Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Happy Winter Solstice 2011!


King´s Village DX wish you all a Happy Winter Solstice 2011. This year the solstice will happen exactly at 05.30 UTC on Dec. 22nd.
Let´s see what will happen to propagation conditions when the days will become longer after tomorrow - hopefully increasead ionization will improve the ionosphere a bit, although we will possibly see an increase in solar activity as well.
This year the winter seems to be green still at the King´s Village DX QTH, no snow and freezing at all. Actually every third year we will see the end of the year without snow in Southern Finland.

73 TK

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

King´s Village DX Station November: La Primerisima 1470 Panama


It was quite easy to pick this one as a Station of the month as it was an interesting story to find this one on 1470. As we know, this channel has long been an "indicator frequency of Trans Atlantic propagation conditions".
I found some remarks in my notebook when I have made some routine checks on 1470 making notes like - "Primerisima - maybe a new slogan for Vibracion ", Vibracion slightly higher than usual" - as I found this one on about 1470.001 and Vibracion has been always below the nominal frequency.
Thanks (again!) to Swedish MW-dxers I found information that indeed this is "La Primerísima Panama". Actually on same days during November Panama has been audible also on 1350, 1510 (tent.), 1530 (tent.) and 1560. And some days La Primerísima has been one of the few signals on mw band!
AHK has made also a nice story about the station and has also been in contact with the station (and got a qsl as well) - more at "DX Perseus".

Tack till svenska DXare!

Saludos a La Primerísima 1470 Panama!

73,TK

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

King´s Village DX-Station October: Radio Fé, 1220 Lima Peru


Well, once again - the propagation favoured Peru - and on October 28th especially Lima area - there were a lot of Lima stations audible - and almost nothing else! This was a typical very concentrated propagation towards a certain area which sometimes happens during the local sunrise. Stations from Lima were noted on about a dozen mw-channels from 1010 to 1570.
It was very interesting a note a station on 1220 whose program sounded very different of what I have noted here - it seemed to be christian station with some "palabra" and music, after 05 utc with promos mentioning also "Radio Fe" - I was a bit surprised to hear that as I did not know anything like that here. After some resources and again help from Henrik K. (thanks HK) it turned out to be a fairly new station at Lima Peru - Radio Fe 1220. The reception was rather good at time although with heavy spatters from 1215 and 1224. Also the station´s slogan "La Senal que Mueve Montanas" was heard.
It seems the station has started in 2010 and the station has a web-site and it streams the programs on net as well:http://www.radiofe1220.com/.

Saludos a Radio Fé Lima !

73,TK

Friday, November 11, 2011

Mornings and Nights at the King´s Village DX QTH


Some nice mornings in November has been noted with a beautiful sunrise, but after the geomagnetic storm in the end of October it took quite a few days to reach the better conditions; as a matter of fact after the "big bang" in Oct 25 the next "normal level" of Trans-Atlantic signals was noted on Nov 9th with quite a few signals from Colombia (Ondas de la Montaña on 1350 - normally very hard to get something due to Euro-QRM), Minuto de Dios 1370, Vida AM Manizales 1420, Maria (presumed via Ondas del Ibaqué) - Maria also on 1500 (Manizales) - on 1540 classical music was tentatively also a Manizales station. And some others. It was nice as there was almost none from North America to disturb. And the sunrise was beautiful, as well.

In the evening a nice conjuction of the Moon and Jupiter was noted on Nov. 9th as well - nice!

73,TK

Thursday, November 3, 2011

King´s Village DX Station September: Radio Vilcanota 1570 Peru


Once again dx-conditions favours Perú as often this fall. Already heard for the first time in August the station was afgain audible in September heard also by other DX-ers in Finland. It seems station can be heard although usually Bethel Lima dominates the channel. It is actually a bit higher than Bethel, so by looking at the screen (sometimes you have look at the screen on SDRs) you might separete these two Peruvian stations! Also the propagation conditions are sometimes very interesting letting through stations from Cuzco area or Southern Peru while stations in Lima area are not heard. That´s why it is so intersesting to dig these out of the noise.

