Sunday, November 19, 2006

Montana DX Test; QSL

A couple of days ago I received an email verie from KZNS Salt Lake City UT 1280. Thanks very much Tuomo Ahonen for submitting the email address.

Today was Big Sky DX Test day with the prospect of hearing six Montana stations; KANA 580, KKGR 680, KERR 750, KLCY 930, KGVO 1290 and KEIN 1310. All frequencies were monitored, and I followed the test from the mwdx channel on StarChat.net together with many of my US and Canadian colleagues.

At the start of the test period at 0700 UTC signal levels were very good, but spread from Ontario to Oregon. At 0709 I heard KERR Polson 750 after KXL had faded down. Another ID was heard at 0724. Alas, after 0730 signal levels got much weaker. There are indications that 930 and 1290 were not testing.

After going through recordings, and applying bandpass filtering to get the 1000 Hz CW tone as audible as possible, I also found an extremely weak KKGR East Helena 680 kHz. Thanks to Ole Forr, LA6EIA, who took care of translating the morse. As for 1310 it was dominated by WDTW-MI, CIWW-ON and partly CHLW-AB. A couple of times did I hear Nostalgia-type music, hinting at KEIN, but never did I hear an ID. I do hear them at irregular intervals otherwise, but it would have been nice to hear KEIN in this test as well.

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