DX-ing from aboard an airplane
Flight
Frankfurt - Novosibirsk
Siberian Airlines allows the use of mobile phones and laptop computers
during what it calls "horizontal flight". So I used my scanner VR500 and
Sangean ATS-900 at a southward facing window. First I concentrated on
channels R1..R12 and on E2. R2 was unusable because of heavy signals from
the aircraft. It turned out that the signals of R1 and E2 and later on
the OIRT-FM band weren't really that great as the longer wavelength prevented
penetration through the small window of the aircraft. Frequencies above
88 MHz were much better, so each channel from R6 to R12 soon got filled
up by Czech and Polish stations. A small TV set would have been nice to
see the video. Then I used the Sangean and found on the RDS display many
Czech and Polish stations, it was exciting to see the things that others
get during sporadic E conditions, unfortunately the plane traveled too
fast. Before the trip I enabled the OIRT-FM reception of the ATS-900 and
replaced the wide bandwidth FM-IF filter with a smaller bandwidth one.
This was ok until we crossed the east polish border. First I was surprised
that only very very few Russian station carry RDS, and many overmodulate
their signals quite a bit. Their audio sounded distorted. RDS had no chance
to get decoded, only the RDS-indicator flashed occasionally. Only when
briefly the audio pauses RDS would decode. The filter should have not
been replaced in this case. Then suddenly RDS showed 101.1
FM which looked odd, I expected we would fly over St.Petersburg.
I looked out of the window and could not believe my eyes. Below us lay
entire Moscow at night (01:00 local) with all its illuminated concentric
ring roads, inside the tiny innermost was the red square. It just was
absolute fantastic. I had no FM-listing of Moscow with me and tried only
Ekho Moskvy on 73,82 and got it quite weak, it proved again that OIRT-FM
does not penetrate well through the window. R1 had carriers at 3m and
0m.
The rest of the flight I spend on checking R6 .. R60, interesting to get
so many Tx while flying over sparsely inhabited territory in the early
morning hours. Arriving in Novosibirsk at 7:00 local a number of Tx carried
a test tone.
Short after lift off from Frankfurt airport
Short before touchdown at Novosibirsk airport
(Note the difference in landscape)
Flight
path Novosibirsk - Frankfurt click here to see path over Russia in detail
From the received radio stations and sights seen from the window I roughly
reconstructed this flight path (5000 km).
The flight started
at 16:00 local and as we flew westward the time beneath us stayed at more
or less 16:00. We arrived in Frankfurt at 17:00 local. This time I only
monitored FM with my Sangean at a southward looking window. Once in the
air I could hear a few Kemerovo (200 km away) stations again, when we
left Kemerovo by car they disappeared after only 40km. It took 30 minutes
flight before the last one faded away. Again RDS was not much of a help,
only few transmitted it. So I listen a lot to commercials in order to
catch city names. Unfortunately often they only announce their contact
phone number for placing a commercial without mentioning the city name.
Evropa+ in Kemerovo and Novosibirsk carry local programming during the
day. But the other E+ more to the west didn't. An increasing number of
stations indicated that we reached St. Petersburg, RDS was more in use,
however my ATS-900 could not decode many. A bit later the number of Tx
literally exploded, we reached the Baltic states, from now on every 100kHz
was occupied. Finland, Sweden the Baltic states are just as crowded with
stations as central Europe. RDS could not be decoded well, because of
many co-channel interference. There were exception though, RMF-FM Tx's
always decoded very well, the reason is a bit unclear to me. We flew along
the Baltic sea coastline and then over Germany heading for Frankfurt.
I remembered the frequency of Berlins RS-2 of 94,3 and heard it with great
difficulties out of the mess. After all, DX-ing aboard is great fun, and
the time just passes by too fast. It is quite interesting that stations
far north of us made it well into the southward looking window. For Russia
it is recommendable to have a listing of stations and a map with you.
Once you know where you are it is fantastic to watch the landscape out
of the window. However looking up that information eats up time and prevents
you from ID-ing other stations.
River Irtijsh with a sea, probably south of the junction Ob - Irtijsh
(west of Surgut). Note the change of its bed over time, the old meander
can still be seen. Picture above has been processed in order to make it
better visible.
Radio stations
I received during flight over Russia
17:00 Start (my clock ran on Kemerovo time)
17:30 102,8 Evropa+, Kemerovo finally faded away
17:40 103,2 Evropa+, Novosibirsk finally faded away
17:50 101,3 Nashe Radio, Surgut, KY (local programming)
18:00 102,5 Russkoe Radio, Surgut, KY
18:20 I see river
with a sea, (see photo below)
18:45 104,0 Evropa+ RDS: NORD, Yugorsk, KY
(Nord is the license owner)
18:50 105,7 Evropa+, Serov
19:00 104,1 Radio Arsenal ? allocated to Karpinsk (YEKT)
19:10 103,3 Dinamit Berezniki PERM
19:20 105,1 Russkoe Radio, Berezniki PERM
19:45 101,2 Evropa+, Kotlas, AR
19:50 102,9 Radio Maria, Kirov
19:55 100,3 Evropa+, Syktyvar
20:00 104,2 Radio Transmit, Tot'ma
20:15 105,8 RDV-FM, Kostroma
20:20 105,1 Evropa+, Jaroslawl (heard ID "E+ Jaroslawl")
20:35 102,8 R. Maximum RDS: MAXIMUM, SPb
20:40 91,5 Ekho Moskvy SPb
20:40 103,4 Dinamit, RDS:
DINAMIT, ID: "Dinamit, Pieter", SPb
20:45 107,8 Russkoe Radio, SPb
20:50 103,0 Dorozhnoe Radio, RDS: DOPO HOE, Kirishi, SPb
20:50 100,9 Shanson, SPb
20:50 100,5 Evropa+ SPb
20:50 102,4 Radio Studio, SPb
20:55 we reached the Baltic States
entries marked with ? need yet to be resolved
Many Thanks go to Victor Rutkovsky
who helped to identify
The FM-List of Russia
was also consulted.
a few seconds later
Flight path over Russia (detailed view)
Some impressive Thunderclouds
