Posts tagged ‘winter’

Monday, August 29, 2022

Hebei Province: a Sense of Frost

Click picture for "Jimu News" video
Click picture for “Jimu News” video

The following is not a translation but my loose repetition of some of its content – JR

Main link: “near zero degrees”

“I never thought that the drop in temperature would be that hefty,” “Jimu News” quotes a farmer from Guyuan County, Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province.
There had been a blue alert of cold weather, issued by the Zhangjiakou Meteorological Obervatory on Thursday afternoon (August 25), saying that temperatures could be as low as 1 to 4° Celsius in Kangbao County, Guyuan County, Shangyi County among other places in the morning of Saturday (August 27), and suggested that farmers took precautions.

The farmer sensed frost when waking up and then found frozen water in the courtyard’s basin. Rushing to his fields, he found that leaves of zuchini as well as zuchini in its early stages had been killed.

“Jimu News” got similar accounts from other farmers, but does not quantify the overall damage done in the region. The quoted farmer estimates his personal damage at about 40,000 yuan, while in a normal year, he would have made 80,000 yuan RMB from 10 mu. This year, his picking season would end one month early.

A trader from Shandong Province is quoted with expecations of higher prices. Some kind of common beans (芸豆) are said to have been at 9.4 yuan per kilogram on Friday, but to have risen to over 14 yuan per kilogram by Saturday.*) Some areas had even stopped production, the trader is quoted.

Also from the trader’s point of view, based on five years of his own activity, frost has been early by one month, as it would usually be expected in late September.

Some web pages with the “Jimu News” article have been removed. The above draws on news.cnhubei.com content (also removed), but it still seems to be available elsewhere.

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Notes

*)  除此之外,芸豆的产量和价格也受到了影响。“26号芸豆还是4块7一斤,今天7块多了,基本上一天涨一块。”刘华说,即便收购价格还不错,但当地芸豆产量也不多了。

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Monday, December 30, 2019

Happy New Year

cat archive

A happy new year of the Rat, and only the healthy ones for your Cat

 

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Monday, November 11, 2019

Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) Christmas Program on Shortwave

As every year, Northern German Radio (NDR) has scheduled a four-hours Christmas program on shortwave – “Gruß an Bord” (greeting all ships) – for December 24, from 19:00 to 23:00 UTC. The program usually begins with a news broadcast of about five minutes at 19 UTC, and the actual Christmas program would start right after that.

[Please mind the updates underneath – Dec 18, 2019]

Leer Reformed Church weather vane, archive / edited photo

Leer Reformed Church weather vane, archive / edited

All messages will be pre-recorded, in Leer, a town in northwestern Germany, on December 8, in Hamburg on December 15, and at NDR broadcasting house (where letters and emails will be  accepted until December 15), and be read out on December 24, from 22:15 UTC, according to the NDR schedule. Sometime during the first three hours of the program, a one-hour religious service is usually transmitted.

Radio Berlin-Brandenburg’s (RBB) media magazine has published the broadcasting schedule as follows1):

19:00 – 21:00 hours UTC

transmitter
site
kW direct kHz
Nauen,
Germany
125 west 6080
Nauen,
Germany
125 south-
east
9720
Moosbrunn,
Austria
100 east 9570
Issoudun,
France
250 south-
east
9800
Update, Dec 18 125 9740
Issoudun,
France
250 south 11650
Noratus,
Armenia
100 Europe 6030

21:00 – 23:00 hours UTC

transmitter
site
kW direct kHz
Nauen,
Germany
125 west 6145
Nauen,
Germany
125 south-
east
9720
Moosbrunn,
Austria
100 east 9675
Issoudun,
France
250 south-
east
9590
Update, Dec 18 125 9740
Issoudun,
France
250 9830
Noratus,
Armenia
100 Europe 6155

The Nauen site is said to be the oldest continuously operating radio transmitting installation in the world. There was an interruption of about a decade, however, from May 1945 to 1955. By the end of the 1950s, it was also one of Radio Berlin International‘s (RBI) two transmission sites, thus carrying East Germany’s official programs for an international audience.

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Notes

1) as at November 1 (which seems to suggest that changes aren’t ruled out)

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Updates (Dec 18, 2019)

See Deutsche Welle reference to the NDR program for latest frequencies

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Related

Program history, Dec 25, 2017

Monday, December 24, 2018

Merry Christmas

Weser River, Verden District (West)

Weser River, Verden District (West)

Merry Christmas, run, run, Rudolph, and let it snow.

