TBL Tropical Band List

TBL  Tropical Band List
By Willi Passman 

As you may  know  from the logs posted in this blog , mostof them are refered in he lower spectrum of the SW band ie below 7MHz This  part f the band is called tropical band  Why : http://www.pateplumaradio.com/genbroad/tropical.htm

For me  this part of the shortwave spectrum  has a bigger interest thn  the remain part as in these bands you will find stations mostly of the tropical  part fo the  earth ie Africa and Americas (eap South) with signals of special interest to a more dedicated DXer (a person who listens  to more difficult signals then a common shortwave listener ) which can be heard  more particualryl  in late (local )afternoons to early mornings


This  book  was edited  by Willi Passman  , in Germany,  till 2006 and covered  this need as a very good and handy A4 sized guide with updates  every 4 months I have  been a subscriber  to him for one year ,on 1997 , from which is the above photo (the last edition ).

As noticed  in the last page , Willi collects this material  from  12 newsletters and internet sources  some of them are :  EDXP (Au), ODXA (US), ADDX (GE),  Dx window , Play DX , Relampago DX (JP), WRTH , Passband R , Cumbre , hard core Dx and others. BTW  i was member of most of the above clubs and mailing lists !


Here is how he describes  his list

Part A is sorted by frequency, within the frequency by continents and within the continents by countries in alphabetical order:

1.) Europe
2.) Africa
3.) Asia (3.1. Asian part of CIS, 3.2. Near East, 3.3. Far East, 3.4 Pacific)
4.) America (4.1 North, 4.2. Central, 4.3.South)

Part B is sorted by countries, within the countries by frequency and within the frequencies by output power, using declining order, so the strongest station will be at the top.

An additional part contains the stations having been inactive for a long time and stations which are not to be believed to return to the frequency soon.

MY edition  February  1997 contains 1670 entries 

Each entry contains the following info:
Code : how station is reported (often rarely  etc )
QRG :  the freq (separate column for variable /feeder , harmonic etc)
SA SW : sunrise and sunset
Additional info : times of transmission , languages , Identification etc

Here is a photo of the printing :

Practically  this guide  was very useful , more useful than WRTH ,. Actually  every night those older times  thi guide was very much helpful to me

I really miss this guide … It is very sad . 

Today  Eibi’s and Aoki’s  lists are the up to date  frequency listings (but lacking some important  info as ID’s  etc ) But surely the domestic band survey is  also very good thatr goes next to TBL