Radio, DX-ing, Linux, Hacking & more…
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.
Autumn is well known as a perfect season for tropospheric ducting. First notable long-path ducting occurred this year on September 7, but it was just a short propagation. This time, good tropo conditions lasted much longer. Everything started in the evening on October 18 with strong tropo from Lithuania and Belarus. I also got some stations on OIRT band (66 – 74MHz) including Babrujsk (~650km, 73.01 stereo O=5-). Actually I don’t have any OIRT-dedicated antenna and my all receptions were made using Körner 19.3. Stations from Vilnius reached RDS & clear stereo signal (98.3, 102.6, 106.8). Although the distances were not so great, I have received some stations for the first time.