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!

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

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!

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

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)

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 ...

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

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

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

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

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!

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!

King´s Village DX-station November: DYEZ Aksyon Radyo Bacolod 684 kHz

On November 6th I was lucky to capture some philipinos on MW, which is always nice in Southern Finland with rather modest antenna systems. I was also lucky to set my Perseus to record a bit more around the TOH at 13 utc (instead on normal 4-8 minutes around the toh) and got finally a recording of about 20 minutes. I noted a few Philipinos and this was the most interesting for me as i have heard this tentatively only once in Dec. 2009. Some other stations from the Philippines were noted today as well, among them another one from Bacolod: Bombon Radio 1269 and a new one for me. DZIQ on 990. DYEZ 684 had a typical news and information program with some advertisements and a few mentionings of "Aksyon Radyo Bacolod".

From the station´s web-page we can find some information:
"BROADCASTING from the city of Bacolod, the commercial and political hub in Negros Occidental, dyEZ Aksyon Radyo-Bacolod traces its roots to the city of La Carlota where it first started operations from the administrative building of the then Elizalde-owned Central Azucarera De La Carlota in the 1960s.
The small community radio station, originally having the call sign of dyEN, hosted some of the pioneer broadcasters in the province until the declaration of Martial Law when it was closed down. Several years later, it resumed operations as dyEZ and became the dominant news and music station before the proliferation of FM stations. By the 1980s, dyEZ shifted its programming to fulltime news and public affairs. With it came the change of name from Radyo Balita to Radyo Owang until finally settling on what is widely perceived as the most the appropriate name for a dynamic news and public affairs station: Aksyon Radyo.Serving a base listenership of at least a million from its primary area of coverage, which are Negros Occidental’s 32 towns and cities, Aksyon Radyo-Bacolod has consistently proven its worth in the most competitive environment of AM broadcasting in the province."

The station is fun to listen and you can do it easily just by logging into the page of DYEZ:http://www.aksyonradyobacolod.com/

Best Wishes & Happy New Year to Aksyon Radio DYEZ!

73 tk

Season´s Greetings!

Once again we are approaching the winter Solstice tomorrow (21st Dec at 23.38 UTC) so it is time to wish you all the Season´s Greetings!
Actually this day means "the start of winter" - obviously we have already seen the start of the winter in Finland at least with snow accumulating now to about 60 centimeters in the South of Finland!
This Solstice is a very unusual also as we will have the lunar eclipse also on the same day (Dec 21st), unfortunately it seems we will have clouds in my part of the country at that time (morning).

NetSDR testfile

A testfile recorded in Muhos 5th Dec around 07 UTC (1300 kHz Span, recorded with NetSDR, ant:bevarage to North America, about 900 m @305 degrees) is now available at:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5321722/MUH%20051210-1150000Hz_20101205_065851.zip
It is a huge one (5 min.) zipped, about 1,6 Gb file.
It can be listened to with SpectraVue 3.09 or later as well as with the WinradHD, the later seems to have nice sound, but unfortunately there seems not to be a timebar so you have to listen it through.
EDIT Dec 20th:
Sorry, it seems the file can not be accessed, as the following message has been received from DropBox:
"This email is an automated notification from Dropbox that your Public links have been temporarily suspended on account of generating excessive traffic. Your Dropbox will continue to function completely normally with the exception of Public links."
Sorry for that.
73 TK

PUDXK-PreChristmas Meeting & Testing the netSDR at Muhos

It was nice not only to test and do some DXing at Muhos during the weekend 4th - 5th December but also to celebrate 2 x 50 years anniversary of two PUDXK-members (the two Jaris). We started again (like two other PUDXK-meetings) at "Sokeri-Jussin Kievari" at downtown Oulu (at Pikisaari, a small island just near the City Centre) - http://www.sokerijussi.net/.
At the listening QTH (JPRs DX-QTH Muhos) we had nice weather, some sunshine during the few daylight hours between 10 and 14 local time(sic) and temps around -10 degrees. Only about 5 cm snow, whereas in Southern Finland we got more and more during the week after this weekend, now accumulating to about 1/2 a meter at time of this writing!

