Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Strange Echo on China Radio International



Last night I was doing some shortwave listening on my new (OLD!) regen.   As always, China Radio International was booming in on multiple frequencies. But as I tuned them in, I noted something strange:  a very distinct echo on the signal (you can hear it in the video above).  Very strange.  Kind of like the Long Delayed Echos we've all heard about.  I started thinking of explanations.  Might this be some weird regen reverb effect?   (You see -- I'm still wary of these regens!)  But no, I checked -- the echo was there when I listened with my superhet HQ-100.  Could it be that this was some strange multipath effect, perhaps involving multiple powerful transmitters in different locations?   I was listening to the 0100-0200 UTC (20 Aug 2014) CRI English language service. (The echo continued when they switched to Chinese at 0200)  I think the frequency was 9580 kHz.   An SWL website says the transmitter was a relay station in Quivican, Cuba.

What do you guys think?  These fellows might have an explanation: 
http://swling.com/blog/2014/07/china-radio-international-warbling-on-daves-home-brew-receiver/

I really like shortwave listening with this old homebrew 1930s radio.  There are still a lot of interesting signals out there.  Recently heard:  Voice of Vietnam,  Radio Turkey, Radio Romania, WWV, WWVH, CHU, W1AW,  transatlantic aircraft,  Radio Australia, Radio New Zealand... and the mysterious numbers. 

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

1 comment:

  1. CRI's echo is undoubtedly due to their using playback via an old 8-track tape player I sold them (which I had had in my 1970 Ambassador in San Diego back in 1983). AA7EE's recording gives evidence of this.

    TRT Türkiye on 9.515 Mhz. is a personal fav.

    More disturbing is when you hear your own signal with a slight delay (which has happened to me twice on 80m c.w.)--evidence of multi - path propagation. Or sigs bouncing off UFOs. Or both.

    Finally caught up with SS episodes after a hiatus. All very good, and the newer ones with your guests are really super and informative. Techniques and approaches. ZS6SAM/XE1 is a new listener BTW.

    BTW CWTD...are they on vacation? After the "Alex Loop" session they have gone QRT.

    saludos!
    R. XE1GXG WB7AVF

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