[HCDX]: G Hauser's Shortwave/DX Report 99-78

[Glenn Hauser <wghauser@xxxxxxxxx>]

        GLENN HAUSER'S SHORTWAVE/DX REPORT 99-78, Dec 21, 1999

{Items from this and all our reports may be reproduced and re-
reproduced only providing full credit be maintained at all stages. If 
excerpting, this means appending the line above}

[NOTE: The previous report, Dec 19, was headed 99-76 instead of the 
correct 99-77]

** KOREA NORTH. Re Pyongyang: there is no foreign service on air as I 
type this. I checked before and after 0800 but nothing heard on 15245 
13760 (VOA in Chinese poor level here) 9975 9650 9345 7580 6575. I can 
hear the domestic pgms on 11679.8 and 6398.6 but cannot trace v9666, 
and 6250 is impossible due to the mystery "noise" sender on there.  
Note that 11679.8 and 6398.6 are both listed as Kanggye. Maybe this 
site is getting power but the others not??? (Noel Green, UKOGBANI, Dec 
20, via Wolfgang Bueschel)

As I noted, 17735.4 was missing around 0100 UT Dec 19; but it was back 
Dec 20 (Hauser)

** KOREA NORTH. The just today arrived WRTH mentions under North Korea 
for the Kanggye site (exact location is probably Wiwon as mentioned 
for MW 720) now "5 x 200, 2 x 250 kW" transmitters. Provided that 
these information is true (I wonder about the source and its 
reliability) these two 250 kW transmitters should be the ones from the 
Swiss Beromünster site, which was dismantled and taked away by a North 
Korean company a few years ago. Regards, (Kai Ludwig, Dec 20)

** MACAU [non] Late update to the CRI Macau coverage, as of 1900 UT 
Dec 19, since DX Report 99-77:: 

The great moment of handover 1600 UT was marred at 1557 by "What a 
Friend We Have in Jesus" as FEBA prepared to do a scheduled broadcast 
on 9785; 1558 CRI relayed the majestic Portuguese national anthem, and 
at precisely 1600 the Chinese anthem. Meanwhile, //7405 had cut off 
around 1557 at its scheduled closing despite the live coverage in 
progress. Unlistenable until about 1630 when FEBA was off or faded. 
9785 was still on at 1808 check with ceremony, English commentary and 
cut off at 1825. 

Meanwhile I finally looked at the cri/macau website and listened to a 
few seconds of its RA before that dropped off -- audio was awful, 
worse than SW beamed elsewhere. But the table displayed there made 
more sense than previous renderings, when read properly, with the 
exception of the slight omission of not showing any times. From that 
we see that the planned frequency usage was: 

l.  Handover: 9705 Eu, 9785 SAf/As 
2.  Inauguration of Regional Government: ditto plus 9690 to NAm 
    [unheard]
3.  Celebration in Macau: Eu 9745, SAf/As 11720 
4.  Official Reception in Macau: Eu 17755, SAf/As 11720, NAm 9690
5.  Gala Celebration in Beijing: Eu 17755, SAf 11720, SEAs 9535, SAs
    11765
 
UT Mon Dec 20 at 0200, 9690 was on early in English with apparent live 
coverage of Event No. 4; loud and clear, no doubt Spain, as for 
regular programming at 0300. Being in Chinese (Guoyu, I think rather 
than Cantonese) or Portuguese, simultaneous translation was necessary, 
but this certainly increased the already stultifying lack of
spontaneity. Can't leave anything to chance on a Great Occasion!
Intonation on the first syllable of Ao-men is definitely falling. 
Brief check of 11675 around 1215 showed regular programming, tho some 
info from CRI indicated Macau coverage would last until 1230. 

I gather that China is expected to run Macau more efficiently than the 
colonialists, but the ``efficiency'' of CRI is once again in question, 
as they failed to convey clearly and accurately their times and 
frequencies for all this. BTW, whenever you hear CRI without any 
jamming, remember that the Chinese have the unmitigated gall to jam 
our VOA and RFA broadcasts in Chinese (Glenn Hauser, OK) 

I failed to check the broadcast on 9515, but didn't miss the one on 
6165: Signal behaviour and audio/modulation style suggests their new 
Continental transmitters at Urumqi as origin, rather likely it was no 
European transmitter, especially almost definitely no Jülich or 
Wertachtal. The program was hosted by a men and a woman, partly 
voicing-over live sound, also referring to the various languages of 
special CRI broadcasts (without any details regarding frequencies of 
course) as well as their special website. (Kai Ludwig, Germany, Dec 
20)

** RUSSIA (?). unID broadcast harmonic on 10 meters, 29160, was 
reported around 1340 Dec 16 by I0WTD, presumably in Italy; he also may 
have heard it on fundamental 9720; the harmonic was quite strong here. 
(George McClintock, TN) Passport 1998 indicates Moscow the most likely 
source (Hauser)

