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Tuesday, 18 November 2014

Skegness Log: 18-11-14 (FM)

Band 2 Meteor Scatter:
 88.0 0049  D  SR 1 Europawelle, Göttelborner Höhe (saa) D3B1  629km
 88.7 0049  D  Bayern 2, Grünten (Allgäu) (bay) D312  942km
 89.0 0049  I  RAI Radio2, Monte Venda (RAI) (pd) 5202 __RAI___  1197km
 89.5 0049  D  Bayern 2, Wendelstein (bay) D312  1024km
 90.3 0049  G  BBC R3, Unsure which site OM, as 90.5 **
 90.7 0049  D  Bayern 1, Grünten (Allgäu) (bay) D311  942km **
 91.3 0049  D  SR 2 Kultur, Göttelborner Höhe (saa) D3B2  629km **
 92.2 0049  D  SWR3, Stuttgart/Hoher Bopser (bwü) ARD Popnacht, as SR1 88.0  789km
 87.5 0101 POL PR 1, Czestochowa/Wreczyca (SL) Presumed with Polish OM. 90.6 in with RDS  1291km
 88.1 0101  D  MDR 1 Radio Sachsen-Anhalt, Wittenberg/Gallunberg (san) D7D1 MDR_S-AN  839km **
 90.6 0101 POL PR 2, Czestochowa/Wreczyca (SL) 3222  1291km
 91.7 0101 POL PR 3, Czestochowa/Wreczyca (SL) 3233  1291km
 92.1 0103  G  BBC R3, Black Hill or Wenvoe Classical, as 91.9 **
 96.5 0121  D  Bayern 2, Brotjacklriegel (bay) D312  1021km
 92.2 0137 POL PR 1, Plock/Rachocin (MW) 3211  1289km **
 94.3 0137 POL RMF FM, Plock/Rachocin (MW) 3F44  1289km **
 96.1 0137 POL PR 3, Plock/Rachocin (MW)   1289km **
 96.6 0137 POL RMF FM, Walcz/Rusinowo (Pila) (ZP) YL, as 94.3  1060km
 95.3 0152 POL RMF FM, Opole or Olsztyn 3F44
 96.4 0153 POL PR 3, Poznan/Srem (WP) 3233  1127km
 98.1 0231 HRV HRT-HR 2, Celevac or Beli Manastir C202 **
 97.7 0241  D  YOU FM (hr), Rimberg (hes) D366  678km **
 97.9 0241 AUT Ö2 - Radio Niederösterreich, Wien 1/Kahlenberg (wie) A602  1247km **
100.9 0241  D  Hit Radio FFH, Heidelstein (Rhön) [bay] (hes) D368  729km **
 97.0 0243 AUT Ö1, Sankt Pölten/Jauerling (nie) A201  1181km **
 98.8 0243 AUT FM 4, Sankt Pölten/Jauerling (nie) A213  1181km **
100.2 0243 POL RMF FM, Bialystok/Krynice (PL) 3F44 and jingle ID  1506km
 97.7 0244  G  BBC R1, Unsure which site Drum and Treble, as 98.3
101.7 0539  D  Radio Salü, Saarbrücken/Schoksberg (saa) D3B8  628km **
103.7 0539  D  SR Unser Ding, Saarbrücken/Schoksberg (saa) D3B5  628km **
103.5 0549 SVK SRo 1 Rádio Slovensko, Zilina/Krísava (ZA) 5201 and vocal ID  1363km **
103.9 0549  D  MDR Figaro, Ronneburg (Gera) (thü) D3C3 _FIG____  854km **
106.0 0549 CZE Radio Impuls, Pardubice/Krásné (PA) 2203  1127km **
103.6 0553  F  France Bleu Provence, Marseille/Grande Etoile (13) F405  1149km
101.7 0606 AUT FM 4, Graz 1/Schöckl (ste) A213  1261km **
102.0 0606 HRV HRT Radio Osijek, Psunj (sb) C317  1500km
103.5 0606  D  Antenne Bayern, Brotjacklriegel (bay) D318  1021km **
105.3 0606  D  B5 aktuell, Kreuzberg (Rhön) (bay) D315  732km
105.0 0610  D  Radio 7, Iberger Kugel (bwü) D30B  922km
105.4 0610  I  Südtirol 1, Brenner=Brennero/Zirog Alm=Zirago (bz) 5F51  1052km **
106.5 0610 AUT Antenne Vorarlberg, Bregenz 1/Pfänder (vor) Jingle ID  917km
103.4 0615 POL Radio ZET, Czestochowa/Wreczyca (SL) Vocal ID in commercial  1291km **
104.2 0615 POL Radio Zet, Bialogard or Jelenia Góra Vocal ID in commercial
104.8 0615 CZE CRo Vltava, Ostrava/Hostálkovice (MO) 232D R-  1287km
105.4 0615 POL Radio ZET, Siedlce/Losice (MW) Vocal ID in commercial  1512km
103.6 0623 POL PR Radio Wroclaw, Luban/Nowa Karczma (DS) 3403  1035km **
103.5 0628 HRV HKR-Hrvatski Katolicki Radio, Zagreb/Sljeme (zg) C204  1381km **
104.1 0639 CZE Frekvence 1, Plzen/Krasov (PL) 2205  947km
105.5 0639 CZE Evropa 2, Votice/Mezivrata (ST) Presumed Votice as 103.2 affected and nothing from
               Brno  1069km

