Graveyard DXing

St Helen's Church, West Keal, Lincolnshire

Ah, of course! You're thinking I am talking about DXing 'the graveyard channels' on medium wave. Right? Wrong!

OK then, it's got to be something to do with a 'graveyard shift' perhaps? Nope!

So what have I been up to involving graveyards? Well, of course you can rule out actual DXing inside a graveyard, yes? WRONG! I am officially laying claim to being the first DXer who has put up a band 2 beam in a graveyard! It's true. The question is .... am I really the first?

It took me several attempts to pluck up the courage to do this, but I eventually I just had to try it. Why? Because one of my nearest DX hilltops happens to have a church on it. Churches are open to the public? OK, the vicar might have been curious, maybe even dismayed had he seen me putting up a Triax FM3 in his grounds, which is exactly what I did.

All this happened under the cover of darkness, which wasn't actually planned. I was late getting to the church and the last dregs of daylight had almost disappeared. I had planned to arrive sooner, but other things took precedence. I didn't stick around for long though. it was just too dark and I couldn't even see the antenna after a while. The wildlife around the church grounds was indeed quite creepy and various creatures were squawking and fluttering in the trees around me. Surprisingly, this did not deter me. I have been to this location many times before and have sometimes heard an absolute racket from the wildlife in the nearby wooded areas.

The location, St Helen's Church in West Keal. This has to be one of the best VHF DX locations around here. It sits part way down a hillside at the southern end of this ridge of the Lincolnshire Wolds. Reception of France is simply stunning, with virtually the whole of the northern half of France coming through on band 2 - main transmitters of course, but there are also plenty of vertical, low power stations too from the northern tip of France and beyond which come through. I could imagine very regular reception of the Paris area up there but I need to clean up my power supply situation in order to dig deep for those very weak signals. This has been a long-standing problem and one which has been getting worse. The current mains inverter throws out too much noise across band 2, even with the antenna being 20 metres away from it, so I really need to find a quieter one and probably even stick a choke inline, should any of the noise be travelling down the outside of the coax feed from the antenna. Reception to the west, north and east, is blocked by the hills here, plus the church itself, so this definitely is the place to be should Spanish tropo spring up.

This is one of the most stunning church locations around here with superb views across the Fens to the south. It's definitely worth a visit if you are in the area.