jvok wrote: ↑Mon Mar 24, 2025 10:33 pm 100w from 450m up in the pennines. Got heard 60 miles away in north wales

There are *ahem* ways of getting mains power up in the hills

Indeed. There are a couple of very big hills not far from Queensbury...... If you know what I mean!

We ran 220W into a ⅝ over ⅝ colinear up near Mountain, and got the signal into Luton! I was sure that it was a "lift", but subsequent broadcasts went similar distances. The signal strength nearby was incredibly high, but got weak as you went down the hill - the radiation was going over us.

Soon enough, the frequencies we'd used got allocated to commercial stations by OFCOM. It became increasingly difficult to find a "hole" in the band to use. I always liked to be at least 300kHz away from another station, but that's no longer possible. Spoilsports!

Yeah it is a shame how congested the fm band became, it didn't seem to work either lot of local radio stations were doing the samething bbc local radio or bigger commercial stations were doing, they all went pop by the end of it, left with the same station playing through multiple frequencies.

Must be good up there, handy to know a house owner for a weekend go. Or you could stick a fiber glass pole up 10m with a wire gpa on calm wind days. Just a few Watts off a small battery powered thing, mp3 on loop. I guess there are a lot of fields though not so densely populated. Ned hill road or that road with the big south view rugby field up to 370M on that place called mountain.

If you lived there you could have a cheeky mast that went up and down at 8-10pm on a Friday evening running a nice PLL box even 15 Watts would be amazing. That would make it worth coming on, give the locals what music you like every Friday evening. Or more sensibly random to be safe, whenever you fancy, not too frequently.

Go for a drive in the motor or a walk to see where it gets to, standard. Combined Harvester FM 97.0