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Radio Reloj on 950 is silent
- Thread starter Ai4i
- Start date
Not surprised. That's a big signal, and I'm sure they didn't want to waste any time.
The other night after I heard WWL on the Arctic SDR, I was trying for R. Reloj on 950 and 570. But no trace of either.
Stuff in cuba goes down or wrong all the time.. jamming frequencies no longer in use by others...…. stations going off at random..wrong feeds on the wrong frequencies...…. HM01 reading off numbers with no digital databurs.t. I wouldn't put much thought into something of cuba's being off the air
That used to be the case. But in the last few years, China rebuilt all the stations in Cuba, using centralized transmissions sites, new gear and frequency agile auxiliary gear. The transmitters are new, and an interruption would have to be due to a system fail that can't be backed up, like a severe lightening strike to the antenna and ATU.
I'd have to say that the AM system is better than the collective AMs of the US's top 10 markets.
As to jamming, all they do now is make sure frequencies that might be listened to in Cuba are covered by up to a dozen locals on the same channel.
Mishaps still happen, David.. way more then the average station in the US
And as for Cuba, if their stuff is rebuilt.. it still sounds like muffled undermodulated dog doo.
It's not rebuilt. The Chinese constructed brand new transmission centers with new towers, buildings, transmitters, diplexers and multiplexers and all the rest. It's some of the nicest equipment in the world, and all brand new. What they did not do was replace the main studios for the national networks, and they did not change the mindset of how an AM should sound, based, I guess, on 1950's radio in La Habana.
But behind that is the horrible infrastructure in Cuba... fuel shortages since the Venezuelan "free petrol" thing ended, frequent power outages and generally weak infrastructures.
Also, like South Florida, Cuba is subject to lots of tropical lightening that can take out transmitters no matter how much protection there is... although this part of the year is not generally the lightening season there.
Funny how they mimic the 5 mS (5 cycles) clock ticks of 1000 Hz tone made famous by WWV.
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Those ticks were first used in Cuba at Radio Reloj in La Habana in 1948... it was the world's first all news station with the time every minute. And it was the sister station to Goar Mestre's CMQ, the leading station in Cuba and the source of a large number of Latin America's best radio soap operas.
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What ever became of those lovely upper sideband buzz saws?
When I was in La Habana thirty some-odd years ago, 1140 or 1180 or both sounded like pure sinwaves.
They still have serious with horrible audio quality.. low modulation.. unintellgible audio, dead air, wrong feeds at the wrong time.. all sorta issues
That really points mostly to operator error, not the equipment. I have heard the SW transmitters with severe overmodulation.
You have just described state radio in most socialist nations.
The same thing happens in the government stations in Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador and Honduras in our hemisphere (although Ecuador is pulling out of it a bit). When ideology is more important than talent and skills, just wonderful things happen.
K
kf4rca
Guest
RHC (6000) is usually there most nights. Sometimes I hear hum and buzz on their feeds.
What is the topology of their network, microwave, copper or fiber?
I agree that they have an affinity for bass in their broadcasts.
Periodically I hear a warble on top of WBAP (820) that Glenn Hauser surmised was a defective Cuban transmitter.
What is the topology of their network, microwave, copper or fiber?
I agree that they have an affinity for bass in their broadcasts.
Periodically I hear a warble on top of WBAP (820) that Glenn Hauser surmised was a defective Cuban transmitter.
Wow, R. Havana still sounds like that? I've been out of SWLing (except for occasional checks of the ham bands) for about 15 years now and the hum and buzz were going on then, too.
The only worse-sounding station I remember that never seemed to care was Radio Cairo on 9475. Audio was bassy and muffled, like someone had placed a towel over the microphone.
Radio Habana Cuba is SW only.
The domestic networks are were microwave linked the last time I asked, but that was years ago. TV apparently used satellite links, using its shared deal with Venezuela (which may be in jeopardy, too). I wondered at the time why the radio webs did not go to satellite, too.
Cuban stations broadcast FTA on the Hispasat satellite: Progreso, Rebelde, Ta?*no, Musical Nacional, several Radio Habana feeds, etc.
There's also several Cuban TV stations there, although some are encrypted.
There's also several Cuban TV stations there, although some are encrypted.
I do believe RHC is on FM in the major Cuban metropolitan areas...106.9 in La Habana comes to mind. Though the days of picking up Cuban FMs in the Florida Keys are long gone...so good luck trying to hear it outside of Cuba besides on SW.
The one thing that boggles my mind is not being able to find an internet stream of any Cuban TV nets. All the national radio nets stream online. Hell, an even more repressive socialist regime (DPRK) has their few hours of nightly TV broadcasting streamed! In HD, nonetheless!
Considering Cubans are taking to the internet (where possible) like ducks take to water, plus the overall curiosity of outsiders, it seems puzzling that there'd be no online video stream.
During the Cuban winter baseball season, games were being streamed on YouTube and they carried a Cuban network "bug" in the corner of the screen, but I don't recall if the streamer was the network itself or an unauthorized YouTube user who pirated the Cuban TV feed and managed to avoid detection by the YouTube police.
Thank you for that information. It has been some time, as I mentioned, that I did not check the internal systems in Cuba.
I always thought that microwave was "iffy" as the distances between the major cities were greater than ideal hops, and that required microwave sites in rural areas in some cases. With Santiago and La Habana over 450 miles apart, multiple microwave hops could be rather deteriorated as well as subject to intermediate relay failures.
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