Monday, December 3, 2018

Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) Christmas Program on Shortwave

Following an established annual routine, Northern German Radio (NDR) broadcasts a four-hours Christmas program on shortwave – “Gruß an Bord” (greeting all ships) – on December 24, from 19:00 to 23:00 UTC.

ear

_______________________________________
Time
Freq. Transmit- Target
(UTC) (kHz) ter site area
___________________________________
19:00 – 6,080 Nauen, Atlantic N
21:00 Germany
___________________________________
19:00 – 11,650 Issoudun, Atlantic S
21:00
___________________________________
19:00 – 9,800 Issoudun, Atlantic,
21:00 France Indian O.,
Sth Africa
___________________________________
19:00 – 9,740 Nauen, Indian
21:00 Germany Ocean W
___________________________________
19:00 – 9,570 Moos- Indian
21:00 brunn, Ocean E
Austria
___________________________________
19:00 – 6,030 Armenia Europe
21:00
___________________________________
21:00 – 6,145 Nauen Atlantic N
21:00
___________________________________
21:00 – 9,830 Issoudun Atlantic S
21:00
___________________________________
21:00 – 9,590 Issoudun Atlantic,
23:00 Indian O.,
Sth Africa
___________________________________
21:00 – 9,720 Nauen Indian
23:00 Ocean W
___________________________________
21:00 – 9,650 Moos- Indian
23:00 brunn Ocean E
___________________________________
21:00 – 6,155 Armenia Europe
23:00
___________________________________

Sources

Gruss an Bord, NDR, Nov 28, 2018
Background, RBB, Nov 17, 2018
History, Dec 25, 2017

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Monday, January 1, 2018

Happy New Year!

Taipei 101 light and fireworks show, published by the Liberty Times online.

Monday, December 25, 2017

Shortwave Logs, December 2017: Germany’s annual Public-Radio High-Frequency Broadcast

“Gruß an Bord” is one of the oldest programs1) carried on German public radio, and the only one among these that is still broadcast on shortwave. Once a year, that is. The program starts at 19:00 UTC and runs through 23:00 UTC, i. e. Midnight central European time (see table there).

Christmas Eve on Sunday was that one night a year when a public German-language radio broadcaster returns to shortwave: “Gruss an Bord” is a program where sailors’ relatives and friends send greetings to their loved ones on board, wherever on the seven seas they may be2).

From Norddeich Radio to Deutsche Welle

“Gruß an Bord” first went on air in 1953. Back then, according to Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR, northern German radio), coastal radio station Norddeich Radio beamed the wistful messages across the seas.

It hasn’t been aired every year since, according to an NDR press release of 2009, which provides no notes about at which times there had been interruptions.

Some time after its inception, Germany’s public foreign broadcaster Deutsche Welle must have taken the task of broadcasting “Gruss an Bord” internationally, while NDR has always been in charge of the content.

Haus der Schiffahrt (House of Shipping Companies), Leer (archive)

Norddeich Radio has been defunct since the 1990s, and Deutsche Welle terminated their German-language broadcasts on shortwave in 2011. “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (Germany does itself in), an angry seafarer reportedly wrote in a protest letter.

From Deutsche Welle to Media Broadcast

It appears that the program was limited to VHF/FM and medium wave in December 2011, but in 2012, NDR bought airtime from Media Broadcast, a company that operates the Nauen transmitter station ( a site formerly used by Deutsche Welle). They also coordinate with other broadcasting sites in Europe.

NDR is a public broadcaster operating in the federal states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, and Lower Saxony. (As Bremen was part of the American occupation zone in post-war Germany, the city state runs a broadcasting station of its own, Radio Bremen.)

The first hour – and some of the second – of this year’s broadcast were recordings made earlier in December, at Hamburg’s Duckdalben international seamen’s club (or Seemannsmission), a place operated by Germany’s evangelical church. Some time during the second hour of this year’s program, recordings from Leer, a town in Eastern Friesland, Germany’s far northwest, were broadcast. Leer is only a small town, with some 30 to 35 thousand population, but it is a place with a lot of history, and a navigation school. Probably not least thanks to the latter, Leer is considered the place with the second-largest number of shipping companies in Germany, after Hamburg.

In Leer’s “Kulturspeicher”, the NDR’s Lower Saxony broadcasting house also made some recordings, on December 10, to televise a few minutes of them within the state on December 23, in a 3’19” report. (The video should remain online for a few weeks.)

The show felt a bit as if it was from a different era, trade magazine website Radioszene noted four years ago. That’s hard to deny, when you look at the cozy arrangements captured by the NDR cameras.

But then, even in 1979, Werner Bader, head of Deutsche Welle’s German programs at the time, observed that

A minority keeps criticizing, sometimes wittingly, that the two programs [“Gruß an Bord” and “Grüße aus dem Heimathafen”, another sailors’ program] were unctuous. But a majority advocates to carry them forward.
(Eine Minderheit kritisiert immer wieder, in beiden Sendungen gebe es Rührseligkeiten, und sie tut es manchmal auch geistreich witzig. Aber die Mehrheit plädiert für das Wunschkonzert und die “Grüße aus dem Heimathafen”.)

