Log October 27, 2013

From Mario Filippi, NJ:

2749.0  Halifax Coast Guard Radio-Canadian CG  0241  USB male voice with maritime weather for Brown’s Bank, Georgia Bank, Southwest shore, etc. Switched to female voice at 0245.  10/27/13  (Mario Filippi, NJ)

6913.0  "L"-Probable Russian Military CW marker (MX)  0304  Continuous Morse ID  10/27/13  (Mario Filippi, NJ)

7646.0  DDH7-Deutscher Wetterdienst, Hamburg/Pinneberg Meteo  0310  RTTY (50/450)  WX for W. Baltic, Kattegat, Skagerak.  10/27/13  (Mario Filippi, NJ)

8495.0  "S"-Russian Navy cluster propagation beacon (MX)  0223  CW  Arkhangelsk/Severomorsk, Russia.  10/20/13  (Mario Filippi, NJ)

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Logging conventions:

Freq in kHz, time in UTC

USA has official state abbreviation

Remotes are given as place of intercept

ENIGMA designators in () (see ENIGMA 2000 Control List)

Acronyms are listed at Utility World web site

Full name not necessary, but desirable unless there's a need for confidentiality

10 Meters Comes to Life

Pretty lively this morning (Pacific time).  We are definitely in solar peak conditions, though not as dramatically so as in some past cycles.

Some unid likely outband stations were speaking Spanish, way up in 10 (29446.5) where they're not usually heard.  They were in LSB, while amateur transceivers typically use USB on this band.

Also a brief voice opening to Europe.  This path is still going on a weak-signal mode called JT65, though the band appears to be doing its daily shift to South America and later most likely to the Pacific.

Here are some JT65 hits in Southern California. The columns are UTC time, sync quality, strength in dB (I forgot the zero reference), offset in start time from 00 seconds (on your local clock), offset in Hz from 28076.000 kHz, and message exchanged. The countries in () were added by myself for identification.

16:17  3 -22  0.7   608  K CQ EI5HV IO51 (Ireland)

16:21  2 -22  0.8   608  K N1QQR EI5HV -05

16:34  4 -24 -1.9  -318  K SV2DFK EA3ZD 73 (Spain)

16:38  3 -22 -0.2   657  K EI5HV 9Y4NW FK90 (Trinidad & Tobago)

16:48  3 -19 -1.1   689  B NU6O EA3ZD JN01

16:52  3 -18 -0.6   350  K PD0TVA RRR 73 (Netherlands)

17:06  8 -18 -0.1   102  B CX8AF EI9KG R-19 (Ireland)

17:08  3 -22 -1.1  -517  K N8DEA IZ5UFW JN53 (Italy)

17:13  4 -21 -0.4   657  K CQ CX1BP GF15 (Uruguay)

17:16  6 -17 -0.3  -848  B CQ CE6MBK FF30 (Chile)

17:38  3 -19 -0.3   221  K ON7BL CX1BP 73

17:44  2 -25 -0.2   969  K WA6JBZ CE6MBK 73

Lots Going On

Lots happening while I'm engaged in other stuff (Murphy, after all):

1. Solar Cycle 24 may be peaking.  The sun is very active today (25 October), and two X class flares occurred overnight (US time).  The second one caused HF in the eastern US to black out all the way to 10 meters for a brief time.

2. Ken Reitz has made the formal announcement of Monitoring Times's successor publication, an all-electronic magazine called The Spectrum Monitor.  Yes, I'll be writing for it.  My column will be called Utility Planet.  The logs will be published on this blog, however.  It's more timely, and a lot less work for me.

3. The logs will change in one other way.  I'll stop using (by written permission) the ones posted on other mailing lists.  This means that intercepts from UDXF and other mailing lists will stay on those lists, instead of being republished.  This just makes more sense with an electronic publication. Why not get them first hand, and with more discussion of what they mean than I'd ever have room to do?

4. Logs sent to the column e-mail address will be published, of course. This address is not changing.  That's too much trouble.  It remains mtutilityworld followed by a commercial at sign followed by the top level domain for Google gmail. (Spam has made one of my accounts useless, so now I don't run the actual addresses online.)

5. Late October - Early November is sometimes known as the "fall DX season."  All the solar activity should make this year's period quite interesting.  Send in your hits.

No KSM or K6KPH for Shutdown Duration

From Maritime Radio Historical Society:

No MRHS Operations Saturday 5 October
and Possibly Beyond

As you have doubtless read, the partial shut down of the US government means that all federal parks are closed.  That includes the Point Reyes National Seashore where the KSM/K6KPH transmit and receive sites are located.  So, barring some miracle, there will be no MRHS on the air operations on Saturday 5 October and in fact for the duration of the government shut down.

Aside from operations this also means that scheduled antenna repair work at the transmit station has had to be postponed.

We wish you fair winds and following seas...

VY 73,

MRHS

VOA Radiogram In Limbo During Shutdown

Kim Elliott is furloughed, and everything is in the air.  Or, to be exact, possibly not in the air.

Hello friends,

You probably have heard the news about the US government shutdown. Congress has not sent to the White House an appropriations resolution that would allow continued funding of US government operations.

While VOA will remain on the air to provide news in its 42 languages, I will be on furlough during the shutdown and may not be able to produce a new VOA Radiogram for the weekend on 6-7 October. If the shutdown continues through the weekend, the transmitters, if they are on the air during the four half-hours of VOA Radiogram, will probably broadcast last weekend's program, number 28, again.

After about 1500 UTC today, 1 October 2013, I will not be able to use this email account to send or receive emails until the shutdown ends.

My personal website, www.kimandrewelliott.com ,will continue to be updated during the shutdown, and you can correspond with me using the email address for that website: kimweb@verizon.net

The VOA Radiogram website, voaradiogram.net , will remain online during the shutdown, but I will not be able to update it after 1500 UTC today. I have already posted on that website some interesting results from the past weekend's program.

Thanks to all of you who sent reception reports for VOA Radiogram during the weekend of 28-29 September. I will respond to all of your emails but will not be able to do so until after the shutdown.

And now I begin my unscheduled vacation....

Kim

Kim Andrew Elliott
Producer and Presenter
VOA Radiogram
voaradiogram.net