Mark Zenier wrote:

In article . com,
wrote:
Mark asked:

Tong Tong Ting. Tong Tong Ting?

Well, I heard it as "Tong Tong Tong Ting."

That's the VOA transmitter in Delano, California
targeted at Central America stepping on the
tail of the Montsinery (French Guiana?)
transmitter targeted at the Caribean.

Maybe I'm remembering Cold War era broadcasts but all the VOA stuff
I've heard had Yankee Doodle at the beginning of the broadcast.

It's a relay of an hour of the BBC, and according to the VT Communications
schedule I downloaded off that Italian web site, it's from Delano. Does
the VOA still run it, or did they contract out the operation of there?

Up here in Seattle, it stomps the hell out of 5975
for the last 5-7 minutes of the 02:00 hour,
when they warm the transmitter up and
then send the tones. Montsinery has been S9
and Delano us usually 10 dB stronger.

It's not nearly as bad here on the East Coast - Usually the BBC
broadcast has little to no noticable QRM. Given your proximity I can
see how the situation is reversed!

Now I gotta figure out why I hear number stations underneath several of
the Okochobee broadcasts!
(That's not an easy feat, they are almost local.)

Maybe Family Radio is taking in a bit of CIA money on the side. ;-)

Back about 15 years ago, there was some strange close-in QRM to some of
the stronger BBC signals in the 6 MHz band. In this case it was RTTY,
and even stranger the signal went away when I bitched about it on the
shortwave alt.*? group we used back then.

I always wondered if putting your spy communications close to a widely
received broadcast would be good cover. They couldn't take the spy out
and shoot them for just listening to the Beeb.

If it is the Beeb then it is probably the Morse signal "V" (...-) (V for
Victory) played on a Timpani. Still used as far as I know for some language
services but not heard all that often.

dxAce
Michigan
USA