LOGS / NEWS - OCTOBER 2014 A site mainly dedicated to Mediumwave Dxing |
| 980 | CHRF | MONTREAL, CANADA |
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| 1240 | WBAS | WEST YARMOUTH MA |
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| 1340 | WLPL | LOCKPORT, NY |
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| 1470 | WBTX | BROADWAY, VA |
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MW DXING - A BIT DULL AND UNINTERESTING: Nothing to report, although I am still listening every day. Yes, sure, I hear powerhouses like WWKB, but I have heard these kind of things on portable radios from time to time. I am chasing mw dx, and there just doesnt seem to have been the conditions since the 14th!! Now that was a good day.
LINKS TO TAPE COLLECTIONS: If the conditions remain poor, I will be distracted back into the archives here and find some interesting old tapes to transfer over to MP3. Luckily I am not the only person to do this. JEP who I used to swap tapes with in the 70's / 80's has recently posted some large mediafire folders. The folders are for Caroline 1970's, Caroline 1980's, Laser 558 / 576, and Radio Atlantis from the Dutch coast in 1974. Also at the same time Achim in Germany posted some links to his old recordings... The links are below.
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4x6uyud44w1bd/1970s https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1438te3jp0wuh/1980s https://www.mediafire.com/folder/m3pwn373m5m3h/LaserHotHits https://www.mediafire.com/folder/3r08vo6zs466b/Atlantis
http://www.radioachim.de/freeradio/audio/offshore/ http://www.achimbrueckner.de/freeradio/audio/160kbps/ http://www.achimbrueckner.de/freeradio/archive/
I have had almost nothing of significance to report here re dxing, since the 14th October, but for one interesting early fade in on 21st. But I have been hearing a carrier this last few days or maybe even the last week or so, on 980. It was particularly strong on Monday morning. Last night, it finally burst into life and identified itself. Initially I heard the music and the FF, and alerted dx neighbout Paul C up the coast to a possible interesting station. We listened and messed about, wondering if it was Algeria or something, and tried to check for // on 252!!. It was Paul that came up with the answer from Google I believe it was. I don't think I would have got the French id bar for his better grip on French than I have. (NB ff = French, ee = English, ss = Spanish on this site). It turns out this is a new 50kW station from Montreal, CHRF "Radio Fierte" formerly planned to take over 990, when the ESPN station in Montreral moved to 690. After a few problems, it seems they were allocated 980 instead, and the first tests are now being heard. CBV was formerly on this freq in Quebec. Looks like this is going to be a strong pest. Some web sites report that it is a 10kW allocation on 980, down from 50kW on 990. Details are scetchy at this time, and it wasn't even on the Topaz list.
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THE 13 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS : Anyone who was a Caroline listener in the late 70's and to be more exact Christmas 1979, will remember these two little songs made by the guys on board. These are made up from a MW recording, so quality isn't 100%, and I think the thirteen days of Christmas was given too much echo or something....... So incase you can't make it out, here is what I hear for each day, listed below. Maybe not 100% with Steven Bishop??
1st A half a dozen very noisy Dutch!! 2nd Merry Captain Harris 3rd Randy Kees Burrel 4th Our very own Chicago 5th Tom Hardy with his boring punk rock (YEEEUUUK...LOL) 6th "Hello John" I'm Busby 7th Saucy Stuart Russel 8th "Good Afternoon" Stevie Gordon 9th Hippy Tom Anderson 10th Little Nick Richards 11th Fatty Steven Bishop 12th Mike in the night 13th A man called Roy 5593716
Now who can remember all of these names??? I know that I personally know them all very well. Buzby, Stuart Russel, Tom Anderson and Steven Bishop are all still involved in Radio Caroline as she is today. Nick, Stevie and Chicago all go to the conventions. I was just listening to Roy Masters the other night on a remote tuner, when I was on the Perseus in Ma. I was looking, and found a toth from the 1240 stn WBAS that I heard here on 14th. I had a tune around, and came across Roy on 950. He was calling the leaders scum and generally sounded in very good form. But wait. This man was born in 1928 and is 86 years old!! Not a bad voice for 86, and sharp as a razor!!!! But who does not recognise the rest of the above names? I know most people I know will have heard none of the above names. Why would they if they listened to BBC or ILR crud in the 70's. I was told only recently about some insignificant ILR presenter from London that had done something or other, and a link was posted to me from a news service. I had never heard of this character. Why would I? He may be important to someone, but not to me I'm afraid. My interest in ILR is nil. Always has been. I don't even think I would know many if any of the names on the local ILR stations up this way come to think of it. But ask me of the guys that were on the Mi Amigo, or the Ross, or some of the Irish pirates in the 80's and the names I was familiar with way back 30 odd years ago in the 80's are probably still etched in my head. Amazing.
