Tincap said:
Stormy, would R. Rossi's 150 kW St. Petersburg transmitter not be a factor at all? Does it have something to do with the antenna setups at their sites? You were able to tell us that Croatia's 1134 was bi-directional and throwing its signal at us. Is AFN throwing at us and R. Rossi not on 873?
BTW, I'm monitoring 873 and I'm getting slop from Ithica NY, Cuba (the ticking clock...) and...a bit of a surprise...a strong signal from WWL New Orleans. No strong het for the time being.
~BG
Yeah the strength of the hets was definitely weaker last night, as I was only hearing hets on 603, 693, 747 and 873.
AFN is 150kW omnidirectional but there is only a 75kW station at Sankt Petersburg called "Vesti FM". I suspect that 75kW station was 150kW at one time, but is operating at half power. This has happened a number of times in Russia. The state broadcaster has sold some of their aging equipment and frequencies to commercial broadcasters and the commercial operator may operate at lower power to save money or because they have lost half of their final power amplifier. The aging transmitting equipment may have parts, including the 'finals' [power amplifier tubes] that are very expensive to replace. Even in Russia many stations have gone to FM, unless the broadcaster is the unlucky one that wanted an FM frequency - but there may be no frequencies available in the largest cities, so they get an AM or, arrgh, a LW frequency assigned to them.
As far as the tower installations go, stations in other countries face similar problems that U.S. and Canadian broadcasters do. Ground systems deteriorate, transmission lines lose their efficiency over time (some lines are pressurized with gas and lose pressure). Guy wires if not maintained may lower the efficiency of a station's ability to radiate a signal efficiently, and building construction in the area around a transmitting site, which once was rural or semi-rural may lower the ground conductivity. Ground conductivity that is not good to begin with may put a station at a disadvantage as far as its signal reach, and often the power was increased to compensate for poor ground conductivity.
Some stations also may not be using a half-wave tower, which is held by engineers to be the most effective height and compromise between radiating a groundwave and skywave. Shorter towers such as quarter-wave towers are just not as efficient as half-wave towers.
AFN and R. Rossi are both omnidirectional so far as I know. St. Petersburg may have an advantage since it's near the Baltic Sea and the signal would only need to cross parts of Finland, Sweden, Norway, Greenland, Canada and the U.S. to get to your receiver. AFN Frankfurt on 873 is in west central Germany, and the signal only has to cross part of Germany and Belgium/Netherlands to get out on the Atlantic and towards No. America. The propagation the last few days has tended to favor central Europe, as I have presumed, based on the hets I have received. The downside of presuming or actual reception of No. Europe and Scandinavian signals is that there is an auroral effect to MW signals at times - and this effect is more frequent at higher than that at lower latitudes. In other words, reception from Sankt Petersburg would be rarer than central or southern Europe, or No. Africa for that matter. Unfortunately, a number of the No. European and Scandinavian high power stations have been taken off the air due to budget cuts and aging equipment that was deemed too expensive to repair or replace. We used to have the 1200kW Norway station on 1314 kHz, Poland had a few high power stations (300kW) on 818 and 737 kHz. I believe Finland runs 600kW on 963 kHz occasionally, and Sweden may have 1179 kHz at 300kW which it also occasionally uses (for their 'external' services - not domestic programming) There is also the Faroe Islands which operates at up to 100kW on 531, and Iceland, but they're on 189 and 207 LW.
For any information on European stations, I would check out
http://fmscan.org/ If you have any questions perhaps Günter Lorenz
[email protected] might be able to help or direct you to someone who knows about particular stations parameters, like power, if they use a DA, etc. Also the World Radio TV Handbook is a good resource, I have been using it since 1969 (purchase from
amazon.com, more info. at
wrth.com) Though the WRTH won't usually indicate if a station uses a DA or not (unless it's a US or Canadian station - and even then not the specific directions, for that
www.radio-locator.comor
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/amq.html. Information on DA outside of the U.S./Canada is relatively hard to find. The best source for DA information particularly outside of the U.S./Canada is definitely
http://fmscan.org/
