Didn't think there was much chance of hearing it so listened on the online recievers instead, heard alot stuff, like a pirate on 86.3 , I think another receiver may of been tuned to a pirate the rds was scrolling, with polka music, 101.4 or 5 or something, heard a station on 108 on it too.

Does anyone know the song that gose dance dance to the reggae beat it got stuck in my head, I think it may of been a legal station, I do like alot of music that is out there but alot of it everyone is so serious, this was fun.

There was a guy directing his signal towards the uk last week on 87, apparently all the signals below 87.5 are horizontal, even if you do have something with an aerial socket that can recieve down there likely your aerial is in vertical mode too. I think they maybe out of luck anyway it was favoring ireland, I think afew people did point their yagi's over that way

How much power would he have had to be using to reach Ireland?

I think I only have one radio that goes below 87.5, a Sony SW-100E.

Some of the new chip tuners go down to 76mhz if you set them to the Japan/Brazil bands

Interesting post Northeast. marqueemoon the power required would be a function of a few factors. Firstly the usual, the antenna height and gain, the watts in RF energy and the mode of propagation. Either E layer or enhancement by tropospheric ducting, warm air layers, persisting fog is a decent sign that extended long distances at upper HF and VHF may be possible. And of course height and gain and directionality of receiving antenna. I would say anywhere between 200W and 1,000's of watts could do it, the big factor is the propogation which is immensely unpredictable for both E and ducting. Warm spells and high moisture levels in the atmosphere tend to give an indication.

Especially fog that lasts beyond 9AM onwards.

I reported on here having Denmark coming in all day in mid winter Christmas eve, Boxing day or something. That was probably E layer as it has a smaller second peak in late December as well as the June. Seems to be effected by summer and winter solstices for some reason.

Hot humid evenings tend to help with distances.

Propagation is a trul amazing thing. Very interesting. Tecsun Chinese radios that are very good receivers can tune below 87.5 as jvok suggests, you just switch a mode a few button presses.

You did well to hear those long distance signals northeast,

jvok wrote: ↑Mon Oct 20, 2025 9:45 pm Some of the new chip tuners go down to 76mhz if you set them to the Japan/Brazil bands

The ubiquitous TEF radios go down to 65MHz. I've seen the bandscan from one, but never heard any stations down there. If that part of the range works as well as Band II does however, it's definitely an option.

Interesting. Sounds like the TEF could be a cheap option for a band 1 link rx too

Kind of - the lower part of the range does overlap with the top of "traditional" Band I. It's certainly cheap, too - my headless TEF lash-up using parts from aliexpress and a JLC PCB cost way under £20 and performs well. For a link RX, you could program the chip simple enough with a low-end PIC and get the RSSI back out to drive your rig remote control. As far as I can tell though, you can't get baseband out (why would you when the chip has built in stereo and RDS decoders) so you'd have to re-code these at the rig end, unless you want basic mono.

Interesting thread!

FMEnjoyer wrote: ↑Tue Oct 21, 2025 8:48 am Tecsun Chinese radios that are very good receivers can tune below 87.5 as jvok suggests, you just switch a mode a few button presses.

I've got a Tecsun set, can't remember the model number but it's the cheapest one they do with SSB (about £35 from AliExpress). Will check it out...

jvok wrote: ↑Tue Oct 21, 2025 1:29 pm Interesting. Sounds like the TEF could be a cheap option for a band 1 link rx too

If you do, remember to get a notch filter for the receiver of the FM transmtter's frequency.

These receivers get 'deafened' on ALL VHF frequencies by just one (or worse still more) very strong frequency

shuffy wrote: ↑Tue Oct 21, 2025 4:31 pm Kind of - the lower part of the range does overlap with the top of "traditional" Band I. It's certainly cheap, too - my headless TEF lash-up using parts from aliexpress and a JLC PCB cost way under £20 and performs well. For a link RX, you could program the chip simple enough with a low-end PIC and get the RSSI back out to drive your rig remote control. As far as I can tell though, you can't get baseband out (why would you when the chip has built in stereo and RDS decoders) so you'd have to re-code these at the rig end, unless you want basic mono.

Looks like you can get MPX out with a special register setting. See section 3.27 here https://raw.githubusercontent.com/makse ... EF6686.pdf

Given how empty band 1 is nowadays I don't think it's such a big deal being limited to only part of the band. Although my real interest with these chips is using them with a simple downconverter to make a band 4/5 link.

I take the point about needing a band-stop though. I've definitely noticed overloading problems with chip based radios before (admittedly I've never tried the TEF6686)

Apologies - I should have read the datasheet. They're talking about DARC so the spec should be up to the job including RDS. As for the close-field performance, I've only got a 1W TX to hand right now and it's OK in close proximity but with power, as 87to108 says I'd expect the issues you get with all single chip RXs that are this wide. It's a great chip though and well worth having a play around. With the canned modules it's not that easy to get at everything and apparently the front end matching can be improved (it's fine for my purposes) but on the module I've used it looks like there's just a single blocking cap (don't know the value) between the chip DAC outputs and the module pin. For a play around at least, well worth £8 on aliexpress. Plenty of hackable arduino code out there too

If you have a tef86 you long press mode, then go down to fm settings, set lower band edge and you can put in what you like, so you could set it to 85mhz. Theres an si radio a tiny thing that tunes down there by default, with a socket on it, think the sensitivity is as good as the tef but selectitvity not as good, (below fm it wouldn’t matter so much) seem to of left out any audio amplfier, I think your better off with a nice tef one, its got a speaker you can hear and a volume control on the headphones jack, so you can jack with that.

marqueemoon wrote: ↑Mon Oct 20, 2025 3:41 pm How much power would he have had to be using to reach Ireland?

I think I only have one radio that goes below 87.5, a Sony SW-100E.

I think fmenjoyer has done a good job of answering, there was klub fm cork that was heard in finland by eskip on 87.5 and germany too, think that was in the kw range, tropo range of it suspect was the wirral. There were london pirates that were heard in finland under eskip too, power less that the cork station. I suppose the trouble with lower power, some people have said it could work, within the fm band 87.5 to 108 there are so many more powerful transmitters, would have reach the layers of the atmosphere to make it happen. I'm sure i've heard transmitters outside the eu on 87.5 and 108, I suppose something on 87 has more of a chance to make it else were.

I once had an rsl from reading it was weak, (25w) 87.7 there for only a short period during intense tropo, if the power had been alot higher (1,000's of watts) would of likely come in full quieting…likely require less intense fluke event to hear something coming through. Someone on fm watchdogs had a taxi rank below fm, they use nb modulation suppose is different makes the signal go further, suppose theres less frequencies involved than wideband fm, so maybe less to interfere with.

The same guy also has a recording of Point Blank on 90.2 from Poland

wish we had this here, when it goes silent, wait for the guy to start talking, back to the music


this more resent heard over in germany, which is just abit further than my front garden