Saturday, January 10, 2009

Arctic Norway MW Bandscan

My Kongsfjord PC has been offline for the better part of a month due to a failing modem/router. I finally got a replacement, and finally the adverse weather we have had the past few weeks calmed for a few hours allowing me to drive to Kongsfjord and set it up.

While testing the remote control, I did a 30-second Perseus recording of the MW band at 1900 UTC. This is a time of the day when little interesting (from my point of view) is heard, but others might find interest in hearing signals from Eastern Europe and the Middle East (and even India). A few Western European stations also audible. I used the backlobe of my 310-degree North America beverage. Lots of Russian and Romanian stations, Iran mostly everywhere. KBRW-680 and KNOM-780 audible but not strong (they improved later on). NRK Svalbard 1485 very weak; this is usually a super dominant when conditions are right.

I suspect that the beverage is not in a very good state. The general signal level when I checked North America this morning was rather on the low side. It's been too dark, too windy and too snowy to even think about checking, not to say repairing it.

The Perseus file can be downloaded from Guy Atkins' blog under "Perseus SDR WAV Files". It's about 250 MB and covers 1600 kHz from 1859:46 to 1900:19 UTC.

Sorry about not having been very active on the DX scene lately. I have chosen to put my focus elsewhere for some time.