[HCDX] foreign LW, MW, SW and Internet WiFi logs

[aurel chiochiu <acq@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Warm greetings to all of you !

The solar activity stayed quiet enough to allow for some feeding-frenzy 
reception the past night, here in the Montreal area. I had fair to good 
signals on 162, 171 and 183 and, believe it or not, Iceland-189 got VERY 
strong. The further north you get, the longer and stronger the half-daylight 
/ half-darkness grayline effect gets and Iceland is sitting right on the 
Polar cercle !

That being said, not only were the LW TAs really astonishing, but the MW 
Latins were so as well. While nothing properly from South America was heard 
during the last week, I had the pleasure, on Tuesday late night, to pick up 
WKAQ out of Puerto Rico on 580 kHz for the first time EVER in spring.

A drawback, albeit a small one, was the lack of any mediumwave TAs, but, 
hey, I'd rather hear the longwave ones anyway... Just for your knowledge, I 
tried for 549 Algeria (since CHLN moved, this frequency is relatively clear 
here) and 585 Spain to no avail... I can't listen to too many highband MW 
TAs, because the overspills from adjacent channel NA domestics are too 
harmful to the reception of such weak signals from accross the pond ! See 
below my comments concerning the possible purchasse of a better radio than 
what I'm owning right now...

Into the logs now:

Trans-Atlantic DX

162 FRANCE   France Inter, Allouis MAY 3 0310 UTC - with man talking about 
an undergoing litterature-related project, then a brand new oldfashionned 
French chanson, probably in the style of Bénabar, a singer of La Nouvelle 
Scène. Fairly good, amazing for the month of May when the darkness path is 
less solid than during the fall and winter months, though enabling more D 
layer absorption on the lower frequencies !!!! Some botheringsome static 
scratches, though these static craches are not as annoying as the powerline 
buzz with gives a painful lethal vaccine shot to my gorgeous and innocent 
ears. SINPO 45232 some fading, though as with every LW signal, the fading 
was VERY slow, slower than on MW or SW ! (Chiochiu-QC)

171 MOROCCO   Medi Un, Nador MAY 3 0410 UTC - a very eclectic and 
unpredictable music mix, as requested by the Medi 1 listeners. The DJ doing 
the request show was bilingual, French and Arabic. They even played "Without 
Me" by Eminem. Rising from very poor (S2 to S3) at tune in around 11 PM EDT 
(Eastern Delayed Time) to fair (S5) between 0400 and 0430 UTC (12 AM to 
12:30 AM EDT) with grayline enhancement, then almost suddenly lost to S1 
noises at 0430 UTC with the D layer absorption already undergoing, starting 
at 0430 UTC. This was the last LW broadcast signal to fade out ! 
(Chiochiu-QC)

183 GERMANY   Europe 1, Felsberg MAY 3 0328 UTC - playing "Hot Stuff" by 
Donna Summer, then back to the Laurent Rouquier contest show... One of the 
participants to the Laurent Rouquier show was a contemporary dancing 
teacher... The guys out there seemed amazing too see such an unusual guy 
trying to win their contest ! They even asked him a question about global 
warning... Fair to occasionally good on short and slow peaks, but I had to 
be very careful to copy out the content, as this fair-good signal was thrown 
in a bunch of distant T-storm static crashes ! For those new to my DX 
repports, this station is located in Germany, right accross the French 
border, but always broadcasted in French and never in German. The reason was 
that prior to the 1981 François Mitterand election, private radio was 
strictly prohibided from France and the very few people involved with 
pre-1981 French private stations had to run them from accross the border. 
Europe 1 is one such exemple ! (Chiochiu-QC)

189 ICELAND   Rikisútvarpid, Gufuskalar MAY 3 0320 UTC - Woman talking in 
Icelandic and playing obscure English-speaking oldies. VERY GOOD when 
detuned to 192 kHz in AM Wide mode or 191 kHz in AM Narrow mode for several 
minutes in a row ! I needed to detune in order to avoid a high-pitched growl 
on 188 kHz. I guess the Icelandic greyline is the only darkness path at the 
transmitter end at this time of the year... Wow ! (Chiochiu-QC)

4845 MAURITANIE   Radio Mauritanie, Noukchott MAY 2 2340 UTC - playing 
tribal African music with a very slight Arabic flavour... Poor, but fairly 
clear with minor utility QRM ! (Chiochiu-QC)

9550 unID Arabic station MAY 2 around 1930 UTC - playing Arabic music 
including Arabic dance music and religious talk with mention of "Allah" 
(God). I'm puzzled on this one, since my outdated 2003 PWBR (Passport to 
World Band Radio) does not list anything helpful ! +MAY 3 1907 UTC - Man 
doing fairly dramatic Arabic talk followed by an IS (Interval Signal), more 
Arabic talk, then what seemed to be Christian religious music. Weird ! 
unID...any ideas ? (Chiochiu-QC)

