RNZI 9700 am 1145 utc 6 Mar 2021

[Ct Yankee]

Good reception, English service.  Attempted to receive since 1100 utc, just started receiving at 1145 utc.

1145 2 YL's talking
1152 OM ID-ing as "All Night Program" to "The Hard Way" James Hunter
1155 "Child of the Universe" Barclay James Harvest
1200 Time pips to news (lead story: Earthquakes)
1207 Reception mainly in noise now, peaks are still good

[MDK2]

Currently listening to my overnight recording of RNZ Saturday Night, was not pleased to see that the switch from 13730 (uncopyable frequency) to 11725 (not great but much better here) took place at 0758-0759z rather than 0658-0659z as currently listed at RNZI's website. But as of 0823z the signal was SIO 444 with some QSB. I jumped ahead for a moment to make sure it did switch to 9700 at 0858-0859z because I'd have missed another hour if their engineers were generally off by an hour on their entire schedule, not just that one moment.

EDIT: The switchover happened as scheduled but not as usual. Typically there's a voiceover that interrupts the programming (because most of it is RNZ national, networked across the country via unchanging frequencies) saying that they're closing on this frequency and please retune, then it goes off, and appears about a minute later with the birdcall interval until the time pips. In this case the programming lasted until about 15 seconds before the hour and then QSY'd almost instantly - you could hear the end of the last song of that hour into the time pips instead of the interval.

Anyway, 9700's signal is also SIO 544 with some QSB. So a bit stronger but not the near-local quality a 555 signal would merit.

[Ct Yankee]

Very Good reception now 1135 utc 7 Mar 2021, nothing here before 1130 utc.  Program is fast paced news, music snippets, and tidbits.  When I had an unsuccessful first attempt to receive I shut radio off, when I turned radio on for second try I had to check to make sure I didn't leave radio on Standard Broadcast band because signal was so strong.  Signal useable until 1215 utc, longest stretch of a decent signal from RNZI in many months.

[MDK2]

I've been experiencing much more dramatic opening and closures recently myself, where a strong signal goes to nothing or vice versa in a matter of three minutes or so.