** SWEDEN. RADIO SWEDEN -- We've had some questions from listeners 
concerned about reports that a hurricane has wiped out Radio Sweden 
antennas. The reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated. There are 
no hurricanes in Sweden (by definition hurricanes are a kind of 
tropical storm), but hurricane force winds did hit the southern part 
of the country on December 3rd. The winds knocked down electric 
pylons, as well as antenna towers at our shortwave transmitter station 
in Hörby. You can see a photo of a fallen log periodic antenna which 
seems to have been destroyed, in the online version of this bulletin, 
at: http://www.sr.se/rs/media/scdx2327.htm 

The staff were out the following day repairing antennas, and very few 
broadcasts disappeared completely. The first break in transmission was 
at 17:39 hrs UTC, and a series of breaks continued through 00:06 hrs. 
There was another break at 06:45-07:00 hrs on December 4. During the 
repair work on December 4, our broadcasts between 11:30 and 14:40 hrs 
UTC were off the air. Since 14:40 hrs on December 4, transmissions 
have been as scheduled, although some have used different antennas. On 
December 7, 6065 kHz was off the air for 10 minutes from 11:00 hrs 
during the final repairs. The medium wave station in Sölvesborg was 
also off the air temporarily, but that was due to a power failure. On 
December 3 power disappeared for about 3 hours from 20:07 hrs UTC. The 
following day the transmitter was off the air during a power black-out 
for most of the period between 04:25 and 16:15 hrs. (Hoerby 
transmitter station and Magnus Nilsson, Teracom) And at least during 
the period our transmitters were off the air, listeners could still 
hear us by satellite, and over the Internet. (SCDX/MediaScan Dec 21)

** U S A. I really enjoy WOR and your DX Reports on your website so I 
thought I'd contribute this item I heard on WGTG today. WGTG owner 
Dave Frantz reported on his "Survival Communications" program at 1800 
UTC Monday that starting December 22, 1999, transmitter #2 that is 
currently on 12.170 USB from 1300-2300 UTC will be moved to 12.172 USB 
due to a request from the Army Materials Command, who already uses 
12.168 USB for an emergency communications network. He also reported 
that he is proceeding with installation of alternative (solar) power 
for his station in case of power outage. He plans to do some tests 
soon with 5kw power on 6.890 USB and 5kw on 5.085 USB, both powered by 
solar to see how far the lower power will get out. He also says that 
there will be testing at 100w SSB but did not specify a frequency at 
this time. No testing schedule was given; Dave indicated that it would 
be announced on the air soon. (Johnathan Grant, Dec 20)

** U S A. Dr. Demento back in Oklahoma? Despite the promo I heard less 
than a week before on KSPI 93.7 Stillwater, when I checked at the 
announced time, Sunday 8 pm CT, KSPI was covering wrestling!, in fact, 
before 8 and past 10 pm. Collegiate or high school, I suppose, a big 
deal in the fount of learning in Oklahoma. Looked around for a website 
to get an E-mail address, but the one I found, 
http://www.937thespy.com/ did not work. BTW, I also came upon a 
website run by an apartment company listing local radio stations 
everywhere, with gobs of mistakes, like Ponca City OK respelled to 
something unrecognizable (Glenn Hauser, Enid)

THIS DAY'S CHINESE, TIBETAN LESSON

As in 6260, ``Quinghai'' PBS: The correct spelling of the province is 
Qinghai, without the "u" that people tend insert due to influence from 
Spanish or French. The "q" in Chinese is pronounced like English ch + 
h. The combination "qui" does not exist in the modern Chinese 
latinization system, which is called "pinyin". The pinyin system uses 
a number of letters and letter combinations in a way that is very 
different from western usage. The reason is that the system wants to 
cover all the different sounds in Chinese without using other than the 
basic Latin letters. A few other rules: b, d and g are pronounced like 
English p, t and k but without a following weak h sound (i.e. as in 
French and Spanish), while p, t and k are pronounced with a very 
strong following h sound. "ian" (as in dian) is pronounced "yen", and 
consequently "dian" becomes "tyen". The wellknown word "guangbo 
diantai" for broadcasting station becomes "kwangpo tyenthai" ("th" 
pronounced as separate t + h). In addition Chinese has a system of 
tones, meaning that a syllable can be pronounced with a rising, 
falling, falling+rising or constant pitch, each giving a different 
meaning to the same syllable (most often several different meanings 
for each tone). This system also exists in such languages as 
Vietnamese, Tibetan and Thai. Cantonese has eight tones. ---- 

I can write more on this subject if you want me to, primarily 
concerning pronunciation rules. 73s (Olle Alm Sweden via Wolfgang 
Bueschel)

Thanks a lot indeed, and yes - Olle is right in all but one point. But 
frankly speaking, the correct transliteration or rather transcription 
of Mandarin, or any other Chinese language for that matter, has always 
mystified me. Surely there´s some sort of standard. For Tibetan we use 
the 'Wylie-transliteration', which is internationally accepted. But 
then, Tibetan employs letters (30 of them + 4 vowel signs) instead of 
signs. I´ve always wondered how you transliterate a sign... 

Where Olle is wrong is in saying that Tibetan belongs to the languages 
that have a tonal system. I speak all three major dialects of Tibetan 
pretty fluently and spent years upon years among them, I should 
know... ;-) Wonder where he got that information from. Surely a lot of 
nonsense is taught at quite a few Tibetological departments of western 
universities... 73 de (Thomas Roth, Germany)   ###



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