DX LISTENING DIGEST 00-04, January 13, 2000 edited by Glenn Hauser {Items from DXLD may be reproduced and re-reproduced only providing full credit be maintained at all stages} THIS WEEK ON WORLD OF RADIO 1019: See topic summary at http://www.angelfire.com/ok/worldofradio/wor1019.html INFORME DX DESDE NORTEAMERICA. La primera parte de nuestro informe de enero sale al aire el viernes 14 y domingo 16 en Radio Enlace por Radio Nederland. ** ANGOLA. New SW transmitter at Mulenvos Excerpts from report by Angolan government radio on 31st December Radio Nacional de Angola [RNA] is to have a modern transmitter in February 2000. RNA Director-General Manuel Rabelaes says the transmitter will replace the existing shortwave transmitter at Mulenvos... Source: Radio Nacional de Angola, Luanda, in Portuguese 1900 gmt 31 Dec 99 ((C) BBC Monitoring via WORLD OF RADIO 1019, DX LISTENING DIGEST) Mulenvos is the site for the rated 100 kW transmitters on 11955, etc (Hauser) ** AUSTRALIA. G'day Glenn. Enjoy your programmes...been listening for years. Caught your show on WWCR, 1330 utc on 15685 last night [UT Tue] at good level. Thought you might like the following Alice Springs freqs. Though not sure which are currently active. [Re: story on WOR Extra 32 about Alice Springs School of the Air] School of the Air 3845, 5340, 5370, 7760, 8035. Royal Flying Doctor Service 2020, 4350, 5410, 6950. Hope this will be of some interest to others. Keep up the good work. Loved your Aussie language. CHEERS MATE!!!!!! (Jeff Bell, Perth, Western Australia, Jan 12, WORLD OF RADIO 1019, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** CANADA. This week on C'est la Vie...the accent is on...accents. Why is it that when you learn a second language as an adult, you never sound like a native speaker, no matter how well you speak? Yet when kids learn a second language, they manage to pick it up much better. Also, an exploration of the range of accents in the French spoken across Canada, and the reasons behind those differences. That's on C'est la Vie, with Bernard St. Laurent, UT Sat Jan 15 at 0029-0059 via RCI on 5960, 9755 (CBC Hotsheet amended by Hauser, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** CANADA. Hello, Here's what we are working on for this week’s edition of Quirks & Quarks: Our feature item is The Search for Extra-solar Planets: For the first time, astronomers have detected the light from a planet outside our own solar system. It turns out to be blue. As more and more planets are discovered circling nearby stars, scientists say it's just a matter of time before we find one that's just like Earth. We'll find out what that means for our search for life elsewhere in the Universe. Plus, we'll discover why tall men have more children than short guys. That's on Quirks & Quarks, this Saturday right after the noon news, on Radio One. Quirks and Quarks 12:09 - 1:00pm on CBC Radio with host Bob McDonald (McDonald) And on RCI Sunday 1305-1358 on 9640, 13650, 17710 (Hauser, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** ETHIOPIA [non]. CLANDESTINE 11670, Ethiopian Voice of Unity ? or Ethiopian for Democracy ? Jan 12 at 1600 open the program with music, then ID by man in Amharic as ..... Democratic Ethiopia Unity, then continued by mentioning Democratic many times, and meter band also mentioned (probably frequency given), then news bulletin mentioning many African countries such as Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Uganda, Kenya as well as America until 1620, then short instrumental music and after that a long talk by the same announcer on Sudan. Good and clear reception (Mahendra Vaghjee, Mauritius, Jan 13, DX LISTENING DIGEST) And see bottom of this issue, as well as DXLD 00-02 ** FINLAND. Radio Finland will be broadcasting results of the Finnish presidential election on Jan 16: English 0000-0030 6135 (Europe), 0700-0730 9655 11665 (North America); German 