Testing the netSDR
Testing was done only by "ear" without any equipments. I made some simultaneous files with Perseus & netSDR for later review. The Perseus was hooked up to an AcerLaptop (dual-core @ about 2 GHz)while the netSDR was connected to a bit older Dell (single core @about 2 Ghz tabletop pc). So the limitation of processing power limited us just to record everything on netSDR at FFT of 2048FFT/BLK and all the analyzing has to be made aftwerwards. The listening has to bedone using the spectrum display of the total span of 1300 kHz without measuring the exact carrier frequencies. The software used was SpectraVue 3.09. I did make some listening and freq. measurements also using a small span to achieve very good bandwidth resolution (picture) - and comparing the sensitivity with Perseus at the same time.

Performance of the netSDR as expected ...
was very good with a low noise floor and oscillator noise as stated in the specs. You have to notice of course that the unit tested was a prototype and as far as I know the real units (coming Q1-2011 ?) will be a bit better and there will be an option (?) to have even an oscillator of even lower noise soon. So by ear the output of netSDR sounded to be better than that of Perseus and/or IQ we had working at the same time. I do not know if some noise of Perseus was coming from the Perseus PSU as it was using the original power supply unit. The NetSDR was using an "old separate linear (?) PSU" originally used with SDR14 - not the original of 14 or netSDR. It seems that also the netSDR is equipped with a small switching PSU which should be replaced. An issue I fully do not understand - that was the case also with the original PSU of SDR14. Anyway the low signal performance of netSDR was good as well as filtering with the provided software (SpectraVue 3.09). I made a small comparison with very low signals on HF (the Papuan later on on 3905 kHz) by listening it directly on both the netSDR and Perseus. In genaral the reception was quite similar but the sound of netSDR sounded "better" and cleaner (the bandwidth of both rx´s was about 3 kHz). But the difference was very small. What we are missing still with the SpectraVue is the notch which is good on Perseus and on some situation wins the competition, when there is a strong het or signal nearby. As reported earlier the measurement of exact carriers was easier with netSDR/ SpectraVue as SVue tells you "automatically" 4 most powerfull carriers of the viewed span - and you can also see the spectrum (and carriers) at small spans when LSB/USB is used while on Perseus you have to use AM when looking at the spectrum or waterfall on small spans (usually we use 100 or 200 Hz spans). With Svue rather exact measurement can be done like on the picture: using the FFT of about 1Million and demod span of 100 kHz the resolution is about 0.1 Hz. Well, this is not often suitable and when you record 1300 kHz span you have to do measurements with the resolution of about 0.7Hz - which is, however usually enough.
As the unit was an prototype one, there was some decrease of spectrum (maybe the sensitivity as well) on the higher end of the mediumwave band (1500...1800 kHz) which could easily be seen on the spectrum. This issue has been reported also by RFSpace, however.

Recording the Spectrum ...
of 1300 kHz was good, and the 5 minute files were about 2 Gb each. While recording it was possible not only to listen but also to transfer file to external HDs, connect them etc which was very good as the netSDR was SUPER stable - it was running about two days without any crashes. This could be because it was connected by Ethernet and not by the USB. The USB-connected Perseus did suffer of some instability - an issue detected earlier also - you have to be careful when connecting other usb-devices when you have Perseus recording - we had some issues when the Perseus stopped working during these situations. The connecting of netSDR via Ethernet worked really good - this was reported by TuA earlier also when he was using the device at ENOX in November. The 1300 kHz span was good as this is enough for the entire MW-band to be captured. The size of files is so about 12 x 2 Gb = 24 Gb/hour when Perseus record files (using the 2 MS/s/1600 kHz span) of about 2,3 Gb/5 minutes which makes about 28 Gb/hour. OK, not a very big issue, but during the 10 hour session you can save about 40 Gb of HardDisk. We did not tried to record other than 1300 kHz SPANs duringthe tests. It seems we did not do the calibration very well, as the both NetSDR-files and Perseus-files seems not to show correct frequencies, the NetSDR files seems to have an error of about 1 Hz (too much) while Perseus shows about 2-3 Hz too much. Shame on us.