Also this one has a web-stream at web - which I have not yet get working.

Saludos Cordiales a Radio Vilcanota Sicuani Peru!

73,TK

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Asia DX Finally Started!


Finally I was able to get my MW-Asian DXing started with a Longwire on Ground (about 280 metres to NE) - or "LW on Mud & Clay - "LWoMC". It seems -as always in October - that conditions are quite good to Far East & South East Asia. It seems nowadays cx favour more southernly parts of Asia - in 2009-2010 Far East / Japan was more frequent.
Let´s see if we can get some new South East Asian stations, especially I would like to get some new Philippinos and Thai stations.
After the first days one new Philippino station was noted - this one on 1350 (1349.97) and it seems this is DZXQ Metro Manila having at least some days programs also after midnight. Thanks to HR at the Barents Region (see the link of his Barents DX Blog at left side) it seems they also relay ANTV channel.
Let´s see if we get the real ID soon, at least during the last weekend (21-23 Oct.) there was no ID at midnight.

The updated list of the Philipinos heard durinf the last years at the King´s Village QTH below.

73,TK

Saturday, October 1, 2011

King´s Village DX-Station August 2011:Radio América 1630, San José, ER, Argentina


This is station was first captured in Europe at the end of July(in the UK and Sweden by HM) and soon discovered by Henrik Klemetz to be a new station transmitting the FM-channel "Radio Melody" at San José Entre Ríos Argentina.
It was very nice to be able to pick up the signals also at my QTH, first during the PUDXK-Summer Meeting on August 3rd (see earlier posts) and after that it seems the signal is quite often at least visible on the chanel and also with audio at times. It is nice to note this one dominates quite often the frequency and it is easy to recognise being a very steady carrier at 1629.992 kHz. Other carriers (one or two from Argentina as well) seems to drift more. This could be seen at the IQ-analysis picture below (many horizontal lines because of static).

Also in September the station seems to carry "Radio Melody" programming at least at night time. One of the best days of reception was on Sept 18th when the station had a nice program of Argentinian Tangos (Tango is very popular in Finland as well) around 03-04. A full ID of Radio Melody at 03.30 was heard as well.

The station has verified the first reports thanks to help of Henrik Klemetz (to Hasse Mattisson SWE & Andrew Brade UK) - thanks to HK for sending a picture of a nice eQSL!



73 TK

Sunday, September 4, 2011

King´s Village DX-Station SUMMER 2011: Radio JPJ Lima 3360 kHz


Usually MW-SW-listening is not the first priority in summertime, but sometimes something happens. This summer a new station was discovered on 3360 kHz. And it was a new one from Peru! This is nice as the number of SW-station has been going down since a few decades. One of the first who noticed this signal was the famous TreDX-gang during the DX-pedition in Åland around June 10th.
More info about the station with pictures at the TreDX-blog.

Soon quite a few were able to listen to this station with it´s lively music programmes during the morning hours. It seems it had some problems with the TX in July but it is going nowadays better and also with stronger modulation.

And if you want to hear HIFI-signal, just check the stations web-feed:
JPJ.

Saludos Cordiales a Radio JPJ!

tk

Friday, August 5, 2011

PUDXK Summer Meeting 2011 at Kungsböle Lovisa 3-5 August

(Some text added on August 7th & UPDATE 11 August)


Once again the weather during the meeting was very nice with temps around +25 daytime and not too cold even at night.
The meeting started with a repair of the FM-antenna by JSN & MKA, Thank You guys! No Es was noted but tropo got better on friday morning. After the antenna fix, FM-dx was also made on the roof by tiny Tecsun rx, which seems to be a very good rx!