0030-0100 6135 (Europe), 1030-1045 6055 (Europe); French 1045-1100 6055 (Europe); Russian 0100-0130 6190 (East Europe), 0730-0800 6120 (East Europe). Special election results broadcast will be repeated on Feb 6 if a second round of voting is required. (Matt Francis, Electronic DX Press) Is the election on Jan 16 (Sunday), so the broadcasts are on UT Jan 17 (Monday), or both one day earlier? (Hauser, WORLD OF RADIO 1019, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** GREECE [non]. We continue to note that the V. of Greece relays at 1800-2200 via VOA USA sites are not synchronized; Jan 12 at 1910 check, 17705 was first, 17565 was second. We have been unable to get an explicit answer from VOA about why this is the case, since their schedules show 17705 is Delano and 17565 Greenville. For propagational reasons, we tend to agree this is currently the case: 17565 is not quite as solid and strong here, as would be expected from a signal beamed south from Greenville versus one aimed right at us from Delano. Thus we are forced to make another hypothesis: Delano may get the satellite feed direct, even though it is farther away, while Greenville gets it routed through Washington, involving an additional hop? It is also possible that even from the same site the two could be staggered to even out power consumption, as is done at Bonaire (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** GUAM. Effective Mar 26, KTWR will discontinue the Pacific DX Report program, as well as several other locally produced features. This decision has been made by the Trans World Radio Asia Pacific Board of Directors. Regrettably, there will no longer be any scripts produced for PDXR by us, but EDXP material will continue to be used as a key news source until the program terminates late in March. EDXP QSLs will continue to be offered until that time. Host Charlie Troxell advises that he and his family will move to another ministry on Guam during April. As a matter of interest, all of those 174 weekly scripts were compiled voluntarily by us, with financial support neither sought nor expected. The audience of PDXR is considered to be high, but that seems not to be of interest to the people responsible for policy and programming at KTWR. This is similar to the situation when KTWR first came on the air, when we assisted with setting up the first DX program on KTWR - "DX Listener's Log", which was hosted by Bill Damick, who subsequently returned to the USA. Sad to see the end of this program, and we hope that our work over those years has been recognised and appreciated by the global SW monitoring community. If you do not have an EDXP QSL for this program, you still have until the end of March! Thu 0800 15330 (first edition), repeated Fri 1030 9865, Mon 1545 15330, Tue 0900 15200 (Bob Padula, Electronic DX Press via DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** ISRAEL. Dear friends, please receive the following changes to the b99isr02 schedule, effective JAN 17 2000 Add 5830 1500 1630 29 30 39-40 250 090 Persian 5830 1700 1830 2-10 27 28 250 330 Yiddish, Hungarian, Romanian, Yiddish 5830 1830 2000 2-10 27 28 250 330 Russian 6240 1500 1630 29 30 39-40 250 027 Persian 6240 1700 1800 10-13 37-38 250 294 Spanish, Ladino 6240 1900 1945 10-13 37-38 250 294 Mabat 6240 2000 2030 52-53 57 250 187 English 6240 2030 2215 10-13 37-38 250 294 French, Hebrew Hope that it would not make any problem (Moshe Oren, Bezeq, Jan 13) Mabat is TV news in Hebrew from Reshet Bet (Doni Rosenzweig, Jan 13) We spelt out the langs from abbrs. Unfortunately he does not show the frequencies deleted in turn, but recently new 7510 at 2000-2100 is still on the schedule, so 6240 must replace something else (Glenn Hauser, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** ITALY. A friend of DX'ing has asked me to post this: Alfredo Cotroneo, who runs Nexus-IRRS in Milan, Italy has started experimental evening