Indonesia on SW

All those who have been active DXers in 1970-1990 remember well the numerous Indonesian Shortwave stations on tropical bands. Now we have only a few left like a couple of RRI stations - the most commons are on 3325 (Palankaraya), 3345 (Ternate), 3976 Pontianak, 3987 Manokwari and 3995 Kendari. The closing down ceremony with a famous "Rayan Pulau Kelapa"-song is very well remembered among us. During my latests visits to my Haapavesi QTH (almost in the middle of Finland) I checked of course some of these channels. What else can we say but sing along:
Tanah airku Indonesia
Negeri elok amat kucinta
Tanah tumpah darahku yang mulia
Yang kupuja sepanjang masa

DX-Station of October: Ecos de Naranjito Ecuador 1470

This station was easy to select as it was heard at home with only a small 3x7m ALA100 loop antenna and an SDR-IQ receiver and the listening situation was quite a surprise. I heard it"live" during a brief check of reception conditons. The frequency of 1470 is well known as an indicator channel of Trans Atlantic reception. When I checked the situationon October 3rd during the local sunrise time I soon realized that a station was interfering normally very strong Venezuelans (both Vibración and Llanerísima are often heard, the first one now being on 1469.995 and the last one on 1470.034). The Venezuelans played their National Anthem as usual at local midnight but a station with localy oriented program with a gentleman at the studio (with "mensajes" and beautiful Ecuadorian music) was intefering others - and soon it became to dominate the channel! Soon I heard also announcements with time check and ID "...minutos faltan para las zero horas ... 14-70 ... Ecos de Naranjito". The 3rd October was one of the best days to get Ecuadorians in Scandinavia. Many DXers reports to have heard several stations! The strongest stations at my QTH were on 1350 (TeleRadio), 1370 (Rocío), 1470 (Naranjito) and 1530 (both Dorado Deportes and Ondas Canaris). Below you can hear the announcement of the station - the clip shows how the Ecuadorian beats the stronger Venezuelans easily!

Best greetings to Ecos de Naranjito!
Felicitaciones a la Ecos de Naranjito!

DX-Station of September: NuevaQ FM Lima Perú

The September DX-station was a Peruvian station which is rather new broadcasting on MW-band. The reason was easy: I discovered a strange programme which sounded Latin, maybe Peruvian with cumbia music. Soon I heard it mentioning "Nueva Q FM" or something like that. After some work with internet I discovered that there are at least that kind of programming on FM and Internet. After a while this station was heard all over Scandinavia (maybe the first loggings by Norwegians at Kalvoya already in August?) and it soon became a very easy target for Trans Atlantic DX enthusiasts. The station has a web feed as well, at least of this name - I do not know if the feed I found is exactly the same as on MW 1360 kHz. The recording of the station is made in September, but the station has been heard better also in October. I had to make some tricks with a still picture & sound - using Apple Mac´s clever iMovie application.
Congratulations to the Nueva Q-FM!
Felicitaciones a la Nueva Q FM!

Saludo de Aniversario

One of the easiest Peruvian AM-station to catch in Scandinavia is Radio Santa Rosa, Limá, Perú.
On October 16th (actually 15th - 16th night in Perú) quite a few Peruvians were audible in Finland. Many DXers have reported to listen several stations (the easiest channels have been at my QTH: 1240, 1310, 1360, 1380, 1400, 1470, 1500 and 1540).
When I checked a SDR-recording of 16th October at around 05.00 UTC I heard the announcement (check the video) of Radio Santa Rosa of their 51st Aniversary. The quality is not the best as I had only a ALA100 loop (7x3m) & SDR-IQ at my home QTH with RF-noise.
As can been seen, Radio Santa Rosa dominates the channel being even stronger than Europeans on 1503 kHz!

So I am happy to wish this:

SALUDO MUY CORDIAL DE ANIVERSARIO A RADIO SANTA ROSA 1500 KCS AM !

King´s Village DX-station August 2009: Radio Princesa AM 1560

Brazil offers usually interesting dx-opportunities in August. This year we had several openings although the reception conditions started soon to favor more Northernly stations from Peru, Colombia and Venezuela.
Several sunday mornings I had a station right below 1560 kHz. Later on it turned out to be a new station for me ZYH257 - Rádio Princesa da Matas, Vicosa (AL)! It is possible that the station usually signs off earlier, but sometimes it was heard past 3 UTC. The frequency (1559.551) has been observed in Brazil as well. The latest list of Brazilian MW-stations (June 2009)is a good database of Brazilians, you can get it from DX-Clube do Brasil - Thank You!
By the way, while searching information of Radio Princesa, a video was found at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5KQKJnzdmY. Somebody has been there,hi! Online programming was not found, but it seems the home page is pretty new.

