Tom Kinahan-N1CPE, US Army Military Auxiliary Radio System, writes:
ARMY MARS to reach out to Amateur Stations for Reception Reports
Due to current events, the BBC has resumed shortwave broadcasts into Ukraine and Russia. In order to improve Amateur to MARS communications, MARS stations will be requesting to see if amateur stations can provide a reception report for these BBC transmissions. The BBC broadcasts are :
Frequency English Broadcast
15730 kHz 1300-1500Z
5875 kHz 2000-2200Z
The request is to see if you can hear any of these daily broadcasts, and get your report to a MARS station near you. MARS stations for their part will be reaching out on normal amateur frequencies, using their amateur callsigns. You will be asked for your callsign a signal report, time and frequency of the report, and your city and state.
The signal report can take the form of: Good Readable, Readable, Poor, Unreadable. If you listened, but didn’t hear anything, we want to know that with an Unreadable report.
The end result will be for stations to learn if their stations can receive these international broadcasts, to indicate a possible need for station improvement.
The exercise will last through March 25, but if you have gathered some reports, please don’t lose them, and send them after that time, to me by email, if you were unable to identify a local ARMY MARS station.
Let’s have some fun with this! Thanks for your support.
Tom Kinahan
US Army Military Auxiliary Radio System
Region One Director
aaa1rd@usamars.us