THE HAMRADIO DOT COM

This season I have logged quite many MW stations from Puerto Rico. In the 1980s and 1990s I don’t remember hearing many of them in Pori. WNIK Arecibo was heard in the 5th of October 2012 with ID “Unica Radio 1230 AM” on 1230 kHz. WNIK is not the most common PTR-station – WCMN from same town on 1280 kHz is much more often heard here. V/s Jose G Garcia Gonzales replied to my email with very short answer: “saludos si es wnik 1230”. Well, it is clearly a QSL … and my first one from Puerto Rico!

WNIK has a live stream on USTREAM.

Radio Golestan from Iran was the first Iranian station replaying for my Farsi-language report directly from the station. Their Farsi-language email was translated in English with Google translate – same method I used for writing to them 🙂 In their short replay they were wondering how I could hear their station far away in Finland.

Vahon Hindustani Radio is a new (legal) Dutch MW station. They programme (short times what I have heard of) is quite funny: Hindi programme with Dutch “pirate style”. I tried to get QSL from their official email and then via Facebook without luck. Finally found email for QSLs and got nice replay from QSL Manager Koos Wijnants, who is a member of Benelux DX Club.

Romanian local stations are nice: local programmes are quite easy to hear and they seem to replay with QSL very well. I already got verifications from Radio Timisoara and Radio Tagru Mures earlier this year and now Radio Cluj sent their QSL. This is especially nice one because I visited in Cluj-Napoca few years ago. Verie-signer Florin Pruteanu verified my report with PDF-letter attached to email.

Another QSL for the reports of Petalax arrived. WYLL is a “Christian Talk” format station at 1160 kHz which was heard with the great signal on the 20th of October. This was my 10th QSL from North America this year.

One new experience for me during my Petalax weekend was to record and listen to Iranian regional stations. These stations are plenty, many not in WRTH and some still unheard in Finland. These regional/province stations usually give their station ID at 1530 and 1630 UTC – these are prime time for Iran DXer. Anyhow some frequencies don’t send local IDs – they play similar an hour interval-signal but give only a generic “Radio Iran”-ID.

During the Petalax weekend I was able to ID over a dozen of different Iranian local programmes. I have now sent few reports in Farsi directly to the stations but so far I have not received any direct QSLs. Some of those known email addresses have replied with “mailbox full”-message. My solution was to send a copy of my report to English deparment of VOIRI, Radio Iran. They replied quickly and promised to send me a QSL card via post. One of these locals was Radio Arbadil, transmitting on 1197 kHz (and few other frequencies too). I attach an audio file which shows what kind of identifications these Iran stations use:

1197kHz IRIB Radio Arbadil 201012 1530

As you notice, identifying is not so easy when we are talking in Farsi …

This blog has been silent for months and months. I have now decided to activate it, but not for ham radio like domain says. I will report here more about my BC listening results. I am currently quite active medium- and shortwave listener and it is very good combination with the ham radio activities. I am using nowadays Perseus SDR-radio and three longwire antennas 240 to 280 meters (50, 295 and 335 degrees).

I usually listen to mediumwaves in Viasvesi, Pori. Location is only some 5 miles from 600kW Pori (ex-YLE) MW transmitter, which sends China Radio International and some other programmes eg. between 0300-0700 UTC. As you can guess, it ruins much of my sunrise listening. So time to time I have possibility to use antenna farm of my friend Patrik PW/OH6GDX in Petalax, some 150 miles north of Pori.

In Petalax I was between the 19th and 21st October 2012. We had some interesting openings to Great Lakes area and to Iran (about that a bit later). One of the stations identified was WAAM from Ann Arbour, Michigan, on 1600 kHz.

News & Operations Director Dan Martin answered to my report quickly via email. Short replay confirmed that I have listening to their station.