AM radio station list

[Captain Jack]

Driving to badminton yesterday on a windy, wet evening, I was flicking through AM radio stations. Other than a small handful of local and national stations, I was surprised how many others I received from Europe. Sure, it wasn't perfect with noise and warbles but it was audible. It was almost like flicking through 13E in analogue days on an undersized dish. Certainly heard Spanish, Italian, Polish (or Czech) and some other languages I couldn't recognise (probably Welsh).

But anyway, question is... is there a single list of AM stations transmitted around Europe that I can refer to?

 

[Lazarus]

List of European medium wave transmitters - Wikipedia

Actual Channel details are shown towards the right of the tables.

 

[Analoguesat]

Quite a few countries have started turning their mw transmitters off in recent years. Even here in the UK the number of local stations using it is reducing steadily.

 

[Captain Jack]

List of European medium wave transmitters - Wikipedia

Yeah, saw this - I guess I should have added "....receivable in UK under favourable weather conditions".

 

[Lazarus]

These links might be useful, too

http://www.frequencyfinder.org.uk/International_Broadcasting_on_AM.pdf

And Post #6 here Any European Stations still on MW?? - UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum

 

[Lazarus]

Yeah, saw this - I guess I should have added "....receivable in UK under favourable weather conditions".

Yep!

 

[mikeisyou]

Driving to badminton yesterday on a windy, wet evening, I was flicking through AM radio stations. Other than a small handful of local and national stations, I was surprised how many others I received from Europe. Sure, it wasn't perfect with noise and warbles but it was audible. It was almost like flicking through 13E in analogue days on an undersized dish. Certainly heard Spanish, Italian, Polish (or Czech) and some other languages I couldn't recognise (probably Welsh).

But anyway, question is... is there a single list of AM stations transmitted around Europe that I can refer to?

In the past couple of months I've been able to hear Spanish, French, Irish and Czech Radio on the south coast. Here's the recording I took of the Czech station (267AM) https://photos.app.goo.gl/8bUagT2uByQn81Qb7

 

[dxhound2003]

Click on a frequency on this link to see all the transmitters.

https://www.mwlist.org/mwlist_quick_and_easy.php

 

[Channel Hopper]

Yeah, saw this - I guess I should have added "....receivable in UK under favourable weather conditions".

The other halfs car is a Japanese grey import with a dual band tuner where the FM is stuck to Asian frequencies - 70- 90MHz - leaving only Radio 1 and a pirate radio station in the list, so I get to listen to AM far more often when driving. I have found a growing number of Indian/Asian channels receivable on MW/LW.

The following list shows UK station frequencies that will probably bleed out the more distant stuff

AM Radio Stations in the UK

Favourable weather conditions for AM radio is often the opposite for driving conditions btw.

 

[Analoguesat]

^^ That Am radio list is out of date - at least 2 of the listed BBC services closed a year ago. (Humberside / Nottingham)

 

[Channel Hopper]

They might have borrowed the detail from archived BBC pages

BBC - Radio - Radio Frequencies

Did I mention the caveats ?

 

[aceb]

Try this one. 648 kHz - European Mediumwave Station Guide

FWIW The only weather likely to affect MW reception are thunderstorms causing the crackle of spherics under the station you're listening too. Propagation wise everything else takes place way above the troposphere in the D layer. It's a forgotten mode these days so it's unusual to find a decent AM tuner in a car stereo now. The CD30 in our 05 Astra is fantastic with zero interference from the car so I often listen to Caroline on 648kHz like a local station, not bad for 1kW ERP @ 130 miles from the old World Service site.

 

[dxhound2003]

In the past couple of months I've been able to hear Spanish, French, Irish and Czech Radio on the south coast. Here's the recording I took of the Czech station (267AM) https://photos.app.goo.gl/8bUagT2uByQn81Qb7

That transmitter is on 270 kHz, but being 3 kHz off won't affect intelligibility very much on a car radio. The reason that some car radios can tune in 1 or 3 kHz steps on Long Wave is because Europe 1 in France is on an offset frequency of 183 kHz. All other countries are on the designated 9 kHz channels starting at 153 and ending 279 KHz. Your radio most likely only tunes in 9 kHz steps on Medium Wave. Very few new cars have Long Wave these days. Your car is a fairly old Toyota?

Other stations very easy to hear in Ireland include Poland 225, Hungary 540 and Saudi Arabia 1440 kHz. Anyone on the west coast of GB especially Scotland should be able to hear the Faores on 531 kHz.

 

[Terryl]

Here is a world wide list......AM Frequencies networks by country

And nothing beats a hand tuned AM radio receiver with a big long wire antenna, I use a Yaesu FT-1000, it can tune down to 100 KHz, but my long wire antenna is only around 400 feet.

 

[dxhound2003]

For Medium Wave and Long Wave a loop antenna is more effective than a long wire in some cases. It can null out stations and bring in other stations on the same frequency. Using my loop I can null out RTE Radio which is 50 miles away and hear Algeria on 252 kHz. The internal ferrite antenna in transistor radios does the same thing.

When conditions are good I can hear Canadian and US stations, e.g. VOCM 590 kHz and WINS 1010 kHz using just the internal antenna on my Grundig Satellit 700. It needs very careful rotation of the radio to peak the signal and/or reduce interference from nearby European stations e.g. Spain 585 kHz.

There are great videos on YouTube showing transatlantic MW reception, especially in Scotland.

 

[Channel Hopper]

CJs opening post mentioned reception whilst driving, but does the radio in the car have just the MW/LW bands, or something more ?

A number of traffic junctions in local towns nearby have extreme interference, I've put this down to dodgy fluorescent lighting in shop windows, but never did check on the true reason.

(I also found that I could vastly improve reception on MW in a Mk 1 VW Passat by turning off the headlights, but it did slow down forward progress out in the sticks. It was a few years back)

 

[Terryl]

Talk about interference.....many years ago the Fry's electronics store in Fremont CA acquired an original Tesla coil, someone in marketing thought it would be a good sales gimmick to hook it up and try it out, so one day every radio station, TV station and every other type of radio service in about a hundred mile area, was gone for about 15 minuets while the big demo (at full power) was going on.

Needless to say the FCC levied a very big fine on them and made them enclose it in a Faraday cage and to never ever turn it back on at full power again.

Here is a video of it running at a very low power level, they made the Faraday cage to look like a gazebo.

 

[Channel Hopper]

Of course the -other- method to reduce interference on AM stations is to listen to them on a streaming service, but that just wouldn't be cricket.

 

[daro2096]

I know there isn't much on UK long wave band. There is BBC Radio 4 and I think there is or there was a station at 252 called Atlantic Radio and there is also a French radio station you can pick up somewhere on that band. It has been a while since I listened to LW.

 

[rodscha]

Greetings form france!On LW and in French,you, may sure get RTL on 234 and europe 1 on 153 and alger chaine 3 somewhere left of RTL ,maybe Monte Carlo 250-ish
A pity is,France Inter which was our best,has gone off LW a year ago
Conversely,when night comes,we get on MW 1548 Capital gold,a reminder of the old Radio Caroline...