I've spent a couple of days in West Malling Kent, a bit southeast of London. Not a lot of time to check the radio but what's really interesting is how empty the AM band is here compared to the US, as many countries abandon it for FM/DAB. Mosr of the stronger signals here are from Spain or the U.K. The Algerians on 549, 531, and 891 are dominant (531 was local strength last night), and the Saudi 1521 was decent as well. This would be a good place to DX if I could get away from the phones/TVs, etc.
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Checking the AM dial from the UK
- Thread starter wildthangjim
- Start date
Not the right time of year, but in the fall and winter months lots of North American DX can be heard on some UK SDRs. I'll bet with less stations on the AM dial if you can find the right location the reception can be very good.
....and getting more empty every day! Last time I was in London was six years ago....which capped off a dozen years of being in the UK once or twice every year (I worked for a British media company, and my daughter lived and worked in London). As I've posted in other threads, I was fortunate from the standpoint of my central city hotel was relatively noise free, as well as there being a park across the street, so I had some halfway decent DX spots. In the trips I made away from London (business as well as friends and family) conditions were much better for DX than in the city (Duh). My prize catch was Voice of Russia on 1332 one early morning in the Cotswolds, which is just under 100 miles northwest of London.
Fast Forward to two years ago. Italy. Wife and I were splitting the cost of a rural villa four ways with some in-laws. 30 miles south of Florence in the middle of nowhere.Great DX environment! During the daytime the MW dial was all but blank. Only two channels tripped the scan button on my rental car. A 10kw RAI outlet from Pisa (IIRC) on 675 (about 55 miles east of me), and something else on 1170. There were at most two or three other weak signals on the band, not strong enough to trip the scan function. Night, however, was a different story. Loads of signals, but not much in English.
Meanwhile, FM was wall to wall signals. Most of them short spaced. Many, if not most, also operating as pirates. David referred to Italy as the "wild west" of FM.
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There were lots of signals at night, but not like here in the US. I'd like to come back in the winter.
Considering the 600kw power, I wonder if the big Algerians are audible in Italy in the daytime. It's 600 miles or more away, but mostly water.
Considering the 600kw power, I wonder if the big Algerians are audible in Italy in the daytime. It's 600 miles or more away, but mostly water.
They certainly would be listenable along the coast in the more southern parts of Italy, but would decay rapidly as one went inland.
My comparable experience is on the shore on the south coast of Puerto Rico where I used to go regularly. The Venezuelan stations from the coastal areas and places not to far inland, like Caracas, were easily listenable in the daytime... even those with power in the 10 kw range. The distance is, similarly about 600 miles. And it is all a salt water path. Even a few coastal Colombians, quite a bit farther away, could be heard on the lower frequencies if they had higher power.
But the moment I got more than a couple of miles inland, they were all gone. Even the first mile over land killed most of them.
Given what David told us about his experiences, I'd think hearing the big signals from Algeria should be fairly easy along costal areas in the south of Italy. And on top of the reasons previously mentioned, the Mediterranean Sea has higher levels of salinity than the open Atlantic.
My anecdotal contribution is having frequently heard the Libyan station on 1251 while driving around San Juan, PR, in the mid and late 70's (it was formerly on 1250). It would often start "arriving" around 3 PM, and be mostly gone by sunset (6 PM, give or take a few minutes, year 'round) when stations in this Hemisphere became more dominant and put a dreadful het on Libya on the car radio.
Were I a more fluent Arabic speaker, I could have said that the station was 100% readable at times. Sort of like a semi-local, with a bit of noise, but very solid.
Interesting that it would start showing up at 3pm PR time, which is, I think, 3 hours before your sunset and 3 hours after Algerian sunset.
Another "exotic" anecdote, in 2014 when I was in far north Queensland (NE part of Australia, think Great Barrier Reef), one of the strongest signals on the dial during the day was the 10 kw 585 in Port Moresby Papua New Guinea, about 500 miles across the water from me. In daylight, there were less than 10 or so readable signals on AM there.
Salt water paths are amazing. I had a friend near Rockhampton, Qsld., who regularly heard Kota Kinabalu on 1475 in the daytime with its 600 kw. That is about 2200 miles!
That is remarkable. The Malaysian was apparently dark by the time I got to Perth in 2012, but would have been doable from there at night. While I was down there, I think the nearest high-power station to me was the million-watt VOA in Thailand (although probably lower power during the day), at 3,300 miles from my location. It was a powerhouse at night but never thought to try during the day!
To get back somewhat to the original topic, given the relatively clear band in Europe, if you're on the Mediterranean, you probably have a decent chance of hearing some of the high power Middle-Eastern or North African stations during the day.
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I hope I'm not being TOO far off-topic, but David E's Puerto Rico reception did ring a distant DX bell.
'Distant' as in 'way out on Long Island's south shore'.
