RRI DRM @ 9780 kHz, 9 Dec 2012

In the last half hour I got sufficient SNR to decode a jazz program.

Ignore the SNR to the left of the drop - that was VoN, terrible as usual. In fact, I only noticed the presence of RRI when I vacated the 15 MHz band because to terribleness.

The music quality was pretty good with some frame loss, although I'm indifferent to the use of stereo at such low bitrates (20.96 kbps). I'm still of the opinion that about 17.5 kbps AAC+ Mono without code puncturing is the way to go.

Blindingly obvious discovery: VSC can be used outside of WinRadio GUI

I've been trying to follow The Might KBC ever since they began broadcasting across the pond on Sunday 00:00 UTC. I say trying because the last two transmissions have suffered heavy fading - just straight up attenuation that gets progressively worse until the carrier sits at around -80 dBm with a -110 dBm noise floor, and that's before any intermittent QRM raises it to -105 dBm. Audio typically peaks 30 dB below the carrier, so nothing was going to be heard other than white noise.

On the KBC Facebook page there was a link to WebSDR, and over there 9450 kHz was like, -33 dBm / S9+40. Awesome. My next problem was how to get the audio into fldigi for the digital mode segments of the program.

I tried the Stereo Mixer trick to no avail. My use of a USB headset may be a contributing factor. Instead, I ended up defaulting audio playback through the WinRadio Virtual Sound Card. Since it doubles as a recording device, I can then feed through the audio into the USB headset.

Grabbed Audacity to record the digital segments just in case I picked the wrong mode in fldigi and messed up the first several seconds of the broadcast.

The Mighty KBC MT63-1000 @ 9450 kHz, 9 Dec 2012

THE MIGHTY KBC

Special broadcasts on 22, 23, 25, and 26 December

1500-1600 UTC
Europe: 9835 kHz
North America: 21600 kHz
Asia: 15470 kHz


1600-1700 UTC Europe: 9755 kHz DRM

Visit www.kbcradio.eu for more information.

Thanks for decoding this KBC text transmission. See you next week...

===

Bear in mind, I'm cheating by decoding this off of a WebSDR page in the Netherlands. That yielded 13 dB SNR and perfect copy.

The Mighty KBC MT63-1000 @ 9450 kHz, 9 Dec 2012

THE MIGHTY KBC


Special broadcasts on 22, 23, 25, and 26 December


1500-1600 UTC

Europe: 9835 kHz

North America: 21600 kHz

Asia: 15470 kHz


1600-1700 UTC

Europe: 9755 kHz DRM


The next text transmission, just before 0200 UTC, will be in the MT63-2000 mode, long interleave, centered at 1500 Hz.

===

Bear in mind, I'm cheating by decoding this off of a WebSDR page in the Netherlands. That yielded 13 dB SNR on MT63-1000 and perfect copies on both MT63 and PSK-125R.

BBC World Service DRM @ 5875 kHz, 8 Dec 2012

Even though 3955 kHz is still a QRM disaster (someone loves using their plasma TV at night), it was unusually strong, to the extent I could actually decode a couple seconds of audio here and there. It gave me hope that propagation would continue to be good once BBC migrated to 5875 kHz.

It started pretty well, with very little fading. Of course this wasn't going to last, but I had long runs of continuous audio and Journaline was working.

It took about an hour to successfully populate all of the headline content, probably because of MSC frame loss.

I was kind of hoping for full blown articles. At a data rate of 67.5 B/s, it doesn't seem like it's transmitting constantly, otherwise the Journaline stream could have delivered a lot more than just headlines.

I also got EPG schedule data out to a week, not that it'll dictate when I'm able to tune in. Going from 2-4 am isn't something I'm interested in doing every weekend.

Cuban numbers station @ 12120 kHz 8 Dec 2012

Randomly spotted at 09:00 UTC

Test DRM from Ascension Island @ 21750 kHz, 7 Dec 2012

Started out strong, faded quickly. They were interviewing CEO Carlos Ghosn on BBC's HARDTalk. Kind of disappointed that there was no Journaline or other multimedia stuff like in the BBC World Service broadcast.

I get the impression that this was targeting Brazil to mark its full member status in the DRM Consortium. So you'd think that they'd broadcast in Portuguese, right?

I heard that conditions improved later, but I had to run. If this is the start of maybe something more regular (although probably not) I'd hope that they'd broadcast at a more suitable time (for me).