GLENN HAUSER'S SHORTWAVE/DX REPORT 99-78, Dec 21, 1999 {Items from this and all our reports may be reproduced and re- reproduced only providing full credit be maintained at all stages. If excerpting, this means appending the line above} [NOTE: The previous report, Dec 19, was headed 99-76 instead of the correct 99-77] ** KOREA NORTH. Re Pyongyang: there is no foreign service on air as I type this. I checked before and after 0800 but nothing heard on 15245 13760 (VOA in Chinese poor level here) 9975 9650 9345 7580 6575. I can hear the domestic pgms on 11679.8 and 6398.6 but cannot trace v9666, and 6250 is impossible due to the mystery "noise" sender on there. Note that 11679.8 and 6398.6 are both listed as Kanggye. Maybe this site is getting power but the others not??? (Noel Green, UKOGBANI, Dec 20, via Wolfgang Bueschel) As I noted, 17735.4 was missing around 0100 UT Dec 19; but it was back Dec 20 (Hauser) ** KOREA NORTH. The just today arrived WRTH mentions under North Korea for the Kanggye site (exact location is probably Wiwon as mentioned for MW 720) now "5 x 200, 2 x 250 kW" transmitters. Provided that these information is true (I wonder about the source and its reliability) these two 250 kW transmitters should be the ones from the Swiss Beromünster site, which was dismantled and taked away by a North Korean company a few years ago. Regards, (Kai Ludwig, Dec 20) ** MACAU [non] Late update to the CRI Macau coverage, as of 1900 UT Dec 19, since DX Report 99-77:: The great moment of handover 1600 UT was marred at 1557 by "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" as FEBA prepared to do a scheduled broadcast on 9785; 1558 CRI relayed the majestic Portuguese national anthem, and at precisely 1600 the Chinese anthem. Meanwhile, //7405 had cut off around 1557 at its scheduled closing despite the live coverage in progress. Unlistenable until about 1630 when FEBA was off or faded. 9785 was still on at 1808 check with ceremony, English commentary and cut off at 1825. Meanwhile I finally looked at the cri/macau website and listened to a few seconds of its RA before that dropped off -- audio was awful, worse than SW beamed elsewhere. But the table displayed there made more sense than previous renderings, when read properly, with the exception of the slight omission of not showing any times. From that we see that the planned frequency usage was: l. Handover: 9705 Eu, 9785 SAf/As 2. Inauguration of Regional Government: ditto plus 9690 to NAm [unheard] 3. Celebration in Macau: Eu 9745, SAf/As 11720 4. Official Reception in Macau: Eu 17755, SAf/As 11720, NAm 9690 5. Gala Celebration in Beijing: Eu 17755, SAf 11720, SEAs 9535, SAs 11765 UT Mon Dec 20 at 0200, 9690 was on early in English with apparent live coverage of Event No. 4; loud and clear, no doubt Spain, as for regular programming at 0300. Being in Chinese (Guoyu, I think rather than Cantonese) or Portuguese, simultaneous translation was necessary, but this certainly increased the already stultifying lack of spontaneity. Can't leave anything to chance on a Great Occasion! Intonation on the first syllable of Ao-men is definitely falling. Brief check of 11675 around 1215 showed regular programming, tho some info from CRI indicated Macau coverage would last until 1230. I gather that China is expected to run Macau more efficiently than the colonialists, but the ``efficiency'' of CRI is once again in question, as they failed to convey clearly and accurately their times and frequencies for all this. BTW, whenever you hear CRI without any jamming, remember that the Chinese have the unmitigated gall to jam our VOA and RFA broadcasts in Chinese (Glenn Hauser, OK) I failed to check the broadcast on 9515, but didn't miss the one on 6165: Signal behaviour and audio/modulation style suggests their new Continental transmitters at Urumqi as origin, rather likely it was no European transmitter, especially almost definitely no Jülich or Wertachtal. The program was hosted by a men and a woman, partly voicing-over live sound, also referring to the various languages of special CRI broadcasts (without any details regarding frequencies of course) as well as their special website. (Kai Ludwig, Germany, Dec 20) ** RUSSIA (?). unID broadcast harmonic on 10 meters, 29160, was reported around 1340 Dec 16 by I0WTD, presumably in Italy; he also may have heard it on fundamental 9720; the harmonic was quite strong here. (George McClintock, TN) Passport 1998 indicates Moscow the most likely source (Hauser) ** SWEDEN. RADIO SWEDEN -- We've had some questions from listeners concerned about reports that a hurricane has wiped out Radio Sweden antennas. The reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated. There are no hurricanes in Sweden (by definition hurricanes are a kind of tropical storm), but hurricane force winds did hit the southern part of the country on December 3rd. The winds knocked down electric pylons, as well as antenna towers at our shortwave transmitter station in Hörby. You can see a photo of a fallen log periodic antenna which seems to have been destroyed, in the online version of this