Changelog:
Less than a month has passed since previous propagation from Finland and here it is again. I noticed a weak signal from Lapua on 4th October evening. Well… it was an awesome tropo start, first station and distance almost 1200km! Tropospheric ducting has strengthened during night and I got a good signal from Pihtipudas and Jyväskylä in the morning. Unfortunately no RDS was received this time due to adjacent and co-channel interferences.
7th September seems to be again a lucky day for the tropospheric propagation, just like exactly a year ago. This time stations were coming from Finland, Estonia and Sweden. Tropo peaked around 8 UTC and I beat my personal RDS-quality record – three stations from Anjalankoski reached fair stereo+RDS signal at distance 1005km, with levels up to about 20dBf. Enhanced tropospheric conditions lasted from 4th to 9th September, but the strongest and the farthest ducting took place on 7th September.
Nareszcie po ponad 7 miesiącach przerwy pojawił się troposferyczny dukt z prawdziwego zdarzenia, nie licząc słabych sygnałów z dalszej Danii w lutym. Jeżeli chodzi o odległości to tym razem jednak bez zbyt imponujących wyników, ale siła propagacji – wysoka. Mocno podwyższone warunki zauważyłem po włączeniu radia wieczorem około 22. Zresztą to nie była jedyna atrakcja tego dnia, ponieważ wcześniej nad Czechami i Słowacją rozszalała się jonosfera i MUF osiągnął grubo ponad 144MHz. Odebrałem dzięki temu wiele bałkańskich stacji, w tym także premierowy sygnał z Bośni!
Yesterday I noticed a very weak station on 91.2 and after a while I realised it is a Swedish voice. However the antenna direction was wrong, it was heading Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Well… everything was clear – finally first reception via auroral propagation for me! The best signal strength was around 16 UTC with an antenna aimed at 0-30° azimuth.
I have recently bought a portable radio receiver called Dual DAB 4. It supports DAB (MP2), DAB+ (AAC) and the analog FM. It is equipped with a monophonic speaker and a telescopic antenna (although it is too short for the FM reception). Frontier Silicon Verona FS2052 tuner module contains Apollo 2 RF front-end IC and Kino 3 DSP. It is possible to use an included external 7.5V switching power supply or 6x AA batteries.
Once you listen to any Czech FM broadcast channel, you can always recognize their modulation. Why? Czech Republic performs the loudest audio processing in this part of Europe. However, each FM broadcast in this country must comply the ITU-R BS.412-9 recommendation till the end of this year, including both public and commercial programs. What does it mean? The average deviation will be greatly decreased.
