Recent tropospheric activity

[Adam792]

Another good day yesterday. Spain, Algeria, Morocco and Portugal turned into Sweden and Finland later on in the afternoon with a brief visit from Iceland too!

 

[Adam792]

There's been more sporadic E activity over the past few days, including this visitor from the Azores that I was very pleased to receive for the first time this year, and at the best strength I've ever had. It was in and out for around an hour at lunchtime on Tuesday.

Nice and easy to ID with the help of the "ACORES" service in parallel on 30°W 12519V, which as far as I know is actually the input feed to the FM transmitter.

 

[SimonE]

There's been more sporadic E activity over the past few days, including this visitor from the Azores that I was very pleased to receive for the first time this year, and at the best strength I've ever had. It was in and out for around an hour at lunchtime on Tuesday.

Nice and easy to ID with the help of the "ACORES" service in parallel on 30°W 12519V, which as far as I know is actually the input feed to the FM transmitter.

You've done well to receive that in amongst the much more local BBC R2 transmitters. I quite often catch SpE stations below 88.0mhz where there's less competition but you have done well.

 

[Adam792]

You've done well to receive that in amongst the much more local BBC R2 transmitters. I quite often catch SpE stations below 88.0mhz where there's less competition but you have done well.

Luckily here the Oxford transmitter which uses 89.5 for BBC Radio 2 is blocked by the hills to my East, so the frequency is relatively clear. It's there, but very low strength in the background, so a fair strength E skip signal like this one easily takes over!

It was interesting conditions at the time, 89.5 was the only signal received at all. There's another transmitter on São Miguel island which carries RTP Antena 3 on 87.7 (amongst other stations/frequencies), but there was no sign of that at all.

 

[SimonE]

Luckily here the Oxford transmitter which uses 89.5 for BBC Radio 2 is blocked by the hills to my East, so the frequency is relatively clear. It's there, but very low strength in the background, so a fair strength E skip signal like this one easily takes over!

It was interesting conditions at the time, 89.5 was the only signal received at all. There's another transmitter on São Miguel island which carries RTP Antena 3 on 87.7 (amongst other stations/frequencies), but there was no sign of that at all.

I use the dxmaps.com website where you can check what others have heard. I wonder what aerial you use?

 

[Adam792]

I use the dxmaps.com website where you can check what others have heard. I wonder what aerial you use?

Interesting, I've not used that before but I log my catches on FMList, which I think judging by the live map on there passes those logs through to dxmaps.com. Not sure what label I would appear under though

I use a vertical FM dipole that's in my loft. Receiver is an Airspy Mini R2 SDR device.

 

[ozumo]

FM band is busy with overseas stations this evening. I'm terrible at identifying languages but many Spanish, French and Russian including a 'Radio Z' on 107.3