DeLorenzo's Classic DX

[MidCapeMarc]

HCFA2-540 Radio Tropicana, Guayaquil, Ecuador - What an amazing ID including call letters, frequency, slogan, city, country and continent! Heard on February 12, 1979 at 0700 UTC from West Yarmouth, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Receiver was Hammurlund HQ-100 with SM-1 Space Magnet antenna.:D

[MidCapeMarc]

Radio Caaguazu-645 Coronel Oviedo, Paraguay was heard on February 19, 1979 at 0836 UTC. Again, reception was from West Yarmouth, MA using the trusty, if not flashy, combination of HQ-100 receiver and Space Magnet antenna. I was unemployed that winter and thus had lots of time to DX.:cool:

[MidCapeMarc]

Note the ID (or slogan) "Mundial" (MOON-dee-ow) at 40 seconds into the clip. Again heard from West Yarmouth, MA on December 4, 1978 at 0635 UTC using HQ-100 and SM-1. Another amazing signal. In the 33 years since I have not heard ANY station from Brazil as loud as this.:cool:

[MidCapeMarc]

Although approximately 6,000 miles from most points in the Northeastern U.S., the 2 megawatt BSKSA transmitter from Duba is one of the easiest TA's. The best time to get them is around local sunset before 50kw WWKB-1520 in Buffalo becomes too strong. This reception was made on October 12, 2004 at 2300 UTC from South Dennis, Mass. using a JRC NRD-525 receiver and 140 foot broadband loop antenna. There is a top-of-hour ID after the time pips. At 6 seconds after the last pip, you can clearly hear "Ahr-uh-BEE-yuh Sah-ooo-DEE-yuh" (Arabia Saudi).

[MidCapeMarc]

Although not nearly as distant as Paraguay or Brazil, I've always enjoyed this audio clip of HJBL-1160 because of the detailed ID (including call letters - "Ah-chay Hoe-tuh Bay El-ay") and interesting choice of background music which, I believe, is from George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." Again, this reception was made from West Yarmouth, MA using the HQ-100 and SM-1. The date was January 29, 1979 at the stations' 0455 UTC signoff.

[MidCapeMarc]

Although coast to coast MW reception has become quite rare, in the early days of the X-Band it was still possible. In 1996 and 1997, the only US station operating on 1630 kHz was KXBT in Vallejo, CA. They of course later moved to 1640 kHz and changed call letters and formats a couple of times. Here are two audio clips of KXBT-1630 from November of 1996 and 1997 respectively as received at my shack in Auburndale (Newton) Mass. Receiver was the JRC NRD-525 and antenna was the Quantum Loop.

[MidCapeMarc]

Received numerous times during the past ten years, this is one of my favorite TAs. The reason I guess is it's combination of northern latitude and interesting programming. Here are three audio clips of this station, all recorded from South Dennis, MA using the NRD-525 receiver. The first clip was recorded on October 2, 2004 at 0350 UTC and features a female announcer giving a detailed weather forecast in Danish. Clip number 2 "California Dreamin" was recorded a week later on October 9, 2004 at 0354 UTC. The final clip was recorded on October 6, 2005 at 0315 UTC. The song is called "You're Gorgeous" by a British singer named Baby Bird. Thanks to member DX Grrl for identifying this song in 2011. It had been a mystery to me for nearly 6 years.

[MidCapeMarc]

Years before Turks & Caicos became such an easy catch on 530 kHz, this was a rarely heard country. On February 28, 1979 during severe Auroral conditions, I stumbled onto a weak signal in English all alone on 1550 kHz. I was rewarded at 2322 UTC with an ID from Radio Turks & Caicos. It was later reported in DX NEWS that this was probably the first known reception of this station in North America. Once again, the location was West Yarmouth, Mass. and the equipment was the HQ-100 receiver and SM-1 antenna.

Moral of the story: To get rare DX, you do not necessarily need high-priced equipment and acres of land for antennas. What you do need is a good location and the combination of skill and luck to be in the right place at the right time.

[MidCapeMarc]

In mid to late May of 2005, this station was widely heard by DXers in Eastern US and I was one of the lucky ones. Rocco Cotroneo in Brazil was kind enough to provide translation of this clip. It was a soccer match between Palmeiras and Sao Paulo and the score was 0-0. The announcer shouts Globo at 5 seconds and again at :12. Due to Auroral conditions, there was no trace of usual dominant WTAM-1100 Cleveland. Reception made from South Dennis at 0053 UTC on May 19, 2005 using the NRD-525 and noise-reduced longwire.

