[SW] 9585 & 9870 kHz - BBC World Service - test ahead of Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast, Jun 14 2024

About 5 minutes of a test to Antarctica made by Encompass Digital Media on behalf of BBC World Service, ahead of the BBC's annual Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast on June 21, 2024.
The test ran a week earlier, June 14th, at 21:30-21:45 UTC. I must admit I forgot about it & only realised it was going at 21:39 UTC. As the quickest option, I recorded the 31m band for the remainder of the test & here I present the results of its reception in NE Poland.
9585 kHz via Woofferton, UK: very good reception, but affected by some local buzzing noise, blobs every ~52kHz, which I normally don't see.
9870 kHz via Ascension Island: fair, noticeably weaker, and more noisy despite falling in a cleaner portion, in-between two noise blobs. Also adjacent-channel QRM from Voice of Korea on 9875. Audio was slightly delayed compared to 9585.
Both frequencies shut down exactly at 21:45 UTC, although Ascension went off a split-second later than Woofferton. It happened just as a female host was about to identify the programme running though.
The test also ran on 7255 kHz via Al-Dhabayya, UAE, and 11685 kHz via Woofferton. I didn't check them, but based on my experience from years past, 7255 would've been weak, clashing with co-channel Xizang RTV in Tibetan - in fact being overpowered by it, despite Xizang beaming away from Europe on this frequency - and to make matters even worse, likely to be off-frequency. However, the 2nd WOF frequency, 11685 kHz, could've been even stronger than 9585.
I received these transmissions in NE Poland using Airspy HF+ Discovery & 3-element Quad beam for FM band, made of coax pieces, where the driven element is a shielded receive loop, suitable for HF too.

[@swlistening]

Nice reception, for me 9585 was the best. Oddly, the 9870 one from Ascension was completely unintelligible here, except for a few brief periods where I could hear some of it. Interesting that Ascension is so clear on your side, right on the other side of the planet from Antarctica 🙂 11685 was also fairly clear on my side.

[@ArnieDXer]

Really strange if you haven't heard 9870 😮 maybe there's something in their antenna pattern? Basically all these signals have to beam due South or close to it. You're roughly SE of Ascension Island, and if it was perpendicular to the direction of the antenna used on 9870, you would be in the null of that antenna. But I'm not sure 🤷‍♂️

[@swlistening]

@@ArnieDXer I thought so too, I usually pick up all the Ascension Island signals, some are beamed south and some are beamed northwest, towards West Africa, but I usually pick up those ones. Perhaps I was in the null. I seem to remember that the same thing happened last year with this test.