Thanksgiving DXing

Over the Thanksgiving weekend I was in the village of Harrowsmith, Ontario, near Kingston. And as I usually do when I'm up there, I did some DXing. I'm always impressed by how much more I can hear there than from home, even though I'm just using a little portable shortwave receiver with its built-in antenna when I'm there. The reason for the great reception is that there is so little interference. There is very little electrical noise on the bands, and I'm not in a steel frame building there.

I was tuning around on the lower shortwave frequencies, and here's what I heard. Date: Oct. 11, 2010. Receiver: Kaito KA-1103 on its telescopic whip antenna.

• 3485 kHz: Gander Radio, Gander Newfoundland, 0257 - 0300 UTC, with aviation weather.
• 3476 kHz: 0302 - 0310 UTC, weak station in English with Irish sounding accent with air traffic control transmissions. I think this is Shanwick Radio, an air traffic control station in Ireland.
• 3476 kHz: Gander Radio, Gander NL, 0310 - 0314 UTC. On after the preceding station went off. Air traffic control for North Atlantic from Gander airport in Newfoundland.
• 3350 kHz: Radio Exterior de Espana, broadcasting from Costa Rica, at 0317 to 0335 UTC.
• 3320 kHz: Radio Sonder Grense, Meyerton South Africa, from 0336 to 0042 UTC. With music and talk in Afrikaans.
• 3395 kHz: 0402 - 0403 UTC. Unidentified utility with strange pulsing sound: 3 harsh mid-tone beeps and one deeper one, repeated, with each cycle taking about 2 seconds.
• 3185 kHz: WWRB, Manchester TN, at 0405 UTC. Christian broadcaster. 100 kW.
• 3885 kHz: Ham radio roundtable in AM mode aty 0411- 0425 UTC. Stations heard include W2NBC in Oak Ridge NJ, WB2CAU in Dix Hills NY, and N1HCI in Concord NH.
• 3880 kHz: KG2IR, Greenlawn NY at 1320 UTC. Another amateur in AM mode.