firedrake logs, oct 2015

Firedrake has interested me for a while, but I didn't log it at all in 2014. Recently I've been enjoying the UTwente WebSDR thanks to mentions from LondonShortwave on Twitter and my friend Dan. So I thought that would be a useful resource to look for Firedrake again. I found that it's still very active and can be found on a number of daytime and nighttime frequencies.

During 21-24 Oct 2015, Firedrake was located on these frequencies (kHz):

5890 (1800, 2000, 2100 UTC)
5970 (2000 UTC)
7435 (2100 UTC)
7505 (2200 UTC)
9355 (1800, 1900, 2000 UTC)
9370 (2200 UTC)
9685 (2100 UTC)
9745 (1800, 1900, 2000 UTC)
11560 (1800 UTC)
11945 (0100 UTC)
13830 (1100 UTC)
17625 (0500 UTC)
17810 (0600 UTC)

This is a consolidated version of my logs arranged by frequency. Times shown are simply the hour during which the transmission was identified; some receptions were only a minute long.

The target of all of these jamming transmissions, by my recollection, was Radio Free Asia. I saw at least two mentions on Twitter of Radio Free Asia receptions. One was a description of music, the other was a YouTube video. Radio Free Asia is a news broadcast, and the jammer is loud orchestral music. When identifying a station, it's important to ensure that the format is a match, as well as the date, time, frequency, and region (taking things like propagation and greyline location into account).

However, Radio Free Asia itself is not a source of broadcast frequencies for its Cantonese broadcasts. On their broadcasting schedule page, recently updated for the B15 period, the Cantonese schedule is indicated with Frequency Not Promoted.