Radio Kiev

Mid-winter FM Catch!

Running errands this morning, I had the Subaru radio tuned to W241CG-FM on 96.1 MHz. Although W241CG-FM is located in the next town, it is only transmitting 210 watts, so it sometimes drops out as I traverse the hills and dales of Wolcott, Connecticut. When it dropped out at 1502 UTC, I heard the station identification for WAMU in Washington, DC (American University’s radio station).

Actually, WAMU transmits on 88.5 MHz and what I heard on 96.1 was the WAMU HD Radio  stream. That’s a first for the log!

WAMU is located 282 miles to the southwest... a nice mid-winter FM catch!

And a Happy New Year!

I spent a lot of time on non-radio projects this month, primarily moving my daughter from a loft to a condo (oh – my aching back). Bad news is that there is still some of her stuff here that has to go there. Good news is that she is now only 20 minutes away (versus 35 minutes).

Lost my 80-meter dipole during a storm a couple of weeks ago. I can’t climb a ladder to fix it because I messed up my knee hiking in the woods.

So the antenna farm is down to three: the 120-foot Loop under Ground, which is only for receiving, the Hy-Gain 18AVT/WB-A vertical, which has seen better days (it’s about 50 years old) and the ICOM AH-7000 discone, which is 30 years old, but is in good shape and still an excellent performer.

Finally, that is Kainuk in the photo above. She is an orphaned elephant that I adopted at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. My daughter gifted me the adoption and I will be contributing regularly to support Kainuk in 2022.

73 and good DX in the coming year!

Colombia on 770

Two new loggings to report:

November 8 : WBRV on 900 kHz transmitting 52 watts from Boonville, New York, 179 miles to the northwest. 

November 10: WABC (770 kHz) was off the air for maintenance for about an hour. Band conditions were poor due to a recent sun flare, yet I heard three very weak Spanish language stations and managed to identify one: JX (RCN Radio) in Bogota, Colombia, transmitting 100 kW 2555 miles to the south (photo above).

Both loggings were with the ICOM IC-R8600 receiver and Hy-Gain 18AVR/time WB-A vertical antenna (WBRV) and 120-ft Loop on Ground antenna (JX).

Aurora (November 7 UTC)

Powered up the radio at midnight local time and conditions were good. Lots of DX on the LW and MW/AM bands, but nothing new to log. 

However, I did hear the effects of aurora on a handful of stations including Radio Rebelde and WBBM. Oddly, Radio Rebelde was much stronger than usual and WBBM was much weaker than usual (go figure), but both had the watery echo audio that is characteristic of aurora.