Voice of America on 60 Metres

I am up in Eastern Ontario for the weekend and as usual I have a portable shortwave receiver with me, a Kaito KA-1103. While tuning around the 60 metre band I caught the Voice of America in English on two frequencies:

• Voice of America, 4930 kHz, from VOA's relay site at Selebi-Phikwe, Botswana at 0350-0417 UTC. Weak signal with talk in English. Pretty hard to follow, as the reception was poor. 100 kW.
• Voice of America, 4960 kHz, from VOA's relay site at Pinheira, Sao Tome e Principe, off the west coast of Africa. 0417-0420 UTC. Talk in English. Weak signal. 100 kW. 

Reception of African stations on 60 metres used to be a fairly common experience, before most of them disappeared. I remember listening to Radio RSA from South Africa on the 90 and 60 metre bands frequently back in the late 1970s. Today it's a rare occurance to catch a station from that part of the world on these bands, since so few are left.