I used the Silvercrest above which is a very basic and not so sensitive receiver to find a signal using the digital frequency readout. I would then use the more sensitive analogue Sony radio below to listen to the signal properly so I could identify it.
All of the signals were heard roughly 2-4 hours after sunset... approx 9pm to 1am local time. As you might expect, a lot more signals were heard during the hours of darkness and the full list is shown at the bottom of the page.
Some stats and figures....
a) Spain...A total of 109 different signals were heard and roughly 50% of those were from Spain. With the sea path to the south from Ireland, it was probably no suprise that the Spanish signals were so strong and numerous on the band.
b) Gaps....Tuning from 531 kHz to 1602 kHz, there were 35 channels where no signal was heard. It's not that there was no signal there, it's just that I couldn't hear one. In some cases, very strong signals tended to block out the adjacent channels.
c) Countries......The countries with the highest number of stations heard were Spain and the UK. The only signal heard from Eastern Europe was Radio Free Europe in Lithuania.
Italy...Some stations in the north-west of the country were heard at about 1400kms.
Algeria & Tunisia....Some high power stations were heard here along the north African coast at roughly 2000kms.
Portugal...Not too many from there.
France....Two signals....a monster 1 megawatt transmitter in the south east (~1500kms) and a digital DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) transmitter from a site near Brest in Brittany (~500kms). The DRM signal could be heard as a hissing signal with no obvious pattern.
Belgium and the Netherlands...Not too many from there.
UK...The UK signals were by far the most interesting ones to hear. Many were buried in the noise and were only identified by listening to a particular song and then checking online to see what they were playing. I found that the online feeds were often 20-30 seconds behind the live radio signal.
Strong English Stations.....In terms of strong signals that could be listened to at night, these were the strong ones....
810 BBC Radio Scotland Westerglen??
882 BBC Radio Wales 100 Washford, Somerset, England
909 BBC Radio 5 Live 50 Clevedon, Somerset
1053 TalkSport 500 Droitwich, SW of Birmingham
1089 Talk Sport 2 Washford
1215 Absolute Radio 100 Washford, Somerset, England
1341 BBC Radio Ulster 100 Lisnagarvey, Belfast
1368 Manx Radio 20 Isle of Man
These were what I would call acceptable quality. Most of the others had too much interference with them to really listen to. I found it interesting in how on a band full of signals, I could only find seven English speaking stations that were worth listening to at night.
Interference...This biggest issue when trying to listen to some of the UK stations was the level of noise and interference. In many cases, there was a strong Spanish station on the same frequency and it was a case of rotating the radio and nulling out the Spanish station using the directional properties of the internal ferrite rod aerial. On one occasion, I could hear a Spanish station perfectly clear, I'd rotate the radio by 90 degrees and there was a perfectly clear English station on the same frequency.
Echo......Some of the UK and Spanish stations are using the same frequency multiple times in their respective countries. It probably sounds fine in the targeted service area but outside the service area, it results in a loud echo which makes it difficult to listen to.
2 second echo......This was an interesting one. There are two Smooth Radio transmitters listed on 1557 kHz.
1557 Smooth Radio 0.76 Northampton
1557 Smooth Radio 0.5 Southampton
It was impossible to identify which one I was hearing until I realised that I was actually hearing both of them with a two second delay between them! I'm not sure which one was first but I was certainly hearing both of them.
In conclusion...... It was interesting to do a detailed scan of the medium wave band to get a feel for what it is like currently. It is something I would have done many many years ago when I first started listening on radio.
What's pretty obvious is that a lot of stations in Central and Eastern Europe have now closed down their medium wave transmitters and have moved to VHF and digital. Looking at the various frequency listings and from my own observations, Spain and the UK are the two main countries in Europe that still use the medium wave band in a big way.
In the past, I would have listened to the band using a long wire aerial... great for bringing in the weak signals but it can't discriminate between stations. With so many Spanish stations on the band, it is really important to have a directional aerial so that some stations can be nulled out.
I was also suprised as to just how well the internal ferrite rod aerial in the Sony radio performed as it pulled in some of the lower power stations in the UK, especially the ones under 1kw. Prior to this, I would have assumed that I would need a long wire to pull in the low power ones but that doesn't seem to be the case.
The full list of station heard is below...
