Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Shortwave DX Report from Australia

Special thanks to Bob Padula for sharing his monitoring observations from Australia. What are you hearing from your part of the world ?

As at Feb 28 2012, solar update from IPS, Sydney:

Solar Flux 105
Equivalent smoothed sunspot number 54.

Classified by IPS as low.

Yesterday afternoon, I was in the Warrandyte State Park, 15 km from central Melbourne, about 25 mins drive time from my home here in Mont Albert, and did some propagation research with the little Eton E5 and 3 m of random antenna, from the Jumping Creek Picnic Ground, on the banks of the Yarra.

Plenty of action on 9 MHz and 11 MHz, dominated by longpath signals from Europe, Africa, Middle East, and shortpath from Asia and the Americas.

This is the summary of key occupancies, as noted between 0400 and 0430 (1500 to 1530 local Melbourne summer time)

9410 CYPRUS BBC Somali to 0430*
9490 CHINA PBS-Xizang, Lhasa, English news and features during daytime broadcast
9500 IRAN VOIRI Arabic
9560 CHINA PBS-Xinjiang, Uyghur, via Urumqi, daytime frequency
9655 TURKEY VOT English
9675 COSTA RICA REE Spanish
9705 ETHIOPIA National network
9755 IRAN VOIRI Hebrew to 0430*
9765 ROMANIA RRI Spanish (on late schedule)
9805 IRAN VOIRI Dari
9835 MALAYSIA RTM Kajang Malay
9855 RWANDA DW-Kigali English
9895 IRAN VOIRI Arabic
11620 INDIA Urdu to 0430*
11625 MADAGASCAR Vatican Radio, Talata, French
11640 TAIWAN RTI Chinese
11665 TAIWAN RTI Chinese
11690 S. AFRICA R. Okapi, Meyerton, French
11730 UZBEKISTAN NHK-Tashkent Farsi to 0430*
11765 BRAZIL R. Tupi
11885 TAIWAN RTI Chinese
11870 IRAN VOIRI Hebrew from *0430, dominating co-channel WEWN
11905 CHINA CNR6 Amoy
11925 BRAZIL R . Bandeirantes, rare daytime appearance
11935 CHINA CNR5 Chinese
11940 FRANCE R. Tamasui via Issoudin, Arabic/Sudanese
11950 CHINA PBS Xizang, Lhasa, Chinese
11980 TURKEY VOT Turkish

Some modest action observed on 13 metres:

21480 CHINA Jammers for RFA – RFA not audible! RFA seems to alternate between 21480 and 21495 0300-0600 on different days.
21540 MARIANAS RFA-Tinian Chinese
21570 PHILIPPINES VOA-Tinang, Tibetan
21725 AUSTRALIA RA-Shepparton English (low level signal here, as groundwave from Shepparton

Regards from Melbourne, home of Australian Rules Football!

Bob Padula