Рет қаралды 87
About 5 minutes of a test to Antarctica made by Encompass Digital Media on behalf of BBC World Service, ahead of the BBC's annual Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast on June 21, 2024.
The test ran a week earlier, June 14th, at 21:30-21:45 UTC. I must admit I forgot about it & only realised it was going at 21:39 UTC. As the quickest option, I recorded the 31m band for the remainder of the test & here I present the results of its reception in NE Poland.
9585 kHz via Woofferton, UK: very good reception, but affected by some local buzzing noise, blobs every ~52kHz, which I normally don't see.
9870 kHz via Ascension Island: fair, noticeably weaker, and more noisy despite falling in a cleaner portion, in-between two noise blobs. Also adjacent-channel QRM from Voice of Korea on 9875. Audio was slightly delayed compared to 9585.
Both frequencies shut down exactly at 21:45 UTC, although Ascension went off a split-second later than Woofferton. It happened just as a female host was about to identify the programme running though.
The test also ran on 7255 kHz via Al-Dhabayya, UAE, and 11685 kHz via Woofferton. I didn't check them, but based on my experience from years past, 7255 would've been weak, clashing with co-channel Xizang RTV in Tibetan - in fact being overpowered by it, despite Xizang beaming away from Europe on this frequency - and to make matters even worse, likely to be off-frequency. However, the 2nd WOF frequency, 11685 kHz, could've been even stronger than 9585.
I received these transmissions in NE Poland using Airspy HF+ Discovery & 3-element Quad beam for FM band, made of coax pieces, where the driven element is a shielded receive loop, suitable for HF too.