cobalt pet shortwave / mediumwave weblog

03 September 2006

another poke at mediumwave

Say what you will about Coast to Coast AM; I consider it an asset in the game of mediumwave DXing*. During the past week, I used my Tecsun BCL-2000 and my Eton E5 on a few occasions to receive WWL on 870 khz. But a peculiar thing happens before I can hear a positive identification from the broadcast. As a half-hour mark approaches, the signal weakens considerably, and I am lost in a world of static.

Now, I appreciate the fact that this signal travels a great distance, and continuous reception would be a fluke. But it seems odd that the signal regularly fails at these intervals. Is there any way that this is intentional?

*(I'm not working on a new mediumwave DX initiative at this time.)

2 comments:

Dean W. Armstrong said...

A quote from the September 2006 Monitoring Times (describing someone trying to ID 100 stations over 48 hours):

"Radio Japan- A horrible signal. Wonder why stations can't synchronize their IDs with the fading so that it fades in when they're identifying themselves."

weatherall said...

Heh, that's funny. (I wonder if that was a daytime reception; Radio Japan is more reliable at night for me.)