[IRCA] DXing and cruising - part one

[Theo <theod@xxxxxxxxx>]

Today, I finally read through Walt Salmaniw's post a week ago describing 
his efforts of listening at sea.  Nick Hall-Patch had suggested that I 
post a rundown after seeing my description while cruising back around 
the western Indian Ocean in December.

First, I'll agree with Walt about how quiet ships can be once you're 
outside their superstructure.  The major problem is to find a spot on 
deck out of the wind, and with enough light at night for scribbling 
notes.  Then there's the curiosity factor.  One on my latest trip -- see 
below --was especially hilarious.  Early last year while travelling from 
Sydney to Valparaíso, I was on an upper aft deck on the 'Sea Princess' 
in the late evening north of New Zealand, trying to determine whether R. 
Fiji had managed to activate 990 kHz. An officer suddenly appeared and 
watched me pace (in and out of the only lights) with the PL-380 for a 
minute or so before deciding I wasn't about to jump. I guess I was 
picked up by a surveillance cam somewhere.

I tried to post all this as one piece but it failed to appear.  So to 
two brief reports I sent off to the 'New Zealand DX Times': the first 
about a circle cruise out of Mauritius in December... and the second, an 
unforgettable segment from Cape Town to the Canary Islands in February.  
The receiver was a stock Tecsun 380:

"I spent 14 nights on a circle cruise of the western Indian Ocean out of 
Port Louis, Mauritius during the second half of the month.I should have 
had Douglas Johns on hand to figure out what was going on in Mauritius 
as my 2016 WRTH listings for FM didn’t seem to match up with 
reality!Three AM’ers are active: 684 (in mostly brief daytime checks) 
had a good but not overpowering signal where I spent a couple of days 
pre-cruise on the SE coast, and was carrying Kool FM in French (the 
other French service on FM only was Radio One, pronounced as in EE) – 
819 had a thumping signal at Blue Bay near the airport and appeared to 
be carrying Best FM in Hindi, plus short bursts of Chinese – and 1575 
was poor with BBC World in English.I’m guessing 684 and 819 still share 
a site near Curepipe so why there’d be a noticeable difference in 
reception is a good question.My taxi driver to the ship was an 
entertaining elderly gent who was intrigued when I asked about the 
station on his radio (Best FM).He pointed out the former MBC building as 
we passed through Curepipe but they now have a massive building closer 
to Port Louis, and just as importantly he pointed out the nearby Phoenix 
brewery after asking whether I’d tried the local beer!Do you need any 
answer to that?On board, my dinner sitting was late so any evening 
checks were in the region of 10.30 pm and later – either 1830 or 1930 
UT, depending how far west we were.Very casual observations basically 
boiled down to lots of Iranians and Arabic stuff on MW; VoA 909 from 
northern Botswana was a powerhouse along with the parallel on 4930 – the 
Beeb on 3255 and Sonder Grense 3320 were easy pickings any night – and 
once we were on East African Time/UT+3, my check turned up presumed 
Madagascar at very poor strength/modulation on 5010.Also surprising was 
how weak RN Angola was on 4950 – ditto for ZBC/11735.Thurs 21 Dec, the 
evening before the ship’s call at Zanzibar, it was covered by a 
religious outfit in Portuguese till 2000 UT; is there really a 50 kW 
Brazilian called R. Transmundial as listed in the WRTH and Aoki? A 
hugely dominant African on 6090 was presumably Kaduna.One evening only, 
999 had a Slavic language (I can’t tell the difference between 
Russian/Ukrainian) and since returning home, I think that must have been 
TWR/Kishinev-Grigoriopol which is listed as having a weird schedule. 
Another evening, 4965 had Voice of Hope from Zambia thundering in with 
its American-style presentation, never to be heard again, till I 
realised after looking at Aoki that they use the frequency Mon-Fri only 
and my re-checks had been on weekends. Gee!The Friday morning in 
Zanzibar, I was on deck about 8 am and 585 and 6015 were definitely on 
air.During a shore tour, I asked the local guide during a stop north of 
Zanzibar Town about how far we were from Dole?Eyes glaze over – tourists 
ask strange questions -- till I mentioned ZBC… ah, we’re ‘in’ Dole… the 
tx site was maybe ten mins drive away, but banana palms and other trees 
kept any sighting, um, out of sight. The first two calls had been in the 
Seychelles; I’d recalled there should’ve been a MW tx still on-air, but 
never heard it, so maybe it isn’t?The other major highlight (for me) was 
the call at Mamoudzou on Mayotte’s Grande Terre, in the Comoros. I took 
a ferry across to the old French colonial capital at Dzaoudzi and 
wandered to look for the now ‘Mayotte Premiere’ location but never found 
it.Anyone with an old ORTF QSL card for 3331 will have a view of the 
causeway.The last call was La Réunion: no MW as the two tx’s (and the 
one on Mayotte) closed during 2017."
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