BC-DX 789 05 Jan 2007 Private Verwendung der Meldun

There is a wood chip burning plant (I think) near McFarland. There is a
dairy west of Earlimart. Can't think of the name of the latter dairy. When
the wind was right you know what I mean. Both show up on satellite
imagining [sic]. Also North Kern Facility of the CA Bureau of Prisons.
Sight of the place made my blood run cold. Greenville has two transmitter
plants, "Beargrass" and "Black Jack." Beargrass was closed recently, left
to rot away. Your tax dollars hard at play! Don't think Delano ever had a
receive plant. Audio feed came down phone lines.
(Charles A. Taylor, WD4INP Greenville, NC, ibid.)
Thank you for taking the lead on this, Dan. You are absolutely correcto-
mundo about the HF skip zones. Add to that the ability of major shortwave
broadcasters to beam their transmissions in a fairly narrow pattern, and
voila, VOA Delano should be heard very well in Cuba. Lest we not forget
that many VOA/RM broadcasts are jammed, as well as propagation conditions
changing daily, it is important to transmit from different locations, at
different frequencies, and at different times in order to get through. I
for one applaud the work that both you and Charles Taylor have done for
our country.
(Joe Miller-MI-USA AB8YP, ibid.)
[Google Earth imagery coordinates
IBB Marathon-FL 24 41 57.61 N 81 05 18.97 W ]
According to the NRC DA Pattern Book, it looks like a typical ND pattern
for a 50-kW station, except the origin/transmitter site is on the edge of
the north of the circle. I just looked it up, and was surprised. I thought
it was elongated toward La Habana; but in fact appears to be (as I
described it) a broad beam. There also seem to be no minor side-lobes
common on many "tight" DA patterns. I expect never to hear RM-1180 unless
they do an equipment test on Monday morning on a single tower. Probably
won't ID. Incidentally 1180 and all RM HF frequencies close down 0000 -
0500 EST on Monday mornings!
(Charles A Taylor-NC-USA WD4INP, ibid.
all via dxld July 12)
ZIMBABWE ZIMBABWE Govt Gets a Taste of Own Medicine
GOVERNMENT radio jamming equipment reportedly purchased in China has
backfired, gagging its own new shortwave project, Voice of Zimbabwe (VOZ),
sources at the station revealed to the Zimbabwe Independent this week.
The ambitious station, set up to counter Western broadcasts, is said to be
battling to recruit qualified personnel to run its operations while its
few employees are still in Harare instead of moving to Gweru where it was
due to be housed. Sources said the equipment was believed to be made up of
three jammers installed at Thornhill, a military airbase and government
communications centre in the Midlands.
The plan was to block a perceived negative publicity campaign from outside
radio stations such as Voice of America (VOA) funded by the U.S. State
Department, SW Radio which beams from London and Dutch-funded Voice of the
People (VOP), among others. The jamming equipment has prevented VOZ from
starting regular operations due to the self-signal interception going on
at the station.
Zimbabweans have been forced to listen to state radio programming owing to
punitive broadcasting laws enacted by government. The country has four
state-controlled radio stations operating under the frequency modulation
(FM) radio wave band and one shortwave, VOZ, which appears to be suffering
a stillbirth.
Government clamped down on Capital Radio, Zimbabwe's first independent