Thursday, August 02, 2012

Monitoring Syria on shortwave


Special thanks to JR, for sending in this logging from his latest monitoring of Radio Damascus. Contributions are always welcome from our blog readers.
Gayle Van Horn

Syria

Re your post "Monitoring Radio Damascus on Shortwave", I listened to the initial ten or fifteen minutes of the station's German and English broadcasts on 9330 kHz last night GMT (August 1, 18:05 and 21:10 GMT respectively). Both broadcasts seem to begin somewhat earlier - closer to the full hour - than scheduled. The German broadcast was affected by complete signal failings many times (appeared to be power failures, but that's just my personal guess), and spoken lines were otherwise only occasionally intelligible. English came in with a stronger signal - constantly O=3, except when the signal disappeared completely, too. But that happened less frequently than with the German broadcast three hours earlier.

Hope this may be of use.
Best regards

JR

log edited for clarity

Radio Damascus, Adra, 9330.00 at 2150-2235 UTC, (July 28). English with Arab string music in background. News summary, but the modulation was so poor, that only a few words could be caught.

Hymn at 2200 to station ID and schedule in Spanish. Additional station identification as, ”Radio Dimasque de la Republica de Syria,” mentions about Syria and Palestine.

Transmitter fade out for three minutes and returned as mention of ”boletin de informaciĆ³n.” Obviously the same old transmitter with a very strong signal (S 9+30 dB), but severe transmitter hum and poor modulation. SINPO 53242.
(Anker Petersen, Denmark/playdx)