[HCDX]: DX Listening Digest 00-30 Feb 25

[Glenn Hauser <wghauser@xxxxxxxxx>]

        DX LISTENING DIGEST 00-30, Feb. 25, 2000
                edited by Glenn Hauser

{Items from DXLD may be reproduced and re-reproduced only providing
full credit be maintained at all stages. BBCM items are copyright}

** ANGOLA. Former head of UNITA radio defects to government
Excerpts from report by the Angolan news agency Angop web site on 23rd
February

Luanda: Jose Chicomo, the former director of [UNITA leader Jonas]
Savimbi's Vorgan [Voice of the Resistance of the Black Cockerel] radio
service, has just turned himself over to the Angolan authorities in
Catumbela, Benguela Province. Chicomo, who served as Jonas Savimbi's
special correspondent for a great many years, described the terrorist
leader as someone who does not know what he wants. Chicomo is also
known as Chico Torres... Jose Chicomo is the second Vorgan
corespondent to turn himself over to the Angolan authorities over the
past few months. Papagaio Mussili, who spent 20 years in Jamba, fled
with his family to Namibia and then Luanda. The latest military
developments in Angola, namely the Angolan Armed Forces [FAA]
offensive on various fronts, have caused several of Jonas Savimbi's
officials to abandon him. As a result of the FAA offensive, Andulo,
Bailundo, Jamba and a number of other locations have come under
government control. Source: Angop news agency web site, Luanda, in
Portuguese 23 Feb 00 ((c) BBC Monitoring via DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** AUSTRALIA. Re: Darwin and Dummy Loads.

I believe that Radio Australia Engineering should use their extensive 
Web presence, or on-air, to notify the global listening community of 
the exact nature of the operations at Darwin. Not to do so will invite 
unwarranted time-consuming speculation and discussion, and could cause 
the issue to be raised in the Australian Parliament by the Opposition 
Party during Question Time. Indeed, the Australian community has a 
right to know what is being done with ITS money up there at the Cox 
Peninsula! 

Some clarification should also be made by RA as to the exact nature of 
these "tests" - the information made available to me was that these 
were/are short duration operations limited to a few seconds/minutes, 
carrier without programming, into "dummy" loads. Other information 
suggests that some unspecified communications facility in the NT 
was/is being used for irregular test transmissions, carrying RA 
programming and tuning signals, but on frequencies well outside of the 
recognized SW bands.

The long duration (one hour) transmission heard here in Melbourne 
during weekdays on 9580 from 0030-0130 is the usual RA English 
service, with super-strong signal levels, suggestive of emanation from 
Shepparton or another site in New South Wales, South Australia, 
Tasmania, Central Australia, or Victoria, via ground-wave coverage. 
Propagation at that time does not favour Darwin. As I had suggested, 
this may not appear to be the same operations as reported by others.

Some months ago I compiled an Professional Consultant's Report to RA
Engineering concerning proposed spectrum usage and coverage of the 
Northern Territory HF operations. The terms of that report were that 
it was to be considered "Classified", with its contents NOT to be 
disclosed to other parties. 

Whilst the hobby community is looking at "Darwin", it might also 
consider Katherine, Tennant Creek or Alice Springs as the source of 
unscheduled HF activity.  (Bob Padula, Melbourne, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** AUSTRALIA/GERMANY. Another response to Richard Buckby, DXLD 00-29:

Hello Richard,

As a addition to your remarks: The 250 kW mediumwave transmitters, 
which were installed in the Fifties at various GDR sites (two each at 
Berlin-Köpenick and Burg, a single one at Schwerin-Wöbbelin, 
Wachenbrunn and Dresden-Wilsdruff) had a built in dummy load. These 
were systems of big tubes, in which distilled water was streaming. It 
was the same water which was anyway needed to cool the PA stage tubes; 
incidentally SRW-357 types, large beasts of some 1,50 metres height 
and in the head of some 30 centimeters diameter, rather impressive 
when glowing (I had the lucky experience to visit the Wilsdruff 
transmitter when still on the air). So the dummy load needed no own 
cooling system and it was not too striking inside the anyway large PA 
stage, which occupied the half hall, simply divided by panes to 
protect people from the high voltage.

Today dummy loads seem to be rare. Back in last year some tests were 
done at Leipzig-Wiederau on the new Thomcast transmitter (783 kHz) to 
find out why it was working so unstably. During these tests the 
transmitter was deliberately overmodulated with test tones to force it 
to trip. All this happened when it was connected with the usual 
aerial; I was asleep during these tests, so I didn't know how harmful 
the splatter was...

Regarding Darwin, considering all reports about it, they have 
evidently a "real" dummy load there but the recent tests were done to 
evaluate the performance of the antenna system, i.e. it was in any 
respect "real" transmissions, using full 250/300 kW into the curtain 
arrays. What makes me wonder is that they fired up the Radio Australia 
interval signal (evidently locally generated like at Deutsche Welle 
transmitters, who used to insert the tinkle prior to the programmes 
from their own source). It was stated that no other audio signal was 
at hand, but I'm a little surprised about that; how will they do any 
measurements on the transmitters with no test tones available?
Regards, (Kai Ludwig, Germany)

