DX LISTENING DIGEST 00-58, April 24, 2000 edited by Glenn Hauser {Items from DXLD may be reproduced and re-reproduced only providing full credit be maintained at all stages. DXLD may not be reposted in its entirety without permission} ** AFGHANISTAN. Voice of Shari'ah English programme changes time: Afghan Taleban radio said on 21st April that its English-language programme would be now aired at 1530 gmt, half an hour later than before. The programme will be now broadcast at 2000 local time. Source: Radio Voice of Shari'ah external service, Kabul, in English 1530 gmt 21 Apr 00 (BBC Monitoring April 24 via DXLD) ** BHUTAN. We are just a little over a week away (May 1-12th) before a major operation takes place from this number 2 most wanted country hits the airway. A quick recap of details presents that the operators will be: 9V1YC, JA3IG, JA3USA, JF1IST, OH2BU, ON4WW, RA3AUU, UA3AB, K3VN, K4UEE, K5VT, N0MJ, N1DG, W0GJ and W3WL. Using ONLY 100 watts, the operating frequencies are: CW - 1826.5, 3504, 7004, 10104, 14024, 18074, 21024, 24894, 28024 SSB - 3795, 7095, 14195, 18145, 21295, 24945, 28475 RTTY - 14080, 21080, 28080 It has been reported that an interactive Web site will be operational shortly at: http://www.goldtel.net/A5 The Web site will contain: daily log, daily schedule, current statistics, the latest WWV (w/grayline and MUF information links), latest PacketCluster A5 spots from around the world, and links to sponsors/supporters. QSL via W0GJ: Glenn Johnson, 14164 Irvine, Bemidji, MN 56601 USA. (KB8NW/OPDX April 24/BARF80 via John Norfolk, OKCOK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** CUBA [non]. I can hardly believe how little coverage Radio Martí is giving to the Elián González story. With the exception of one panel discussion a couple weeks back, this seems to be a matter of policy. Of course now, after the raid, the whole issue becomes a tiger-by-the-tail which the Fundación Cubano-americana can't tame. What a shame, though, that VOA hasn't exercised enough oversight so that the station would at least give a true picture of news related to Cuba. Come to think of it, it's been a while since they've used that carefully worded formula: ``Radio Martí; programa de servicio para Cuba de la Voz de los Estados Unidos de América.`` (Max Swanson, MN, April 24, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** GREECE [non]. ``It`s All Greek to Me`` was heard again already in progress at 1803 UT Sunday April 23 on 17705 via Delano, and continued through the hour. Last time we had heard this weekly Voice of Greece show announced in English was from 1906, before DST (Glenn Hauser, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** MONGOLIA. As per your recent DXLD I checked the V of Mongolia the last couple days, and the results follow. I must qualify this though and note that this time in April is when Mongolia quickly begins to fade away in northeast Ohio. In fact the known English broadcast on 12085 at 1030 had been much less audible here as of 4/19/2000 - plus R Australia Brandon on 12080 often blocks them as some days Brandon is audible on my new Yaesu FT847 receiver from 12076 - 12085.6 kHz. Anyway, here's my observations: 1030-1100 V of Mongolia English is audible here on 12085 variable; 1200-1230 V of Mongolia presumed Japanese on 12085 some days, but not every day that I checked last week (wasn't heard here on Wednesday or Saturday, but I'm not home every day at this time). It was audible then a couple times the week before. 1500-1530 Nothing heard here on 9720. Very, very, very faint carrier 12015 and 12085 but could not make out any audio at all. 2000-2030 Nothing on 9720 or 12015. Syria with good signal but very weak audio on 12085 kHz. (Lee Silvi, Mentor, April 23, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** MONGOLIA. Hi Glenn, I rechecked and Voice of Mongolia was booming in Sunday morning on 12085 in English; this was at the previously noted time of 1030 UTC. Their signal was actually better than previously, so maybe they were off for a couple of days to fix their xmtr? The xmtr hum was totally gone. Interestingly enough, the woman presenting the show noted that the two later broadcasts in English (1500 and 2200) are now on BOTH 12015 and 12085. I don't get either one of these in New Hampshire but someone else may want to give these a shot. (Craig Seufert, Meredith, NH USA, April 23, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** MONGOLIA. Glenn, VOM heard this morning at 1030 UTC in ENGLISH on 12085. Fair (S4) signal but somewhat poor audio, making it difficult to understand the already difficult to understand female speaker. So things are back to what they were a week ago! (Michael Kallstrom, KY, April 24, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** MONGOLIA. 