 89.9 0817 AUT Ö2 - Radio Wien, Wien 1/Kahlenberg (wie) AC0C  1247km
 91.1 0817 CZE CRo Radiozurnál, Ceské Budejovice/Klet - CRa (JC) 232F R-ZURNAL  1084km
 89.5 0833  I  RAI Radio1, Multi-tx 5201
 89.1 0835 CZE CRo Radiozurnál, Plzen/Krasov (PL) 232F  947km
 88.4 0840  D  MDR Figaro, Leipzig Wiederau (sac) D3C3  843km
 90.4 0844 AUT Hitradio Ö3, Klagenfurt 1/Dobratsch-Villacher Alpe (kae) A203  1199km
 91.1 0908 NOR NRK Petre, Probably Bokn or Jetta F203 and pops **
104.1 1615 POL Radio ZET, Kraków/Choragwica (MP) Vocal ID in commercial  1406km

** Personal Skegness 'First'

I did not expect this! Today I present my biggest meteor logbook ever!

Here is a video of the reception of the 1.5 kW Brener transmitter of Sudtirol Eins on 105.4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLse_Ti_BZk

The RDS performance of the Elad FDM-S2 continues to impress and astound! I wouldn't say the majority of these meteor bursts weren't particularly strong either. The beauty of having 6 MHz IF bandwidth in the S2 receiver is that a single meteor burst is capable of affecting all the frequencies in the range. Although this doesn't happen with every single burst, it is quite often noted. Occasionally only a few frequencies might be affected, or just one. Well done the Elad SW2 software!

Good DX!

John Faulkner
Skegness, Lincolnshire (JO03dd) <3m ASL.
Blog: http://skegnessdx.blogspot.co.uk
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/g1vvp
Vimeo Channel: https://vimeo.com/skegnessdx

Receivers:
Elad FDM-S2, Sony XDR-F1HD with Konrad i2c modification.

Aerial:
Körner 9.2 @ 5.5 metres agl. QTH is 3 metres asl.

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

2 comments:

  1. Hi john I see your enjoying the Elad it is a remarkable little receiver ....the software needs a few tweaks especially for MW dxing. When I was using the elad this summer foe SpE with my homemade FM loop I was very impressed with its performance ...John the built in rds decoder works very well....but I found that if you use RDS Spy with it PI codes can lock quicker and at a narrow BW might be useful for Meteor reception and in some instances full RDS locked quicker than the built in decoder....the beauty of it is you can use both at once and compare....this is good for Live dxing or recordings...Cheers Mark ScottishDxer

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello Mark. Yes, this is a very nice receiver and I have been very impressed with its performance on band 2, but it needed a pre-amp to perform to its fullest capabilities. That's not a problem for this level of performance. The front end also seems to be virtually bomb proof. I used to have a few images of Belmont in the OIRT range when I beamed at Belmont, using my Sony XDR-F1HD and this was without a pre-amp inline. The S2 doesn't have these images when I beam at Belmont, not even with the pre-amp inline!

    The audio on FM band 2 is very good indeed. That was one of my initial observations. Whether you'd class it as audiophile would be debatable, but it's very clean sounding and has a good depth of stereo.

    It's early days with medium wave but it seems to work well enough. The audio quality is not great on medium wave and that's not a great problem when you consider the lack of hi-fi there anyway. While the signals seem adequate, I felt that a pre-amp of some sort would help down there too.

    As for using RDS Spy, I have already tried to get this working via VAC and failed. A radio friend also tried to get this working, connecting to my computer via TeamViewer over the internet, but also failed. I have a feeling that my non-standard soundcard may have something to do with this as this has been a problem in the past when used with VAC, though I don't know why. The same basic rules apply and everything was set correctly. I will look at this again very soon.

    RDS decoding on the S2's own software is excellent! I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually better than RDS Spy, but I have yet to compare. It's a very good match even if not. SDR Console is also another excellent programme which decodes the RDS quicker in some respects. I will write more about this along the way, but both SDR Console and the S2's own software are essential in my view and each have their own big advantages.

    I have seen the S2 software being described as 'clunky', which I would tend to agree with, but a lot of problems experienced are solely down to computer issues as you need a capable computer to run the S2 as you will know.

    Anyway, that's a bit of waffle about my initial experiences with the S2. It's a lot of radio for the money and should be quite a force in the DX world, especially when it comes to band 2 DXing. I have written more about my first impressions here: http://skywavesdx.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=365

    Cheers Mark!

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