transmissions on weekends on 7120. These *should* be audible at least on the East Coast and in the Central US and Canada. These transmissions are especially interesting because they're in pure SSB (USB) with 10 kW of power into an L-dipole, i.e. pretty much omni-directional. These transmissions feature free radio programs from Europe, and the producers are eager to see if they reach NAm. Nexus would like to get as many reports as possible to get a picture of reception over there. Reports can be emailed to: info@nexus.org The Nexus homepage is: http://www.nexus.org The sked URL is: http://www.nexus.org/NEXUS-IBA/Schedules/IRRS-SW_B99.html (via Larry Nebron, John Norfolk) There we found the actual time for this: 7,120 kHz 0200-0300 Sat & Sun zones 17-20, 27-30, 37-39, 10 kW SSB/USB non directional in English, German (DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** NEW ZEALAND. The Mailbox edition on the RNZI website is still Dec 20 as of Jan 13 (Larry Nebron, CA) The next Mailbox will be recorded on Monday 1st February (Adrian Sainsbury, Frequency Manager, RADIO NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL, reply to Nebron, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** SUDAN [non]. Perhaps the ``9052`` for V. of Sudan in the BBCM schedule quoted in DXLD 00-03 is actually 9520 as BC-DX reminds us with sked in NASWA LN, which has actually been heard on 9517.44 (DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** TIBET [non]. First Tibetan-language web site opens in China Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua Lanzhou, 10th January: The first Tibetan-language web site on the Internet opened recently in Lanzhou, capital of northwest China’s Gansu Province. The web site - http://www.tonguer.net or http://www.gs.cninfo.net - features the history, language, culture, religion, medicine, folk customs, arts, painting and landscape of Tibet in Tibetan language and pictures. Visitors can study the Tibetan language and Tibet’s history and achievements through the web site. The opening of the web site is a scientific research result of a group led by professor Yu Hongzhi at Northwest China Institute for Ethnic Groups. The Tibetan ethnic group has a long history and a population of 5 megaTibetans mainly live in southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai and Gansu Provinces in northwest China. Source: Xinhua news agency, Beijing, in English 1304 gmt 10 Jan 00 ((C) BBC Monitoring via DX LISTENING DIGEST) The above should be of particular interest to, and perhaps only to, Thomas Roth (Hauser) ** U K O G B A N I. Merlin Network One SW schedule, complete, to Eu u.o.s.: Roy Masters: M-F 1700-1800 6185 Imagination, from Stafford Broadcasting Society: Fri 1900-2000 6010 Celtic Notes, from Wales Radio International: Fri 2130-2200 6010, Sat 0300-0330 9735 Am, 1130-1200 17650 Au Global Sound Kitchen: Fri 2200-2300 6170 7165 9615, Fri 2300-2359 3985 6170 7165, Sat 0000-0200 3985 6180 7165, Sat 1400-1600 9605 13640 15510, Sat 1600-1800 3965 9655 13640 (© BBC Monitoring Jan 12 via WORLD OF RADIO 1019, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** U S A. KIPM, pirate normally on 6950/6955 and 13910/13915 says it has produced 7 shows with more to come: 1) Traffic Report Obscura; 2) God, Illuminator of Our Lives; 3) Primordial Time Journey; 4) Ramblings from the Heart of Darkness; 5) Entropy; 6) Electromagnetic Madness; 7) Arecibo Alpha 1. Stands for Illuminati Prima Materia; ``each show is one hour in length and highly cerebral in content``. Addresses: Allan Maxwell, KIPM, P O Box 24, Lula, GA 30554 or KIPM_outerlimits@hotmail.com (Maxwell Jan 3, DX LISTENING DIGEST) PROPAGATION OUTLOOK And now the solar forecast. This week the more active side of the sun is expected to be facing us. Solar activity should be mostly low, with only M-class solar flares taking place occasionally. Solar flux levels should peak early this