Afternoon US Kyodo News is JSC, Not JJC

Still getting great reception of the Kyodo News FAX on 16971 kHz USB, 60/576. Today I caught a sign-on, identifying the transmitting station as JSC, Kagoshima Radio, not the usual JJC, Tokyo.



Some Googling around turned up the following (badly translated) information:

07.04.12 [April 2007 -hugh] 16971kHz 10kW JSC Fisheries Kagoshima consignment sent to radio stations (for the direction of Hawaii)

I interpret this to mean that this one frequency is broadcast for part of the day over a separate transmitter with a different beam. This certainly explains why only part of Kyodo's 24/7 sked is being sent, and why it's so much louder on the US Pacific Coast than any of the others. It sounds like a special contract to transmit a newspaper to Japanese fishing boats operating in the Eastern Pacific.

You learn something new every day in this hobby.

JJC Tokyo News FAX Received Nov 3

You know the fall DX season has arrived when Southern California has a relatively clear copy on the Kyodo News FAX from Japan. This is the best one I've received in a long time.

Frequency was 16971.0 kHz USB, time was just after zero UTC. Parameters were 60/576.



It's worth repeating that, unlike the weather charts, the news FAX is copyrighted material, reproduced here at a greatly reduced size under fair use for the purposes of amateur radio propagation reporting. Any unauthorized commercial use would probably prompt Kyodo to start scrambling the faxes again. We'd hate to lose the last news FAX on the air for DXing.