bulletin, at: http://www.sr.se/rs/media/scdx2327.htm The staff were out the following day repairing antennas, and very few broadcasts disappeared completely. The first break in transmission was at 17:39 hrs UTC, and a series of breaks continued through 00:06 hrs. There was another break at 06:45-07:00 hrs on December 4. During the repair work on December 4, our broadcasts between 11:30 and 14:40 hrs UTC were off the air. Since 14:40 hrs on December 4, transmissions have been as scheduled, although some have used different antennas. On December 7, 6065 kHz was off the air for 10 minutes from 11:00 hrs during the final repairs. The medium wave station in Sölvesborg was also off the air temporarily, but that was due to a power failure. On December 3 power disappeared for about 3 hours from 20:07 hrs UTC. The following day the transmitter was off the air during a power black-out for most of the period between 04:25 and 16:15 hrs. (Hoerby transmitter station and Magnus Nilsson, Teracom) And at least during the period our transmitters were off the air, listeners could still hear us by satellite, and over the Internet. (SCDX/MediaScan Dec 21) ** U S A. I really enjoy WOR and your DX Reports on your website so I thought I'd contribute this item I heard on WGTG today. WGTG owner Dave Frantz reported on his "Survival Communications" program at 1800 UTC Monday that starting December 22, 1999, transmitter #2 that is currently on 12.170 USB from 1300-2300 UTC will be moved to 12.172 USB due to a request from the Army Materials Command, who already uses 12.168 USB for an emergency communications network. He also reported that he is proceeding with installation of alternative (solar) power for his station in case of power outage. He plans to do some tests soon with 5kw power on 6.890 USB and 5kw on 5.085 USB, both powered by solar to see how far the lower power will get out. He also says that there will be testing at 100w SSB but did not specify a frequency at this time. No testing schedule was given; Dave indicated that it would be announced on the air soon. (Johnathan Grant, Dec 20) ** U S A. Dr. Demento back in Oklahoma? Despite the promo I heard less than a week before on KSPI 93.7 Stillwater, when I checked at the announced time, Sunday 8 pm CT, KSPI was covering wrestling!, in fact, before 8 and past 10 pm. Collegiate or high school, I suppose, a big deal in the fount of learning in Oklahoma. Looked around for a website to get an E-mail address, but the one I found, http://www.937thespy.com/ did not work. BTW, I also came upon a website run by an apartment company listing local radio stations everywhere, with gobs of mistakes, like Ponca City OK respelled to something unrecognizable (Glenn Hauser, Enid) THIS DAY'S CHINESE, TIBETAN LESSON As in 6260, ``Quinghai'' PBS: The correct spelling of the province is Qinghai, without the "u" that people tend insert due to influence from Spanish or French. The "q" in Chinese is pronounced like English ch + h. The combination "qui" does not exist in the modern Chinese latinization system, which is called "pinyin". The pinyin system uses a number of letters and letter combinations in a way that is very different from western usage. The reason is that the system wants to cover all the different sounds in Chinese without using other than the basic Latin letters. A few other rules: b, d and g are pronounced like English p, t and k but without a following weak h sound (i.e. as in French and Spanish), while p, t and k are pronounced with a very strong following h sound. "ian" (as in dian) is pronounced "yen", and consequently "dian" becomes "tyen". The wellknown word "guangbo diantai" for broadcasting station becomes "kwangpo tyenthai" ("th" pronounced as separate t + h). In addition Chinese has a system of tones, meaning that a syllable can be pronounced with a rising, falling, falling+rising or constant pitch, each giving a different meaning to the same syllable (most often several different meanings for each tone). This system also exists in such languages as Vietnamese, Tibetan and Thai. Cantonese has eight tones. ---- I can write more on this subject if you want me to, primarily concerning pronunciation rules. 73s (Olle Alm Sweden via Wolfgang Bueschel) Thanks a lot indeed, and yes - Olle is right in all but one point. But frankly speaking, the correct transliteration or rather transcription of Mandarin, or any other Chinese language for that matter, has always mystified me. Surely there´s some sort of standard. For Tibetan we use the 'Wylie-transliteration', which is internationally accepted. But then, Tibetan employs letters (30 of them + 4 vowel signs) instead of signs. I´ve always wondered how you transliterate a sign... Where Olle is wrong is in saying that Tibetan belongs to the languages that have a tonal system. I speak all three major dialects of Tibetan pretty fluently and spent years upon years among them, I should know... ;-) Wonder where he got that information from. Surely a lot of nonsense is taught at quite a few Tibetological departments of western universities... 73 de (Thomas Roth, Germany) ###