When I beam to the South this nasty signal basically wipes out all weak signals on 20m.



Beaming to the East/West it's still there but not nearly as strong.



From what I can gather, 13.820 is Radio Marti between 1300-2000.  The transmitter for Radio Marti is about an hour East of me, but I can't copy anything but the jamming.  This has apparently gone on for years, but don't know if that's what I'm hearing or if its local to me.

I'm not normally around the radio during this time but certainly makes 20m a PITA when I am.

Anyone else experience this?

I see similar on 40m from the Chinese and Romanian stations that have not moved out of 40m yet.

They say they are broadcasting at 250W but the big red line says otherwise!  (ETA:  Just realized that's 250kW!)

There is a site I found where you can put in the frequency and it will list any SW stations broadcasting there right now.  http://www.shortwaveschedule.com

Yeah, but in this case Radio Marti (financed by US Gov) is getting jammed by the Cuban government.  At least that's the way I understand it.

Just didn't know if it impacted others as I didn't see much about it on the amateur radio forums.

I have noticed something similar but only when I use my KX3 with the large Yagi. I have not tried going as low as 13.8 Mhz to find the source. I also have a huge issue when a CB-er operates his 2kW radio, 1 mile away. I can hear his garbled signal on all bands and frequencies (some louder than others). It almost sounds like an IF image but the radio is a direct conversion SDR. Weird huh? It does not bother me much though because I mostly use the KX3 with portable antennas. This problem emerges only when I hook it up to my Pro-67B Yagi. I thought, maybe something is wrong with the KX3 but I don't have another one to compare it to.
My primary base rig (FTDX-3000) does not seen to be affected by this at all. It does have powerful front end though. Noise level is at nearly zero on 20 meters on the ftdx3000.

Soviet Union used to jam SW broadcast stations. The jamming signal used to be called - KGB Jazz. LOL.
Soviet military also had numerous mobile, shortwave jaming stations, equipped with a generator and a several KW transmitter, plus relatively sophisticated receivers that were electro-mechanically linked to the transmitter. I used one of those stations during a ham radio Field Day in Ukraine, 25 years ago.  The operator's cabin was on a military, 6 wheel drive, truck chassis, and both the driver's cabin and back cabin (where the operators were), were hermetically sealed and RF shielded. All truck's wiring (including the engine) was RF shielded too. They had a large NBC air filtering system to allow the station to be functional during and after a nuclear strike event. I'd love to have of of those for a field day over here.

Yeah I was hoping you would chime in since being fairly close and with a yagi.  Spin your beam down to Cuba between 1300-2000 and tune to 13.820.  If you have a panadapter you should be able to see it.  If not you should hear a garbled signal.

Actually, I'm getting ready to head to my shack. I'll try listening on my FT-1000 too and will let you know.

Did you mean to try listening between 13:00 and 20:00 ZULU? That will have to be tomorrow then. I will most likely call CQ on 40m and will try to work some DX. Yesterday night, the band was wide open into Europe.

Yes 13000-2000Z they broadcast on 13.820.  I noticed jamming a bit on their other stations but I don't have any directional antennas near their other operating frequencies.

Radio Marti Schedule

Radio Marti is almost always wiped out here by the Cuban bumble-bees.  Crazy bastards.  But all of the jamming seen here is narrow band and I've never heard any sort of leaking outside the bandwidth of the SW station.

It could certainly be local to me, thats why I'm looking for others to check if they have a directional antenna and panadapter.

I listened briefly today. The band was clear, with almost zero noise. No noticeable interference from Cuba. I get slight increase in noise level from the West because of a power line (200 yards away) and some houses in that direction.
Unfortunately I had to leave and could not try listening on my KX3. Most likely it would have picked up the interference. It always has a poor selectivity on a busy band with lots of strong stations nearby. The RX fron end is not the best but it's a portable radio. It does not have this issue with a smaller, portable antenna.  I'll try again tomorrow.

Just tried listening now, I can't discern anything on any antenna, but I can see the transmission on the display.

It's muffled, and sounds like it's being jammed. So, yeah, I think you're right. The waveform doesn't change as much as you'd expect with a 250kW AM station.


ETA: The image upload sucks.

I believe this is local to me.  Not really sure what that noise is though.  It's just centered there at Radio Marti.

Thanks for the input from others.