WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News

the establishment of a full commercial SW broadcast radio station.
On Friday 27th January 2005, the Latvian Broadcasting Council announced
that RNI had been granted a FULL commercial SW broadcasting licence. The
RNI broadcasting licence is NOT a temporary relay licence, as used by
previous operator KREBS TV.
RNI is now the ONLY officially sanctioned SW broadcast radio station in
Latvia.
The website address is:
(Bernd Trutenau-LTU, DXplorer June 20)
LIBYA [and non]. SAWT AL AMAL Today the jamming situation around Sawt
Al Amal was unusually chaotic. At 1200 Amal opened on 17620 interfering
with RFI. The Libyan relays as usual opened on 17610 / 17660 / 17665 /
17670 / 17725. Due to feed problems all Libyan freqs via France at first
had long periods of silence. After some time the RFI feed was put on 17610
and 17660,//to but a couple of tenths of a second in advance of 17850 /
17620 / 15300. 17670 and 17725 remained silent. At 1214 17660 went off and
a silent carrier appeared on 17620. At 1221 RFI audio was switched on,
creating an echo with the normal RFI signal. At 1216 17670 went off and a
silent carrier appeared on 17625.
At 1300 Amal went to 17630 (a 10 kHz shift instead of the usual 5 kHz
step), interfering with ANO. At 1310 the Afropop station went on and the
jammer that had been on 17625 also piled up on 17630. At 1313 Swahili from
Libya was on 17610 and 17620 while Arabic was 17630 and 17725. At 1327
this had been corrected with Arabic on 17620 and Swahili on 17725. Just
before 1400 I noted Amal back on 17620. At that time RFI had already left.
The Libyan relay left at 1400 sharp and Amal at about 25 seconds after the
hour.
(Olle Alm-SWE, wwdxc BC-DX and dxld June 17)
That's a fantastic situation you describe - Olle - and I cannot help
wondering why so much effort is being put into jamming this station. And
why has France become embroiled in it too - what are they getting out of
it? Favours from the great leader, a more reliable oil supply, bucks or
what?
It seems to me that two 'monitoring' facilities are at work here - one
guiding Amal and the other (presumably the French) following what the
clandestine does. It would be real fun if Amal had two txs to move around
I think! I haven't personally worked out what time RFI actually goes off
17620 - the last schedule I saw (via Wolfy?) updated it to 1700, but I
think it's earlier than that. It must be suffering badly from QRM - and
now ANO 17630 is not immune. So far, I think the BBC 17640 has escaped
serious QRM but there are other stations operating in this region that
haven't.
Although the French(?) have several txs to "play around" with they don't
seem to be making a very good job of jamming the station. I take it that
the Libyan mx txion - usually on 17665 - is coming from somewhere else -
not France. I seem to recall that a Russian site was reported? It is
always at good level here but the others are not as strongly heard. RFI on
17620 is usually quite weak. I'm glad you agree that Swahili is the lang
used on 17610 and 17725 - Olle. Our Spanish friend insists on calling it
Hausa. I wonder why these are always accompanied by a buzz but the other
Libyan relays are not? These are stronger here than 17620 too. But if we
still agree that the Afro-pops come via Gabon then it astounds me that
they put it onto 17630.
Anyway, all well worth observing.
(Noel R. Green-UK, wwdxc BC-DX and dxld June 18)