At 2130 Tuesday night, the band was quite lively as noticed by STU. I wouldn't even have checked at that time, as the band has been very poor this last few days. But there they were. An early opening, and Daytimers being heard. 1380 WABH , 1280 CFMB, 1590 WHGT, 1350 WEZS NH so far. Yet A/K indicies were pretty high. A I think was about 17, K 3. It is good to hear the French QRM off air, and freeing up 1380 as well as WDEA 1370 being more in the clear. Can I be hopeful and hope it stays off....UPDATE: QRM back on by 0400!! Signals never really got stronger as the night went on. They stayed the same or indeed got worse, so I have no spectacular dawn to report. This seems to have been a one off interesting early fade in.
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A FEW MW LOGS: 820 Radio
Cuidad Cuba id 0604 19/10
Stations are: 1020
KDKA
RTE have announced a postponement of their anticipated 252 LW closedown. Why I wonder?? You are either closing or you aren't. Like the BBC pretending to close local radio MF channels last year. Did any one of them stay off??? I saw on the web last night some reports of other stations being heard on the 252 freq of RTE. There was a distinctive tone being heard here, and at first I wondered if it was deliberate to try and persuade listeners LW was really a noisy medium. After all these punks were the ones that jammed the Irish pirates on in the 80's with out asking for permission to do so from the authorities. Not only did they use FM, but they used MW, as well as UHF links. So they are not shy of ridiculous projects of very dubious legality, at the expense of the public. Anyhow I later went onto a remote Perseus receiver in Italy and discovered a strong tone on 252. No trace of RTE. Was this Algeria on the way back to 252 LW??? Maybe they have heard that RTE is closing 252, and that the channel would have been perfectly clear?? Radio Algiers used to use this freq for their English broadcasts, but since 1989 or 1990 when Atlantic 252 began, it was hopeless in the UK. YLE Finland also used to use the freq as well for their English broadcasts!! The 1985 WRTH for example lists Finland as 200kw, two USSR sites with 150kW, and ALGERIA WITH 1500 / 750kW. The latest lists mention only RTE as active, so they have had a free run. Back to the tone. It was heard last night, up to 0100, but seemed to be off air through the night, though back at 0500 GMT. Let's hope it is going to be a pan European oldies or rock English language broadcaster that takes over the freq and not the holy quoran!! Pipe dreams!! A few of their clips are given below, including a couple of clips with the Algerian test tone .
The Voice of Spain, Spanish Foreign Radio or whatever they call themselves this week are closing tonight. The time given was 0000 on 15th Madrid time. Can I asume they are not closing on the 15th?? As midnight tonight is 0000 on 15th?? The last English transmission goes out at 1900UTC, I believe. I will be checking 2100 on 9660 as well though incase there are any more English broadcasts. UPDATE: The English language programme from RTVE tonight on 9665 at 1900 was abysmal. I wonder who can actually listen to a 20 minute interview with an unknown poet that thinks his offspring still listen to tapes at home, and a 30 minute interview with some random bookseller. Riveting stuff. This was supposed to have been the final English broadcast to Europe, but this was not even mentioned once. They even read out the sw freq sched at the end!!!! There was not even a historic half hour or so dedicated to the history of sw programmes from Spain. Why I wonder?? The last broadcast sounded more like a Radio Tirana broadcast. In fact the Voice of Iran was just HF of them rambling on about Islam and crap religion. No wonder I dont pay much attention to International Broadcasters. I seem to remember the final English broadcast from Radio Sweden was also particularly dull, considering their history of being one of the most popular sw stations on the international bands.
Leaving SW for ever seems to mean nothing to some of these radio stations. They can't even be bothered to tell listeners they won't be back tomorrow night. No wonder they have had the carpet drawn from under them. I was sent a link to an on line recording of the last broadcast to North America. This at least had reference to the last broadcast. It wasn't uploaded as a simple download though, but as a playback on line only thing. If you want to keep the full broadcast, you have to listen in real time and record it. How wonderfully quaint and backward.
MW
DXING:
570 WMCA
NY GD 0600 14/10
1330
WRCA.
930 CFBC
I have been a bit hasty as well to delete files I think. I meant to save a few clips, but some that I never saved are gone. Radio Disney 1560 for example had a so called syndicated test of the emergency procedures. There was none of the other big blowtorches from NY taking part, which makes me wonder in a real emergency, who would be listening to 1560. 7 year olds?? It certainly wasn't syndicated. I do wish I had kept the Perseus file for that one.
790 A
barrage of stns here at 0300 13/10 usually splattered by local
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