As many of you know, I’ve been catching up on correspondence recently as the past few weeks have been quite hectic.
SWLing Post reader, Andy (G0FTD), sent the following message several weeks ago, but is still seeking help:
I came across your website recently, so good to read something dealing with proper SWLing!
Last night I set up an experiment on 279Khz.
This is because of my interest in something called QRSS beacons in amateur radio. I use the HF bands, but recently became interested in the LF bands, 136 / 475Khz amateur bands and propagation.
I thought it would be interesting to test for the times that the day / nightime occurs at LF.
To do this I decided to use 279Khz, which by rights only has 2 transmitters on them, and at a convenient distance.
The only list I have says that Belarus and Turkey operate transmitters, so in theory I should only see 2 traces on my Argo software.
But I was surprised to see 3 traces.
Two of them have about a 1Hz offset to the main one, exactly on 279Khz.
I wonder if your readers can confirm the transmitters ?
Maybe Belarus is operating two TX sites with the offset, and the other is Turkey ?
You can see that the two offset ones go QRT at the same time.
If you can help Andy, please comment. Again, Andy, apologies for the delay in posting your inquiry!
I made another comment (I think it’s removed or Thomas is not notified about it)
I could receive this station with my Tecsun PL-680 in Darake (a mountain, north of Tehran). The voice was not very clear, so you had to focus and use headphones.
In the city, I couldn’t get anything on this freq.
Hi, Mehdi,
Somehow your previous comment landed in the SPAM folder. Not sure why, though, as nothing in the content should have triggered that response. Anyway, I approved it, of course. Sorry about that!
Cheers,
Thomas
Hi
I live in Tehran-Iran.
In the city, I can’t receive anything on 279KHZ, but today I went to Darake mountain (north of Tehran), and I could hear the voice on this frequency with my Tecsun PL680 (though it was not very clear and needed headphones and focus to be able to understand it)
Mehdi
Could well be one of the stations listed as using this channel in Asia. Russia closed a number of its Longwave broadcasters, and some used that channel, so Turkmenistan would be the likely favourite if it’s still there.
The station at Asgabat on 279 kHz is still shown in the latest edition of WRTH as running 150 kW on that channel, and the carrier from that one would certainly be capable of reaching Europe, even if if it was normally hidden behind the two European stations.
It’s not Turkey, it’s Turkmenistan, which is another country.
Since one LW transmitter usually covers a huge area, no country has the need to use two of them on the same frequency (excepting Russia but they stopped LW broadcasting last year).
So I don’t know what Andy saw there but as far as I know there are only two transmitters on 279 kHz.
I’d be interested in the answer as well