Evaluation of files later ...
at home I finally made some afterwards listening ("Post DX-session evaluation") of the files of total of about 300 Gb. Again there was no big difference between the signals I listened to, so in general both hardwares worked ok. Maybe I can do some real "DX-listening" with those files later (I transferred only some files of TOH´s of the two nights with me) in a few days. I know some files have already been analyzed by JVA who has also a powerful "automatic split frequency capture&analyze software" - but he can tell about it later on. The listening was done using my Pentium dual-core @3GHz (4 Gb memory) PC so it was easy and took maximum 10-20% of the processing power. The recommended PC/Laptop for the NetSDR is at least about 2 GHz/dualcore, but as we noted the recording and listening (without exact carrier measurements) can be done easily with older pcs/laptops of about 2 Ghz/single-core. Then you have to use the full spectrum view and set the FFT low (like 2048 FFT/BLK) and possible set the screen update speed (n=10-20). And furthermore - you do need a BIG HD (preferably an internal, but the external works ok and there is no problem with multible USB-connections as you have the RX hooked up to the Ethernet port).

The reception conditions...
towards "TA" were rather average to good especially on 5 December (coming better later that week) and some early reception of common NAs were noted starting at around 19 utc. Also some Latin American were noted at night on both 4 and 5 December. The conditions were rather wide spread however with stations from Venezuela to West Cost.The antennas used during the tests were beverages (700-900 meters)usually at around 290 ... 305 degrees.

Last but not least...
I have to point out that the NetSDR is priced at about 1300...1400 euros - and you can get a Perseus at about 700...800 euros, so if the money talks you can get "about the same" with 500 euros less. However, if you want to see the exact carriers easily, prefer using the SpectraVue (or SDRRadio) software and like the "look and feel" of NetSDR and last but not least - like to use the Ethernet connection (and easily connect the device used remotedly via net) the choise is NetSDR. And there will be some software development going on with the SpectraVue (I believe), SDRRadio and what is the most interesting with the totally new "CuteSDR", which seems to be an open source platform to develop softwares available also for Mac OS - an issue most wanted by the increasing number of Mac-users among radio enthusiasts!
Well, which one? for myself - I´d like to have them both.

Thank You very much for RF-Space letting us to test this proto of the great new receiver, let´s hope we will see the final products soon!

A testfile of 5 minutes covering 500-1800 kHz will be published later on for those wanting to test with the SpectraVue 3.09 or later.
73 TK

SWR Special Summer Meeting Broadcast - Results of the Competition

I have finally got the list of the DXers who had accepted reports to Scandinavian Weekend Radio on August 6-7th 2010 and we have done the decisions of the winners of the competition. As we reported earlier, a special QSL will be out - the Art Director has been doing the first drafts and we hope to get the printing machines printing during the Christmas Season, please be patient!

The list of reporters and distances from the tx site Virrat is:
Europe/World: Alan Pennington, Caversham, UK. Distance: 1900 kms.
Scandinavia: Henrik Klemetz, Borås, Sweden. Distance: 780 kms
Finland: Raimo Karjalainen, Rantsila. Distance: 257 kms.
Thanks to Mauno / MR for calculating the distances!

The prize of the most distance reporter, the WRTH 2011 (from the WRTH) will go to Alan soon!
The special prizes for two others will be sent also soon - these are donated by the Kymenlaakso AMK University of Applied Sciences.

Thanks to all the reporters!

73s, The FDXA Summer Meeting 2010 Team.

King´s Village DX-Station October 2010: Radio Verdad Guatemala 4052.5 kHz

Also this month a station on the tropical bands was chosen. This is mainly because this particular station is one of the few station still transmitting from Central America on tropical bands and it is a very friendly one for radio ethusiasts. I remember to have heard back in the 20´th century and got also a reply then. I tried it a couple of times this fall when it was transmitting with a temporary small transmitter on 4055 kHz but I think it was rather hard to capture in Europe. Now after the end of October ( I checked it on Oct. 28th and found it with rather good signal) it was again on 4052.5 (4052.455) and since then it seems to be a regular visitor on this a bit odd frequency between 75 and 60 mb.
Information I have seen (thanks to R. Wayne Borthwick, VA7GF vie Glenn Hauser DXLD):
The antenna is a 89 m long with a phasing stub 11m long hanging near the middle. The two current nodes are separated to give near maximum collinear gain (about 7.5 db above isotropic theoretical). Since the antenna is oriented NE to SW it is ideally oriented toward covering Mexico and Western N. America on one side and C. America, S. America on the other side.

