Report from: Bogdan Alexandru Chiochiu 4190 Edward Higgins Pierrefonds (Montreal's West Island), Quebec, Canada H8Y 3M9 (514) 685-0714 Equipment: Sanyo MCD-S830 with ferrite bar antenna Sangean CST-818 with long-wire in our interior yard Sangean CST-818 with telescopic antenna extended at maximum for FM
MW (or the "AM broadcast band" for persons like Louis Bouchard and Priscilla Plamondon-Lalancette who don't know what MW is all about): 530 TURKS AND CAICOS, Radio Visión Cristiana Internacional, South Caicos DEC 12 0055 UTC - Ads for churches, "Radio Visión" jingle. Great w/ some QRM from a computer in my neighborhood; SIO 433. (Chiochiu-QC) 550 VENEZUELA, YVKE, Caracas, DF DEC 13 0136 UTC - Political tele-talk from a correspondent, followed by promo with mention of news. SIO 322 under semi-local WEVD-VT with another semi-local, CHLN-QC, nulled completely with the ferrite bar antenna perpendicular to the south-east. (Chiochiu-QC) 555 ST. KITTS, ZIZ, Basseterre DEC 13 0050 UTC - Soca dance music. Poor to fair at best and the signal was a bit weaker when adjacent channel CHLN-550 was nulled with still some minor splash from sub-dominant WEVD, also on 550. (Chiochiu-QC) 570 CUBA, CMDC, Radio Reloj, Pilón DEC 13 0042 UTC - political news with clock ticks and Morse Code IDs. Often topping the WSYR Syracruse super-pest with no sign of HIMS; SIO 433. My best reception with the best readability of this station this season ! (Chiochiu-QC) 585 SPAIN, Radio Nacional de España, Madrid DEC 11 0020 - threshold level with what sounded like dramatic play. Very shortly audible. Surfaced again 0058 just before the top-of-the-hour with familiar Spanish rock tune extremely threshold, but definitively // with the Net stream (see below). Was surprized to hear them even at such weak and almost unusable levels, since the geomagnetic conditions seems bad and not even short-haul WICC-600 was audible at all. Not hearing *AT ALL* a short-haul signal and hearing TA audio is definitively intriguing ! Nothing on 1134, with adjacent NYC pest nulled, my only other TA regular. (Chiochiu-QC) 600 CUBA, CMKV, Radio Rebelde, Urbano Norris / prob. WICC-CT DEC 13 0118 UTC - Baseball game in progress. Topping completely this channel with a second station barely noted way under, with man talk, probably WICC-CT, since La Nueva Radio Ya was noted with SS Xmas ballad at this time on the http://66.225.205.22:80/ stream (try this, since hearing an actual ID under Rebelde and WICC may be tough; if you have local and semi-locals to your south around 730-740 and 620, then this Nicaraguan on 600 is your best bet for this country; for me nulling local CKAC-730 leads to some strong CHWO-740 from the south-west, so Sandino-740 or YNN-620 are out of question, 600 is my best bet for Nicaragua). (Chiochiu-QC) 610 CANADA, CHNC, New Carlisle, QC DEC 10 2038 EST - "Marcia Baila" by Rita Mitsouko French pop, then dual ID for CHNC and CHGR followed by No Doubt cover of Talk Talk's It's My Life, in WIP-PA null. Not tough to hear at all, but most interesting than a lot of the domestic talkers. (Chiochiu-QC) 670 unID, DEC 13 0021 UTC - Woman noted here with religious talk. Both WWFE-FL and YVLL-DF are suspected. (Chiochiu-QC) 750 VENEZUELA, YVKS, Caracas, DF DEC 12 0041 UTC - "beisbol". Very good at this time (SIO 444), but in mix with WSB barely 1 minute later (SIO 222 then). Also with baseball game the past evening (DEC 13 UTC) and mentioned on two occasions injury to one of the players. (Chiochiu-QC) 760 COLOMBIA, HJAJ, RCN Cadena Basíca, Barranquilla DEC 12 0031 UTC - Good peaks like at tune-in. Growl-QRM from 0033-0035. Growl-QRM from 0033-0035 and other times the past two evenings. Talk on "fútbol"; the Cartagena team is finalist. Tuned briefly away and when I returned to the channel, I found the main announcer talking about improvement in the team, not sure if the same noted followed by promos and ads, one of them mentioned "Cadena Basíca de RCN". After 0230, had the "Domingo Bolero" pgm. (Chiochiu-QC) 770 COLOMBIA, HJJX, RCN Cadena Basíca, Santafé de Bogota DEC 12 0056 UTC - Very briefly, for just a few seconds, with WABC, recognized one of RCN's commercial jingles. SIO 322 while it lasted. Rare ! No sign of the new Radio Rebelde outlet, the usual Latin occupant of 770. (Chiochiu-QC) 780 VENEZUELA, YVNM, Radio Coro, Coro, Falcón DEC 12 0153-0157 UTC - Presumed w/ a llanera song, followed by a gaita. Around 0157-0158, it faded. SIO 222 + DEC 13 0149 - Greetings to listeners for their anniversaries, one of them living in Punto Fijo and another one living in Coro. This is part of the "Discoteca del Pueblo" program ! (Chiochiu-QC) 890 CUBA, CMDZ, Radio Progreso, Chambas DEC 12 0046 UTC - Nocturno pgm; noted a fairly nice 60's Spanish rock tune at this time. SIO 333 at 0046. (Chiochiu-QC) 1320 CANADA, CKEC, New Glasgow, NS DEC 12 1618 EST - IDs and weather noted at a good level in mess with other co-channel domestics. SIO 433. Despite this relatively good reception, on this ENE direction, didn't note any TA MW DX, not even Spain-585 ! On the other hand, on the evening of DEC 10, despite