Monday, December 31, 2007

Mon Dec 31

3902: Radio Bluestar putting in a good signal @ 2035, giving out contact details and greeting listeners. SINPO 44433.

3925: Top Radio (see comments) @ 2040 playing pop and dance music. Strong signal peaking at s9+20dB. Sounded like relay of an FM station with IDs spoken very quickly. SINPO 44433. Anyone got any ideas? Click here for short recording

4025: Laser Hot Hits playing "Brown Eyed Girl" @ 2045. Poor-fair signal. SINPO 24332.

Happy New Year to all readers of this blog. Let's hope for good reception conditions in 2008.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

3925????
Are these guys asking for trouble?

Anonymous said...

Happy New Year Paul!! All the best and no noises and no interferences - only clear reception:)

Maybe its Radio Top Relay is on 3925?? It is not easy to distinguish TOK or TOP - I guess.. (www.topradio.be??). Strong signal also here.

Anonymous said...

hi good morning and a happy 2008! on 3925 KHZ I can listening since 2007 TOP RADIO from Rotterdam with
live Broadcast. The station answer after my E-Mail report 1 Minutes later with "Thanks Dr.Tim....". More to this station you can experiences in Dr.Tim's Pitate NEWS

Have a nice start in 2008 and all the best in the next 365 days....

Anonymous said...

It was Top Radio with a relay on 3925. Noting special wrong with 3925. This frequency is in use for many years by pirates without real problems.
Last 10 years is only Westcoast and Vrije Vogel (was on 3935 but same story) raided. And if you did listening last 10 years you must know it is used by many pirates even with regular saterday evening broadcasting for hours. The authorities has always a story... The FM stations hear every time they shut down the airplanes...
Its the risk of the pirate, some have luck some not.48 meter is the same, its still in use for others.You ask for the same trouble if you transmit on 48.
The risk for trouble is the same.
Last 2 years are more stations raided on 48 as on 76 for the last 10 years.

Anonymous said...

Another Fool.
3925 (maybe 3924) regularly has aircraft comms on it.I presume this is Dutch.

uk dxer said...

Thanks for IDing TOP RADIO - I imagine it was being relayed by one of the Dutch SW stations. Coming in very well last night.

Surely in this day and age a more reliable way for planes and airport control towers to communicate with each other can be provided.

Shortwave seems an unreliable method for such an important commuication as the frequencies can often suffer from fade outs or other QRM - not just pirates but clandestines and other stations that use the out-of-band channels.

Anyone know anything about aircraft communications?

Anonymous said...

In most cases in aviation communication VHF band is used. On this “air band” (108-138MHz) operate ATCs (like towers, approache&area controls, etc. ) It is reliable way to communicate, but it is limited to line-of-sight range. So when airplane is e.g. over ocean we need to use High Frequency Radio (HF). Everyone knows that HF can provide global coverage because of its ability to bounce off the ionosphere and can span the globe in a series of skips. In Shannon there is important ATC – they guide planes over the Atlantic Ocean. They use many HF frequencies: 3016kHz 5598kHz 8906kHz 13306kHz 2899kHz 5616kHz 8864kHz 13291kHz 2872kHz 5649kHz 8879kHz 11336kHz 2971kHz 4675kHz 8891kHz
3476kHz 6622kHz 8831kHz. HF band is also used as the Air/Ground services . They are aimed to the commercial airline market and provide HF equipped aircraft with means to keep in contact with their ground based company offices or the public telephone network. I know one example: Stockholm Radio (3494 kHz (22 - 05 UTC) 5541 kHz (H24) 8930 kHz (H24) 11345 kHz (H24) 13342 kHz (H24) 17916 kHz (H24) 23210 kHz (05 - 22 UTC)). I am sure that such services is much more. We need also add to big amount of frequencies used by military airplanes. And what about marine communications? – the same.
Airplanes send also some data to ground stations (ID, position etc.). In most cases ACARS (Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System) uses VHF band (primary channel for Europe is on 131,725 MHz.), but similar like in voice communication, use also HF. There are several ground stations but in Europe works station in Reykjavik (17985 15025 11184 8977 6712 5720 3900 3116 kHz). Some time ago Orion Radio used 5720 and we could hear short transmissions during programme. Marcel decoded one.
There are also big numbers of Volmets (meteorological information for aircraft in flight). Two examples: Shannon Volmet on 5505kHz and RAF Volmet on 5450.
So HF will be in use long time because it is the easiest way to communicate and such communication will take many channels.

uk dxer said...

Thanks Michal for that useful information.