A peculiar message from E25 -- accompanied by a new song

It's been more than a week now where E25 plays a new song as an intro theme.

Thanks to our friend Mr. DXer, the song is "Ahbabena ya eeni mahom maana" ("Our lovers are away") from Farid Al-Atrash. But there's more. A short 3-group message was sent to Agent "000" (!) but the operators don't actually want to reveal this peculiar call. Most of the transmissions lack the call part; like having the volume turned down until the moment the machine is ready to say "Message" three times. Then someone turns the volume on.

The procedure goes like this:

• Music ("Our lovers are away") one or more times.
  
• Audio off or very low ("mechanical" YL calling "0 0 0").
• Audio back to normal calling "Message" x 3 as usual,
• 0669 6676 6682,
• "Rebeat" x 3,
• ...
• "End of message, end of transmission"

In most cases it was difficult or impossible to identify the call, but on 21/05/09, they "revealed" it to us. Here's a sound sample recorded on 23/05/09, 0927z, on 6140 kHz. Note that the recording was made in USB and in the beginning of the transmission the carrier was a bit off-frequency. Some other days the song was repeated 2 or 3 times.

Here's a later sound sample where we're not "allowed" to hear the call. As usual the frequency was 6140 kHz. It began earlier, at 0918z then after 3 minutes of blank carrier (which BTW was off-frequency again), the new song was repeated four (!) times. The sound sample is from the last part of the transmission (final repeat of the song plus msg).

Many thanks to Mr. DXer for identifying the song and alerted the E2K Group for this kind of oddity.

Honolulu FAX audible on 16 MHz

Unfortunately I haven't got a decent map from Honolulu HF-FAX service on 16133.10 kHz USB, but I can hear it right now (1830z). My ears can detect the presence of fax signal but the software decoder just gives a very noisy printout.

I managed to log Honolulu on 16133.10 kHz USB this morning at 0715z, and also on 11088.10 kHz but still no clear image reception... While the HF conditions gizmo in my blog says Poor, I wonder if these... 11(!) sunspots makes the difference!

Latest version of rfax.pdf

A new HF-Fax frequency/schedule list is available, dated 24 February 2009. Download it from here.

E10 ABC on 5339 kHz, jammed

ABC was discovered in a FTJ frequency. It is on air right now, on 5339 USB with a nice S8 signal. The strange thing is the existence of the Jammer, at the same frequency but with a weaker signal. How odd! Why to jam a station calling "ABC" and nothing else? Maybe the Jammer knows more about the purpose of ABC, with no messages so far... Here's a short sound sample!

E11a this morning

Right now (07:15 UTC), E11a is on 11486 kHz, USB, with a solid S9 signal. A 46-group message (without the initial and ending 77777's, which is E11b) for Agent "389", starting with "07946..." is in progress.

This is the full transmission.

E10 now sends "TMS" instead of "ABC" on 6428 kHz

E10 was calling "ABC" on 6428 kHz the last few days. But right now (1545 UTC), E10 calls "TMS" in AM mode on 6428 kHz. E10 transmissions are carrier+USB but this one is AM. This recording was made with the Icom set to LSB to avoid some digital "rattle" QRM. The signal is ~S7 on LSB with S9 peaks, while it is a more or less steady S9 in AM with +10dB peaks and digi QRM.

E10 EZI2 & E06 mix on 6840 kHz

Thanks to E10-Agent, ENIGMA 2000 members were informed about an exciting E10/E06 mix!

Specifically, on 6840 kHz E06 started calling "190" and moments later the E10 lady was calling "EZI2". E10 ended at 2003z (after the usual 3 minutes) while E06 sent a 71-group message:

190
865 71
72890 71657 88008 19559 03948
...
(Ended at 2016z with fast zeros)

E06 started with with an S6 to S8 signal but after a while he got stronger, S9...+10dB. Propagation effect or just a necessary power-up to "win" E10?

You can listen the entire transmission here. Enjoy!