WINTER SWL FEST
Because this was the 25th running of the Fest, it ran for three days instead of the usual two days. It was outstanding. The presentations were extremely interesting and very informative. Another plus of the Fest is that it is always great to talk radio stuff with other SWLers. I noted the absence of an Editor from either of the two major SWL magazines. Nor did they see fit to provide any magazine gift subscriptions for the prize drawings. We have all heard the expression "What goes around,comes around"!!

Of particular interest to me was the talk given by Tom Witherspoon regarding the Ears to Our World radio charity. I personally know of two locations that would benefit with radios in the classrooms. On is in Central America and the other is in Africa. I will be looking into this matter in the near future and hope to be able to provide some radios for those schools.

HAM TRANSMISSIONS
On 6866.5 kHz I heard a rough, buzzy, loud CW signal and I jotted down the HAM callsigns. Since I am not a HAM I checked with a couple friends who are HAMS. I learned the names and locations of the individuals and one of my friends made some suggestions as to the cause of the out-of-band operation. I have since sent the details to the HAM who was transmitting.

On 10124 kHz I heard a continuous carrier with what sounded like repeated letter Ns. About every 5 minutes the callsign of the sender was transmitted. A HAM friend has advised me that such transmissions are radio beacons which allow listeners around the world to check propagation conditions on that band. He gave me two Internet references for beacons. http://www.w6nek.com and http://amateur-radio-wiki.net/index.php?title=Beacons

CUBAN NUMBERS BROADCASTS HEARD February 2012
Times in UTC, Freqs in kHz.

VO2A
0200 5762 Sat
0800 5898 Fri
1900 12180 Tue-Thu
2000 13380 Tue-Thu

M08A
1300 7578 Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri
1400 8097 Tue-Fri
1800 8097 Mon-Wed, Fri
1900 6785 Mon, Wed-Fri
1900 8097 Mon, Wed,Fri
2000 7554 Mon-Fri
2100 6932 Wed, Thu
2200 7519 Mon, Wed, Fri
2200 8009 Thu
2300 8009 Mon, Wed
2300 8135 Tue, Thu-Fri

I forwarded my monitoring results to Ary Boender and he has included them with his, and the logs of other SWLers, in an updated Cuban Numbers sked/freq chart which appears in Numbers & Oddities Newsletter Edition #173 February 2012.

End of Report

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