We'd often get together with another couple for dinner, visits, pet-sitting, astronomy, music, etc, who lived in Mastic Beach for several years. If Mastic Beach were any farther east from NYC, the place would be in the Lisbon metro book.
On a few late sunsets, driving around, we'd hear WOND from South Jersey atop 1400, with their Oldies-based A/C format.
I repeat -- late sunset. Twilight. Car radio. That is the time when other stations should start to come in and gnaw away at graveyarders.
Alan and Lucy lived south of Montauk Highway. That long, old, rustic road is the farthest-south main road on Long Island. All sorts of south Jersey and DelMarVa stations would be there -- daily.
Yet, you went not even a mile inland, and you'd hear the much-closer WSTC from coastal Connecticut take over. Goodbye WOND. And there are absolutely no hills or mountains in that section of Long Island. Just ducks, windmills and sand.
WSTC has a daytime signal that audibly can be taken on a car radio disproportionately into north-central New Jersey -- WOND's home state. That spot is just about equidistant between Stamford CT and Atlantic City.
Here are the two signals, courtesy of that NF8M guy. You'll have to magnify the page and jitter the arrow buttons to center the two signals.
http://www.nf8m.com/pattern_maps/US-CA_daytime/D-map_1400KHz.html
Salt water is to DXers the natural and legal equivelant of steroids for athletes.
'Distant' as in 'way out on Long Island's south shore'.
We'd often get together with another couple for dinner, visits, pet-sitting, astronomy, music, etc, who lived in Mastic Beach for several years. If Mastic Beach were any farther east from NYC, the place would be in the Lisbon metro book.
On a few late sunsets, driving around, we'd hear WOND from South Jersey atop 1400, with their Oldies-based A/C format.
I repeat -- late sunset. Twilight. Car radio. That is the time when other stations should start to come in and gnaw away at graveyarders.
Alan and Lucy lived south of Montauk Highway. That long, old, rustic road is the farthest-south main road on Long Island. All sorts of south Jersey and DelMarVa stations would be there -- daily.
Yet, you went not even a mile inland, and you'd hear the much-closer WSTC from coastal Connecticut take over. Goodbye WOND. And there are absolutely no hills or mountains in that section of Long Island. Just ducks, windmills and sand.
WSTC has a daytime signal that audibly can be taken on a car radio disproportionately into north-central New Jersey -- WOND's home state. That spot is just about equidistant between Stamford CT and Atlantic City.
Here are the two signals, courtesy of that NF8M guy. You'll have to magnify the page and jitter the arrow buttons to center the two signals.
http://www.nf8m.com/pattern_maps/US-CA_daytime/D-map_1400KHz.html
Salt water is to DXers the natural and legal equivelant of steroids for athletes.
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Not daytime reception, but... when I lived in the Phoenix area around '72 to '74, Kota Kinabalu was the bellwether signal for Oceania and far SE Asian reception. When it came in, I looked for Australia and New Zealand and the surrounding areas. I have always wondered why it had such a good signal.
It appears that the antenna site is still there and you can see where the 4-5 towers are/were. If the towers were in a line, would assume it was directional, perpendicular to the line, but this appears to be a "bow-tie" arrangement. If it's directional in the same way, would suggest a NE-SW focus (which would help explain its strength in Phoenix). Could you give a brief explanation of how this works?
https://www.google.com/maps/place/6...4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d6.165833!4d116.166389?hl=en
This is a fairly normal directional configuration, which could be several options. One is that the center tower was used for daytime operation, while the parallelogram set of four was used at night (or vice versa). Or they could be all combined. The patter could be one of a million options, depending on the power and phase of the RF fed to each tower.
State operated stations generally do not directionalize to protect other stations as much as to optimize coverage of areas within their nation. That makes me wonder about why such high power was headed towards the NE, unless they were, part of the day, programming for some group in the SW Philippines, such as the Muslim community.
The configuration would send signal NE toward Manila and also SW to cover Sarawak (and also Brunei). There are very high mountains to the east of the transmitter, so this would probably maximize daytime reception.
Interestingly, Google Street View covers the area and shows the towers were gone by 2015.
Another band to check in the EU and the UK would be longwave.
LOTS of stations including most if not all Russian ones are gone.
Allouise, FR only transmits time pulses, no more France Inter.
Ireland keeps postponing the ultimate demise of their LW station.
The BBC has stated that when the last of their power tubes goes soft,
198 KHz will be found, "Only on the History Channel"
And so it goes, soon Mongolia will be alone on their unique, 2KHz offset non-channels.
LOTS of stations including most if not all Russian ones are gone.
Allouise, FR only transmits time pulses, no more France Inter.
Ireland keeps postponing the ultimate demise of their LW station.
The BBC has stated that when the last of their power tubes goes soft,
198 KHz will be found, "Only on the History Channel"
And so it goes, soon Mongolia will be alone on their unique, 2KHz offset non-channels.
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