The main meal was traditionally "Kungsböle rökt lax"(KingsVillage smoked salmon) with some nice Riesling wine Altenberg de Wolxheim - Alsace Grand Cru 2008 (thank you MKA,JSN,LN!).
The meal ended also with traditional "Sun Blueberry Pie" with handmade vanilla sauce (tnx JSN!). If you compare now the pie to the one in the meeting summer 2009 (the report is at http://pudxk.blogspot.com/2009/08/pudxk-summer-meetings.html - now we can see a lot of spots whereas in 2009 the sun (and the pie) was totally blank! As we know after 2009 the sun was almost spotless for two years - and now the situation has changed. And of course the main disturbances occured just during our meeting - and we are waiting still for the next two CMEs due to arrive soon! The animation of CMEs can be found here!

And there is no dx-meeting without sauna - this time we had nice sauna both nights and the second one with 5 blondies from nearby local brewery!

Some AM-dxing were also made and a few Peruvians were noted - however the conditions changed due to the disturbance. Now we tested also remote-dxing as MR had his RXs at Joensuu on all the time and the configurations to my new modem (capable to connect to the net with 3G and also distribute the connection to 8 pcs!) were done by JSN (thanks!).
Later on at night (morning on August 6th at around 2220utc) a visible Aurora was noted here - I could not make photos of it but a nice piece of video was made only about 100 kms West of King´s Village in Helsinki: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFXtJx4EHEw
All in all, the meeting went well; thank you all! Now the MW-dx Season 2011-12 is officially opened - although the night between 5th and 6th August showed NO ONE signal from TA when I made a recording of 1200-1700 kHz with the NetSDR. Next night (August 6th-7th) only a few Transatlantic signals noted, like Globo 1220! But the conditions will improve next week... hope so.

Update 11th August: After checking SDR-files from 4th August the new Argentinian station on 1630: AM 16-30 San José Entero Rios BA (relaying Radio Melody) was noted (4th August 1.15 utc-). It seems while we were having the "early morning sauna" around the sunrise the condtions were favourable.


73 TK

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

No DXing (almost...)


Well, the reason is simple: the weather has been either "too good" which keeps busy doing other summer activities including a Finnish traditional "carpet washing in rivers and lakes" etc or the increased thunderstorm activity. Actually at the King´s Village area near sea we have only to look at the beautifull increasing clouds rather than having the very heavy storms at least until nowadays (around 12th July).
In fact I did one night a small bandscan on MW and found the usual Peruvian channels 1500, 1510 and 1640 (Kalikanto) with some audio - Santa Rosa 1499.985 being the strongest one. Usually in July there has been only Brazilians so this seems to be promising sign for the coming MW-TA-Season due to start around the end of the month or in the beginning of August.

I have been testing also the new mobile Internet connection: the speed is better and the fee lower - strange! - the new connection is running between 2-5 Mb/s download and 1-3 Mb/s upload; sounds good. Have to do some research as the mobile router needs the port forwarding in order to use it with the Perseus Net - connections. More about that later.
73,TK

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Towards the new MW-DX Season!

Once again we are on the important day of the Northern Hemisphere: the Annual Summer Solstice is now at 17.16 UTC - so we are now looking forward not only to the real summer season in Northern Europe - but also into the next medium wave DX as the nights are becoming gradUally longer. We in Finland have to survive the big "crazy" celebration days of the midsummer soon ("Juhannus"). Unfortunately the real ancient celebration which used to be rather exactly during the solstice has been transferred to the weekend around these days (and like many other such ancient traditions the christian culture has captured the old traditions). Anyway the tradition of Finnish Mid Summer Festifal is still strong with a couple of interesting magic traditions including Sauna & Swimming at remote lakes with mosqitos. Some - not so exact information of this - can be found at the BBC`s news - but there were notting about the Finnish Madness of DXing ? The story can be found at BBC-Finnish Midsummer

The picture below shows the situation at my Northern QTH (Haapavesi)- sun still shining after 22 local time at about 320 degrees.

KING´S VILLAGE DX WISH YOU ALL HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE!

