The Mighty KBC: September 26, 2015

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Richard Langley, who notes:

Live hour-long recording of a test transmission from the The Mighty KBC on 26 September 2015 beginning at 23:00 UTC on a frequency of 7395 kHz, likely from a transmitter site in Europe. The Mighty KBC uses a transmitter at Nauen, Germany, operating at 125 kW for its regular Sunday UTC broadcast.

Reception was very good with negligible interference and only slight fading. The program ("The Giant Jukebox"), produced and announced by Eric van Willegen ("Uncle Eric") originated from Ede, The Netherlands, and consisted of pop music and announcements including requests for reception reports.

The broadcast was received on a Tecsun PL-880 receiver with its built-in telescopic whip antenna indoors in Hanwell (just outside Fredericton), New Brunswick, Canada, in AM mode with 5.0 kHz RF filtering. 

The Mighty KBC

Once again, The Mighty KBC broadcast a two hour mix of music to the world on 9,500 kHz. Fortunately, I was able to record the entire broadcast--you can listen below. The KBC signal and audio out of their transmitter in Bulgaria were both excellent. There was very noticeable interference from the clandestine station, Radio Republica, who broadcasts at the same time (00:00-01:57 UTC) on 9,490 kHz.  According to my spectrum display, Republica's signal had a bandwidth of 20 kHz!  At times, I had to narrow my receiver filter to about 6.6 kHz and use a USB sync mode  to keep KBC's broadcast clear.  Still, you can certainly hear some of the noise from Radio Republica in the recording.

Since Radio Republica is broadcast from the US, I'm curious if listeners in other parts of the world (or other parts of North America) had the same problem. If so, please comment!  I'll pass this along to KBC.

You can download the entire broadcast as an mp3 by clicking here, or simply listen in the embedded player below:

The Mighty KBC test transmission

Last night, I listened to and recorded The Mighty KBC's test transmission on 9.4 MHz. The broadcast lasted 2 hours and was quite successful. They had a little distortion in the signal for the first half-hour or so, but once that issue was resolved, audio was excellent. This was, after all, a test transmission.

Mind you, I was using the WinRadio Excalibur receiver and a rather large horizontal sky loop antenna--not a portable radio. But based on their signal level as compared with the adjacent Voice of Greece transmission (9.42 MHz), I expect they could have been easily heard on a portable radio here in eastern North America.

If you missed the broadcast, click here to download a full recording or listen below.

Next week: another test broadcast scheduled

Update: Note that The Might KBC will broadcast another test transmission on Sunday 21 September from 00.00 - 02.00 UTC on 9,500 kHz.