Skegness Log: 07-02-14 (FM)

Band 2 Meteor Scatter:
105.2 0119  D  Radio Arabella, München-Ismaning (bay) Donna Lewis song, as web  970km **
105.2 0334  D  Radio Arabella, München-Ismaning (bay) Paul McCartney and Michael
               Jackson song, as web  970km
105.2 0422  D  Radio Arabella, München-Ismaning (bay) Rolling Stones Satisfaction,
               as web. Two successive bursts  970km
105.2 0530  D  big fm (Baden-Württemberg), Langenbrand (bwü) Ellie Goulding song,
               as web  755km **
105.2 0616  D  big fm (Baden-Württemberg), Langenbrand (bwü) Part of Big FM jingle
               heard  755km
105.2 0636  D  big fm (Baden-Württemberg), Langenbrand (bwü) Different Ellie
               Goulding song, as web. Four second burst  755km
105.2 0730  D  Hitradio RTL Sachsen, Dresden-Wachwitz (sac) OM talking over music,
               as web  951km **
105.2 0743  D  big fm (Baden-Württemberg), Langenbrand (bwü) Black Eyed Sprouts
               song, as web. Four second burst  755km
105.2 0807  D  Hitradio RTL Sachsen, Dresden-Wachwitz (sac) Swedish Bungalow
               Mafia, as web  951km
 93.8 1213  D  SWR2, Waldenbyrg or Saarburg William Tell Overture, as web   **
105.3 1240 HNG MR 3 Bartok Radio, Budapest - Széchenyi-hegy (Bud) Distinctive classical
               music, as web  1461km **
105.5 2133  F  France Info, Bayonne/la Rhune (64) French OM on phone, as web  1104km **
105.5 2146  F  France Info, Bayonne/la Rhune (64) French YL, as web  1104km

** Personal Skegness 'First'

I discovered a great little tool this morning (for people who can't handle basic arithmetic like me) by the name of Time Calculator.

After realising I had made a couple of errors with my time calculations I searched for something which did it for me - accurately! This is the problem I have found. When I begin my overnight recordings in WaveLab, I name the file according to the date and the start time of that particular recording. All meteor bursts are clearly visible along the timeline, which has hours and minutes marked along it. You can in fact change the start time in WaveLab to something meaningful, thus producing the actual correct time along the timeline, but this has never worked for me. So "00:00" might correspond to a correct time of 01:45" and therefore "02:15" will correspond to "04:00", as examples. The problem is, as I quickly discovered this morning, that my calculations were going wrong and I was out by an hour, etc. If I had two brains cells I might be better at this (or dangerous, as they say), but this little web calculator does the calculations for you. You enter the actual start time of the recording and then you enter the hours and minutes given on the timeline which correspond to a meteor burst. I think I will be using this regularly now.

Two days to the house move! The 9.2 antenna should be coming down today providing the weather stays calm. I might be out of action for a short while, but I will try to do what I did when we moved here and put up an FM3 on day one and try a quick bandscan, time permitting (Jane insists!)

Good DX!

John Faulkner, Skegness, Lincolnshire (JO03dd) <2m ASL.
Blog: http://skegnessdx.blogspot.co.uk

Receivers:
Sony XDR-F1HD with Konrad i2c modification & XDR-GTK software.

Aerial:
Triax FM5, one metre AGL
Rooftop Körner 9.2, 8m AGL & Yaesu G-5500 azimuthal/elevation rotator (temporarily out of action due to local noise issue)