CFVP

[buzzy buzzard]

Just a little mention that CFVP 6.03 MHz is still transmitting these days.

I caught them during a bandscan of 49 metres a few days back but I wasn't fastidious enough to note the time and date.  This was my first catch of CFVP, largely because I never actively seeked out the station.  I more often heard the MW main CKMX 1060 KHz (Calgary's Funny 1060) many evenings of AM DX.  Now that CFRW 1290 Winnipeg was reformatted from a TSN sports station to Funny 1290, I thought for a minute that the local AM 1290 station was bleeding through onto the shortwave dial.  I listened for the commercial break and heard the Calgary branding. 

There you are, CFVP I had left for dead is still on the air.  I haven't read any post on the subject for quite some time.

Used a Marconi 138 console radio with an MLA-30 loop.

[Pigmeat]

The last I heard of any Canadian  SW station out west were the efforts of local hams to save the Vancouver station years ago. I assumed they were all long gone. Thanks for the info.

[Shortwave_Listener]

Here in Canada we have CFVP Calgary (100W, 6030 kHz) and CFRX Toronto (1KW, 6070 kHz). I haven’t had much luck hearing CFVP Calgary because radio Marti makes it impossible to hear it while they are on. Once radio Marti leaves the air at night it can be heard but I find the Cuban jamming remains on but luckily isn’t very effective.

[Paul B. Walker, Jr.]

I have heard CFVP up here in west central Alaska.. better then youd expect, even without jamming.. but the jamming renders CFVP useless.. still audible, but useless

[MDK2]

I've copied this station from my QTH in Colorado on exactly one occasion, in the middle of winter and at a time when thankfully both Marti and the jammer were off the air (6:00am locally, after Marti signed off but still a good while before sunrise). I don't know why they use that frequency. The jammer's copyability is intermittent (is it directional? If so, at what azimuth?) but Marti is like a local station here, and I can't imagine that it's a lot weaker in the target area of Alberta.

It's strange too because at the time (and I assume today) the station was running a nationally syndicated comedy broadcast. Not something like a news/talk format, which you'd think is the kind of thing people in remote mountain valleys would want or need.

[Ct Yankee]

Last June while out in the SF Bay Area I picked up CFVP (maybe 0500 utc hour) a few times, clearly remember hearing comedy skits.  It took many attempts of location/time to pull them in though.

[Treehouse SWL]

CFVP was off the air for a while in 2020ish-2021, returning to the air in mid-June last year after a transmitter fix. I got an e-QSL from their QSL coordinator just less than a year ago.

I'm about 30 miles northeast of Seattle, and CFVP is a daily catch in the fall and winter here. At this time of year, the daytime noise levels sometimes make it trickier, but I can usually here it in the local morning (before 1700 UTC) and often at night. I just checked and could hear the standup comedy programming at 0525 UTC this evening. When conditions are right, and this happened just before 0100 UTC today, CFVP will even come in over Radio Marti here.

If you're old enough (I'm just over 50), you might remember the CBC also operated several low-power relays on shortwave, including CKZU on 6160 kHz in Vancouver, B.C., which I could hear from my childhood home just outside of Seattle. That relay finally shut down in 2017 -- one year before I started listening to shortwave again after a 30-year break.