** CANADA. Hi Glenn! Re Will Martin's comments on "Madly Off..." being 
missing on Dec. 19, that would not have been due to the technicians' 
strike. The strike only started late on the local evening of Dec. 30, 
i.e. around 0330 UTC on Dec. 31. I don't know what might have gone 
wrong at either Montreal or Sackville on the morning of Feb. 20, when 
you found BBC WS on 17710, instead of RCI. By the way, I should 
mention that, as of Sat. Feb. 19, the programme "Nova Scotia Kitchen 
Party" has returned to CBC Radio One, and also to RCI. RCI timings are 
Sat 2200-2300 to Europe/Africa (replacing "Quirks and Quarks"); Sun 
0000-0100 to the Americas (replacing "Global Village"). 73- (Bill 
Westenhaver, QC, DX LISTENING DIGEST) Rather, 2205 and 0005 or so

** CANADA. Hello, This week on Quirks & Quarks we are devoting the 
entire program to: Science in an Uncertain Age: a special full-edition 
report from the annual meeting of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science. This past weekend in Washington, more than two 
thousand scientists gathered for the yearly AAAS meetings - and the 
intrepid Quirks crew was there, too. We'll have the highlights on this 
weekend's program, including the physics of baseball, the future of 
space exploration, the impact of humans on ecological systems, the 
battle between science and the humanities, and the debate over the 
expanding universe. All that and more on Quirks & Quarks this 
Saturday, right after the noon news, on Radio One. (Bob McDonald, 
Quirks and Quarks) So still on RCI Sunday 1305+ on 9640, 13650, 17710 
(DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** CONGO DR. State radio and TV to get new shortwave transmitter
Text of report by Congolese radio from Kinshasa on 23rd February

The national radio will soon be heard throughout the country. A new
10-kW shortwave transmitter has been ordered for the national radio
from an Italian company, TelConsult AD, with a credit line of 1m
dollars granted by President Laurent-Desire Kabila.

Jose Kasengwa, director-general of Congolese National Radio-Television
[RTNC], announced that the new transmitters will be delivered to
Kinshasa in March. Source: Radio-Television Nationale Congolaise,
Kinshasa, in French 1100 gmt 23 Feb 00 ((c) BBC Monitoring excerpted
by gh, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** COSTA RICA. This is a ``make or break`` year for RFPI. Either it 
will grow, or disappear from the air. More new Friends of RFPI are 
very much needed. This will lead to matching funds. Join for $40 to 
RFPI, P O Box 20728, Portland, OR 97294 (James and Debra Latham, RFPI 
Mailbag Feb 25 via gh, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** GREECE. VOG has reorganized its schedule; the Interprogram has 30 
minutes in each language, such as English at 2100 on 9375, 7450. More 
about this via http://www.rnw.nl (Andy Sennitt, RN Media Network Feb 
24 via gh) Just in case this applied to the VOA/USA relays at 2100, I 
checked 17565 and 17705, but they were in Greek/music (gh, DX 
LISTENING DIGEST)

** ISRAEL. 15785.03 (new frequency) Galei Zahal, 1405-1450+, a lot of 
pop songs, ID "...Galei Zahal", at 1430 news in brief mentioning 
Chechnya, Tel-Aviv, fair to weak here in Moscow (Nick Pashkevich, Feb 
24, DX LISTENING DIGEST) 

** OKLAHOMA. KTOU-LP ch 22 in OKC, with the Cadena Independiente 
Nacional, which runs old movies dubbbed in Spanish in prime time, also 
seen on channel 17 now, including the KTOU 22 ID at 0230 UT Feb 24 
when tropo enhancement was up; no sign of KDOR-17 Bartlesville with 
TBN. So where is this transmitted from? (Glenn Hauser, Enid, DX 
LISTENING DIGEST)

** U S A. The Director and the Program Director of VOA are pleased to 
announce the following changes within the VOA News Division:

Kevin Lynch will become Assignments Editor in our London News Center,
and Challiss McDonough will take over as Johannesburg Bureau Chief.
We?re sure both will be tremendously successful in their new roles.

After three years as Director of the News Division, Sonja Pace has 
been selected as the new Chief of our Moscow Bureau.  We thank Sonja 
for her dedication and leadership in the Newsroom and look forward to 
hearing her back on the air.  Although she will not leave for Moscow 
until mid-summer, Sonja will depart from the Newsroom shortly to begin
intensive language and area studies courses.

As the VOA newsroom evolves into a multimedia operation, we will be
redesigning the position of News Director to supervise our radio,
television, and Internet news output.  We will recruit both internally
and externally for someone who can fulfill this role and hope to have 
a new VOA News Director in place by the time the multimedia newsroom 
opens on the first floor in the fall.

We are fortunate that veteran correspondent Andre De Nesnera has 
agreed to serve as Acting Director of the News Division.  Andre will 
join Managing Editor Jerry McKinney, Acting Assignments Editor Jim 
Malone, and Program Manager Cindy Krasinski as the interim management 
team in the News Division during the transition period.

We would like to thank all of these outstanding journalists for their
dedication to VOA, and wish them much success in their new roles.

(Sanford J. Ungar, Myrna R. Whitworth, VOA press release via Kim 
Andrew Elliott) S. Pace was the subject of a newsroom petition to 
remove her, previously reported here (DX LISTENING DIGEST)

** U S A. George Thurman and I noticed that WBCQ-2 was on with Brother 
Scare around 0230 UT Thu Feb 24. Visions of yet another frequency 
totally wasted, but this was //7415, just testing 2 after a breakdown; 
it was on the next day, but not the next night (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX 
LISTENING DIGEST)   ###

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