Algeria HF AERO

15NOV16 8894khz 0639UTC: heard HB-FLH, a Pilatus Porter, wkg Algiers with departure and arrival times & altitude. This is one of several small Swiss-registered aircraft that regularly appear on this frequency from companies like Star and Zimex Aviation that, as far as I know, bring passengers and supplies to the Algerian oilfields.

Other recent logs also include French Airforce Transport aircraft (COTAM) wkg 6712khz and a German Airforce aircraft on 6730khz.

So despite HF being used increasingly less, there are bits and pieces still left if you know where to listen. I get depressed when I see the internet listing hundreds of frequencies that really interest me, only to discover the lists are old and out-of-date, and the services stopped being active years ago. So that is mostly why I write the blog: to let other fellow aviation enthusiasts know what can still be heard. Often I will spend hours and hours monitoring a single frequency - I don't do much HF scanning as I find you miss the initial details of the transmission, and those are the juicy bits with the callsigns and names of the stations.

I know there are some interesting catches to be had using the data modes of HFDL and one of my favourites, ALE. But I don't do very much data decoding these days as I find it hurts my eyes and gives me a headache. And for me, nothing beats the sound of a pilot's voice appearing out of the ether.

73 Adam