I designed it so the lower elevation angle minor lobes are about 8 to 10 dB down off the ends of the antenna to cover E. USA and Europe. It hangs over a gully with a max depth of about 25m and is end fed through a matching network by approx. 10 m of RG8 coax. The matching network is mounted in a sheet metal box on the tower and consists of a single 30 cm diameter coil of three-eighths soft copper tubing. Top of the coil is to antenna and bottom to ground with the 50 ohm tap about 1.8 turns up from the ground.

The big problems in the installation were getting a good solid ground in dry earth covered by concrete and buildings. Lots of work by the mason chipping holes for the ground wires in the concrete. It also turned out the power feed from the transformer at the edge of the of property had a bad neutral so today that got fixed. Prior to that we were completing the neutral current through our antenna ground, and indication that the antenna ground is at least capable of a few amps at 60 Hz without too much voltage drop.

Hope this and the 500 W carrier from the Omnitronix solid state transmitter helps reception up your way. 73 (R. Wayne Borthwick, VA7GF, Oct 29, WORLD OF RADIO 1537, DX LISTENING DIGEST).

Freezing DX!

Two important issues are to be announced soon:

1) The list of the accepted reports from DXers of the SWR FDXA Summer Meeting Broadcasts 6-7th August.

2) The King´s Village DX Stations October and November.

While waiting for these news (which are not from the DXleaks) we can enjoy the Art of the Arctic Winds coming from the North Pole at the window of the DX-QTH at King´s Village. Yes, it has been freezing times the last two weeks with temps. down to -20 degrees C. But we are used to manage, unlike the friends of us in Central Europe.

73 TK

How to Listen to the Philipinos on MW?

During the "Golden Years of DXing in 1970´s" with loops and small wire antennas (and an old tube receiver) one could easily get a few MW stations from the Philippines also when they started the broadcast day. I remember one of these was DWWW on 1280. And several others, but that was before the Asians adjusted the channels to the current 9-kHz spaced allocation which is everywhere but in Americas.
Things become a lot more difficult later on. However, during wintertime, especially in October, sometimes you can get a few (a dozen seems to be almost the maximum number) of them even in South Finland. What you need is a wire to 50...80 degrees (a beverage could be best or a BOG/LWOG) of about a wavelength long and of course a suitable receiver. Nowadays a SDR-rx which records the whole band before the sunset (usually in Finland around 12-14 utc) at least during the TOH´s is good. A good outdoor loop (ALA100 for example) can be used as well, but you have to reduce the intereference from Europe. In Lapland the situation is of course better.
It seems that last season was not that good as the more Northernly stations (Japan, Korea and Northern China) were often the dominants. For these areas in South East Asia, you need actually a bit more disturbed propagation conditions.
This year I has been able to note at least two good days for reception of Philippinos in October: the 5th and the 10th of Oct. Some new frequencies were noted like 684 (Aksyon Bacolod) and 864 (UNID so far). I have tried to measure some of the offsets (list) as quite a few of them seems to be rather stable on their offsets. From the list all but those on 1422 (maybe back on nominal now?) and 1575 have been noted recently. Some of these might be possible even in Central Europe - at least the easily recognizible carriers? Please note the accurancy of the offsets is about 1 Hz due to the daily variation, Doppler effects and the resolution / accurancy of Perseus (some of the measurements have been done by SpectraVue-IQ).
What's also interesting with the Philipinos is the language (sounds a bit like Spanish) and the style of programming they have (some of them religious, though). Those having "normal" informative / music programs also identifies rather well with call letters and/or slogans. They seems to have to give "the official ID" prior to closing down.
The published lists of "KOJE" etc of NA-MEX stations is a big one as the lists of Latins (and so seems to be the lists of logged "Kiwis" as well nowadays. This is a tiny one, but the small number can become bigger - so let´s try to get them!