[A-DX] Fw: [BDXC-UK] Last chance to hear Seychelles relay

[Wolfgang Bueschel]

Re Africa logs von heute Abend.

hier eine Mail von Chris, der (noch) bei der BBC arbeitet.

Morgen noch mal SEY zu-hören.
Die Azimuth sind ja nicht Menorca-Münsterland freundlich, eher was für
Kigali.

Noch lieben Gruss an unseren SEY-Volker im Saarland.

73 wb


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <>
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2014
Subject: [BDXC-UK] Last chance to hear Seychelles relay

> A reminder that Saturday is the

> last day of operations

> of the BBC's Indian Ocean relay. The schedule is as follows:
> 0400-0600 BBCWS in English on 15420 and 12095
> 0600-0800 BBCWS in English on 15420 and 17640
> 1100-1130 BBCWS in Somali  on 15530
> 1400-1500 BBCWS in Somali  on 15420 and 17690
> 1500-2000 BBCWS in English on 15420 and 12095

> The last transmission has been coming into the UK nicely recently on both
> frequencies.

> On a personal note, I'll be sorry to see this relay station go, as it
> served me very well when living in Kenya, especially before the BBCWS FM
> relays opened.  I first lived to Kenya in 1987, the year before the
> Seychelles relay opened. Although I can't say that reception of BBCWS was
> difficult then, at certain times of the day the signals from the UK,
> Cyprus or Ascension were not as good as one would have liked. This all
> changed when Seychelles came on stream. It is an ideal one-hop distance
> away from Kenya and gave superb reception, especially when using the
> higher frequencies on which there is almost no selective fading and low
> background noise (those were pre-computer days!). It was one of those
> cases where a solid SW signal is just as good as a strong local MW one.
>
> The SW schedule used to be much more extensive than it is now, with both
> transmitters on the air in English most of the daytime on 15420 and 17885.
> This was overkill (at least in Kenya) as both frequencies were
> ultra-reliable. You could even hear, very faintly in the background, some
> control tones. When I mentioned this to a UK-based BBC engineer he was
> amazed as he said the tones were at a very low level that and were
> intended only to be detected by equipment. The designers had told the BBC
> that no humans would be able to hear the tones on shortwave.
>
> Chris