Foreign FM Stations coming thru in hot weather

flickarius

I hope this is the right forum for this one FM might not be quite "Hobby Radio" dept but here goes.
I'm in Mid Louth and this morning I was going through the Fm band and at 103.5 where Midlands 103 is based, I hear a Spanish station coming through. I left it on and continued my journey and eventually the RDS kicked in and it was RNE 5 Mu. I've looked this up and find it's the Spanish National Broadcaster (RNE RADIO 5 TODO NOTICIAS (Ricote MU) FM 103.3) a 24hr news channel.
I remember once before picking up another Spanish Broadcast some years ago near the start of the Fm wavelength at 87.5 or 6. Is it common for this to happen when temps are high? and has anyone ever heard any French or perhaps Dutch stations coming through on FM?

Quaderno

It's not common, but not unheard of either. The term to use to find more information would be "Sporadic E propagation".
Here is a nice animated map that shows the conditions earlier today.

Fuzzy Clam

flickarius wrote: »

Is it common for this to happen when temps are high? and has anyone ever heard any French or perhaps Dutch stations coming through on FM?

It happens to some extent every year. I've never heard Dutch but Spanish, Italian and French are common enough when it occurs.

PauloMN

Happened me last month, during another high pressure:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056974872

Common enough in the summer during decent high pressure spells. Usually the conditions on the 2m and 70cm amateur bands allow you to talk across the UK and sometimes further, which would normally not be possible on those frequencies.

watty

FM DX is certainly Hobby Radio. There are people with MASSIVE Band II aerials for DX, or even a discone on the chimney gives x5 as many stations as an indoor whip.

flickarius

watty wrote: »

FM DX is certainly Hobby Radio. There are people with MASSIVE Band II aerials for DX, or even a discone on the chimney gives x5 as many stations as an indoor whip.

Wow...five times as many stations? that's something I didn't know, Thanks for the heads up. Thanks for the info guys, This certainly is an interesting occurrence.

deaglan169

when i lived at my parents place i was big into fm-dxing, had a 8 element antenna think it was on a rotator and 2 fm tuners a kenwood kt6040 which is the dxers dream machine you can mod the filters, also had a standalone rds decoder for super quick pi code captures, i used to leave radio on 87.6 a good frequency as its usually clear nationwide, then when you hear a burst your there ready best i got was over to romania i think and algeria, its a cheap and easy hobby to get into my first reciever cost 15quid on ebay and antennas arent dear at all, check out fmlist.org, you can plot your dx on it and identify those foreign stations, really miss it now im in an apartment but got some dx on the work van radio other day:rolleyes:

watty

There can be 20dB difference between an indoor "whip"/aerial and roof mounted aerial. This is why DTT / Saorview is planned assuming outdoor aerials and not suitable in more than about 20% of locations for a handheld portable TV (or maybe much less). Otherwise they would need much more transmitter power and probably about x5 as many small sites (like repeaters / relays).

This is why the sell off of UHF TV spectrum is crazy. It means we will never have more than x3 as many channels if all are HD, we will never have anything more advanced than current HD and there are not enough channels for a network with enough fill-in transmitters for handheld / pocket TV.

They (Led by Comreg, Ofcom and French Regulator) want now to sell off a second block of TV.

Comreg & Ofcom have the aim of abolishing Terrestrial TV entirely.

The "so called White Space" communication is part of placting big US business interests and also destroying Terrestrial TV as it DOES block people relying on out of area TV channels due to local terrain. Neither the spectrum sensing nor the database (which people will "game") solve the A B C "hidden transmitter syndrome".

130Kph

Last month I was driving down an east facing 800ft hill in Lanzarote when (while band-scanning) I was able to pick up a Moroccan station in clear FM on a standard car radio (transmitter 150 – 200km away?).

The 10 minutes I heard consisted of dreary militaristic marching band music (a-la 1970’s Radio Moscow), followed by 5 minutes of exhortations to Mohammed and Allah followed by the news headlines (David Cameron was mentioned), followed by more flowery praise to Mohammed/Allah.

I was enjoying it as an unexpected minor culture shock but in the end herself said (to paraphrase) “turn off that crap, its giving me a headache”.

I doubt that station could be heard at sea level though.

dxhound2005

Here are two good Sporadic E examples. Foreign stations received in Ireland and Irish/UK stations received in Germany. I remember years ago hearing Polish stations around 66 to 70 MHz, which is the FM band in parts of Eastern Europe. Some radios can be switched between that band and the 87.5 to 108 MHz band.

watty

BBC World on FM from Cyprus was reliable in Jerusalem on a car Radio.