Halloween loggings, etc.

It's Halloween. I took a vacation day from work. It's beautiful outside, so I'm working on a woodshed and I'm downloading Winradio software onto a different computer. And maybe I'll even put up another dipole. Hopefully, I'll have the Winradio and the R-8 both running tonight.

Speaking of night, I wonder how the propagation will be? Channel Z was skipping out looong last night on 4075 kHz, making it to California with a weak signal and the carrier was audible in Brazil! I made the comment yesterday that people should keep an eye on 4000-4100 kHz tonight, but now I wonder if stations would have better results around 2300-2500 kHz after dark. I don't recall any pirates ever using this band, so I don't think anyone will be broadcasting there . . . but wow the nighttime MUF has been crazy low.

1648 UTC: I downloaded the latest Winradio software and installed it. Took the laptop upstairs, plugged it in, and everything is working. Wanted to do a test record, so I recorded 10 seconds or so of CFRX on 6070 kHz. I moved the freq to somewhere in 43m and there was a signal on the band . . . which leads me to my 1st Halloween logging of the year:

Unid: 6927.1, 10/31, 1642-1644* Weak but audible signal. Sounded like a children's song from the '50s. Reception was not strong enough to know if it was a Halloween song or something else. Signal shut down before I could get the frequency centered, reduce the bandwidth a bit, rename the file, and start recording.

1818 UTC: Have a post in place and part of the back wall. Came inside, saw an unid log on HFU, so I ran up to the radio room & started recording. At long last, it's my 1st recording on the Winradio.

Ion Radio: 6930.3, 10/31, 1810+ A commercially produced Halloween show, sounds like OTR. Heard a CW ID, but I still have never learned code, aside from being able to copy "CQ" and "SOS," so I had to rely on HFU logs for the ID. Program continued in and out of the noise. At the end of the horror program were CBS Radio IDs & into a fairly long news segment about what was currently happening with the Watergate scandal, so maybe this was from around 1973 or so? I stopped recording after about 5-10 min of news because the recording file was getting huge, but that was a mistake because SSTV images were sent just after I stopped recording. I don't have MMSSTV on this computer, so I just downloaded it, too. We'll see if it works later on tonight.

Back to the woodshed . . .

Planet Z (tent.): 6926.9, 10/31, ca. 1950 I thought I'd recorded it, but I hit the wrong red button. Heard a bit of music, then a bit of talk with echo & off. Signal fair, ID per HFU logs

2100 UTC: Added more to the back wall & got some concrete in place

Old-Time Radio unid: 6770, 10/31, 2100+ Old family comedy program. I've had a lot of noise on the band today & OTR hasn't been very strong for a long time

2215 UTC: Another post & a few more supports up

Channel Z: 4075.1, 10/31, 2220+ Pretty good signal, but I've had pretty high noise levels all day. Cranberries "Zombie." Just heard Andy Walker with an ID. The Specials "Ghost Town"

6950, 10/31, 2215+ Very strong signal. Hope they stay on a bit longer. I don't yet have my 2nd antenna up, but I'd like to keep listening to Channel Z because it's been a while since I've heard it.

2348 UTC: Ate supper and I've been watching the pretty noise patterns roll by on the Winradio. Boy, this thing's noisy! The noise is sitting on S7. I switched the antenna back over to the R8 and the noise was about S7 there as well, but when I turned off the Winradio, the noise level on the R8 dropped to about S3 or S4. Hmm. I think it's time to go Lowe's for woodshed stuff.

The morning after: Wow, evening conditions were disappointing! Wolverine Radio was audible, but very weak. The signal levels were comparable or maybe slightly better on the Twente web receiver. I had a carrier with a bit of audio from X-FM that just got worse as the night went on. It sounded like a lot of the Europirates that I have a tough time picking details from.

Thanks to everyone who took the trouble to broadcast and I'm glad to see that some people had a good evening of listening.