9575 MOROCCO   Medi Un, Nador MAY 2 2350 UTC - playing a flamenco influenced 
raï vocal in the style of Radio Tarifa followed by an Arabic dance music 
number. Poor using the connecting cable close to our longwire to very good 
(but fadey) when completly connected to our longwire until blowed away by 
Romania sinnging on with the RRI English service on 9580 kHz after the 
Africa Numéro Un sign-off when completly killed by huge China-9570 and huge 
Romania-9580 without the possibility to slightly detune from either QRM 
offender on the low side or the high one ! (Chiochiu-QC)

9580 GABON   Africa Numéro Un, Moyabi MAY 2 2330 UTC - Very poor signal 
noted in passing with music. When the solar activity is very low, the 
nighttime propagation on 9 MHz is poor because the strength of the F layer 
isn't very robust ! Adjacent Morocco-9575 was better, because the path to 
Morocco had less darkness. At this time of the year, the daylight holds 
longer in Morocco than in Gabon ! Morocoo has a subtropical clime, while 
Gabon has an equatorial clime and is almost sitting on the geographic 
equator ! (Chiochiu-QC)

http://fr.radiocontact.be/page/radio-contact-live-on-air/15.aspx BELGIUM 
Radio Contact - French service, Bruxelles APR 27 2045 UTC - "Le Patoche 
Club" -> inside this openminded talkshow known in French as "libre-antenne" 
a medium named Mohad was calling on the station to say he saw the Iraq war 
before actually happening and was trying to tell the Belgium gouvernment to 
give the USA's Bush administration an ultimatum for peace, but they didn't 
listened him. Therefore, he was trying to obtain money from the Belgium's 
gouvernment ! Patoche, amazed, was trying to understand him, asking him more 
details about other bad events the medium was able to predict succesfully. 
+APR 27 2115 UTC - "Le Patoche club"; with the jock Patoche at this station 
receiving a phone call from a 15 years old youngster named Loïc who failed 
to merge a relationship with his loved one because his "half" thought he was 
too smart for her. At the phone, Loïc seemed very shy and was almost crying. 
Patoche was trying to understand him... One listener argued Loïc and Mohad 
were the same weird guy trying to fool the jock ! Excellent Hi-fi stream ! 
SINPO 55555 ! (Chiochiu-QC)

http://www.radio21.ro/site/Radio21Live.m3u ROMANIA   Radio 21, Bucharest MAY 
3 1847 UTC - playing "Desire" Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) vocal smash hit 
by Morris & Play & Win, followed by the "We'll Be Burning" Sean Paul 
well-known Dancehall ragga hit, then unknown "All I Want Is Your Kiss" 
dance-pop number, followed by an English spoken ID "Radio 21, your fun 
station", then a commercial R&B number "I'm Taking Back My Love". This 
station is famous for having an all-English jingle package ! Their only real 
show is their normingshow "Fabrica Dementa"... Aside from it, they are a 
fully automated Rhythmic CHR station which playes maybe 5% of rock, the rest 
of 95% of their music programming is either R&B, Dancehall, Latin or 
electronic dance music ! Excellent Hi-Fi stream ! SINPO 55555 ! 
(Chiochiu-QC)

http://www.medi1.com/player/playlist.php?p=real_player MOROCCO  Medi Un, 
Tanger MAY 3 1922 UTC - End of the last U2 single, the the female jock was 
talking about how U2 manages to build at the same time electric and melodic 
tracks, then introduced the last song before their 1930 UTC lengthy French 
newscast ! In my WiFi DX repport, I wrote "Tanger" instead of "Nador", 
because while the LW/SW transmitters are located in the city of Nador, the 
FM ones are scattered through the country and judging from the Hi-Fi sound 
they put into my computer speakers, they must stream the feed from a local 
Tanger-based FM transmitter ! Almost excellent Wi-Fi stream ! SINPO 45555 ! 
However at 1931 UTC, the connection went bankrupt and now I'm enjoying 
silence...lol. (Chiochiu-QC)

Pan-American DX

555 ST KITTS   ZIZ, Basseterre APR 30 0410 UTC - Very weak, realying BBC 
World Service. (Chiochiu-QC)

580 PUERTO RICO   WKAQ, San Juan APR 30 0405 UTC - with ID sounding like 
"Mega" or "WKAQ 580, la emisora (¿que te trae?) información é analisis". 
Very good with slight QRM mainly from WTAG Worchester, MA in CFRA null ! 
First time ever I'm listening to Puerto Rico during the OFF-SEASON SPRING 
MONTHS ! Semi-regular during our fall and winter months though ! 
(Chiochiu-QC)