Freq KHz Station Pwr (KW) Location
531 JIL FM 300 NE Algeria
540 Onda Cero Catal 50 Barcelona
549 JIL FM 300 NW Algeria
558 RNE Radio 5 ???, Spain
567 Radio Nacional 5
576 RNE Radio 5 100 Barcelona
585 RNE Radio Nacional 600 Madrid
594
603 RNE Radio 5 ???, Spain
612 RNE Radio Nacional ???, Spain
621 RTBF International 300 Belgium (...Due to close at the end of 2018)
621 RNE Radio Nacional ???, Spain
630 TBC - Unable to get positive ID. Arabic music. Tunisia?
639 RNE Radio 5 ??, Spain
648 RNE Radio Nacional 10 Spain
657 RNE Radio 5 20 Spain
657 RAI Radio 1 100 Toscana, Italy
666 TBC - Unable to get positive ID
675
684 RNE Radio 1 300 Seville SW Spain
693 BBC Radio 5 Live 50 Start Point, Plymouth, Dorset
693 RNE Radio 1 ??? Spain
702
711
720 BBC Radio 4 10 Lisnagarvey
720 Antena 1? TBC Portugal
729 RNE Radio 1 ??? Spain
738 RNE Radio 1 600 Barcelona
747 RNE Radio 5 10 Cadiz Spain
756
765
774 RNE Radio 1 ??? Spain
783
792 SER Radio Sevilla 50 Seville SW Spain
801 BBC Radio Devon 2 Barnstable, Devon
801 RNE Radio 1 ??? Spain
810 BBC Radio Scotland Westerglen??
819
828
837 COPE 50 Seville Spain
846
855 RNE Radio 1 ??? Spain
864
873 SER Radio Zaragoza NE Spain
882 BBC Radio Wales 100 Washford, Somerset, England
882 COPE?? TBC Spain
891
900 RAI Radio1 50 Italy
909 BBC Radio 5 Live 50 Clevedon, Somerset, England
918
927
936 RNE Radio Nacional 5 ??? Spain
936 TBC
945
954 Onda Cero Madrid 50 Spain
963
972 RNE Radio Nacional ??? Spain
981 Chaîne 2 Ouled Fayet, Algeria
990 SER Radio Bilbao 10 ??? Spain
999 COPE Madrid 50 Madrid, Spain
1008 GrootNieuws Radio 100 Netherlands
1017 Radio Nacional 5 ??? Spain
1026 SER Radio Spain
1026 Downtown Radio 1.7 Belfast
1035
1044 SER Radio 50 Spain
1053 TalkSport 500 Droitwich, SW of Birmingham
1053 COPE Zaragoza 20 Zaragoza, NE Spain
1062 RAI Radio 1 60 Cagliari, Italy
1071 France Bleu 8 nr Brest, France DRM
1080 SER Radio Several tx in Spain. Suspect it's La Coruna Spain
1089 Talk Sport 2 Washford or Redruth???
1098 RNE Radio 5 Several tx in Spain
1107 RNE Radio 5 Santander with 10kw?? Spain
1116 SER Radio 5 Pontevedra, Galicia, NW Spain
1125 RNE Radio 5 ??? Spain
1134 COPE Pamplona 5 Pamplona, N Spain
1143
1152 RNE Radio 5 ??? Spain
1161
1170 Swansea Sound 0.58 Swansea, Wales
1179 SER Redio One of two TX. Spain.
1188
1197 Absolute Radio Several TX in the UK
1206
1215 Absolute Radio 100 Washford, Somerset, England
1224 COPE Multiple TX in Spain
1233 Absolute Radio Several tx UK
1242
1251 Smooth Radio 0.76 Great Barton, E of Cambridge England
1260 SER ?? Spain
1269 COPE ?? Spain
1278
1287
1296 Radio XL 10 Birmingham England
1296 COPE Valencia 50 Valencia Spain
1305 RNE Radio 5 ??? Spain
1314 RNE Radio 5 ?? Spain
1323 Smooth Radio 0.5 Brighton England
1332 Smooth Radio 0.6 Peterborough England
1341 BBC Radio Ulster 100 Lisnagarvey, Belfast
1350
1359
1368 Manx Radio 20 Isle of Man
1377
1386 Radio Free Europe 150 Lithuania
1395
1404
1413 RNE Radio 5 Spain
1413 BBC Radio Gloucestershire 0.5
1422 Chaine 3 50 Ouled Fayet, Algeria
1431
1440
1449
1458 BBC??? ??
1458 Lyca Radio 125 Asian Music
1458 Gold 5 Ashton Moss/Arqiva nr Manchester
1467 Transworld Radio 1000 Roumoules, SE France
1476
1485 SER ?? Spain
1485 BBC Radio Merseyside 2 Wallasey
1494
1503 RNE Radio 5 tx: 10k nr Gibraltar & 6k NW Spain
1503 BBC Radio Stoke 1 Stoke-on-Trent/Sideway
1512
1521 SER 5 Castellón/Ramell Spain
1521 Radio Panj 0.04 Coventry
1530 Pulse 2 0.74 Huddersfield
1539 SER Several tx Spain
1548 Forth 2 2.2 Edinburgh
1557 Smooth Radio 0.76 Northampton
1557 Smooth Radio 0.5 Southampton
1566 BBC Somerset 1 Taunton, Somerset
1566 Premier Christian Radio 0.8 Guildford, SW of London
1566 Vahon Hindustani Radio 1 Netherlands
1575 SER 2 tx Spain
1584 SER 2 tx Spain
1584 BBC Radio Hereford & Worcester 0.5 Woofferton
1584 Panjab Radio 2 NE London
1593
1602 SER 4 tx Spain
1602 Desi Radio 0.07 London
2 comments:
Interesting indeed. While on the move I do the same. Ad for The Netherlands, there ara many LPAM stations on the air these days. All operating powers between as little as one Watt UP to 100 Watts which is the maximum. Most, if not all, hifh power stations are now off air and the LPAM stations are on the official Dutch frequenties. Quite a challenge to log some of those stations but not impossible. Our government granted many requests for frequenties and to be honest they granted those requests in an attempt to get all those pirate stations off air. These pirate stations operate between 1611 and 1700 kHz. Their number declined so one can say these attempt were succesful. A list of those LPAM stations can be found on www.radio-tv-nederland.nl Kind regards, Willem.
Very interesting post. I used to scan the MW bands years ago and will do so again after reading your post. I will be getting the RSPdx in the next week or two so it should be ideal for listening on the MW bands. Thanks again for your post. Best Wishes Peter
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