Listening to S.America HF Air Radio Recief

knockerdanks

Hello.
Do any of the people on this site follow HF Aircraft in out of the way places.
I listen at night at its amazing what you can hear.
Freqs= 6.645 6.649 5.454 2.944 4.669 6.645 4.699 These are SAM1

Freqs=6.535 8.861 3.452 5.565 SAM2

Let me know how you fair.
I would also like to know what equipment you use.

Bye
knocker

Growler!!!

Try listening to Mumbai. 6661, 8879 or 10018. Try and raise them yourself too. None of us can ever raise them :-) :-)

EchoIndia

Used to listen many years ago and it was interesting, especially pre-internet. Highlights were hearing RAF C-130s plying their way to Dakar and Ascension during the Falklands War in 1982; the US buildup for Gulf War I was also memorable, with large volumes of transport, tanker and bomber types crossing the Atlantic for a period of months. The African frequencies were good for hearing aircraft give a lot of flight plan details, such as point of departure, destination, aircraft type and registration. I recall Angola 707s checking in en route Luanda to Lisbon and their transmissions coming in clearly over thousands of miles.

crosstownk

Ah yes. Listening to HF on SSB. I did this many moons ago. I did it the hard way with a manual tuner. No internet back then making life easy - if you wanted to listen you really had to make an effort.

My Dad was big into short wave radio and had a mahoosive long wire antenna stretched across the back garden which gave amazing reception.

I used to slowly rotate the fine tuner in the correct frequency range and when I heard the SELCAL (which sounded like a game of Simon) I'd have to fine tune the BFO to bring it in crystal clear. Once I got the lat/long from the transmission I'd plot it on a wall map as a record. Mostly I got North Atlantic traffic but South Atlantic was regular enough. On rare occassions I'd get Pacific traffic but this depended on excellent 'skip'.

God know what the neighbours thought of the Silverrod CB antenna, the long wire antennas and the discone that were mounted about the roof.

This is the receiver I used. It's VHF & UHF were also excellent via the discone - many an hour spent listening to the Gardaí. My Dad still has it and it works like new. I've a small but capable Sony digital HF tuner but unfortunately I don't have a decent antenna.



EDIT: I must borrow it from him and give it a go - much more satisfying than just clicking on a website.

Bussywussy

Ah I must set mine up again....I've a dx394 receiver it does the job..my manual tuner is knackered and I don't think I've the space for the GR5V long wire antenna....so I need a tuner and some antenna like a wellbrook loop...

I could pick up Tripoli and Dakar and New York radio...apart from the usual shanwick, santa Maria, Stockholm,gander stuff.
Theres fun in it,I wouldn't use the internet at all...

Comhrá

This is my trusty old Sony ICF 2001D which I bought new in 1987 and it is still working well. It has ssb which I used for years for listening to Shanwick, Gander, Azores, Santa Maria plus several other bands such as marine radio. It also has the VHF airband with scanning.

I worked a lot of nights in the 80's and 90's and on quiet nights I kept awake listening to the N.Atlantic traffic. In summer, I would often track eastbound traffic through the night and by dawn if conditions were clear, I would often see the same traffic pass overhead, bound for European airports. It was great fun back in the day.

martinsvi

I'm a licensed ham with a pretty decent setup, I can barely get Volmets these days, the RF "pollution" in my estate is crazy, it gets worse around Christmas when the LED Christmas lights start to come up.. might need to invest in a decent filter or something