BBC World Service - Special Winter Solstice Broadcast To British Antarctica Survey

British Antarctica Survey (Source: BBC)

BBC World Service - Special Winter Solstice Broadcast To British Antarctica Survey (BAS), transmitting from Woofferton (UK), was logged under less than favorable conditions on 21June 2014.  From 21.30 to 22.00 UTC, greetings, good wishes and personal messages from colleagues, family and well-wishers was observed. For added frivolity and fun, snippets of comedic music was interspersed between the comments. At 21.59 UTC BBC World Service ID was heard, then transmission promptly ended at the top of the hour (22.00 UTC). 

Propagation on 5.875 kHz was clearly not ideal in my quarter. Reception throughout the broadcast was poor with a (SINPO) of 24321 -- weak signal with occasional and indiscernible speech due in large part to atmospheric noise and fading. At various times I switched to USB and LSB modes to filter out the noise, but even with this reception remained in a word, terrible. HERE is how the BBC Winter Solstice BAS broadcast on 5.875 kHz sounded in the closing minutes from Malaysia.

Alternative frequencies were much worse: 5.985 kHz was barely noticeable; and 7.350 kHz was buried in QRM from regional stations, namely China. Reception was undoubtedly good elsewhere, and particularly the targeted area -- Antartica. Nevertheless, kudos to the BBC for airing this special winter solstice broadcast!!! 

To learn more about this broadcast, click HERE. If you missed the broadcast and want to hear how it went in 2013, click  HERE. The content and format was essentially similar for 2014.