Monday, November 30, 2009

King´s Village DX-Station, November: 4KZ Ingham, Qld, Australia!


That´s it - the X-bander 4KZ finally has been noted several times this fall, although I have had several "fights against the nature" with BOGbiters trying to eat my Far East Bog! The station has usually phone-in shows at nites and sometimes with very marginal signals it is easy to recognize during the TOH with interval signal music and time pips before the news. The best reception has always been during my local sunset around 14.30 - 16.30 UTC. It seems 4KZ has been so far the easiest catch although not so easy - 500 Watts AM and about 14.000 kilometers distance is the reason. I know some special conditions has been noted in the North (Lapland´s DXpeditons), but the situation is a bit different down here.
By the way - the Finnish Immigration Museum near Seinäjoki has received a house (hut) from Ingham last summer. It is an old sugercane workers hut of Finnish immigrants in Australia built in the 1900th century. Obviously it was not only Italians but Finns doing the cane cutting during that time. The barack will be rebuilt at the museum village next summer!
The article of the project is also at http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2009/01/08/2461654.htm

Thank you very much for the email from 4KZ, the director of 4KZ - Al Kirton says "For some reason, we seem to receive quite a few reports from the Scandinavian region" - that´s right - Scandinavia is certainly a densely populated area of guys trying to pick up distant signals on AM! Another email from the station (Thank you Anthony Palmer - Maintenance Supervisor) contains some photos, here is a 100 Ft tower of the Ingham transmitter (1620 AM). Thanks guys down there!




Saturday, November 28, 2009

King´s Village November DX-Station: 2 days left!


The selection of the November DX-Station will be in two days. Recent DX will be rather difficult especially towards North East / East not only because of the BOG-biters, but also due to the current global warming (?) with continuing rains has made by BOG now into a BUW (beverage under water) at least at the beginning of the wire - the picture shows the beginning of the BOG before the rain - some snow was still there up to about 14th November.
One Philippino what was finally IDed in November: 1160.9 DWCM Manila. Seems to be pretty regular altough current conditions favor stations more North and of course China! Ni Hao!
Stay tuned!

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Fight against the Nature - BOG Biters!


In October I tried several times to get even something from the Far East and Australia on MW-band. I installed the BOG as usual on the cultivated field (to about 45 degr./NE). The simple antenna is about 250 m long, yet enaugh to bring something from NE direction and whats more important the noise level (mostly from the telephone lines near by carrying ADSL-traffic) is pretty low.
But the wire was destroyed several times in October - sometimes to several pieces - and it turned out to be rabbits / hares testing their teeths to my BOG! So nowadays I call these animals "BOGbiters".
However I have managed to do some DX although also the European QRM seems to be stronger this year.

Anyone who likes to check the band from 909 kHz to 1701 kHz (October 19th 15hrs UTC, there are of course a lot of Europeans, some Chinese etc but a few Aussies on X-band - 1620 the strongest - and on 1548 ? - but something sounds like English on 1233 as well? - Please send your comments to me if you find something interesting) can do by downloading the Perseus file of 30 seconds at:
SPR_091019-1450_01305kHz_001 150002 150032 .wav

PAPUA -NEW GUINEA ON 90 MB


Like Indonesia, Papua was an interesting target with a lot of stations on 120, 90, 75 and 60 meters in the end of 1900 century. Well, there are fortunately still a few stations left on 90 mb. Usually in winter period almost all active stations can be heard - some better durinf their morning broadcasts around 19 - 20 hrs UTC and some during the evening b´casts around 12-13 UTC. I made a scan of these in October while visiting my QTH at Haapavesi. The stations heard can be seen on the picture with offsets frequencies (+-1 Hz). There is a missprint on the picture - please note that .99xx means below the nominal while .0xxx is above!
Around 13 hours utc RRI 3345 had a break of a few minutes making possible to listen the TOH of the Papuan on 3345!
The best reception of these was on 3290:


If you want to check the band yourself you can also find a short Perseus file at 13 utc on 4shared:
90mb_2110_13ut_000 130045 130130.wav