've been all over the commission to allow us to flip AM to FM where we
can."
The
CBC, which is applying to exchange its Vancouver AM station for three FM signals
that will cover the same area of southwestern B.C., says the move is more about
signal disruption than audiences.
"AM
still has tremendous advantages over FM on the distance it's able to
cover," said Ted Kennedy, chief of staff for CBC English Radio. "But
the issue we're having, and it's an issue facing everybody, is that with modern
construction techniques in major urban centres, AM doesn't penetrate the
buildings as well."
But
the biggest hurdle in big cities is scarcity of available signals on the FM
dial. In downtown Vancouver, there is only one spot remaining on FM and rival
broadcasters would also love to have it.
"FM
is a much more valued signal," said Rael Merson, president of broadcasting
for Rogers, which has converted stations in Victoria and Winnipeg. "When
the product you are selling is music, the quality of the audio is of paramount
importance."
Ownership
rules limiting broadcasters to a pair of English and French FM stations in any
given market also stand in the way of such aspirations. Coru s applied last year
to simultaneously broadcast one of its AM formats in Winnipeg on FM to get a
better signal in the city. It was turned down by the CRTC because the move would
have given the company three FM stations there.
Such
ownership and frequency restrictions may be the only thing keeping AM music
stations from being relegated to the history books.
"Let's
face it, there's a lot of people including my kids who have grown up never
having listened to AM radio, except when I forced them to listen to me,"
Mr. Bergstrom says.
Though
he did contemplate other tracks for that final song - including Steam's 1969
chart topper Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him
Goodbye, Mr. Bergstrom figured Mr. Orbison put it best when he crooned:
"There's someone new. We're through, we're through."
***
By the numbers
AM STATIONS (2006):
178
Revenue:
$320-million
Pretax
profit: $21-million
Average profit per station:
$118,000
FM STATIONS: 419
Revenue:
$1.09-billion
Pretax
profit:
$276-million
Average profit per station:
$659, 000
I am thinning
out the herd. If you need pictures, I can send them. If
the radios
don't sell here, off to eBay they go....
DX402 with
manual $50 plus shipping 150 -30000 kHz plus FM and stereo
out the
headphones. Has SSB.
DX390 150-30000
kHz plus stereo out the headphones and FM. Has SSB
and a plus of
FM SCA for those who might want to listen to the
reading service for the blind. Modified by Bruce Elving. $50 plus
shipping.
GE Superadio
III AM/FM good AM DXer. Unmodified so it has the dial
calibration off
like all of them. $32. shipped.
GE P721 beige
AM leather box radio fairly big and in nice shape. Not
for DX. Just
looks cool. $25 shipped.
Bendix
Navigator 420 DF radio LW/MW and HF to 4.5 MHz, leather case
and original
headphone. $25 shipped. May have manual for this somewhere.
RCA Victor
6-BX-63 5 tube portable radio, green. Working, has crack
in dial lens.
$20 shipped. AM and the other band is off.
GE 4576D[?]
dark brown solid state clock radio. Has analog Telechron
clock. AM radio
only. $10 plus shipping.
Westinghouse
827T4 AM tube table radio made in Canada. Nutmeg orange
and white. $12
plus shipping.
GE P736A four
tube portable AM radio. $23 plus shipping.
Sony SRF-42 AM
Stereo Walkman. Working, just add AA batteries and
headphones. $25
plus $5 shipping.
Optimus 16-184
hand held AM/FM/LCD TV $25 plus $5 shipping. Has box
and manual.
May have more
for sale later. Reply to amfmdx@qwest.net.
Good
afternoon!
A week
or so ago I received a Sangean HDT-1X. Initially it is quite impressive.
Today
was the first chance I had during this busy for me season of annual lodge
reports.
I have
a splitter from the roof TV antenna, which is not the greatest. I received 30 FM
stations using the scan function.
The 5
HD stations are:
93.3 KIOA
their main channel
100.3 KDRB
main and second program
102.5 KSJZ
main channel
106.3 KPTL
main and second program – HD-2 is “Smooth Jazz” and I have had it on most
of the day – nice break from classical
107.5 KKDM
main and second channel
It
seems that the audio quality on the HD stations is excellent.
