CHQT Heard in Japan

[jon]

Man listens to iNews880 on radio in Japan
by iNews880's Brittney Le Blanc
10/13/2009

Hiroyuki Okamura lives in Yokosuka, Japan.

That's 12,169 km away from Edmonton - and according to Google Maps would take about 34 days and 23 hours to drive to. (We here at iNews880 don't recommend you drive to Japan - take a plane, it'll be drier.)

But Hiroyuki wrote a letter to iNews880 after listening to us - on his radio. He recorded what he heard, and it's muffled - but definitely us.

Hiroyuki is one of many radio operators who listen to AM radio waves from around the world. Here in Edmonton and Alberta we have numerous groups, including NARC (Northern Alberta Radio Club).

John Chu is with NARC, and volunteers at the Telus World of Science. That's where we caught up with him and asked him how a man in Japan can listen to our station.

"The electromagnetic radiation actually doesn't travel along the surface of the Earth. It goes up into the sky and hits a layer in the sky called the ionosphere. The ionosphere reflects it back down to the Earth, and it bounces up again - we call that skipping. By bouncing up and down a few times, the waves will reach Japan."

At the Telus World of Science, Licensed Volunteer Amateur Radio Operators demonstrate and promote the hobby of, and the science behind, amateur radio. And John explains they sometimes catch really interesting things. He says once a ship was in distress off the shore of San Francisco and the only ones who heard the call were the volunteer radio operators at the Telus World of Science. They called the San Francisco coast guard and the ship was saved.

As for Hiroyuki, he and other hobbyists listen to AM radio stations as he did here, and do it not for credit, but for a Verification Card to prove they've done it. Which we're sending back to him in Japan. (blb)

ref. - http://www.inews880.com/Channels/Reg/iR ... ID=1150720 where they have some great pictures

[jon]

Unfortunately, they talked to the wrong folks. The NARC are pretty focused on Ham Radio, without any experience on the standard Broadcast Band. So, several questions remain unanswered.

First of all, exactly when was the reception?

If it was overnight in the wee hours of yesterday morning, WCBS-880 New York may have been off the air for occasional maintenance. The problem is that, under normal night conditions, CHQT would be no match for WCBS. CHQT has a night pattern that dribbles almost no power in the direction of Japan. And WCBS is non-directional. Both are 50 KW.

CHQT with a daytime pattern is non-directional. But sunrise is pretty late these days in Edmonton, and I'm guessing that CHQT wouldn't switch back to day pattern until 8 or even 8:15 a.m (pattern changes must occur at the closest quarter hour on the 15th of the current month). Admittedly, by that late, there would be too much light to the East for that first hop of a skip to leave WCBS on its way to Japan, so that is the most likely scenario. Signals would travel a fairly Northern route, so it may well be dark all the way from Edmonton to Japan for a little while after CHQT switches to day pattern.

And I've seen that really happen, back in the late '60s in Burnaby with an Osaka station on 830 KHz with a very strong signal at 8:15 a.m. with the sun outside bright and clear. Even the 830 Hawaiian station would have had too much light in its path to Vancouver to be heard, not to mention WCCO in Minneapolis, so the Japanese station was all alone on the frequency.

Plus, the way that signals normally work, when this Japanese DX'er was listening to CHQT would have been an ideal time for an Edmonton DX'er to be hearing Japanese stations. Especially given that they run 100KW and more non-directional.

Be sure to listen to the audio playable from the iNews880 site. It sounds out not so great but fairly quickly includes a relatively clear iNews880 imaging piece. Admittedly, I've heard them so many times that I recognize them instantly.

[45 RPM]

The mystery is now solved. We know where iNews 880's listener is and who he is.

I wonder if Hiroyuki was wandering around a Wal-Mart parking lot in Yokosuka with some kind of a Sony
transistor propped up against his ear?