The Firedrake is pretty much active all day every day with few quiet hours. I do not think a morning has gone by in the last several years that I have not stumbled on it. However, it changes frequency to match the stations it is jamming, so it often shifts frequency from hour to hour. It can have as many as 10 or so frequencies active at one time, I seldom see less than two at any one time.
Firedrake goes off the air at the top of each hour. It stays off for between 6 and 25 minutes. This “off” time is probably what is called “look through” in the jammer world, time to listen and make sure the signal you want to jam is on that frequency before you start or restart jamming. Typically Firedrake comes back on one frequency at a time, from low to high frequency, but often it brings up the lowest frequency last.
This “off” time has lead to some interesting activity by some of the typical Firedrake Jammed stations. They sometimes put their most important material, news, etc, in the first 15 minutes of transmission, trying to get it to the target audience before the jammer goes active. A few stations have started coming up for 15 minutes only and then shifting frequency.
Also, this means if you are looking for Firedrake you might just get a cup of coffee or look for other signals for the first 15 or 20 minutes of the hour. Since it is hard to tell exactly when it will come back up you might be wasting your time sweeping a band only to have it pop up in that band at 22 minutes after the hour. Typically I look for it 30 minutes after the hour or later if I am sweeping for it. If you have an SDR like the WinRadio Excalibur that can show you the entire HF spectrum at one time you can look on the waterfall for signals that come up at “odd” times. BC stations most commonly come up a few minutes before the top and bottom of the hour, a visual signal that comes up at say 17 minutes after the hour might be a good candidate to check for the Firedrake.
Propagation and high transmit power accounts for the good signal on the east coast or anyplace in the World. Changes in propagation accounts for the variations, sometimes strong sometimes not even on the same frequencies and times.
Look at the times and frequencies of the Firedrake receptions you get. Is it an all night time or all day time path from you to the east coast of China? Are either of you in the gray line? How would the frequency vs time and propagation work, for example if it is a high freq, like 16100, you would not expect that to work well at your local midnight, or 7970 kHz might not work well at your local 1300. Because the jammed stations are in the same region and aimed into China many times they are on frequencies/times that do not work well for reception in the US or Europe.
In the last few days, at various times, I have seen Firedrake on the following freqs; 7970, 9200, 10300, 10500, 10700, 11500, 12230, 12300, 12500, 12600, 12670, 13130, 13920, 14700, 14970, 16100, and 16270 kHz. In the last few months I would probably add another couple dozen freqs.
Jimepage, Firedrake is not broadcast from satellites, for that matter essentially no HF signals are with a very few low power exceptions. However, it does appear that the Firedrake signal is probably linked to the transmitter sites via satellite, this accounts for all signals being synchronized.
T!