Sunday 29 April 2007

Sunday morning: Full of oriental music

From at least 0800z to 1322z E25 was on air playing oriental music. At my QTH, signal strength was constant S9+. Towards the end of this lengthy test (?) session a song was repeated again and again several times. Listen!

Friday 27 April 2007

E25 resends nearly the same message

A nice AM transmission today at 1142z, sending nearly the same message to Agent 780. Listen! As a bonus, some background chat is present too! So the OM called "780 785 49 51 788 38 41 45 46 48 50" many times, then "780" a couple of times and then a g11 message followed:

27/04
g11
9546 4111 0310 3238 5429 9388 5757 2587 6001 6341 0310

but yesterday...
26/04
g11
9405 3111 0310 3238 5429 9388 5757 2587 6001 6341 0310

Of course you can spot the difference! The first group is different, but the second, which gives a serial and the group count is legitimate...

26/04 3111 → 31 → 13 = serial, 11 → 11 = group count.
27/04 4111 → 41 → 14 = serial indeed increased by 1 and again 11 → 11 = gc.

Another TX occurred at 1244z again AM, "Arouh Le Min" and an OM repeating "220 4 5". ID 220 is a rare one, last appeared on 17/09/2005 and 01/09/2003 accompanied with musical intro.

Who else is on 9450 kHz?

I found the latest Shortwave broadcast schedule from EiBi. So who else uses the same frequency?
So we have IBRA Radio at 1200z-1300z without causing too much QRM and then VoR, with a strong digital (DRM) transmission. A little searching can reveal more info about these stations.

Language codes:
PJ stands for Punjabi (India/Pakistan)
HD stands for Hindko (Pakistan)
UR stands for Urdu (Pakistan)
HA stands for Haussa (Nigeria)

The rest language codes should be clear to you :-) If not, take a look at the "readme" file at EiBi.

Transmitter locations (aka Remarks):
t is Taldom-Severnyj (near Moscow) 56N44, 37E38
ka is Kashi (Kashgar) (Xinjiang) 39N30, 76E00

And that completes the "Who's who on 9450 kHz"!

Thursday 26 April 2007

E25 in USB under 1000 Hz tone and DRM

After being absent for a couple of days, I checked for E25 news. A carrier was present on the well-known frequency since 1030z today. At 1244z a 1000 Hz tone was up and later, a guy started calling "780 785 47 788 38 41 45 46" (a rather odd calling session, which anyway implied that a message will follow for Agent "780"). Indeed, that happened, and a 11-group message followed for Agent "780". The tone gone near the repeat of the message. Here is the message:

9405 3111 0310 3238 5429 9388 5757 2587 6001 6341 0310

The 5th group was 5428 then changed to 5429 in the repeat.

And here is the processed sample to remove the 1000 Hz tone. It is recorded on USB and near the end of it I switched for a couple of seconds to AM and then back to USB for comparison, so to make clear that it was a USB transmission. The DRM station interfering is Voice Of Russia. Check here for more info. Scroll down and click next to entries for 9450 kHz.

The guy says "Repeat" instead of the usual "Rebeat". Arabic language has no "p" so maybe that's the reason why E25 operators say something like "Rebeat" instead of "Repeat".

Monday 2 April 2007

UNID signal plus XM

A known frequency for the weird whale-song-sounding or "backwards music" station XM (Attention! Not XW, W for Whale! XW is different, "Workshop", check your Enigma Control List!) is 8707 kHz +/-. Here is a sample from today's song, 0814z.

A UNID signal noted by some Enigma2000 members appeared again on 10683 USB, 0809z. I can describe it as a Jet plus a looping banging sound. But today an XM signal appeared there too!!! Listen! The XM interrupted the UNID transmission. I was lucky to catch this since the station QRT at 0817z. Very weird stuff. Any ideas?