You Know You're A Transmission Nerd When....

[SomeRadioGuy]

.. (or you spend too much time listening to shortwave radio.... take your pick)

When you can identify what transmitter site the transmission is coming from without ever checking any schedule listings/websites due to unique audio characteristics present at a particular site that you only ever hear from that transmitter site.

I've heard the Thailand Government's "Radio Thailand World Service" from the USAGM site in Udon Thani, Thailand. It's the only site RTWS broadcasts from and they must have a seperate set of transmitters that are solely for the RTWS broadcasts because I hear some "Transmitter noise" thats been evident on the RTWS broadcasts for years now. It's not a hum, its not a buzz, its not an echo... it's an audio oddity that may be best described as a combo of a metallic echo/ringing... kinda like a very low key version what Omnia's Voltair Watermarking gear does to stations in PPM Ratings market in the US, but RTWS clearly doesnt have a Voltair installed

I've only ever listened to the english broadcasts because, well thats all I ever understand and speak so I don't pay attention to the rest of their schedule, but If I tune across the HF bands and even if I don't know initially who or what that language is, I figure out its the RTWS in a manner of seconds and anytime I hear that noise, look it the frequency im hearing, I see that its a RTWS broadcast

I hear the VOA in Korean from the same site but can't say I've heard the same noise, though VOA Korean is S9+80 here! (Yes, no exageration!)

Then theres the USAGM site in Kuwait. It mainly broadcasts middle eastern and asian languages. And I cant say for sure I've heard it on every language there, but it seems like I've certainly notice it on asian languages.. where theres a very low key audio artifact present that sounds like bubbling, very low speed wefax data. One person surmised its jamming thats more evident in the target area, but every single jamming transmission I've ever heard or known of uses audio thats way more aggravating.. loud chorus music, buzzing, jet engine white noise or over modulated programming from the jamming countries radio networks.

Any time I've heard that bubbling, low speed wefax data and look up what broadcast this is, its coming from Kuwait.

Yup, I have no life and im a massive nerd.. but when you spend as much time DXing as I do, you do tend to take notice of things others dont.

 

[bigdonho]

Just spit balling here, but could the artifact you hear on RTWS be a low bit rate feed to the transmitter site? Generally one of the agreements made by USAGM when they build a realy site in foregin countries is to allow that country to use the USAGM facilites. A low bit rate feed from the studio would be common to all the programming.

Regarding the bubbling sound, that is most likely jamming. Cuba used (and may still use) the same sound to jam Radio Marti. It was interesting to travel to northeastern North Carolina near the Greenville realy station and tune in Radio Marti's frequency. All you would hear was the jamming. In south Florida, near the aiming point of Cuba, you would hear the shortwave signal with just a hint of the jamming. I guess it has to do with first bounce in the shortwave skip.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

Just spit balling here, but could the artifact you hear on RTWS be a low bit rate feed to the transmitter site? Generally one of the agreements made by USAGM when they build a realy site in foregin countries is to allow that country to use the USAGM facilites. A low bit rate feed from the studio would be common to all the programming.

Regarding the bubbling sound, that is most likely jamming. Cuba used (and may still use) the same sound to jam Radio Marti. It was interesting to travel to northeastern North Carolina near the Greenville realy station and tune in Radio Marti's frequency. All you would hear was the jamming. In south Florida, near the aiming point of Cuba, you would hear the shortwave signal with just a hint of the jamming. I guess it has to do with first bounce in the shortwave skip.

the RTWS audio oddity could be the transmission feed

THe noise Cuba uses to jam Marti is electronic buzzing or jet engine whitenoise.... or in the case of AM radio, one of their stations on the same frequency