12085: Very good reception for two consecutive days with English at 12085.0. Couldn't find any parallels. Interesting program about monuments in Mongolia at 1526 including one to a marmot, and another depicting male genitalia! Same female announcer, who must compromise 100% of the personnel of the English service! (Volodya Salmaniw, BC, 22 and 23 April, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** NETHERLANDS ANTILLES. Hi Glenn, you've probably already heard this, but Radio Netherlands on their 2330 UTC newscast 4/23 reported that the power generation plant at Bonaire had been destroyed by fire; said that transmissions would be disrupted "indefinitely". I suspected something was up when 2330 xmsn on 9845 khz was much weaker than usual, probably coming from Flevo. Nothing on their web site yet about this (Steve Luce, Houston, 2356 ut April 23, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** NETHERLANDS ANTILLES. April 24 UT at 0124 English closing announcements on 9845: Radio Netherlands mentioned the fire again, apologized for the frequencies ``being messed up`` and said the English broadcast at 0430 would not be on tonight due to the fire as neither frequency for 0430 was operational. She said she did not know when the 0430 broadcast would be operational again but asked listeners to be patient. (Lee Silvi, OH, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** NETHERLANDS ANTILLES. On Easter Sunday, 23 April 2000, a major fire broke out in the generator room of the Radio Netherlands relay station on Bonaire in the Netherlands Antilles. The fire totally destroyed the generators, silencing the station. Fortunately nobody was hurt, but the cost of the damage may run into several million dollars. The temporary loss of the Bonaire facility means that transmissions to North, Central and South America, western Africa, Australia and New Zealand may be disrupted for some time. It´s not yet known how long it will be before the station can be made operational again. Every effort will be made to maintain as full a service as possible from other transmitter sites. In the short term, some frequencies may be off the air, or received with weaker signals than normal. We ask for your patience and understanding in these difficult circumstances. Please remember that Radio Netherlands transmissions are also available online, both live and on demand. Listeners in some areas can also hear portions of our programming via local stations. (Andy Sennitt, RN website April 24, via DXLD) ** SHIJIUTUO ISLAND. Here is another chance to work the members of The Beijing DX Club once again from Shijiutuo Island (118 degrees 49' 36"E, 39 degrees 08' 43"N). Activity will be from May 1st through 4th. They will use the callsign BI3H and plan to operate on CW and SSB on the normal IOTA frequencies from 40 to 10 meters with two stations active (one beam and one linear amplifier will be used). The first station is expected to be active at approximately 1000z on May 1st. They plan to work North America during 2300z to 0200z and 1100z to 1400z. The team members will include Ken/BA1AJ, Alan/ BA1DU, Guo/BA1GYS, Chen/BA1HAM, Ban/BA1MK, Chen/BA1MT, Wu/BG1CE and others. QSL via W3HC. (KB8NW/OPDX April 24/BARF80 via John Norfolk, OKCOK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) The IOTA frequencies can be found towards the end of Nets to You! on the World of Radio web site. ** UKRAINE. SPECIAL EVENT (Attention CW Enthusiast!) On April 27th, the Ukrainian Radio Telegraphic Morse Club (UCWC) will celebrate the 209th birthday of Samuel F.B. Morse, the inventor of the radio telegraph, and be active on the air using the special callsign, EMORSE (all letters) now through April 30th. Activity will be on all bands including the WARC bands. A unique QSL card will be available through the QSL Manager DJ0MAQ, Czeslaw Grycz, Sigmaringer Str. 33, 10713 BERLIN Germany. They mention that a contact with EMORSE and the QSL card is a full valid membership to the Morse Club UCWC. The address for the HQ of the Morse Club UCWC is: P.O. Box 28, Chernigiv- Postamt, 14000 Ukraine, Europe. Their E-mail address is: morse@ok.net.ua Their Web page is: http://morse.cjb.net (KB8NW/OPDX April 24/BARF80 via John Norfolk, OKCOK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** UKRAINE. Alexandr Yegorov