To my ear, this doesn't have the same sound as the verified TA FM DX recorded in 2003 and 2009...but I'm not a regular user of DSP radios such as the Tecsun, and it's hard to tell very much from speaker audio recorded on a camera microphone, if that's what this is. But the fading doesn't sound like typical E-skip fading to me.
At minimum, it's probably worth checking with Clare FM to see if they were indeed broadcasting death notices and the song heard here at the time you were hearing them. In my limited experience listening to local Irish FM recently, the evening hours (and 4 PM CDT would be 10 PM Irish summer time) contain little or no local content - mostly music, liners and network news at the top of the hour. The death notices tended to air in the morning or early afternoon, at least when I was listening.
Here's the thing about E-skip: it has a certain predictability to it. You don't know exactly when it will be there, but when it is, it follows a certain path. In the days of analog TV, when I'd sit in my home office with channel 2 on the TV from May until August, it was almost a given that the first signal to pop in would be either WESH or WPBT from Florida. The openings almost always progressed to the west and then north, and if one station from an area was in, it would be almost absolutely true that the other stations below the MUF (maximum usable frequency) from that same area would be in, too. So if I was seeing channel 3 from Memphis, say, channel 5 would be in as well...and probably 2 and 4 from Little Rock, too.
Which brings us back around to Clare FM. If this path really did exist for you yesterday, then if it were me, I'd be sitting by the radio again today around the same time to see what happens. And if you *do* hear Clare on 95.9, the first thing I'd do would be to try the other frequencies known to be coming from that Woodcock Hill site. Here's a list:
http://www.rte.ie/radio/MW.html
The frequencies you're looking for are in the second row, under "Woodcock Hill." 93.8, if you can hear it, would be especially distinctive - it's the "RnaG" (Raidio na Gaeltachta) service, which is entirely in Irish Gaelic.
If you can hear the Woodcock Hill signals, you should be able to hear the more powerful FMs in the top row from the Maghera site, too.
Luck, as they say, favors the prepared...
At minimum, it's probably worth checking with Clare FM to see if they were indeed broadcasting death notices and the song heard here at the time you were hearing them. In my limited experience listening to local Irish FM recently, the evening hours (and 4 PM CDT would be 10 PM Irish summer time) contain little or no local content - mostly music, liners and network news at the top of the hour. The death notices tended to air in the morning or early afternoon, at least when I was listening.
Here's the thing about E-skip: it has a certain predictability to it. You don't know exactly when it will be there, but when it is, it follows a certain path. In the days of analog TV, when I'd sit in my home office with channel 2 on the TV from May until August, it was almost a given that the first signal to pop in would be either WESH or WPBT from Florida. The openings almost always progressed to the west and then north, and if one station from an area was in, it would be almost absolutely true that the other stations below the MUF (maximum usable frequency) from that same area would be in, too. So if I was seeing channel 3 from Memphis, say, channel 5 would be in as well...and probably 2 and 4 from Little Rock, too.
Which brings us back around to Clare FM. If this path really did exist for you yesterday, then if it were me, I'd be sitting by the radio again today around the same time to see what happens. And if you *do* hear Clare on 95.9, the first thing I'd do would be to try the other frequencies known to be coming from that Woodcock Hill site. Here's a list:
http://www.rte.ie/radio/MW.html
The frequencies you're looking for are in the second row, under "Woodcock Hill." 93.8, if you can hear it, would be especially distinctive - it's the "RnaG" (Raidio na Gaeltachta) service, which is entirely in Irish Gaelic.
If you can hear the Woodcock Hill signals, you should be able to hear the more powerful FMs in the top row from the Maghera site, too.
Luck, as they say, favors the prepared...
