4185 AM
Caught show opening just after I got home from errands. This was supposed to be my rest day from running workouts (prepping for half marathon), so a good excuse to put up my feet and listen.
0104 UTC Op chatter about new battery for broadcast, Sevendust "Xmas Day"
0128z op checking HFU logs, shout-out to loggers, Smooshing Pimpkins "Beguiled"
0128z RHCP "Dani California", able to Shazam that from across the room. Shazam usually struggles on my phone with music in sideband, but better in AM
0150z Redhat chatter about challenges of playing radio outside or via mobile in cold weather.
0157z op chatter, checking logs, "Some Velvet Morning" by Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra, possibly the weirdest pop song of that era to actually become a minor hit. More popular now than it was then (yeah, I'm old enough to remember).
0205z Same song, Some Velvet Morning, this time Primal Scream with Kate Moss.
SINPO 44323, S3-7 rapid fluttering peaks and fades, better than usual to my indoor antenna setup. Great audio, as usual. Kinda makes me wish the Palstar had the kind of adjustable AGC as some better SDR setups.
By 0205z signal improving, SINPO 44333, S9 peaks, somewhat less crazy fluttering fades.
0218z Redhat chatter, peaking S9+ now. Reading logs: "'Rock song by woman'. I'm guessing that's Garbage." (I laughed harder than I should have over how that sounded. )
0224z "Chinese High" Gang Gang Dance
0227z Spoon "On the Radio" , SINPO 44444 now
0234z Redhat talking about challenges of playing radio in cold mobile unit without gloves, tech issues with antenna and fiber optic cable. Reading logs from email.
0240z my recording will include a loud sneeze because I'm recording off the speaker using my backup phone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
0241z "Ballad of Chasey Lain" Bloodhound Gang. Never heard this one before
0248z Kraftwerk "Radioactivity" remaster
0300z mic doesn't have frost on it yet but getting almost cold enough. Chris Cornell "Long Gone"
0319z Fifi "Criminal", strong peaks, a bit more fading again, SINPO 54334
0332z Dido "Don't Believe in Love" conditions back to beginning of broadcast, S5-9, rapid fluttering peaks and fades.
0354z Chromatics "Time Rider" , signal hanging in there but conditions fading, SINPO 44323
0358z 3EB "I Want You"
0408z sign off ID and chatter, Flunk "Blue Monday"
Palstar R30C with indoor RF Systems EMF antenna strung along the ceiling, beer can end transformer dangling across the curtain rod. Works a little better than bare random wire, especially after guesstimating number of coils in feed line and ferrite chokes to control local noise.
Six off-air recordings, five of which are a few minutes long throughout broadcast, one was two hours long. Audio quality of my recording is pretty mediocore due to the open mic on my old phone picking up room noise. I kept fiddling with distance between the phone and speaker, recorder AGC and levels, wav vs mp3, but none of it really helped. Too bad because my previous off air recordings using this method outdoors were fine, probably because there was no room noise and reverb messing with phasing.
The actual broadcast audio quality and signal were very good. For about an hour it was near broadcast quality signal, comparable to how I usually receive Radio New Zealand and Australia here at night.
https://archive.org/details/xfm-4185-am-2022-12-17-20-05-10
Topic: XFM 4185 AM 0104 UTC 18 DEC 2022 (Read 2019 times)