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.
CQ 160m contest CW part was this weekend. I just worked a bit here and there, total operating time maybe 3 hrs 45 minutes or so. Only NA worked was VY2ZM, who was loud and easy. Also heard few others, N3ZA and K1AR if I remember correctly.
Subject: [3830] CQ160 CW OH1F(OH1NOA) Single Op HP
CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW
Call: OH1F
Operator(s): OH1NOA
Station: OH1F
Class: Single Op HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 3
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 240 State/Prov = 1 Countries = 29 Total Score = 35,970
Club: Contest Club Finland
I have received some email-confirmations from BC radio stations:
– Radio Grutte Pier (f.zuidema ät knid.nl), Holland
– Radio Zeewolf International (radiozeewolf ät hotmail.nl), Holland, operator is ham too
– Scandinavian Weekend Radio (info ät swradio.net), Finland, v/s Tapani Häkkinen, DX-listener
– Radio Black Bird (shortwaveblackbird ät gmail.com), Holland
– Irish Music Radio (imr6930 ät yahoo.com), Ireland
– Trans Europe Radio (radiotranseurope ät gmail.com), Holland
– Sluwe Vos Radio (rxreport ät live.nl), Holland
– Radio Shadow (sw.radioshadow ät gmail.com), Holland
Scandinavian Weekend Radio is a licensed radio station, others are “free radios”.
I also got Perseus-SDR from Italy on Monday. Hopefully I am able to test it this weekend with real antennas!
I have recently activated my other old hobby: listening of foreign broadcasting stations on medium- and shortwaves. This weekend there was a special activity for so called “free radio” around the world, so many “pirate stations” have been active. I decided to log my MW/SW catched to this blog.
14th January 2012
6170 FIN: Scandinavian Weekend Radio, Virrat with strong 59+30dB signal. This is a legal station although many DJs have strong free radio background (and some are hams). DJ Häkä already confirmed my reception report by email. 1100-
6205 NLD: Sluwe Vos Radio. Sent thanks for report to me in live transmission. 1414-1420*
6300 NLD: Radio Morning Star. Bad QRM. 1505-
6320 NLD: Radio Osaka. 1526-
6331 NLD: Radio Boomerang. Close down just after coming to QRG. -1444*
6374,7 R Caroline International. One of many R Carolines. 1250-
6920 NLD: Trans Europe Radio. “This is test transmission of Trans Europe Radio”. Sent also greetings to me. Good signal with 60 watts and G5RV antenna. 1302-1328*
6925 NLD: Radio Mustang. Very loud although said that he is “low power station”. -1457*
7535 NLD: Trans Europe Radio. Heard also here with strong S9+10dB. In live transmission said thanks to me for my email report and promised to send me a QSL card next week. 1500-
15235 NLD: Radio Shadow. Good signal, playing oldies. 1225-
15460 NLD: Radio Black Bird. Also sent greetings to me in live transmission. MUF was down, fading from average to zero. Black Bird already sent me QSL via email and mentioned that he used CB-antenna 1 meter above the ground with 4 radials. 1126-
15515 NLD: Radio Borderhunter. This station is probably in Baarle-Hertog or Baarle-Nassau.
I already received email-QSLs from SWR and Radio Black Bird (who is ham radio operator too…).
My contest year started with ARRL RTTY Roundup. This was the second RTTY contest with my buddy Patrik, OH6GDX.
ARRL RTTY Roundup
Call: OH1F
Operator(s): OH1NOA OH6GDX
Station: OH1AF
Class: M/S HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band QSOs
————
80: 145
40: 263
20: 231
15: 219
10: 8
————
Total: 866 State/Prov = 44 Countries = 79 Total Score = 106,518
Club: Contest Club Finland
Comments:
“Two operator, one set up” -operation. Had fun!
Propagation was not so good than it has been during this contest season. Low bands were ok, but we couldn’t get much going on during the nighttime. High bands closed to USA/VE very early, so missed some states/provinces.
Christmas storm broke our 20m stacked array, so this time we used only a single yagi for 20m. It is in same tower than 15m yagis but pointing to different direction, so band changes with very slow turning tower were not so quick 🙂
Calling CQ, Come in please!