A good candidate of the DX-station of August was R Planalto de Ji-Parana 1390 kHz (new name, possibly a new owner,too?).

Indicator Stations from Far East

There are quite a few indicators of Far East conditions audible using a car radio. This is good as when driving to your DX-QTH you can listen what´s the situation on AM band is. I am very pleased with my latest VW and it´s integrated receiver with real knob! A pity it has no switch to 10 kHz increments, so listening to TA is difficult. One of the Far East examples of usual stations is Korea on 1566 - if it is loud and clear (and not India) the conditions over the Northern Latitudes are better. Also 1170 is a good channel to check if the dominant is an European, the Philippines or Korea. An example of the Korean KBS can be heard here.

DX Highlights in September at King´s Village

St Petersburg DX-CLub´s Alexander Beryozkin visited Finland in September on his way to the EDXC Dublin. We spent a few days around Kotka and Kouvola and visited among other places the Kouvola Tube Radio Museum. Alexander discovered also a secret with this receiver - he started DXing with this heavy tube rx (photo) in 1968 - the secret is that while listening to 19 mb was forbidden in Soviet times - the clever designer in Riga had made "an Easter Egg" to the receiver: by pressing both SW1 and SW2 switch down you can tune in to the 19 mb as well. We spent also some time in the old border of Sweden and Finland at Abborfors (10 kms South of the King´s Village) to celebrate the 200 years anniversary of the freedom of Sweden andFinland at the very border station down there.

Further tests of a modest HP-laptop (HP530) has been made recently - now I have this very modest laptop as a mobile pc with Perseus SDR. It has actually only a Celeron 1.83 cpu, but after the downgrade from Vista to XP (and an additio of memory to 1Gb) it works rather well, even when recording full 1600 kHz. The HD has been changed as well, but also the new 80 Gb is rather small for huge sdr-recording. What is the best - the unit´s PSU seems to be practically noise-free!
When visiting the Northern DX-QTH at Haapavesi in September I made some antenna tests with a BOG (400 mtrs East) and heard some Asian stations - unfortunately some powerline noise made very difficult to get Aussies on X-band.

Also a new antenna wire reel system was tested while working with a 300 m horse fence wire to West (plastic wire with three bound coppercoated steelwires), pretty light weight and inexpensive antenna but needs insulated supports (fence sticks were used).

Got my Far East BOG finally working at King´s Village QTH in the end of September - and noted the first X-band Aussies in the beginning of October (1701 and 1620).

Great Trans-Atlantic conditions continued all the time with stations from Brazil, Peru and Ecuador among others. Some of these signals can be heard almost daily with small antennas also at Home with ALA100 loop under an old oak tree!

The decisions to announce the August and September DX-stations at King´s Village are to be made very soon - stay tuned!

WELCOME TO KING´S VILLAGE DXING

This Blog will be devoted to DXing in King´s Village DX-QTH. Earlier notes have been included in the PUDXK-DX blog, which is a common Blog for all the members of the Northern Dimension DXers - a small community of DX-listeners particularly interested in Medium Wave DXing in Northern Finland and Lapland.
Since my main DXing QTH is in Southern Finland I will be reporting later - and hopefully more often - in this blog of my own.
DXing since 1970 has been changed a lot, earlier with analog receivers my focus was to listen and verify stations in the beginning of my DXing career. Nowadays my interests are in listening (mainly to Asia-Pacific and Latin America) "difficult stations on MW", making observation of offset frequencies and exploring reception conditions. I organize also special DX-camps in my Northern Finland QTH as well as in the "King´s Village".
King´s Village - Kungsböle (Swedish)- Kuninkaankylä (Finnish) is a small Village 100 kms to the East of Helsinki near Loviisa. My QTH is an old small house near the centre of the Village. The exact QTH is at 60N 25E. My second QTH is at Haapavesi, 500 kms North of Helsinki (65N 24East). I do some DXing at home in Espoo as well although the the level of RF-noise is high.
Current equipments: King´s Village: Icom9000, SDR-14 & IQ, Perseus-SDR. 280 m BOG NE, 130 m LW NW, 280 LW W. Espoo: SDR-IQ, ALA100 Loop. Haapavesi: Perseus-SDR (IQ), EKD 515. Sev lws/beverages/bogs - partly under construction.