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Portugal should be an easy country since there is not much land along the route
to coastal North America. The route is often enough away from the auroral zone
that signals can slide through even though absorption significantly reduces
stations from northern and eastern Europe.
Certainly adjacent Spain is well represented on the dial most early evenings
here, so what about Portugal?
Those of you who DX'ed from the eastern US and Canada in the '70s remember
booming signals from 665/666 (old plan / new plan), 719/720, 755/756, 782/783,
1034/1035, and others. 719 and 755 were car radio regulars for me during
sunset homeward commutes on Boston's elevated Central Artery (that was later
buried as the Big Dig / Tip O'Neill Tunnel).
What happened since is that the power levels of most Portuguese stations were
downgraded significantly. Some, like 1035, a former blaster, went dark
altogether.
I did have a fair opening that way on 2 NOV at 2200 UTC. Reviewing my
recordings I found a fair-peaks signal on 666:
https://app.box.com/s/gfhbobg66dh4d64yggos2l072iz018bq
Top-of-hour time pips are "4+1", in this case four longer ones and one short
one. These are lower in pitch than the "5+1" (five shorter and one longer)
pips characteristic of many other stations, most notably the RNE Spain
affiliates.
Parallels on 630 and 720 were also logged at that time.
630 has the 4+1 pips under WPRO.
https://app.box.com/s/pw0jue7nex3cqkaxggbderf4j1rpy9md
On 720, it's kind of noisy but the pips stand out.
https://app.box.com/s/zm37wdsd3toh3k4ye23flqqigxhl5c5e
Interestingly on 720 an hour earlier, the 5+1 higher pitch pips of RNE Canary
Islands predominated. The same results for RNE Canaries at 2100 UTC and
Portugal at 2200 UTC repeated several other nights on 720. Since there is no
serious 720 domestic activity until WGN and occasionally WRZN start coming up
after 2200 UTC, that channel is kind of a free-fire zone for international DX
from about an hour before sunset until after 2200 UTC / 5 p.m. EST. The demise
of CHTN is a gift that keeps giving.
The Portugal synchros on 630, 666, and 720 have 10 kW as maximum power. This
is quite a bit less than what these stations were running 40 years ago. That's
why nothing coming out of there, in the present state of things, will compare
in strength with the big honkers from Spain such as 684 and 855.
Mark Connelly, WA1ION
South Yarmouth, MA
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