Saturday, June 18, 2011

King´s Village DX-Station May: Radio Television Caranavi 1550



Bolivia on medium wave is not so easy at least with small antennas, but sometimes especially during the spring months it seems the propagation favours these stations when the usual dominants further North are not so strong. It seems this one on 1550 is one of the most common from Bolivia to be heard. That was the situation in the beginning of May when the MW was going to be rather silent at the end of the real MW-DX Season this winter. The station was dominating the channel quite a few mornings during the local sunrise at the DX-QTH. It seems the sation usues also "Television" in it´s station identifications. The signal was best usually around 01.30-02.00 UTC. The station has a web-page - also in English at http://rtc.bz/index_archivos/mision_in.html.

Best wishes to Bolivia!

73s TK

Friday, June 3, 2011

King´s Village DX-Station April: Radio Onda Cero, Chamaca 1640 kHz


A typical Peruvian programming started to appear on 1640 in April and after some work from the Swedish Experts including Fredrik Dourén, Torolf Johnsson, B I Holmberg + Henrik Klemetz - the location was discovered to be at Chamaca, Cusco dept. Peru. TNX HK & all other DXers in Sweden! The station had even a special program with greetings to Nordic listeners on May 6th, but the propagation (and the time of the program) did not favour our attemps to lsiten to the program.

Since then the station was audible rather often especially before May and the increasing sunlight here in Finland. I am sure we can capture the signals again in August. The high frequency and rather free channel can make it rather easy to get this one later on. There is however, many times also the Dominican station on the same frequency, but you can easily separate the programming of these two - Onda Cero has a typical "Peruvian modulation" and usually at night programs with folklore muisc and messages to the listerners. In April-May Onda Cero was very stable on 1640.008-.009 kHz. Maybe the high location has also something to do with the good reception. Hopefully we can get more info from the station about the power of the Tx.

The latest news from the station (via FD, TNX) - the new name of the station is RADIO KALIKANTO, with slogans: "desde chamaca-chumbivilcas para el mundo" "una radio para confiar".

Saludos Cordiales a Radio Onda Cero / Radio Kalikanto, Chamaca!

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Special Antenna Tests of a New Flag-6to1-antenna


A special new antenna design was invented at the King´s Village DX-QTH on Sunday May 15th. This special system constists of an ALA100 Delta-Flag combination System. The impedance matching is 6 to 1 ! This is a bit redisign of the Swedish 8 to 2 type of matching system. The work will continue with the Swedish and Finnish Teams developing these designs further on ;-). By the way at the picture the "Flag-element" of the antenna is just going up!

It seems this particular design did work so far only on 15th and 16th of May 2011 !

73, TK

Monday, May 2, 2011

King´s Village DX-Station March: Radio Alegría Arequipa Peru


Since a few years I have tried to capture this one with a real identification. There was also rumors that it the station have changed the name to "Radio Las Vegas". I even "send" my sister´s son to record some frequencies at Arequipa (when he was travelling the area). Afterwards there was no evidence of the name change. But finally at the end of March things started to happen with good conditions especially to the South of Peru and the Andies. Finally we got real identifications and also the close down announcement of this Radio Alegría, Arequipa. No doubt the station is still Radio Alegría. Also the web page was easily discovered with on-line transmission on web - cool! Furthermore Henrik Klemetz (&co) in Sweden found out that Radio Las Vegas is also on 1510 - but it is located at Cuzco!
Thank You HK!
Radio Alegría has been audible quite often this spring with nice programs of Peruvian folklore music. It seems the carrier frequency is stable at 1510.016 although the modulation on AM is a bit distorted - at web, the signal is loud and clear. There is also chat so when you listen to (AM or web) you can send greetings via net!


Saludos cordiales a Radio Alegría, Arequipa - La Ciudad Blanca!

