Welsh TV received through tropospheric ducting

lucernarian

It's nearly gone now but we were getting Welsh TV on Divis' channels. S4/C came up on Ch 21 and I'd guess it was either Bets-y-coed or Blaenplwyf. EBU grade 3 at best, very impressive considering there is the steep peak of a hill to my southeast. I'm also getting ITV on Channel 48. After a bit of searching around, it's probably coming from the Isle of Mann.

Any long-distance stuff being received by boardsies?

watty

Not been looking at the minute. But some years ago I did pickup Spanish TV in Limerick City on a Portable TV whip aerial upstairs at the window.

My TV aerial point north and is only about 7ft above ground at side of house so as to "see" under the giant beech trees.

Antenna

watty wrote:

But some years ago I did pickup Spanish TV in Limerick City on a Portable TV whip aerial upstairs at the window.

that would have been happening on Band 1 due to Sporadic-E propagation (not tropospheric) Watty.

Sporadic-E: shortwave type propagation very occasionally occurs (mainly in the summer) on low to mid VHF frequencies - including Band 1 TV and Band 2 (Fm radio).
Signals skip considerable distances (not receivable in the zone in between). i.e. Spain or Italy to Ireland

tropospheric is different, I once accidentally discovered Spanish TV TVE2 on UHF at home due to ducting (near Cork Coast), no sound of course due to the different standards. I seem to recall it being there for hours before it faded out (many years ago)

watty

Well I don't know how it worked. Some people of course claim Sp-E doesn't exist. Exactly what it is may be in question but it exists. I have had VHF contacts to Aberdeen on 5W SSB 144MHhz and Dundee on 1W FM, which I had assummed was Trop (2005).

Some amazing records for higher frequencies:
http://www.g3pho.free-online.co.uk/microwaves/records.htm

Ulsterman 1690

Why is it mainly Spain one gets during SpE openings.

Most Band 1 SpE I have seen has been Spain/Portugal or the Nordic countries. but I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Ive got TV from anywhere else in Europe

On the other hand Ive got Italy a few times on FM radio and (what sounded like) Eastern Europe on 35 MHz. The books say this is mostly military stuff anthough Ive heard what sounded like phonecalls (ringing tones followed by conversations in unknown languages) and of course more often than not 27 MHz is jampacked with Italian stuff.

watty

Sea path? You frequently hear Spanish on the Cork Repeater 145.650MHz (Mulliganish RTE site).

The itallians may be running 5KW
They certainly run KW on SSTV on 14MHz & 21MHz. Reception from Italy seems good generally. I've had excellent 29MHz contacts on 5W to Sweden only 2005 & 2006

lawhec

Sproadic E reception I believe tends to favour N-S reception better than E-W reception, with Spain nearly due south of Ireland its an obvious candidate. I wonder when Maghera had RTÉ on Channel B how often was it viewed in Spain, as the opening works both ways.

The most memorable moment for Sproadic E openings had to be the reception of FM radio from the USA and Canada from nearly four years ago in N.Ireland. Wish I had got it myself at the time, though if I did I would probably be doubting myself that it was real in the first place.

DigiDec

Yes I am getting the Welsh TV channels here too, (Dublin northside), it is from the Blaenplwyf transmitter, if you go to the text on ITV1 and press the reveal text button it tells you what tranmitter you are receiving, we always get the Welsh channels here never the N Ireland ones, I remember back in the early seventies before cable tv we had a huge lump of metal on the roof but again it was the Welsh channels, BBC Wales and the old HTV Wales.

lucernarian

They were too weak to get teletext on them. Thanks for telling me that shortcut for the currently received transmitter. Couldn't remember how to do it. I'm astonished at how I got Blaenplwyf as the slope of the hill is 30 degrees before it levels off 30 metres further up.

There are one or two houses on the southeastern side who have aerials pointing out to the southeast. Not sure what transmitter in Wales they're getting. Can't imagine the reception of Welsh TV in Louth is great...

Mind you, I went to try that reveal thing on our usual UTV and the signal was too weak for teletext.

lawhec

The Teletext reveal trick isn't that accurate, it only shows at which transmitter the Teletext stream was inserted into the broadcast signal. For example for all N.Ireland transmitters, including Limavady and Brougher Mountain, show "DIV" on reveal for Divis.

Antenna

I happened to discover fairly good tropospheric ducting last weekend

attached is a picture of a quite watchable 'five' on Channel 37 received by me in Co. Cork from Presely (SW Wales). This picture was around 7PM last Saturday (7 june 2008) . The co-channel interference pattern (venitian blind effect) is from a very low power TG4 transposer several miles away located at the Strand area of Youghal town (for the southern side of that town),

GerardKeating

watty wrote: »

Not been looking at the minute. But some years ago I did pickup Spanish TV in Limerick City on a Portable TV whip aerial upstairs at the window.

My TV aerial point north and is only about 7ft above ground at side of house so as to "see" under the giant beech trees.

I remember one weird day about two years ago, in the wilds of Connemara, getting into my car at lunch time and could not get RTÉ1 on the radio, so did a quick scan, and could not get any irish FM radio station, but got a few strong german FM station, one of them mentioned Frankfurt a bit in the advets..

I remember picking up something on Band I while tuning the TV at home in July 1996, was probably a day or two after moving to Listowel. There was no sound (PAL-B most likely) and I couldn't identify where it was coming from.

Surprisingly I never got much of a signal from Channel B from Maghera in that location - I got it long enough to see one of the closedown messages overlaid on it but the picture was terrible - I wasn't using a Band I antenna in fairness.

A couple of years ago I picked up the Divis UHF and FM channels down here too. Black Mountain Channel 5 came in but it was very poor. On the other hand, Divis Channel 4 was excellent, some co-channel interference but it was certainly watchable, grabbed a video on my phone at the time.

Mossy Monk

Used to get Spanish radio on FM at times but the furthest I have gotten tv from was Birmingham.

Antenna

Another couple of pictures taken last Saturday night (7 June 2008) sometime around 7PM.

these two are of Channel 4 from the South Coast 'deflector' main Carrigaline transmitter - which is on Ch 40 - suffering CCI (Co-channel interference) from BBC2 from Presely Wales.

This TV was latching on to the NICAM of the Presely BBC2 (the 'deflector' has no NICAM), so you had the sound of BBC2 with the picture of Channel 4! - unless you disabled NICAM! There is no offset between the carrier frequencies of both transmissions (vision carrier of both is 623.25 MHz) - if there was the TV would have ignored the background BBC2 NICAM. An offset would lead to a less noticeable interference pattern (during CCI) too.