Sunday, February 21, 2010

1800 UTC Fishery Fax Confirmed JFX

Every day at 1800 UTC, a fax is sent over the Japanese Fishery frequency of 8658.0 kHz.

Others have been able to identify this transmission as JFX, Kagoshima Prefectural Fishery Radio, in the southern part of Japan. For the first time ever, the morning of February 10 (local time, 2/11 in Japan) had good enough conditions for readable text here.

Luckily, that day's fax was self-identified with the heading JFX-NOAA. NOAA is the US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, umbrella agency for the National Weather Service and several oceanic prediction centers.

Indeed, the content seemed to be columns of figures showing forecast weather conditions for three days. Well, we know that JFW, Fukushima, sends NOAA weather. Obviously Kagoshima does too.

We now have a pretty good handle on the Japanese fishery faxes. What was once known in utility books as "Chuo Gyogyo" (Central Fishery) turns out to be at least three stations at the prefectural level. These are JFC (Misaki), JFW, and JFX. All of these use common fishery frequencies of 6414.5, 8658.0, 16907.5, and 22559.0 kHz.

In addition JSC, also at Kagoshima, still blisters the US West Coast on 16971.0 kHz with a very strong relay of the Kyodo News oceanic edition. This is at 2300 UTC daily. Other transmissions occur throughout the day.

Fax is tuned 1.9 kHz below these assigned frequencies.