73,TK

(Photo by Jarkko Tulla, March 2010)

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Latest Cooking Recipes from the King´s Village DX-QTH


Just tune into my cookin pot at the King´s Village DX Hut!
Well, this is not an April Fool, but my latest tests using the mobile Internet connection (a 3G-mobile modem / DNA operator) reveleas that by putting the modem with the enclosed antenna into my old cooking pot makes the connecting better by using the old pot as an reflector! The antenna setup can been seen at the picture above.

My current setup includes the Perseus & Perseus server software (4.0beta), the above modem and a small HP110 laptop - all these connected to an antenna. During the latest tests I have been still using my Asia-antenna - a wire under the snow (picture). According to several users of the system it seems to have been working OK for the most of the time - at least when the connection has been using "3G" (maximum upload about 300 vs download around 700 kb/s). The server is configured as "GPRS"-mode and the speed has been around 50-90 kbs most times. The picture below shows a typical screenshot of another Perseus user listening to his own Perseus and my Perseus simultaneously on the same computer. Unfortunately it seems my Perseus was seriously off the exact frequency! Thanks MR for testing the connection.

I will inform when my server is online during the next few days and weeks (only when I am also at the QTH). Usually it will be online in the evenings / nights. Probably I will change to a longwire antenna soon. The information will be in the Perseus-Yahoo Group and/or you can see my Perseus on the Perseus server Map.

73,TK
PS: BOG/LWOG is still under the snow, but not very long ...

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Radio Nord Revival 1512 kHz


In the beginning of March (8th, 12th & 13rd) it was nice to listen to Radio Nord on MW. Of course the reception was better on SW 6060, but it was interesting to note that both the first transmissions with 60 Watts had a readdable signal - as a matter of fact it was better than the signals of the more powerfull TX during the weekend 12-13rd March. The reason was that the first TX was a bit off the nominal on about 1511.897 kHz, so the intereference from the very powerfull Iranian (and Saudi) was avoided. The screenshot (picture above) on 12th March shows the analysis of carriers during the evening - my setup (IQ+PC) is maybe not staying on exactly on the channel, but as can be seen the difference of the carriers is only about 1 Hz, the Iranian being on about 1511.999 while Radio Nord was on 1512.000 (note that I have corrected my calibration error of 1 Hz by moving a lower scale a bit). Saudi-Arabia was on about 1511.991. What I have been told the tx of R Nord was very stable - may picture shows the variation of about 200 mHz, but that should be because of my receiver set up. The SDR-Radio IQ-Data File Analysis is a very good tool to analyse the carriers indeed.
Just looking forward into the next broadcasts of Radio Nord in May, more information from their web-page - stay tuned!
73,TK

Sunday, March 20, 2011

King´s Village DX Station February: DXAB Davao 1296 kHz


Well, once again a Philippines MW station has been announced as a station of the month. This station has been very hard to hear earlier, but this winter I realized that it is a bit higher than other stations (mainly China, Taiwan, Japan NHK and later Afghanistan) on this crowded channel 1296 kHz. It is good the European stations are not interfering durin the afternoon hours. DXAB could be heard only in the beginning of February and it seems not be able to be heard now in March as it is closing down around 14 utc. At the picture is an SDR-Radio IQ-analysis of the signals on 1296 (6th Dec 2010)showing the DXAB signal before it´s close down, it is measured about 30 Hz above the others.

DXAB (1296 kHz Davao City) "Radyo Patrol" is an AM station of ABS-CBN in the Philippines. The station's studio is located at ABS-CBN Broadcast Complex, Broadcast Avenue, Matina hills, Davao City and it's transmitter is located at Km 4 McArthur Highway, Matina in Davao City,DXAB Davao also simulcasts ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs programs such as TV Patrol Southern Mindanao and TV Patrol (Wikipedia).

The slogan of the station is "UNA sa Balita, UNA sa Public Service".

Best regards to Radyo Patrol DXAB!

73,TK

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Updates to the Philippino-DX & Japan-DX lists

I Finally made some updates to my lists of looged MW_Philipinos & MW-Japan lists. The Philippines stations are mostly logged during the last years (mainly 2007-2011) at my King´s Villages QTH near Lovisa (a couple of earlier loggings included) while the Japanese are all heard during the last two DX-seasons (from Oct 2009 - Febr. 2011).