[MidCapeMarc]

In late January 2009, there was an unusual opening to Northern Europe. One rarely heard station (and country!) heard here on Cape Cod almost daily between January 22 and January 31 was Kringvarp Foroya Utvarpid-531 kHz from Akraberg in the Faroe Islands. The Faroe Islands are located north of Scotland and belong to Denmark. Here are 2 clips from that time period, both received with the JRC NRD-525 and Conti Super Loop antenna. The first clip was recorded on January 22 at 2055 UTC - 3:55pm local time - and is amazingly loud & clear. There is no ID but the reception was confirmed by the language, Faroese, by several Scandanavian DXers via the Yahoo Group Real DX. The second clip was also recorded on January 22, 5 minutes later at 2100 UTC and includes the top-of-hour announcement. As I mentioned earlier, this reception "window" lasted for 10 days. Who knows when the window will open again. :cool:

[MidCapeMarc]

Much to my surprise, the window to the Faroe Islands had reopened by Sept 20, 2009 and possibly before. Heard here most nights from Sept 20 through this writing (Oct 8) although not nearly as loud and clear as last January. A fourth TA has now entered the Faroes/Spain/Algeria mix - I suspect Iran but have not yet been able to confirm it. 531 is one of my favorite TA channels. Very little adjacent channel splatter and no IBOC hiss!

[MidCapeMarc]

The 1.2 megawatt transmiiter at Bolshakovo, Kaliningrad was heard relaying The Voice of Russia World Service on October 30, 2010 at 2207 UTC. Check out the nice ID in English. Heard from South Dennis, Mass using the JRC NRD-525 receiver and new East/West Delta antenna. Fellow DXer Chris Black from South Yarmouth helped me put up the Delta after my Super Loop was blown down by Hurrican Earl in September 2010. The Vertical sections of the Delta are about 75 feet long and the horizontal section is about 60 feet. It is located in the woods about 50 feet behind my house.

[DX Grrl]

Received numerous times during the past ten years, this is one of my favorite TAs. The reason I guess is it's combination of northern latitude and interesting programming... (T)he final clip was recorded on October 6, 2005 at 0315 UTC. I really like this song but do not recognize it. If anyone can tell me the name of the song, the artist, and the year it was released, I would be most grateful. :)

I know this thread is way old, but, I found a copy of that song you liked, on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIQRZn-JvPs The song is "You're Gorgeous" by Babybird, from the album "Ugly Beautiful" from 1996. There are a couple of versions of this song, but, this is the one the Denmark station was playing.

[MidCapeMarc]

Wow! Thanks very much, DX Grrl! It took almost 6 years, but someone finally recognized the song! You have made my day! I will save the clip on my You Tube page and do a little research on the artist, Babybird. Thanks again and Good DX!

Marc DeLorenzo
South Dennis, MA, USA

[cd637299]

I have found it fairly easy to ID a song now by Googling. If you can remember 2 or 3 or more groups of words in the lyrics, you can enter them in Google, remembering to enclose the phrase in quotation marks to keep the words together (otherwise, it'll just search anything containing the words, no matter the order).

For example:

"old macdonald had a farm" "quack quack here" "here a moo"

Instant results....

(Just yesterday in a grocery store I heard a song which had a really annoying beat and lyrics, but I knew I heard it before. I Googled & it turned out to be "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls. :rolleyes: )

In a grocery store, no less.

cd

[spunker88]

cd,

If you have the audio of a song you want to ID you can use Midomi.com. Run the audio output from your tape player, etc to the mic or line input of your computer and it will capture around 10 seconds of audio then hopefully come back with the song and artist. Seems to work great with static interference, its become a helpful tool for IDing those songs via ES when there are no words I can make out.

[DX Grrl]

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that method. I use the Shazam or Soundhound music tag apps, on my iPhone. I've tagged some great music, and discovered some great music groups, just shopping at Macy's. It's instant gratification! I was amazed the Shazam app was able to identify the Babybird tune through all of the MW atmospherics. I think it is wonderfully magical that one can find an awesome song while DXing a station thousands of miles away! That's a double bonus.

[cd637299]

I joined Midomi 3-4 years ago, but I think the members are "new school"....

I had a few unID songs made famous as instrumentals, and I think that I tried a song by whistling, and the results weren't even close on Midomi. Thankfully I have found a few chums around the world who have ID'd some of these for me, after making mp3 of my own voice, "la la la" style.

I may still have a few songs buzzing in my head, but I cannot think of them right now.

*Is* there an unID instrumental site that works a la Midomi? (I am talking about songs from 40s thru 70s or so.)

cd

[spunker88]

I think they try to index all songs, but the service is popular among smartphone users who tend to be young and listen to newer music so new stuff is probably indexed better. But it will do older stuff as I tested it on Zoomer 740 one night straight from my radio and it ID'd a bunch of 40s and 50s music. But maybe some of the rarer stuff from this era isn't indexed.