South Korean FM Oddities

[cckadlec]

Today, in an effort to complete my local FM bandscan, I walked back to the top of my local mountain, Hyoyang Mountain, somewhat down the street from me. Instead of confirming the stations I was confused at, I ended up straying from my mission when I realized I was able to null the jammers atop the mountain in a tiny 2"x2" area of air... and tried to fetch these stations as the sun set.

Attached MP3s:

96.7 Gukkun (Chuncheon) - The wind was whipping when I was up there (just in general, everywhere)... and although it's tough to hear in the recording, some signals like this one - local ones - were just obliterated with distortion. Probably 2 or 3 of them!! Almost like echoes and muffling and everything. I'm thinking it was the wind and trees around me... as most of the distorted stations were from behind me, going through the trees.

92.5 MBC Daejeon and a jammer - absolute distortion of a local station... baffled the heck out of me as it didn't exist the day before. Then I figured out that it was battling a jammer (around these parts, generally they're just high-powered silent stations)... half the recording is facing one direction being affected by the jammer, then I turn directly at the jammer (sounds like a mosquito!), then toward the MBC station itself... which is perfect.

92.9 potential jammer - there's a station 135 miles away... but this frequency gave me the feeling it was also a jammer, although I can't find any record to indicate any station to jam. The sound has been pretty loud and terrible for dead air, most certainly, so there's no way this can simply be ordinary static.

97.9 Pyongyang FM (1) - first recording, I was aiming (unknowingly) directly toward Haeju - move the MP3 player an inch and it's gone -- you can hear the absolute silence, which is the silent-station jammer in the South. This station is actually on 97.8, and the silent stations are on 97.7, 97.8, and 97.9.

97.9 Pyongyang FM (2) - second recording was better... unsure if it was on 97.8 or 97.9 that I recorded it, but I totally nulled the jammer. The other audio that can be heard is simply bleed-over from a local 97.7 when I moved the radio an inch or two.

107.2 Pyongyang FM jammer - This is a jammer somewhere locally in the south. Sit down and I hear nothing, but stand up and this comes in loud and clear, blocking Pyongyang FM in Nampo, 160 miles away. This was recorded exactly on 107.2.

Chris Kadlec
Icheon, Korea
(30 miles se of Seoul, 55 miles se of DMZ)
http://www.beaglebass.com/dx

[Lynn]

Thanks for sharing! Very interesting.