from Kiev informs that starting April 14 the World Service of Radio Ukraine International has resumed broadcasting via the Soviet-built superpowerful tx in Lvov. Current schedule: 07:00-12:00 on 21520 kHz (on April 21 21510 kHz was used instead) 19:00-22:00 on 15530 kHz 23:00-04:00 on 13590 kHz (as reported today in Moscow DX-Bulletin) Personal note: Tonight, at 1:20 UT I listened to RUI's Ukrainian broadcast here in Michigan on 13590 kHz. The reception was excellent. In their Mailbag they broadcast an interview with a visiting Canadian of a Ukrainian descent who runs a daily Ukrainian radio show in Toronto, Ont. A guy was upset because of hearing too many people on the streets of Kiev speak a "foreign" language (meaning, of course, Russian). He said, "These people live under Ukrainian sun, eat Ukrainian bread and breathe Ukrainian air. Why don't they speak Ukrainian language? Nowhere in the world can one observe anything like that! In Paris they speak French, in Rome they speak Italian, and in Warsaw they speak Polish. People living in Kiev must speak Ukrainian!" This line is quite characteristic of RUI's Ukrainian service. But it's very strange to hear something like that from someone living in Toronto. In my view, Toronto is much more multicultural than Kiev. People who live under a "Canadian sun" seem to be free to speak many foreign languages on their streets or in their houses. Why not propose the same for Kiev? (Sergei Sosedkin, MI, April 24, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** UKRAINE. 13590 1000 kW is back! I hear Radio Ukraine International nightly with a great signal in Ukrainian, and an hour of English from 0300 to 0400. They did not use this frequency for the English hour between 0000 and 0100, instead continuing in Ukrainian, without the usual interval signal and ID. Lviv is listed here until 0400. After this, Kharkiv is listed with 100 kW. RUI is audible here at 0620 with a very weak signal in Ukrainian, which would support the lower power and site listed. Good news for the English hour at 0300, since 9640 is only barely audible here in English between 0000 and 0100. I've heard an e-mail address announced for Radio Ukraine International, and haven't seen anyone else post it. I believe it is: VSRU@NRCU.GOV.UA (Volodya Salmaniw, BC, 16 April, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** U S A. Glenn, in reference to your item about CBS Radio O&O's not webcasting... Would you believe my market - Atlanta - has no CBS Radio, and has not for years. As CBS Radio Hourly News is the most no-nonsense and authoritative of all that's out there, I turned to the web to find CBS Radio News during the day, and to the clears at night. After a lot of searching I noted that a sizeable majority of CBS affils do not webcast, but I finally found success via the KXL- Portland and KQV-Pittsburgh RealAudio feeds. Now I find CBS affil (but not O&O) WTOP Washington - perhaps CBS Radio's most prestigious news station after WCBS-NY - webcasts 24/7 including News On The Hour and many CBS features. Plus WTOP this winter launched a WTOP-2 webfeed of rolling coverage of various federal and legislative events, sort of a C-Span concept via a radio webcast. And what does WTOP-2 feed in the weekends and odd hours? AP News and CBS Radio features. (Of course WTOP's 1500kc signal is obliterated at night in my neighborhood by WSB's harmonic.) So CBS's idiotic webcast prohibition may be wide-ranging, but it is not all-encompassing. Best, (Tom Roche, VT Editor, Atlanta, April 23, DX LISTENING DIGEST) INTERNATIONAL MARCONI DAY (IMD). On April 29th (from 0000-2400z), over 40 International Marconi Day Special Event stations will be participating world wide. These Marconi Day Stations will represent Historic Guglielmo Marconi transmitting and receiving stations and will commemorate milestones in the development of worldwide wireless communications By Guglielmo Marconi. The Marconi Radio Club, W1AA/IMD of Massachusetts, will represent the Marconi Transatlantic Station where Marconi completed his first spark gap radio transmission between the United States and Europe on January 18, 1903. The Marconi Radio Club will have several stations on the bands for the event. Check out the Marconi Radio Club W1AA Web site at: http://personal.tmlp.com/k1vv/w1aa/ Sponsor - C.R.A.C. - International Marconi Day link: (List of participating stations and award information). Also, check the Cornish Radio Amateur Club Web site at: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~straff/ (Ohio-Penn DX Bulletin) ###