Lacking
a good AM antenna, only 1040 (50 KW) – WHO and KXNO 1460 (5 KW) seem to have
HD. In experimenting a bit with 1460 the static, noise, QRM just disappears as
advertised.
The
following stations have RDS:
90.1
WOI-FM
92.5
KJJY
97.3
KHJH
98.3
KWPV
103.3
KAZR
104.1
KLTI
I
called and visited with a LIVE PERSON at Sangean; very pleasant. I made a
suggestion that component units have both the RCA plugs and also should add the
mini plug for convenience with that being used a great deal
By the
way, the public radio stations in Iowa went to a new arrangement, at this point
I refuse to call it a system, that is awful! The station I listen to more than
any other is WOI-FM. They were as professional as anybody could be. Again last
night, as has been happening since the inception of the new arrangement, went
silent for a good 10 minutes around 6:30 P.M. I finally called and a nice person
answered and when I asked if they were aware that ‘FM had been silent for 10
minutes the response was: “Oh! I just noticed that!” When a 100 KW station
sits silent for 10 minutes…. But – somebody at the state level thought that
they could save some money even thought they have successful fund raisers (I am
a member). I had about 40 years in BC including the coming of FM (Previous post)
and some experience with automation. One can only hope they get the bugs worked
out - PDQ!
Thanks to all for making this a very interesting list.
** U S A. Tnx
to Paul B. Walker, Jr., for putting on an impromptu DX test from
WABV 1590 in
South Carolina. Since he said it would run until 0630 UT Feb 8, it
was more
convenient for me to start listening after 0600 than 0500. I made the
great sacrifice
of hearing ESPN Radio with stupid sports talk for 15+ minutes,
and trying to
detect some signs of the DX test underneath, but never any sign
of it, so I
wonder if WABV really ran until 0630?
At least I was
rewarded by a new (?) log of a station I would otherwise avoid,
WAIK 1590 in
Galesburg IL, which did give a full ID at 0622, along with Sunny
97.7, WMOI
[COL: Monmouth], after which I upgave. Whoopee! Per NRC AM Log, WAIK runs only
55 watts at night, and it was
dominating the frequency! Could it be they forgot to switch from 5000 watts day
power? The least they could have done for WABV test. NRC Antenna Pattern Book
shows them with an almost circular pattern to the south of city only
WABV Test: I
listened from about 0500-0630 UTC, and aside from WAIK as well as a station
playing some unid mx, I didn't get anything that even sounded
like a DX Test
in here.
Willis played
the radio to me and I could hear sweep tone. Bob Smoak just called. Someone post
for me computer not in control room – Powell Way
I got sweep
tones at 12:23 from someone on 1240. I am in Southern
Indiana 40
miles northwest of Louisville, KY.
WKDK test not
heard 2,250 miles away in Gilbert, AZ via radio but perfect copy via NBN.
Heard here in
Rochester with ease - started listening about 0020, at which point WBIX was
apparently in regular programming from the CRN network (which is co-owned with
the station). Code ID at 0030.
Signal was
clearly audible, but neck-and-neck with KYW throughout.
I was hoping
for more Todd Rundgren, though (for those not aware, he's the favorite artist -
and then some - of WBIX's CE Grady Moates!
Heard here in Carlisle, North West UK. Morse and
voice ID noted at 0515utc. Problem here was splash from Italy on 1062.
I tried for it, but couldn't hear it here in
Abbeville.
I did catch The Mighty 1090 WHGG Kingsport, TN on
the air.. AGAIN.. later then it should be.
Did Anyone record the test at all and get
pretty good reception? My voice was used during the test and I'd just be curious
to how it all sounds on the air
No
reader submissions this month!
No
one got the bird this month!
ABDX
consists of:
Editor/List
Owner: Kevin Redding
Webmaster:
Michael J. Richard
Moderators:
Phil Rafuse
Powell E. Way III
LW
Editor: Jay Heyl
NBN
Editor: Martin Foltz
And
179 of the greatest DXing contributors on earth!
Please pass the ABDX
Journal to all the DXers you know. The dues are free and all we would like to do
is see you contribute your logs on occasion.
To join the DXers at
ABDX either go to this URL:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ABDX/
Or email dc2daylight at
gmail.com