DW Kigali 25740 kHz

[Digger]

An unattended log, unfortunately. I've never seen this one before.


Note 30th April: DW (many thanks to Mr. J.M.) confirmed the location as Kigali in Rwanda. That is about 5'860 km away from my location

[Digger]

DW RLS Kigali is still fizzing around 1330 UTC today, but the signal is very faint. The distant thunderstorms are noisier

[Digger]

Noticed some activity this afternoon, started logging and the S-meter rose to a maximum of S3 (+19 dBuV) and there was quite a lot of audio.

Around 1615 UTC the programme was in English. Around 1703 UTC it was native language and the S-meter peaked at S2. Around 1734 UTC still native language and the S-meter peaked at S3. Then around 1800 UTC the conditions died quickly.

[Digger]

Today's catch. Interesting that I can receive something almost every afternoon. Today there was only three syllables of sound when the SNR reached 14 dB.

[Digger]

Today's catch. It is getting better every day! Shame I had the 10 dB RF ATT active the first 30 minutes or so. I cut that first part out from the log. Furthermore I got 174 MB WAV on the HDD. I have some difficulties understanding the language though.

[Digger]

A total of 44 seconds of western pop music got stuck in my PC this afternoon...

A little bit more here: www.omnirep.ch/drm/dumps.html

[Digger]

An unattended log, I forgot to start a wav file.

[Digger]

Nice to follow the football game around 1455 UTC for about 13 minutes! Unfortunately, because of my extremely limited knowledge of African languages, I cannot tell for sure who won.

[Digger]

A small treat for thirty minutes in the early evening. I believe the DRM power is about 80 Watts and the antenna is probably a vertical with a ground plane consisting of three radials. Would be nice to get that confirmed.

Just for fun I let the receiver monitor the frequency during the night. Needless (?) to say, there was nothing in the log this morning.

Anyone has a clue in what way the signal reaches Europe? The signal is clean, sometimes with slow Fading. Could it be related to tropospheric bending over such a large distance? Has anyone else tried out this frequency?

[Digger]

It was confirmed that the DRM power is about 80 Watts RMS into a quarter wave Ground Plane Antenna placed 10 m above ground.

Today the "reception" was limited to just over two minutes of decoded audio during a 12 minutes segment (see log). The Channel Impulse Response behaved differently today compared to previous loggings: Today there were two impulses about 1 ms apart. The second peak was considerably stronger and varied less than the first.

The signal came back later in the afternoon, but never gained enough strength to produce any audio.


PS: Many thanks to DW for the kind information on the DW Relay Station.

[Digger]

The conditions were not in favour of this station today. The SNR never climbed above 10 dB. There is still some activity left at 1630 UTC, but I stopped the log after 137 minutes of, well, nothing.

[Digger]

This afternoon I did not get anything, but later in the evening some segments with rather quick Fading were caught in the log. It was not enough to catch the title, I just saw the text "Other language".

[Digger]

The long wire worked better today compared to the GP for 27 MHz. Some small fragments of "Candle in the wind" with Elton John could be heard. A male announcer in native language just before 15 UTC, then a female announcer talking in French at 1505 UTC, followed by a male announcer talking in English. No sound after 1506 UTC.

[Digger]

Today was the 12th day in a row I could catch Africa on DRM.

A somewhat late start this afternoon too. Like an ocean swell, the signal got gradually stronger. I recorded some sound around 1600 - 1611 UTC: Fragments of a woman speaking in a native language at 1601, fragments of music around 1602, again fragments of a woman speaking in a native language at 1604, same again at 1607, an "A..." at 1608 and the last audible sound was a female voice at 1611 UTC who I thought said "Usama bin lade..." and that was it. Fin.

[Digger]

The conditions were not in my favour today.
One and a half syllables only of a female native speaker was all that sipped through.