[HCDX]: weekend DX

[wa1ion@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Mark Connelly)]

I did a bit of listening on the first weekend of the New Year.
This is just a quick report: full loggings will be sent later.  

>From Harwich, MA (3 JAN 1998), the longwave and lower-band medium-
wave signals from Europe were very good when monitored between 0345 
and 0545 UTC.  Instead of usual Netherlands on 675, I noted Arabic
music at 0425 UTC.  Has Libya moved there from 674 or may this be 
something else ?   Western Sahara on 711.05 was in with a booming
signal (killing WOR) with speeches and music parallel to Morocco
on 612 (which was also local-like).  Some northern Europeans,
such as Ireland-567, were coming through, but Spain and North
Africa had the strongest overall signals.  The Trans-Atlantic
stations on the upper half of the MW band weren't too strong:
there was worse domestic slop than on the lower frequencies.

At 1900 UTC / 2 p.m. local (3 JAN), the het from Saudi Arabia
(1521) showed up on the car radio: that's over 2 hours before sunset.

Luckily the weather was fair and mild (by January standards) when
I set up at Windmill Beach in South Yarmouth the following afternoon.  
I listened from 2140 UTC (3 JAN) to 0040 (4 JAN).  Low band southern
Europe / North Africa MW stations were strong again.  Senegal on
765 had a great signal and Burkina Faso - 747 made an appearance.
The Latin Americans were also coming in well.  A few of the more
unusual signals noted were a Spanish-language station on 732.25
kHz (weak), another unID SS on 961.3 and a buzzy / drifty carrier
on 624.  WSKO - RI (formerly on 789.8) is now on correct 790.0.
Barbados now has the 200 Hz low "channel" to itself and bits of
its 789.8 kHz signal were splittable from WSKO and the others
on 790.

High-band northern European signals (such as 1314 and 1422) seem to
have recovered by about 0130 UTC on 4 JAN (as noted on the car radio
in the Plymouth, MA area).

DXers should be aware that stations in the Arab countries may be 
operating on extended schedules now that the Ramadan month is in
progress.

73, good DX, and Happy New Year to all.
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