Bogdan Chiochiu in Pierrefonds, QC DX`ing on his father`s Mazda Protégé 2002 car-radio
I had a very big chance to DX the last evening in nice auroral conditions (there are 2 articles on the main Hard-Core DX page about 2 big solar flares. I had Latins on half the frequencies from 530 to 1110 in the car-radio after a road to Île-Perrôt and to the commercial center of Fairview in Pointe-Claire to eat an extremely great Chinese food and to play chess. Before ariving at Fairview we had Radio Carupano on 1110, the first Latin of the evening. Afterwards, when we returned my father goed to Murelatos and left me in the parking where I found like I sayed half the frequencies on the lower and middle part of the band full with Spanish. The logs below resume very well the story of the past evening`s Latin American feeding frenzy DX activity: 530 TURKS AND CAICOS, Radio Visión Cristiana OCT 24 0041 - with announcements and "Radio Visión Cristiana Internacional" mention by a fairly young man announcer beetwen two ranchera songs w/ gospel lyrics. The third song heard was a pop-music-sounding Spanish gospel one, then more ranchera-sounding gospel music. Excellent signal, but sometimes lots of QRM when driving because apparently when driving because the Dopler effect is quite present on the AM band (altough much less than on FM and only for the groundwave signals; on FM even during special e-skip DX conditions, the e-skip signals will have some Doppler) so the car-radio is fixed to become more sensitive when driving, than when in a parking lot. However, this cause noise coming from some sort of overload from the extremely strong locals and even the `excellent` signals can`t escape this when driving. Only the `urban quality` signals can escape this, of course, and most of the non-DX`ers do contend with their "urban quality" locals when they are in the city. When we were driving toward Montpellier, VT I could get CINF Infos 6-90 at a fair-good level without this strange noise QRM, so I think my theory is correct. This didn`t happened all the times though. For exemple at 0043 UTC (8:43 PM EDT) while we were driving when I tuned for 1 minute or so away from 530 we could get 780 Radio Coro with just the very intense next to adjacent splatter from local CJAD, but no "driving QRM". + OCT 24 0054 - at our home the only strong and even readable Latin until our neighborhoods plugged their computer in by 0057 or 0058. (Chiochiu-QC) 570 CUBA, CMDC, Radio Reloj, Pilon OCT 24 0037 - with RR Morse code ID. Very good, totally topping 570 this time. At 2 other times, it was noted at about even strenght with another Latin American station wich played SS tropical music, either previously logged once YVLX Radio Rumbos or HIMS Radio Cristal wich would have been new here for me and my 4th Dominican on MW. I tried to // it with YVLL-670 at these times (the flagship station of the Rumbos network), but 670 had nothing, not even WSCR. A chance that WSYR Syracruse wich is the big pest on 570 here was kicked out by the Aurora ! WSYR is most of the times so strong here that it makes WMCA in New York City sounding like good DX. (Chiochiu-QC) 580 DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, HIAF, Monte Cristi OCT 24 0033 - Man talk followed by a bachata song with nice synthesizer, then ID with possible call-letters and "Radio Monte Cristi" slogan, then a more up-tempo meringue tune. Strong signal, just under WTAG. New for me, Dominican Republic #3 ! I`m sure I had them last November at a fair level in mess with WTAG and Jamaica, but they were in for just 30 minutes with meringue mx and I didn`t heard any ID, so I could not confirm it. (Chiochiu-QC) 600 CUBA, CMKV, Radio Rebelde, Urbano Norris OCT 24 0038 - Excellent for some minutes with futboll game. Seemed // with 1180 but not sure at all, because 1180 was very, very poor with co-channel WHAM and a few slops from WLIB-1190. At other times, this one had also an off-channel growl. Did anyone heard HJIJ Radio libertad out of Barranquilla the past evening ? They are slightly off-channel, on 600.06, but the only DX`ers that seem to get HJIJ-600.06 are those on the East Coast. (Chiochiu-QC) 640 GUADELOUPE, Radio Guadeloupe, Pointe-à-Pitre OCT 24 0013 - Man announcer talking with young womans about their relationships in Parisian accented french and also gived an RFO e-mail address. At 0024 when he mentioned "Radio Guadeloupe" my father was amazed ! Booming way over any QRM like co-channel Radio Progreso-Cuba, though occasionally Progreso was stronger: I heard them playing zouk music too, but at times times the interference was bigger so I probably mixed up zouk and