conditions sounded slightly auroral and this station was completly absent, Spain-585 made the trip, at threshold to very threshold levels, but present and yet nothing the following evening (DEC 11). (Chiochiu-QC) 1380 UNITED STATES, WKDM, New York, NY 1620 EST - After hearing CKEC tune to this one; very loud with reaggeton music and man DJ. Lost at 16:23 due to pattern change (or power drop ?) relative to sunset in NYC. (Chiochiu-QC) SW: 6010 MEXICO, XEOY, Ciúdad de Mexico DEC 13 1301 UTC - Very tentative with man in apparent Spanish at a very weak level (SIO 141) and faded out completly barely one minute later. Radio Educación on 6185 was also weak and Rebelde on 5025 already faded. Couldn't wake earlier to listen to this wonderful station, but at 8 o'clock (1300 UTC) which is way too late, so I talked to a friend on phone instead. Maybe tomorrow !... Recording of this station made on Saturday morning will be available very soon, probably today. (Chiochiu-QC) 6200 CHINA, XIZANG PBS, Lhasa DEC 11 0256 UTC - Presumed with man in Chinese at a very poor level noted in passing. It's sunrise at this time in China, I believe. (Chiochiu-QC) 7055 DEC 10 1706 UTC - Ham; apparent "CQ-CAN" ID, then thanking a ham with which he was in contact; also talking about a contest about contacting as many Canadian cities as possible with at least one other ham; het from adjacent frequency in BFO. Heard other hams here too, but didn't listen attentively. (Chiochiu-QC) 15300 FRANCE, RFI French service to Africa, DEC 11 - 1606 UTC - News item about elections in Chile. SIO 411 at this time with awful local distorted overloading from the 1570 mega-pest, giving head's pain. (Chiochiu-QC) 15475 GABON, Africa Numéro Un, Moyabi DEC 10 1506 UTC - promo for a romantic pgm, intro of Black Box's Ride On Time 1990 house classic followed by a really great French rap tune (too bad I didn't had the tape running), then new-school reagge followed by more rap and reagge. At 1545 than man announcer which presented this music interviewed a young female singer. SIO 343 at 1306, but only SIO of 221 at 1345 due to some adjacent splatter. My long-wire antenna do not provide me much gain above 9 or 10 MHz unfortunately. New for me on this channel ! (Chiochiu-QC) FM (or USW for ultrashortwave): 93.9 unID 1106 EST - Ad for a car in and out, either a very short lived Es opening, MS or TrS. If it was TrS, which I suspect it was, then it is Ottawa. (Chiochiu-QC) First of all, we have another day of strike at school which is why I sent this report at this time. Latin American conditions on the regular AM band, especially last night, were quite good, not much above average and nothing exceptionnal, but it was nice to get Reloj on 570 at the best level yet for this season, relog Venezuela-550 and get a good peak from Coro-780. By the way, I'm preparing a tape report for Radio Coro. Do I have to place recordings all over the tape for having a better QSL rate ? Despite these nice catches, it was disapointing to not be able to hear Nicaragua-600 and signals were generally up and down. But it was way much better than last Saturday when the only foreign DX available was RVC, the usual Cubans and Spain-585 at very weak levels. Other disappointments was my inability to wake up before 8 o'clock this morning and the absence last night like any other night of XERTA-4810. Last night, instead of the usual noises which my DX friend George Maroti told me they are on USB (they could therefore be nulled with the BFO control in LSB position), I had fair-strenght overload distorted spur from the worst station here, CFAV-1570. I wish they fail and go off, seriously. They ruin DX on both MW and SW here. On FM, no skip yet, despite regular checks. Is Sporadic-E intense in the Southern Hemisphere these days ? On to the good things: I will be able to transfer the Mexico-6010 ID I caught on tape into real-audio as soon as possible, probably in the next dozens of minutes or hours. I also caught Chinese at very poor level on 6.2 MHz which makes for an excellent catche. Last, but obviously not least, I'll have the scan results this afternoon, probably by phone. They should and are certainly ready for today. The chances of this damned thing to return are excessively slim, but I'm still a bit anxious, though I should be much more optimist. We'll be celebrating this victory at the Mexican restaurant "Sombrero" in Kirkland. I went there a few weeks ago and both the food and the service were excellent ! I spoke with the owner in Spanish; he told me that my Spanish was as good as his. We talked a tiny bit and I told him about my hobby and about the fact I caught 3 XEs on AM (it was the week-end I got XEX and apparent Brazil on 730, with local CKAC nulled as much as possible) and suggested to him to try for two of the easiest Latin stations, Caicos-530 and RCR-750. He was extremely friendly. I really hope to meat him again next time. Be the good DX stuff with you ! Bogdan ---[Start Commercial]--------------------- World Radio TV Handbook 2006 is coming out. 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