XC "The Crackle" along with E10 ART

It is the first time I've heard of XC, the so-called "Crackle" on HF. The Crackle is more of a "noise" station than a "numbers" station since its content is unknown...

It is now (0746z) up on 6987 kHz. The E10 station ART on 6986 kHz is causing QRM :-) but this does not trouble me; actually it is a "double pleasure"!

This is a sound sample from 6986 kHz (the E10 ART frequency)

And this is a sample from 6987 kHz, from a bit later, after E10 QRT.

You may also try 5135 kHz, during night.

Frequency plot

Spectrogram

V13 "New Star Broadcasting station" barely audible!

The so-called "New Star Broadcasting station" (ENIGMA: V13) is barely audible right now (1300z) on 11430 kHz. The ICOM R75 is set to USB and the preamp is engaged. This is a sample from the beginning of the transmission, where you can hear the musical intro. The quality isn't so good but still the V13 theme and the YL characteristic rhythm is apparent.

Additional info can be found at:
http://www.cvni.net/radio/nsnl/nsnl038/nsnl38v13.html

A better sound sample can be found at:
http://www.enigma2000.org.uk/

And of course you can take a look at the past E2K Newsletters :-)

The station QRT at about 1330z. If you like, you may try again at 1400z on the same frequency, 11430 kHz. Good luck!

New edition of rfax.pdf HF-FAX guide ... Updated!

Here is the latest (10 September 2009) version of rfax.pdf guide, which is updated. There are less stations listed now, which means that some are no longer transmitting... This is a bit sad...

BTW right now the South Africa ZSJ station has a fair image quality on 18236.10 kHz, USB mode...

E10 on 14000 kHz

E10 is known to transmit on 14000 kHz (exactly at the beginning of the 20m ham band). Last night I got the repeat of a message while listening to the CW portion of the 20m band. Unfortunately I don't know the call (yet).

So this is what's happened yesterday, Thursday 11/06, 2209z, on 14000 kHz USB.
The message was:

m g28 t
ZIFNS OWWLO XJVAE WGPZG MSPTV PORHW QALCX RIHPY XQQMO SBKJI
RMTHL JOOBC NCZAK ZQJYV GJZNR PNQWQ ACJKL WNKMO BPEMR QPMNP
PZKUT ZAJQR OUVBE YNMOA XPCHP UJFLG RHJAT FSFLF
eom eot

UPDATE:
The message belongs to YHF who usually transmits on 2844//3840 kHz at 2200z.
Thanks E10-Agent!

Very odd "sinusoidal" sweep on 6990 kHz

Well, HF is a garden of endless sound varieties.

Now, what's this? Something out of order?

Recorded on 6990 USB, wide filter setinng, at approx. 2109 UTC, S5-S7 signal strength.

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!