I just thought I'd drop by to quickly mention I was up by Scout moor wind farm in Lancashire about half hour ago and had the London pirate RAW Radio 87.5 for good few minutes with almost clear signal before it faded away again! I checked on their website and it was the same record playing.

Nice bit of Sporadic E about atm ;0)

Yeah it's that time of year, I remember having both Sub Zero (pre Raw) and Platinum interfering with each other up on a huge hill not far east of Manchester. It's very high around there and 87.5 is a good frequency to hear on massive hills for many miles and sometimes it's not just on a good day!

I've not seen much of Raw, maybe one time in the last couple of weeks it's popped up, but I've had Pulse come in a few times now. Mostly the E just brings in Algerian stations though.

It's doing well for 140w soon we will be back With the big 1200w booming

That's really good going I didn't expect to hear it this far! I've just been back up there again to see if I could hear it but no sign of now tonight. I'll keep my ears peeled!

It's always going to get further if it the only station in the county using 87.5?

Nope. It'll go to the horizon. When it gets there, the field strength - decided by the radiated power - will determine whether it can be heard over the noise. The guy picking up a London station in Yorkshire is enjoying the benefits of ionospheric reflection. Some of the energy will go upwards towards the ionosphere, and under the right conditions, the signal can be reflected many hundreds of miles. I used to be amazed when my Irish FM transmitter got reports from Russia!

Apart from ionospheric reflection, there is another phenomenon called "tropospheric ducting" where a region of the troposphere (the lowest part of the atmosphere) forms what amounts to a waveguide, and transports VHF signals (that normally only go to the horizon, remember) many thousands of miles. An Irish friend of mine and I made probably the first 144MHz contact across the Atlantic using just 40 Watts and a 10-element beam through a tropospheric duct. The two-way link lasted for almost an hour, and the received signal strength was astonishingly high.

A good measure of Sporadic "E" activity is to check the amateur repeaters that you can receive at your location. Up in Yorkshire, Stephen and I knew there was an opening coming when we could receive the Danbury repeater in Essex.

I have a computer connected to an SDR receiver board (a very experimental and temperamental set up at the moment) that monitors Bands II, III, IV and V for openings. There's little point in monitoring Band I during the summer, because it's always open. I used to be able to receive several London Band I links from Nottingham. It's no wonder those idiots used to get studio raids, running 10 or 20 Watts on Band I!

Now that's what you call RAW POWER!!

famefm wrote:It's always going to get further if it the only station in the county using 87.5?

I was checking because we've actually got a very strong one on 87.5 around here.

Raw has made it to Bristol this morning. Signal strength is weak but easy to identify.

Nice1 mate we r still on Lo power 140w from a high site

I might hear you more regularly when you've got 1200w on, but it still depends on DX conditions as much as power and height.

On the hills you may be more constant with the higher power, I'll have to check. UKs Finest / Sub Zero used to come in on the hills around Bristol.

picked up d & b tonight on 87.5 in barking essex slightly crackly but still listenable

UK wide bruv!

On the train out of London it was audible beyond Slough, but at geek levels not totally listenable. The train being a big metal tube cuts the signal levels down a bit of course, so I'd expect it to be decent with a good rooftop aerial in Slough, or even a yagi pointing to London in Reading.

I've had no sign of it here in Bristol this morning though, despite IHR and Pulse coming in a little bit.

I can get it a very good signal in most parts around here i had it to milton keynes lasts week all the way from watford clear nearly all way there .