** CHINA. 9860, Dec 27 at 2320, Firedragon jammer of traditional
instrumental-only music with lots of percussion, is S9+20/30 with
victim barely audible under, i.e. RFA Mandarin via TINIAN this hour
(Glenn Hauser, OK, WOR)

** COLOMBIA. 4940, Dec 28 at 0145, usual gospel huxtering in Spanish
from mystery missionary station, S7-S8 into Bonaire SDR. Here, it`s a
JBA carrier vs S9+10 HLNL, while by 0505 at Bonaire during devotional
of pious platitudes and then citing Lucas XVII, it`s S8/S9+ but quite
sufficient. Aoki/NDXC now lists this as:

``4940 0000-2400 CLM La Montana Colombia Spa Maicao 1-7``
And this has now been copied by aggregators such as short-wave.info/

But how were this name and location determined? Perhaps Ron Howard can
find out from his Japanese DX contacts. Maicao is in NE Colombia,
right on the Venezuelan border and on the main highway across the
northern tier, thus a prime destination for Venezuelan refugees or at
least visitors. Further north than the previous DF/guesses (Glenn
Hauser, OK, WOR)

** KOREA SOUTH. 9805, Dec 27 at 2321, Chinese at S9+20/30 with K-Pop,
i.e. as you would expect, KBSWR as scheduled this hour 100 kW at 205
degrees, so why is it inbooming over here? I guess this does not
provoke ChiCom jamming (Glenn Hauser, OK, WOR)

** U S A [and non]. WORLD OF RADIO 2066 monitoring: confirmed Sunday
December 27 at 2300.2 on Area 51 via WBCQ 6159.94v, S9/+20; IS & ID
loop was playing already at tune-in 2257.

Missed checking 0030 UT Mon Dec 28 on WRMI 7730; anyone hear it?
Confirmed no longer at 0130 UT Mon on WRMI 7780, instead Wavescan.

Confirmed UT Mon Dec 28 at 0230 on WRMI 5800, VG S9+15/20 to Bonaire
SDR, and 7780, S9+5/10 to UTwente SDR; also on WRN webcast

Confirmed UT Mon Dec 28 at 0450 the 0430 on WRMI 9955, VG S7-S9 into
Bonaire KiwiSDR while it`s only a JBA carrier here. Next:

1900vUT Monday IRRS 7290 Bulgaria to WNW, 594-Italy
0330 UT Tuesday WRMI 5800 to SSE [pre-empted for FSR]
2200 UT Wednesday WBCQ 7490v to WSW
2300 UT Wednesday WRMI 9955 [jammed?] to SSE
0130 UT Thursday WRMI 7780 to NE [pre-empted] [ex-0100]

Full schedule including AM, FM, webcasts, satellite, podcasts:
http://www.worldofradio.com/radioskd.html
WOR is always a SW program first, but as stations make it harder to
hear, I can`t blame people for accessing a reliable alternative.

Our non-commercial broadcasts and website depend on voluntary support:
thanks this week to Gerald T. Pollard, Raleigh NC, who sent a generous
Solsticial check in US$ on a US bank to
Glenn Hauser, P O Box 1684, Enid OK 73702 USA

One may also contribute via PayPal, not necessarily in US funds, to:
woradio at yahoo.com (Glenn Hauser, OK, WOR)

** U S A. 5950, UT Mon Dec 28 at 0300-0400, `Encore` of classical
music via WRMI, ex-9455, VG via Missouri SDR but somewhat distorted;
direct at 0354 seems less distorted at S9+20 but not enough to
overcome high local xmas noise level of S9+10. Also the transitions
between music and announcements are noisy as if surging automatic
volume control were engaged in produxion (Glenn Hauser, OK, WOR)

** U S A. 5085, Dec 28 at 0521, WTWW-2 is strongly on and modulating
rock music. Wolfgang Bueschel also noted the dead air earlier:
``some logs of Dec 26 re US private broadcaster. 5085even WTWW only
empty carrier signal at 0718 UT on Dec 26, and two accompanied
spurious strings seen on 5072.020 and 5097.980 kHz exact. S=9+30dB
powerful noted in Cape Canaveral FL, as well as on NJ and MI states.
Also accompanied by 60, 120, 240, 360, and 480 Hertz spur buzz strings
from the mains. wb`` (Glenn Hauser, OK, WOR)

