I had a good chance to work 530 this evening for about an hour from 1845 to 1935 EDT (2245-2335 Z) and again at 2000 (0000 Z) Apparently last week's hurricane did some damage to the big Rebelde 530 site in Cuba, and I am not now hearing them with the same signal as before. This is for the weekly Saturday Marti broadcast on 530, BTW.
Due to local inside noise (townhome living-bah) I get my best results, so far, using the built-in Delco radio in my truck (1996 vintage) and stock whip antenna. Sitting there with the engine off (for acoustics) in 90 degree heat, in a rainstorm, well, that's what DXing is all about. Just part of the nuttiness, I suppose. At least the only cops I risk seeing would be called by the neighbors, if I stay out too long. Today, with the severely weakened Rebelde, Marti was actually atop the frequency for much of the time. Unfortunately we were pounded with local T-storms and the incessant static chopped up a lot of the audio. I was able to // some of the other 530 audio with Rebelde-1180 which was clean and loud, showing no sign of the night-time multiple-carrier rapid fading on 1180 (this is well before local sunset). I believe one of the 1180's is in Pinar or near CH, a solid all-day signal here (Tampa) , as is 640 Progreso, and some several others. Generally (530) a man-woman long telephone interview, bits of bumper music, voices were heard when Rebelde carrying music. At 2330z caught "...marti ... desde Miami, Florida..." through static, at at 2359z, a good rendition of the hourly "atencion, Cuba" ID with "desde avion de los EE. UU." etc., and mention of frequencies, television marti etc. At one point, a tape of a speech from Don Maximo Lider el Viejo, with a sentence by sentence commentary spliced in, read by someone with a contrasting point of view. Fortunately the T-storms backing off by 2345. Caught IDs on handheld Micro-43 acoustically (for which I haven't taken the time to find a speaker feed for direct patch, a major surgical operation in this truck). My location in western Hillsborough county is somewhat inland and here I notice a definite slow variation in signal which seems to really peak up 2 or 3 times per hour, today ranging from near-inaudible to fairly strong (but would have still been way under the normal big Rebelde gasbag if they were optimum). My best guess is that this slow variation (this is _way_ before sunset) is due to slow orbiting of the EC-130 in airspace north of La Habana, the trailing longwire (with the 500 pound stabilizer weight) creating a distinctly non-symmetrical pattern which varies for me as the plane turns. Or else, they fly east, and then return, and go far enough to the east so that the land projection near Venice/Sarasota starts shielding the signal, compared to the all-water path from Pinar east to Habana. All just speculation, for now. I'd guess, though, that they try to stay close in to the capital area, but well outside the 12 mile limit. Interestingly, a report from a coastal area DXer near here shows a solid nonvarying signal level on them tonight, so perhaps a different polarization wavefront reaching me and my car radio vertical whip antenna. I note the same 2 Hz SAH as previously, when the signal was buried under Rebelde, but with the same cyclic slow fading. No evidence of RVC has ever been noted here during daylight of course. If the T-storms has not been present I would have had an outstanding quality recording of them (Marti) tonight.. - Bob Foxworth, Tampa FL built-in Delco car RX, 1m. whip ---[Start Commercial]--------------------- World Radio TV Handbook 2005 is out. Order yours from http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0823077942/hardcoredxcom ---[End Commercial]----------------------- ________________________________________ Hard-Core-DX mailing list Hard-Core-DX@hard-core-dx.com 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