venerdì 27 marzo 2015

Glenn Hauser logs March 26-27, 2015


** ANGUILLA. 6090, March 27 at 0147 check, CBB is on (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** GERMANY [and non]. D-AIPX is the unique call of the plane crashed into the Alps, as I have NEVER heard mentioned on any of the news about it. I had to look it up on flightradar.com Referring to it as ``Flight U9525`` is totally ambiguous as the same route and flight number has been and will be carried out daily by a variety of other aircraft which, let us hope will not crash (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** MEXICO. 970, March 27 at 0129, weak Spanish station from SW, fortunately close to the null against local adjacent 960 KGWA. ID as Radio Madera, automated timecheck for 6:29 by YL voice, mentions FM 96.1, back to music; 0132 next break another full ID mentions Chihuahua, 6:31 TC, more music; some CCI from an ABC station in English, NW/SE but mostly nullable; 0135 yet another break with ID, ads, gobierno del estado PSA; promo a show lunes a viernes 6 a 7 de la mañana; 0137 auto YL TC for 6:37; 0140 gone. No sign of XEJ Juárez which we have not heard for months and believed to be off the air. 

Instead it is the other Chihuahuan on 970, as in Cantú: XESW, Radio Madera, La Mera Mera, +FM 96.5 [sic], Cd. Madera, 5000 watt daytimer. IRCA agrees, yet schedule as 14-05 UT. 

Cantú also linx to station website http://www.radiomadera.com/
which acknowledges that it is on 96.1, not 96.5; and the 5-letter call for FM, XHESW is more like what I heard announced.

Where is Ciudad Madera (Wood City), anyway? It`s not in my Rand McNally; a larger atlas shows it in the remote west-central Chihuahua mountains, not far from the Sonora state line. And Cantú has this as the only radio station in the town, altho the website shows sibling outlets with corporate HQ in Chihuahua capital. 

A strange thing on the schedule, auto-displaying for Friday already: among the programs with titles are four other blox labeled SIN PROG., apparently meaning ``without programming`` --- so do they axually take breaks off the air? Those are at 07:00-07:30, 09:00-13:30, 15:00-16:00, 16:30-21:00 local, which per the TCs heard is still MST = UT -7, to become MDT = UT -6 the first Sunday in April, like the rest of Mexico beyond the Border starting a quadriweek later than in El Norte.  No, a full-week program grid shows no such breaks:
Also linx to the cheesecake-prone state journal Vozenred.com 

I`m wondering if Quintana Roo, since it alone last year switched to EST = UT -5 to be in step with tourists from eastern USA, will also switch to EDT = UT -4, better late than never, on April 5? Here`s a handy Mexico timezone map along with adjacent USA, showing current but not future situation, and linx to others:

Anyhow XHESW does have live streaming. And per Cantú, there is only one TV channel in Madera, relay Televisa-2 Canal de las Estrellas, XHMAC on channel 7 (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** NORTH AMERICA. 6876-AM, March 27 at 0055, as I tune in, music stops and synthetic YL with ``thecrystalshipshortwave@gmail.com`` address twice; fair signal, back to music, still at 0103, but off at 0135 check. Tnx to notification from John Poet a sesquihour earlier that the relay had just started. It was heard better by Stephen C. Wood in Massachusetts as late as 0110 (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** OKLAHOMA. 1520, March 27 at 0055 UT, I`m surprised to find a VG signal from KOKC, already back on the air within 24 hours of its towers being destroyed by tornado. Item from CBS News about a procedure the FDA has approved to turn brown eyes blue by messing with melanin levels. Then PSA from Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotix, 0056 ``News-Talk 1520, K-OKC``. 

How did they do it? Somehow load the single tower which was not downed but merely broken in two? Or swift change to some other site? Sounds like full power, in fact better than it had been before the disaster! There is less CCI from Rochester, but at 0112 UT, a tell-tale het on the hi side, no doubt Saudi Arabia, 1521, which I had not heard since sometime last fall. Presumably KEBC gets to resume its normal programming on 1560, but just after sunset it`s already lost in the QRM.

Paul B Walker forwards the answer: ``From KOMA Engineer Mike Fields via the I Take pictures of transmitter sites facebook group:

"we are on the air at 1520 kHz with new folded vertical radiator and a slightly modified simple L network. Makes 10 kW with 1.07 VSWR"

They are using a portion of the only remaining tower from 1520, the only one that didn`t collapse because of the tornado``

Regarding the additional info about this in my last report: strangely enough the story from Epoch Times is the Falungong, responsible for Sound of Hope and consequently pervasive ChiCom jamming all over SW (credits AP however as main source of KOKC story).

As for this one:
``They have also been in the middle of a major rehab of the station``:

Oops, the link went to some other station`s PSRA notification. One more number got cut off, should be, paste back together if necessary: 
This STA expires May 11, 2015. I imagine another one will be requested! (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** OKLAHOMA. So much for KWTV`s putting CBS Evening News on KSBI when pre-empted on KWTV itself: March 26 at 2230 UT, KWTV RF 39 is running local news mainly about tornado aftermath, both on 9.1 and 9.2, while KSBI RF 23, 52.1 (tho there is no 52.2), is in normal programming of some old sitcom rerun. At least tonight we do have NBC News on KFOR RF 27, and ABC on KOCO RF 7. KFOR website announced that the missed NBC primetime shows last night would be played overnight on coming Saturday and Sunday.

One other anomaly noted: RF 29 KTUZ, which has Telemundo on 30.1, Univisión KUOK on 36.1, and Estrella TV KUOK-CD on 48.1, instead is black and silent but fully powered on 48.1 around 2230 UT, but back in business as ``KOCY`` by 0220 UT March 27. I was suspecting the low-power RF 48 transmitter, if it exist, may have sustained antenna damage as well. There was tornado wreckage in other parts of OKC than just Moore, tho we hear little about it (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** PERU [and non]. 5980, March 27 at 0057, JBA carrier; my streetlite fires up at 0058; just before 0100, 5980 carrier is joined by a second one slightly offset causing a double-het with BFO, i.e. R. Chaski first, and BBC/UAE the second. Chaski cuts off about 0106:27* which is 15.5 seconds later than three nights ago, averaging 5+ seconds per (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) 

** SAUDI ARABIA. 1521, March 27 at 0112, tell-tale het against 1520 as I am surprisingly hearing KOKC already back on air after tornadic destruxion [see OKLAHOMA]. Should I call it UNIDENTIFIED, when it has to be the 2-megawatt pilot of trans-Atlantic DX? Quickly stepped thru the rest of the band at 9 kHz intervals, but the only other TA carrier was on 1503 at 0117. Identity of that is not obvious at all: biggest ones are 25 kW in Egypt and 200 kW in Iran. Soon is gone the 1521 het. Some other guys were hearing this last night with KOKC gone (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) 

** SRI LANKA. 11905, March 27 at *0113:10, SLBC carrier cuts on for about 10 seconds; this seems to be SOP as I have heard it before. Then back to stay from *0114:11; add prélude music at 0114:47; 2+1 timesignal ends at 0115:11.5, sign-on announcement. Only fair signal with flutter (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** U S A. 7505+, March 27 at 0146, no signal from WRNO when it is nominally on during prime-time (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** U S A. 970, March 27 at 0134 UT, as I am concentrating on XESW, see MEXICO, some NW/SE CCI IDs in passing like KXYL. Must really have been KSYL in Alexandria LA, 1/1 kW U2. Probably the same one as at 0130 UT with ABC News, per affiliation info in NRC AM Log (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

This report dispatched at 0424 UT March 27