salsa on 1 occasion. Usually I replay my tape before writing a report ! I will be able to do this soon again. (Chiochiu-QC) 640 CUBA, Radio Progreso OCT 24 0018 - Fading over Radio Guadeloupe for about 4 minutes with a program of cuban music hosted by a male announcer, // CMDZ-890. (Chiochiu-QC) 760 COLOMBIA, HJAJ, RCN, Barranquilla OCT 24 0036-0037 - Very poor with some WJR, but // HJJX-770 wich was a bit better. Without the // this one wich is usually a powerhouse on my Sanyo and Phillips portables, wouldn`t have been identifiable. I guess they are on lower power like the past fall (until the late November / early December when they re-begun to be very easily heard until at least March or April). This may indicate a good opportunity to log other weaker Latins on 760. (Chiochiu-QC) 770 COLOMBIA, HJJX, RCN, Santa Fé de Bogota OCT 24 0036-0037 - Noted at poor-fair level with man talk over a poor, but messy WABC. A third station was probably there too. I`d really like to log YVKK RNV from Valencia here. It is quite regularly reported recently and it seems to be the best bet to log the Venezuelan state of Carabobo for eastern North-American DX`ers. By the way, Valencia is the capital of this state. For those of you that want to add a new dimension to the DX hobby, counting the Venezuelan states like you do with the US ones can be very exciting and interesting. You can learn how Venezuela is divided into it`s 23 states, their names, geography, etc. (Chiochiu-QC) 780 VENEZUELA, YVNM, Radio Coro, Coro, Falcon OCT 24 0026-0029 - Playing an up-beat meringue tune followed by a possible ID, then a salsa tune. Good signal, but extremely intense next to adjacent local splatter from CJAD-800 and just before I was tuning away the fading-in of a bit of WBBM QRM made this one almost impossible to listen to unfortunatly. + OCT 24 0043 - Very good now but with very intense next to adjacent local splatter, playing a mid-tempo salsa song. (Chiochiu-QC) 870 unID, OCT 24 0035 - Fair w/ Salsa music, but fading out at times. Any ideas ? (Chiochiu-QC) 890 CUBA, CMDZ, Radio Progreso, Chambas OCT 24 0018 - Cuban music show, // 640 wich was slightly under Guadeloupe at this time. (Chiochiu-QC) 900 VENEZUELA, YVMD, Mara Ritmo 900, Maracaibo, Zulia OCT 24 0036 - Very tentative with salsa music about even with 2 domestic talkers. (Chiochiu-QC) 1070 VENEZUELA, YVMA, Mundial, Maracaibo, Zulia OCT 24 0016 - Presumed; tuned away from R. Guadeloupe to hear this w/ futboll. (Chiochiu-QC) 1070 UNITED STATES, WNCT, Greenville, NC OCT 24 0039 - Presumed w/ ranchera music, atop the channel for several minutes while tuning back and forth beetwen this and other channels with SS on them. I`m 99.9% sure it was them and they are an excellent domestic DX catche considering that North Carolina is hard to log with WBT-1110 being the only easily heard station in this state and the only one I confirmed until now. (Chiochiu-QC) 1080 VENEZUELA, YVQJ, Radio Barcelona, Anzoàtegui OCT 24 0017 - Very tentative; someone way under a good WTIC (they`re usually excellent, not good: a good sign of the Auroral conditions) and Barcelona is the only station I ever logged on 1080 beside WTIC, hence the most likely one. (Chiochiu-QC) 1110 VENEZUELA, YVQT Radio Carúpano, Carúpano, Sucre OCT 24 2324 - Presumed with salsa music way under WBT. First Latin American signal of the signal ! (Chiochiu-QC) 1180 CUBA, CMBA, Radio Rebelde, Villa-Maria OCT 24 0038-0039 - Tentative; seemed // 600, but not strong and clear enough to be sure. (Chiochiu-QC) I wonder if anyone can tell me more about the programming of Radio Mar Caribe (HJSB). I found on the Bruce Conti web-site a logging of this station from May 3, 1998 and they played accordion music (I guess vallenato music), and what I heard was salsa. I wonder if they play salsa too. Hope the repairing of the Sanyo will be going well, because I`d really like to be a full-time active DX`er in my free times like the past season for exemple when I used to send sometimes as much as 2 or 3 reports on a good week-end ! Well, that`s it for now ! 73 and good DX, Bogdan---[Start Commercial]--------------------- World Radio TV Handbook 2004 is coming out! Preorder yours now! Only $20.97 through us. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0823059685/hardcoredxcom ---[End Commercial]----------------------- ________________________________________ Hard-Core-DX mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://dallas.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx http://www.hard-core-dx.com/ _______________________________________________ THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt
