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Thursday 26 June 2014

Skegness Log: 26-06-14 (FM)

Band 2 Sporadic E:
 87.6 1406 ALG Radio Laghouat, Aflou (3) Presumed as not Chaine 3!  2120km
 87.8 1420  I  Radio Kiss Kiss, Vibo Valentia (vv) 5225 KISSKISS  2011km
 88.0 1428  I  Radio Rama, Gairo/Punta Tricoli (og) 50BB   1633km **
 87.6 1507 GRC Laikos 87.6, Thessaloniki/Hortiatis (cmc-tsk) Vocal ID  2208km
 88.0 1512 MNE Radio Crne Gore 1, Niksic/Tovic-Sudina Glava (NK) 63C1  1795km
 66.0 1928 UKR UR 1 Persha Prog., Krasnohorivka/PFKRRT, vul. Gogolya, 15 (PO) OM talk, as web  2327km


** Personal Skegness 'First'

Without a doubt, today was the most frustrating day of Es for me this season. After spending all day watching the Es cloud over eastern Europe, and expecting nothing to come of it, Es did eventually start, with typically weak and fleeting bottom-of-the-band reception of Italy (lasting a few seconds), Algeria (lasting a few seconds), Greece (lasting a few seconds) and Montenegro (lasting a few seconds).

An hour into this never-quite-got-started opening something more interesting happened. 88.0 had Es with a male speaker in a language I can only describe as sounding like a cross between Greek, Dutch, German and Italian. After a few seconds of speech they played an old Sex Pistols song. It faded as quickly as it appeared. I wasn't recording at the time as I initially assumed this was Holland. The signal lasted only fifteen seconds or so. No other Es were coming in at the time.

A few minutes later I had a station on 90.2 playing what vaguely sounded like Indian music, with a flute as the lead instrument. I managed to record the tail end of this. It too was fleeting and weak, but at least I was now recording. Then nothing for a few more minutes.

Suddenly 89.4 sprung to life with a male speaker in a language I couldn't place at all. It sounded nothing like any European language I had heard. Good job I had been streaming this via TeamViewer or nobody else would have heard it because I hadn't realised that I had the pause button active in Bandicam, so this one got away too and none of the above quite reached RDS level.

The reception might be nothing spectacular, but I am still inclined to think it may have been double hop as the 6m map was covered in it with lots of paths running from the middle east into the southern half of England. There was more double hop than single hop being reported at that time.

:O(

Good DX!

John Faulkner, Skegness, Lincolnshire (JO03dd) <3m ASL.
Blog: http://skegnessdx.blogspot.co.uk
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOrAbHyPpIflDXo62HWyOiA
Vimeo Channel: https://vimeo.com/skegnessdx

Receivers:
Sony XDR-F1HD with Konrad i2c modification

Aerial:
Körner 9.2, 5.5 metres above the ground. QTH is 3 metres above sea level

Rotator:
Yaesu G-5500 azimuth & elevation rotator, allowing antenna to be vertical or horizontal, etc.

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