Late evening February 24 and all night February 25, 2015 have proved to be may be the best opening towards Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay I have ever experienced in Lemmenjoki. On 1560 I noted a bunch of stations emerging around 23 UTC on February 24. Argentinian LT11 R General Francisco Ramírez and Uruguayian CW51 R Maldonado, two stations typically dominating this frequency during La Plata openings, were equally strong. Some fade in and outs was provided by Brazilian R Povo Pombal. The interesing thing was that simultaneously a strong interfering howl was noted, indicating a strong carrier nearby. It took me some time to realize, after extending the frequency range of the Perseus, that there actually was a very strong peak but no audio on the split 1560.792, i.e., severely off! I followed this frequency between 23 and 2330 UTC and was lucky to observe the emergence of an SS audio that culminated in a real surprise. The station’s locutor kindly announced at 2327 UTC: “En la frequencia 1560 kilohertz, desde Vichadero, Rivera, Uruguay, transmíte CV156 R Vichadero”!
After a lot of Googling I got in touch with Mario Raúl Coitiño who confirmed my submitted mp3 audio and who has been working at the station since 1978 and is presently in charge of the program “Actualidades” aired several days a week 2130 to 2300 local time. Raúl is 58 and kindly sent me a lot of chats and a nice photo of his family. He also noted, that the station is obligated to carry their legal ID every 15 minutes because of air traffic regulations for traffic in and out of the local airport nearby! Radio Vichaderos owner and director is José Enrique Mariño. This is one of the more surprising logings I have made during the last years! If the station remains this far off 1560 it should be a fairly easy catch for the Nordic DXers during the next season.
Thanks HK and JPR for listening to my mp3!