The Audience: families, the wider public …

“Gruß an Bord” is aired by a public broadcaster, and at the same time, it is about family – two rather different target audiences. An NDR editor interviewed in the December 23 report from Leer, tries to match the two:

If this is about feelings, the broadcast is still needed. If someone says that most of the German ships have been equipped with internet for a year now, and that families can skype or text each other, or use Whatsapp – but then, people may sit alone in their bunk, on Christmas Eve, before and after their meals, that’s not the same as if you join everyone else in the mess deck, listening to this broadcast together.
Wenn es um Gefühle geht, dann braucht man die Sendung noch. Wenn jetzt jemand sagt, die deutschen Schiffe sind seit einem Jahr weitgehend mit Internet ausgerüstet, und dann können die Familien miteinander skypen und sich eine SMS schicken oder per Whatsapp kommunizieren, aber da sitzen vielleicht die Leute allein in ihrer Koje am Heiligen Abend, vorm Essen, nach dem Essen, bekommen ihre Whatsapps, das ist ja nicht so, als wenn  man gemeinsam in der Messe sitzt und dann vielleicht gemeinsam diese Sendung hört.

Or as put by an (apparent) senior sailor in a television report from the Hamburg event, the program is

special, because you get the impression that – even if you can be reached by email, smartphone etc. -, the public is aware of you.
Das Besondere an der Sendung ist, dass man eben tatsächlich den Eindruck hat, dass man – auch wenn man über Email, Handy erreichbar ist, trotzdem auch im Bewusstsein der Öffentlichkeit ist.

… and the friends of the high frequencies

I recorded all of the program, and listened to some of it. It remains a reverend institution, and worth listening to. But I think I liked the final twenty-five minutes best. There, letters and emails were read out from an ordinary broadcasting studio – well-structured and carefully thought out messages, rather than improvised talk into microphones.

I have no idea how many people listen to the programs, and where. But when listening to the mails and letters being read out, you realize that a substantial share (if not the majority) of those who listen to the shortwave transmissions must be shortwave aficionados, rather than seafarers:

Bernd Ottenau from Ottenau sends greetings to all members, honorary members and friends of the Radio Taiwan International listeners’ club Ottenau, as well as the international shortwave programs’ German-language editorial offices.
(Bernd Ottenau aus Ottenau grüßt herzlich alle Mitglieder, Ehrenmitglieder und Freunde des Radio Taiwan International Hörerclubs Ottenau, sowie die deutschsprachigen Redaktionen der internationalen Kurzwellenprogramme, und wünscht gesegnete Weihnachten sowie ein gutes neues Jahr 2018.)

A thing Germany has in common with countries like China, India, or Japan are its pasttime associations, and its shortwave listeners’ associations not least. They, too, may be an explanation as to why a radio institution like “Gruß an Bord”, allegedly from a different era, remains on air – at least once a year.

The 6155 kHz relay transmission from Armenia – offering the best signal among all the sites rebroadcasting “Gruß an Bord” – goes off air a few seconds after 23:00 UTC. CPBS Beijing emerges on the same frequency, informing me that it’s the eighth day of the lunar calendar’s  eleventh month today.

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Notes

1) The “Hafenkonzert” is even older – see Related underneath – “Soundscrapes of the Urban Past”
2) Then again, maybe not exactly on all the seven seas. The Pacific Ocean isn’t among the target areas stated by NDR.

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Related

Soundscrapes of the Urban Past, 2013

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Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Norddeutscher Rundfunk Christmas Program on Shortwave

Just as in previous years, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) broadcasts a program for ship’s crews at sea and their relatives and friends at home on shortwave, from 19:00 to 23:00 UTC (20:00 to 24:00 central European time).

Rotatable directional antenna at Moosbrunn transmitter site, Austria. Wikimedia Commons, click picture for source description)

A rotatable directional antenna at Moosbrunn transmitter site, Austria. Wikimedia Commons, click picture for source description)

From 19:00 to 21:00 UTC

6125 kHz, target area northern Atlantic, transmitter in Nauen
9685 kHz, target area Indian Ocean (west), transmitter in Nauen
9925 kHz, target area Atlantic/South Africa/Indian Ocean, transmitter Issoudun
11650 kHz, target area Atlantic (south), transmitter Issoudun
11800 kHz, target area Indian Ocean (east), transmitter Moosbrunn

From 21:05 to 23:00 UTC

6040 kHz, target area northern Atlantic, transmitter in Nauen
9515 kHz, target area Indian Ocean (west), transmitter in Nauen
9765 kHz, target area Indian Ocean (east), transmitter Moosbrunn
9880 kHz, target area Atlantic (south), transmitter Moosbrunn
9925 kHz, target area Atlantic/South Africa/Indian Ocean, transmitter Issoudun

For listeners in Germany or not too far from there, medium wave may also be an option:
702 kHz (Flensburg), 792 kHz (Lingen), 828 kHz (Hanover), and 972 kHz (Hamburg).

Probably the last chance to listen to the program on medium wave, as according to plans, January 13, 2015, will mark the end of medium wave broadcasts by NDR.

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