** U S A. 830, more replies to thread I started, ``Why is WCCO 830
echoing?`` on the IRCA iog:

Mike VE7SKA cn88/B.C. Dec 24 #15359

``I too have been noticing the echoes on WCCO the last few evenings &
think Glen[n] probably has the answer that the station is testing a
second, auxilliary transmitter. Often echoes on the same frequency
indicate the same syndicated program is being transmitted on two
different DX stations with slight offsets or lags in audio. However,
in this case as others have noted, there are some differences in the
fades that can be heard indicating two transmissions in very close
proximity. 73 Mike, Salt Spring Island BC``

Scott Fybush Dec 25 #15381 IRCA iog:

``WCCO is one of the rare AM stations (I know of fewer than a dozen
around the country) with a full-power auxiliary transmission facility
at a different location. If you look on FCCData.org (by far the best
way to parse the FCC's databases), you'll see it listed under the
BXL-19991004ACA application - the "X" is the giveaway that it's an aux
license:

https://fccdata.org/?lang=en&appid=417231&facid=9642

As others have mentioned on this thread, this is a shorter tower than
the main one - 127.6 degrees at 830, so it will have different skywave
propagation characteristics from the big 194 degree main tower a few
miles to the south in Coon Rapids. (I believe the aux site in Ramsey
used to be a site for the 1470 station licensed to Brooklyn Park,
which has since moved elsewhere.)

Most of the former class A "clear channel" 50 kW AMs have shorter
auxiliary towers at their licensed transmitter sites, sometimes fed by
a completely separate transmitter, sometimes just with RF switching to
allow them to be fed by the normal transmission chain. (Which is
usually more than one transmitter - typically an older transmitter
will be retired to backup duty when a new transmitter arrives;
sometimes big AM stations run alternate mains, with transmitter A
operating for a week, then transmitter B, then back to A, which is a
good way to be pretty sure you have a working standby if the on-air
transmitter fails.)

In those cases, you'd almost never see the main and aux tower both on
the air simultaneously; even if there's a second tower, the RF
interaction between two towers both on the air at the same site would
start tripping alarms immediately.

Even in the rare cases with off-site auxes, there's usually some kind
of fail-safe that keeps both from running at once. Not that it *never*
happened at WBZ, but when the 10 kW aux site at our studio location
was on, we all knew it, because the co-located TV station started
complaining about interference to its video chain. (And now that site
is gone, anyway.) Here in Rochester, WHAM 1180 can't use its backup
site on one tower of sister WHTK 1280 unless the engineers manually
switch WHTK to non-directional operation from another tower in the
four-tower array.

All of which is to say: as nearly impossible as it is for a big 50 kW
AM to be operating simultaneously from two sites, WCCO appears to be
one of the very few places where it actually could happen - two
completely separate sites with separate transmission paths, neither
shared with any other station that would be affected, both operating
unstaffed most of the time, and no co-located studios where someone
would immediately notice the problem.

(And now I'm kicking myself for forgetting to check 830 at 5 AM ET as
I was driving in to WXXI for my airshift this morning. If you're
wondering, we have just one transmitter site, but multiple
redundancies there - multiple audio paths to get to the site, an
emergency studio/newsroom on site that we've yet to actually use, a
generator for power backup, a recent Nautel transmitter that's
actually two redundant transmitters in one, and a 1955-vintage RCA
transmitter that still runs like a charm and gets exercised on the air
now and then.)`` -- Scott Fybush, Rochester NY (via gh, WOR)

UNIDENTIFIED. 7719.5-LSB, Dec 27 at 2308, ``over`` in English just as
I get it tuned in, nothing further for a few minutes. Maybe military
such as MARS, but LSB make me suspect it`s a second harmonic from
``80`` meter ham band, i.e. from 3859.75; nothing there either at a
quick check (Glenn Hauser, OK, WOR)

UNIDENTIFIED. 7739.9, Dec 27 at 2308, JBA carrier S6-S7, nothing
listed on 7740; maybe Sound of Hope? (Glenn Hauser, OK, WOR)

UNSOLICITED TESTIMONIALS

``DX Juke Box on Thursday night from Radio Nederland was a "must hear"
on my schedule. I hand copied all of Glenn Hauser's tips, and marked
them in WRTH and White's Radio Log for "my personal targets to chase"
list. And now in 2020, I'm still chasing Glenn's tips, as well as all
of the input from this great group of dedicated DXer's. Thanks to all
of you, and I wish you all a Very Happy and Satisfying 2021! 73, Mike
Gorniak`` (WOR iogroup)

This report dispatched at 0600 UT December 28