600 CUBA   CMKV, Radio Rebelde, Urbano Norris APR 30 0403 UTC - with woman 
doing fairly dramatic chatter in Spanish, sounded cultural related. Good, 
but mushy signal with some fading and CKAT QRM. SINPO 43522 ! (Chiochiu-QC)

640 CUBA   CMBC, Radio Progreso, Guanabacoa APR 30 0407 UTC - with man 
talking about the city of Matanzas (a Havana suburb, east of the capital) 
followed by old-fashionned Cuban music. Briefly good, then faded down to 
very poor and mushy with domestic QRM from WNNZ and/or CFYR (AM 640, 
Toronto). SINPO 42522 ! (Chiochiu-QC)

http://200.6.157.20:8034/listen.pls VENEZUELA   YVNM, Radio Coro, Coro, 
estado Falcón APR 27 2230 - "La Informadora 7-80" with the news announcer 
talking about several cases of porcine flu in Colombia and in Spain ! 
Average stream, fairly Lo-Fi ! SINPO 45354 with a slight buzz in the 
background but the stream was in stereo; apparently using the Motorola 
C-Quam AM Stereo system which enjoys a certain degree of popularity in 
Venezuela ! A frequent catche DX wise, though lately conditions toward South 
America have been inexistent... I don't have a Motorola C-Quam AM Stereo 
receiver at this time, but I beat at times they will be strong enough to be 
picked up here in the Montreal area with a fairly clear stereo sound on 780 
AM ! As far as this Wi-Fi log goes, entering the URL address into your 
Winamp's URL fonction, is the only way to listen to the Radio Coro's stream. 
The stream link on http://www.radiocoro.com/ has broken, as the web-site URL 
has expired since a few weeks ! (Chiochiu-QC)

Additionnal comments:

Boy, was I excited to receive both Europe and North Africa so late in the DX 
season... Unbelievable ! I always dreamed, since I came up here, to receive 
broadcast signals on bands NOT used in North America such as the 153-279 kHz 
LW band, the SW tropical bands of 120, 90, 75 (a regional band in Europe and 
a tropical one in Africa and Papua New Guinea !) or 60 meters and the 
OIRT-FM band 65-75 MHz ! Why ? It's hard to explain, maybe because those 
frequencies weren't featured on most radio which only had MW AM and CCIR-FM 
and it was like gold for me ! Now with all the IBOC hash all over the AM 
band, DXing the longwave or the shortwave bands is more appealing than ever 
!

I'm leaving for Romania on the 15th of May and will probably carry the PK's 
Shielded Magnetic LW loop with me in order to see how far I can get on LW in 
a country that has only one LW broadcaster, albeit a very big one, on 153 
kHz !

I'm also looking forward meeting Romania's top DXer, Zvartoshu and I should 
do a priest in order to allow a huge sporadic-E opening to coincide with my 
visit ! I'm already subscribed to its softpedia radio-related messageboard 
and yesturday, while listening to either shortwave radio or Internet 
webcasts, I posted my first two messages !

At the end of March, another fairly excentric guy, at least as excentric as 
I am, with roots in both Brazil and Angola, came to my house and after a 
succesfull demonstration of huge, albeit routine mediumwave DX signals, on 
the Sanyo MCD-S830 barefoot, we promised to meet sometime in downtown 
Montreal to look for some used receivers. There are some "sweet spots" in 
downtown, at La Armée du Salut, where they sell old radios. Maybe after we 
get back from Romania in early June, if we don't find an affordable 
communication receiver sometime soon ?

As far as my equipment goes, I see that the telescopic antenna of my Sangean 
818 is almost beginning to die... If I place it on a weird position or if I 
play too much with it, I seem to loose almost all SW signals and most of the 
weaker semi-locals on FM... I also see that most of the empty FM frequencies 
in my area have this awful and really ugly CBF 95.1 / 105.7 Rythme FM (ex 
CFGL) mix which I didn't had before to such a botheringsome extent ! I 
wonder if there is a solution with it... The telescopic antenna does not 
appear to be broken, just weaker in terms of performance and...well...more 
fragile. It seems for some unknown reason that for good SW reception, both 
the telescopic antenna must be in a good place and the random wire attached 
to a Yagi I never used must be connected; if one of those elements is 
missing, then reception is abysmal !

I was hesitant to replace my Sanyo and Sangean receiver for one main reason: 
I love airchecking ! Both the Sanyo MCD-S830 Hi-Fi portable and Sangean have 
tape decks and what I love the most about this hobby is taping, especially 
the music and the jingles and playing back until I learn them by heart or 
until I get tired of them !

Is there any way to aircheck from a Drake R8B... It's not impossible we'll 
purchase an used one for EBay... After all, it is thanks to EBay, we were 
able to purchasse the PK loop and it is thanks to this loop I got involved 
in LW broadcast DXing...

