First Tropo of 2013

 95.0 1304  G  BBC Radio Wales, Ebbw Vale (WA-BLG)  ID after news  284km ** 
 96.5 1351  G  WBLS Radio, London pirate  Preacher, ID. Almost noise free! **
 87.6 1355  G  Playback UK, London pirate  Club track, as web **
 92.0 1452  G  Desire (Essex), London pirate  Club beats, as web **
 93.9 1835  G  Fresh (Kent), London pirate  DJ and dance track, as web **
107.0 1847  G  Isle of Wight Radio, Chillerton Down (EN-IOW)  ID & School Reunion info  300km **
 99.6 1925 HOL Slam!FM, Hoorn/Electronweg (nho)  Techno, as 91.1 & 95.2  325km
 99.9 1928 HOL BNR Nieuwsradio, Wormer/Alticom Toren (nho)  Presume Wormer tx. See notes.
               Over Norwich  309km **

** Personal Skegness 'First'

Not the tropo we were hoping for so far but several firsts were heard.

I was pleased and very surprised by the reception of the Ebbw Vale transmitter. Last time I heard this was at the summit of Alport Heights in Derbyshire where it briefly in during a tropo one day. Every other time I was at Alport Heights there was nothing on 95.0. Considering there was no real enhancement to South Wales at the time, i.e. Wenvoe was its usual fluttery self, I was amazed Ebbw Vale got through at all. It was stable for a few minutes and an ID appeared as soon as I had tuned on to the frequency. I had to check the web parallel to confirm as I thought my ears were deceiving me.

BNR Newsradio on 99.9 had me fooled as they were playing a pop song! A check with 95.4 (Gilze) confirmed it was indeed BNR Nieuwsradio. It wasn't long before they returned to their usual business talk format. Not that there are two other BNR Nieuwsradio transmitters on 99.9: Ugchelen, 3kW and Dedemsvaart, 1.1kW. Had this been Ugchelen, which I had initially presumed, I would have likely also been hearing Radio Gelderland on 103.5, which I wasn't. 99.9 was noise free too so I would have expected something. Instead there was just a very weak Essex which had no indication of any QRM at all. I therefore presume I heard the more powerful Wormer transmitter with 26.9kW.

Lots more of my regular Dutch transmitters were heard but I left them out this time in favour of reporting on the less common stuff.

Good DX!

John, Skegness, Lincolnshire (JO03dd) Approx. 1m ASL

Receivers:
Sony XDR-F1HD (tropospheric)
Kenwood KT6040 (sporadic E & meteor scatter)
Icom IC7000 (OIRT)
Conrad RDS Manager

Aerials:
Rooftop Triax FM5, 8m AGL
Yaesu G-5500 azimuthal/elevation rotator

Software:
RDS Spy v0.99