Rare Low Power Meteor Scatter DX - 103.0 Ö3, 40 Watts Or Less!

This January, my eyes have been opened to DX I wouldn't have believed was possible on the FM broadcast band. Low power 'community strength' transmitters, propagating via meteor scatter. We know that many high power transmitters can propagate well and are often strong enough to produce RDS data on our radio's displays, but how low in power will propagate? Of course that depends on many factors relating to the meteor itself. Meteor scatter is relatively simple via digital modes on the ham bands using low power, but I never expected this ...

On January 9th at 07:15, I was alerted to the fact that I had received a low powered transmission from Austria. This was in response to a video I had uploaded to my YouTube page. I thanked Peter, "pe1etr", for identifying this but regretted to tell him that I was unable to hear the ID he could hear. Then I received a message from Philp, W4WDX in the USA. He is an Austrian DXer but lives in the US now. He had heard my recording and reported that there was definitely an Ö3 identification in the recording. He stated that he was very familiar with the Ö3 network and there was no mistaking this identification. I still couldn't hear it.

Here lay a problem. I didn't want to dispute what Peter and Philip were saying, but I just wished I could hear this identification myself. When we listen to weak signals it is always the case that some people hear things better than others. I needed to be 100% sure of this ID, not for the sake of agreeing with Peter and Philip, but to be able to state, without doubt, that this DX claim was accurate and could be proven to other DXers who might also be sceptical.

So I took the additional step of getting in touch with three other DXers, two of whom spoke German, in order to further confirm this reception. Jurgen could hear part of the ID but couldn't be sure. Günter was clear on the "3" part of the ID and, being Austrian himself, could also confirm an Austrian pronunciation. He commented that the sound and the voice accentuation was part of a jingle or "claim" ID, perhaps the last part of "Hitradio Ö3" and not part of a plain studio moderation ID. It was not the number three as pronounced in a discussion or talk either. Furthermore, he commented that, as a possible alternative to Ö3, the powerful Grünten SWR3 tx on 103.0 would have been a strong contender, but the "3" did not sound how they would pronounce it. I must also thank Andrew Webster for listening. He too was also clear on the identification, short of being able to confirm the Austrian pronunciation. Suddenly, I could hear the jingle ID myself. I had mistakenly been listening to the German male speech prior to this and didn't spot the brief female vocal jingle drop-in. At last, I could hear it!

Only one more thing to do, to follow Günter's suggestion of recording Ö3 overnight at the same time to get a good idea of their jingle identification and hopefully catch the very jingle itself. So, after listening through six hours of Ö3's overnight programming, I have isolated several Ö3 jingle identifications. Although I did not hear what I could be sure was the actual Ö3 jingle in question, I heard several others which used the same female voice and with the same type of audio effects processing.

Here is a recording of seven identifications. The first six were obtained from the Ö3 web stream. The seventh is my off-air meteor scatter ID. I repeat this twice. Then you hear more of the actual meteor burst itself.

If I were completely honest, I would still be slightly sceptical were it not for Philip's first-hand knowledge of the language and the station identification, plus Günter's detailed analysis, which seem to confirm that this catch is 100% definite. I might personally put that down to 99% as we are looking at the briefest of signal fade-ins which is chopped a little at either end, but please decide for yourself. If you wish to post your views below, whether you agree or disagree, then please do so. All opinions are equally valid.

Finally, here is a link to the actual YouTube video, with all the meteor scatter and troposcatter signals. You will hear the Ö3 ID at 2 minutes and 14 seconds into the recording.

Note: YouTube appears to have blocked access to this video from certain countries due to copyright infringement. Please let me know if you are having difficulties seeing/hearing this.