Thank you for tips from our Webmaster regarding this post not making it through yesterday. I have tried to sanitize the text and roll the dice again.This whole 153 kHz UNID situation is really interesting and a great topic to stir the pot up here (we need to keep building momentum ref LW listening IMO).
Here is what I am thinking. Algeria has a transmitter that we can get nicely on 252 kHz so why have two transmitters? 153 kHz would be redundant and running a Mega Watt LW station costs big bucks. So this is one case for getting rid of 153 kHz from Algeria.
On the other hand the carrier on 153 kHz is nothing short of a flamethrower night after night ! Just have a look at how many dB their carrier was out of the noise in the video I posted last night. The carrier I see on 153 kHz is ALWAYS super strong.
Speculation was that Romania was going to be a low power station and not operating all the time. But the carrier strength is right up there with TDF on 162 kHz that runs about a MW of power. Like every evening with the sun still up I can see a nice carrier from TDF (162 kHz) and on 153 kHz. So something doesn't seem right. If Romania was transmitting a "low power" signal they would not be as strong as what I am seeing. Or at least it seems that way to me.
But just now, as I typed this last night, I recall the previous evening I was tuning around and I was seeing all 3 of the EFR stations (DCF39, DCF49, and HGA22) coming in very well from Germany and Hungary. So well that I could have decoded them. Those stations run 100 kW, so about 10 dB less power than our typical LWBC stations. But those EFR stations average about 20 dB lower carrier strength than the carriers on 162 kHz or 153 kHz. So heck, maybe Romania fired up a larger transmitter.
Here is what I will do.....I will try to concentrate on making some further recordings of 153 kHz and send the audio WAV files to someone who speaks Romanian.
If someone else can help out please get some recordings as well if you have good propagation. I do not want to rely on recordings I made several months ago or esp from last year since I think Romania (if I recall) was just getting situated and initially running lower power and not 24/7 operation. So I will only post newer captures.
Also, since this post is a day late I will add in that I made a recording last night and had ChatGPT analyze the WAV file. Once it translated the audio to text it identified it as Arabic. If anyone has any recordings of what they think is Romania please post them and we can have the audio analyzed.
73 Gedas W8BYA