That being said, if someone friendly is finding an used receiver, I would be 
glad if he could let me know. It will be 10 years next year, since I'm 
involved PROFFESIONNALLY in this hobby and I don't want to miss out weak 
signals. I just want to know if there is a receiver even better than a Drake 
and more important HOW TO RECORD WHAT I'M HEARING... I see most DXers only 
want to pick up as many stations as possible, but for me the program content 
is very appealing. I see myself somewhere between a hard-core DXer and a 
SWLer (though LWLer or MWLer would be more correct).

I saw lots of encouranging comments regarding Kenwoods and Icom... I see 
that the Perseus receiver is top-shape, but it is probably too expensive for 
now... Still, it wouldn't hurt to learn more about it.

Another thing I NEED to find on EBay until 2012 when the sun will probably 
be exploding once again would be an OIRT-FM tuner or maybe a Japanese one. 
F2 is more likely to reach 65 or 76 MHz than 88.1 where our FM band begins 
and I have a local on A6 with the sound right on 87.75 MHz, so between 87.5 
and 88.0 I will never receive FM DX here (at this QTH) !

I had some DX related dreams during the last night. Bruce Conti was 
complaining he miss badly the solar storms and the huge auroral openings 
toward South America related to them with North American and European 
signals suppressed on mediumwave and the fact he can't understand exactly 
why the Sun is quieter than it should be, as we are slowly moving away from 
the "theoretical" solar minimum... Well, after the above-average late-season 
longwave Trans-Atlantic opening of the past evening, I only wished it has 
occured in December... I already begun to love things from the other side of 
the pond a bit more than the ever-familiar tropical sounds coming from the 
next shore of the Caribbean sea !

I also dreamed I was able to pick up HCFA2 Radio Tropicana on 540 kHz from 
Guayaquil, Ecuador...

It's been a long time since I last had any radio-related dreams, perphaps 
because during most of April, as buzzy with schooling as I was, I did very 
little in the way of DXing until the last couple of days ! Another reason 
for the relative lack of DXing was some slight solar activity, too slight to 
produce auroral enhancement toward the south but not too slight to allow for 
good east-west paths ! Since the 23rd of April, however, the solar 
activity's A indices stayed below 5 and the K ones hover around 1 or 2 which 
seems almost perfect for east-west paths on longwave ! As far as the exams 
goes, I was lucky to be able to squeeze out some time for DXing and for 
repporting here, as the next week I will be almost visiting Hell ! I have 3 
exams on Wensday between 9 AM and 4:30 PM, so wish me good luck ! Adding to 
that, I become member to a Romanian messageboard which has a DX-related 
section on it, so don't be mad if you don't hear from me too often during 
the next couple of months... That being said, if I happen to come accross 
something OUTSIDE North America on 88.1 - 107.9 MHz FM via sporadic-E, 
you'll be the first to know about it ! My most likely target would be the 
Bahamas which has strong stations on 104.5 and 100.3. I still have the FM 
tuner Mike Bugaj gave to me several years ago and I will do my best to take 
the dust out of it and to connect it to the Yagi in our fairly big backyard 
when I comeback from Romania... We tried to do some antenna work the last 
summer, but due to record-breaking rain storms, our plan never could be 
accomplished ! For now, during the last weeks of May, hearing exotic FM DX 
would be easy since Romania is within 1Es from several fairly exotic Middle 
Eastern nations !

Last, but not least, while extensive studies may prevent me from writing 
down on a piece of paper my logs, I will do my best to at least LISTENING, 
if NOT REPPORTING those elusive catches that are still there year-round on 
the lower frequencies, as Mark Connelly told me several times "the DX season 
never really dies" and I will do my best to catch my first sporadic-E FM 
opening this year before flying to Romania.

This repport is brought to you by Bogdan Alexandru Chiochiu, DXing from 
Pierrefonds (Montreal's West Island), QC
Equipment used: Sangean ACS 818-CST / PK's Shielded Magnetic longwave loop 
COMBO for LW
                         Sanyo MCD-S830 / internal ferrite bar antenna 
COMBO for MW
                         Sangean ACS 818-CST / random wire in our yard 
COMBO for SW

May the good DX be with you !
Bogdan Chiochiu
Btw. I: Apologies for having send some Internet logs, but to the ABDX online 
group to which I'm a member since January, the Internet "WiFi" logs are more 
than allowed; they are even encouraged... There is even a section for WiFi 
DXing in the ABDX publication !
Btw. II: If you know a place on the web where I can discuss medium-priced 
used communication receivers for 1 kHz TA splits, if you know a website with 
critics regarding receivers tuning LW, MW or SW and if somebody could guess 
what's the name of the arabic station I'm getting on a regular basis on 9550 
kHz at this time with a poor to good signal, please let me know... Thanks ! 


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