From the Philippines only a few new were observed this winter, although the conditions were better to SE Asia while Japan / Far East was not that good which can be explained of the increased Solar activity.

Two interesting new ones from the Philippines were DZIQ 990 kHz and DXAB 1296 kHz.

New Japanese channels this season were 1125 (NHK), 1152 (NHK), 1197 (JOBF), 1296 (NHK), 1341 (NHK) - now free from Euro QRM!, 1431 BSS JO--, 1458 JO--. The number of Japanese is now 78, although some NHKs has only network ID and a few commercials are waiting to be identified. Anyway it seems that during low geomagnetic activity more than 50 Japanese MW-stations seems to be audible even in Southern Finland.

The Philipinos list is at the picture below. The list of the Japanese is presented at
Japan-DX


Friday, February 11, 2011

The Latest DX-Tools at the King´s Village DX QTH


February means more light which affect of course to the MW-DX. While waiting for better conditions after the latest disturbance I noted a few good days with Far East / S E Asia reception just prior the geomagn. disturbance on Feb 1st. However new problems with antennas were noted although the latest tools to check the antennas has been invested (good during soft snow) in January. I fixed the BOG by inserting a new temporary wire of about 200 m to 45 degr. The wire has been covered by new snow, hopefully deep enough to be safe when the Skidoo traffic starts again! However something happened afterwards also to this and/or the transformer. Note the fixing of the ski bindings - using a piece of antenna wire! The skis are actual ex-Swedish Army skis,hi.

I will update my lists of the observe mw-Japanese stations (some new stations heard this winter) and the Philippines soon, so stay tuned!
73,TK

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

King´s Village DX-Station January 2011: Weifang JGD 1287 kHz

A few times in January as already in the autumn this channel 1287 kHz - which is now pretty "clean" of European QRM gave us a station from China which is very interesting. As a matter of fact it was heard first which a bit strange IDs as "iHome Radio" (slogan in English). When I heard it first it actually sounded like "iPhone Radio". Anyway the station was revealed by MR with his Chinese friends to be "Weifang Jingji Guangbo Dientai" and it has also these Englsih slogans during the TOH IDs. In fact the latest edition of WRTH says this channel is "i Home Service" ! Yes, the WRTH knows!
This channel 1287 has been nice to check the reception of the Far East and South East Asian stations also in Southern Finland this season as it has given as also at least (a dominant) JOHR Sapporo, MBC Korea and a station in Thailand in the afternoon.
Weifang is situated in Shandong Province and it is called a "kite capital of the world".
As it is a New Year´s Day in China - I wish everyone a Happy New Rabbit's Year !
新 年 好
Xīn nián hǎo!

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

King´s Village DX-Station December 2010: DZIQ Radyo Inquirer 990 kHz


Well, once again a new station from the Philippines! Thanks to JKZ of Tampere who found this one first I was also able to hear DZIQ 990 kHz in December 12th 2010. After making some checks of my earlier recorded Perseus-files it was also noted a couple of times before like on Nov. 6th which seems to be very good for the Philippines with a couple of interesting frequencies open (like 684, 954, 990 and 1080 together with some more common channels).
DZIQ seems to be easier now - I do not know if it has done something to the transmitter equipments - according to some information it is using 50 kW of power on AM. It is a news station having mainly talk / news programs at time of reception in Europe (12 - 13 utc). It is always nice to get it as there is also a strong German station dominating the channel and when conditions are favouring Asia, China easily dominates the channel as well.
It seems anyway that the station changed it´s call to DZIQ in 2010 and according to some sources it actually started broadcasting on AM in 2010. The station is owned by the newspaper Philippine Daily Inquirer.
If you can not receive the station on MW you can access the web-page and have the feed with video from the studio, just click http://www.dziq.am/.
Best Wishes to DZIQ Metro Manila!