week at around 200, but then gradually fall. Geomagnetic activity is expected to be 'quiet', but levels could increase towards next weekend. MUFs during daylight hours at equal latitudes should be around 34 MHz for the south and 31 MHz for the north. Paths this week to India should have a maximum usable frequency, with a 50 per cent success rate, of about 40 MHz. The optimum working frequency, with a 90 per cent success rate, will be around 35 MHz and the best time to try this path should be between 0800 and 1200 UTC. And that's the end of the solar information. Updated propagation information since this bulletin was prepared is available at: http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/por/update.htm and for more on propagation generally see http://www.rsgb.org/society/psc.htm. (GB2RS RSGB News Jan 12 via John Norfolk via DX LISTENING DIGEST) THIS DAY’S AMHARIC LESSON Herein you will find a transliteration of the ID of the new DTK station called 'Ethiopian Voice of Unity' Weds 16-17 on 11670. This is with a help of an Ethiopian person. Text is first in Amharic, next is the translation in English. Yihi Foneta Demokrasi ye ItyoPPya Andinet Dimts new. Foneta Demokrasi ye ItyoPPya Andinet Dimts kezzih betatch betegeleTut qeninna seatotch indihumm meter bandotch beAmarinnya Qwanqwa beItyopphyanna beteqorababotch agerotch lemmeegenyu ItyoPPyan program matelalef yijemmiral. Berabu, beItyoPPya aqoTaTer kemishitu and seat iske hulett seat dres be25 meter band woym be 11 sheeh 6 meto saba kilohertz. Ihud, keTwatu 5 seat iske 6 seat be13 meter band woym be21 shih 5 meto hamsa kilohertz yemmeetelalefu programotchin inditadamTu betihitna yasasbal. Foneta Demokrasi yeItyoPPya Andnet Dimts yeItyoPPyan hagerawi hilawe lemeTebeq: beItyoPPya hizb ikkulnet layy yetemeserrete andinetin lemamTat, yeItyoPPyan hizb hilawenet lemaskeber: beItyoppya demokrasyawi sirat lemasfat: yesebawi mebt mekeber lemaregageT: yeHigg belaynetinna tikiklennya danyinet lemasgenyet: yetsota, yehaymanotinna yebiheresebotch ikulnet lemaregageT: yemahberawi tseTita lemasgenyet bemmeederegew tigil akwahwan lemaregageT yeteqwaqwame Tabiya new. Yezuriya bota habt kenehizbu indismamu indiyagelegilinna indiqeTel: kehullum ager hudadinna demokrasyawi, ItyoPPyawi, libbawi digafinna tibibir yifelligal. Foneta Demokrasi, ye'ItyoPPya Andinet Dimts. [sic] ----- This is Foneta Demokrasi, Ethiopia's Voice of Unity. Foneta Demokrasi, Ethiopia's Voice of Unity, begins transmitting Ethiopia's program in Amharic language for those found in Ethiopia and in communicant countries, on the days and hours and likewise meter bands revealed below. It humbly reminds you to listen to the programs transmitted on Wednesday, from 1 hour until 2 hours in the evening by Ethiopian reckoning, on the 25 meter band or at 11,670 kHz; Sunday, from 5 hours until 6 hours in the morning on the 13 meter band or at 21,550 kHz. Foneta Demokrasi Ethiopia's Voice of Unity is a network established to guarantee a situation in the struggle made to safeguard Ethiopia's national existence, to bring a unity based upon the equality of Ethiopia's peoples, to induce respect for the existence of Ethiopia's people, to spread Democratic order in Ethiopia, to guarantee respect for human rights, to promote the rule of Law and fair justice, to guarantee equality of genders, religions and ethnicities, and to promote social security. In order to serve and continue that the region's wealth harmonize with the people, it seeks contributions and democratic Ethiopian moral support and cooperation from all countries. Foneta Demokrasi, Ethiopia's Voice of Unity. (Zacharias Liangas, Greece; also via Mahendra Vaghjee, DX LISTENING DIGEST) You can hear a recording of this opening announcement on my website, the Interval Signals Archive - click to the Clandestine Services section at: http://home.clara.net/dkernick (Dave Kernick, Jan 13, hard-core-dx via DXLD) ###