It's not quite that straightforward regarding the polarisations of some transmissions in Europe these days. Those which were horizontal tend to have become mixed. Not all local stations are vertical either. Generally speaking you can expect the higher powered regionals to be received better with a horizontal aerial. Some of them are mixed though, which means that you should still get plenty of signal if you are vertical.

The mixed transmitters in Belgium and Holland tend to give me slightly more signal when I'm horizontal.

Again, generally speaking, local continental stations tend to be vertical, but there are a few exceptions. Best thing is to check the polarisation in FM List.

As for slant polarisation, I have been disappointed with this. I don't know the facts about losses compared with horizontal and vertical when using slant (I have heard the 3dB figure too), but I tried this myself and even moving 30 degrees away from H or V produced sufficient loss of signal to make me want to avoid slant, full stop. A poor compromise, sadly, as I expected slant could have been really useful. Hopefully others might have had more luck with this - please let us know your findings if you have used slant to good effect.

I have an rotatable FM 3 horizontal on the roof and a horizontal dipole and vertical dipole just under gutter height and the most signals have been received via the vertical dipole.

Generally I have found the national stations tend to be received better on horizontal.

As Dave said earlier I have received different stations on the same frequency many times.

I am going to mount the horizontal dipole vertical so I have 2 verticals feeding different tuners and I will put a vertical dipole on the roof as well for tropo and Ireland.

This morning I was receiving Classic fm from Wrotham which was just rdsing on the denon on the vertical dipole and the sony which I have modded for rdsspy was not registering anything on it's display but rdsspy on the pc was.
Every time the denons rds indicators lit rdsspy started registering although there was considerable splatter from Classic from sutton on 101.1.

I am now waiting for some SPE to test it but I think I have possibly missed the boat on that one.

Andy

Can anybody receive a station under flat conditions at 87.5 ? I've just swung my horizontal dipole south west and am picking up a faint station. Unfortunally the noise is too much to identify a language but on checking FM list I noticed only Belguim use this frequency on vertical at low power.

It could be a pirate in Essex or London; several use this frequency.

Can you tell what sort of music it's playing?

It's sort of middle of the road. I know they played Shania Twain. I only get it on horizontal beaming south. Incidently I was checking fm list and notice that there is a polarisation denoted as S, do you know what this means? Thanks .

Hmm. That's a bit of a mystery. Doesn't sound like your usual pirate. It could be someone's FM sender device; I have had one here on 87.5 playing SE Asian pop & rock.

S means slant polarisation as far as I know.

Spain on now.

Message for RadioRedcat, now is a good time to use RDS Spy for the Spanish E skip. Make sure the Super PI feature is enabled, since this will get those PI Codes even at low signal, very useful when full RDS cannot be received.

Thanks for the info and yes SER did ID on rdsspy but not on the sony but I noticed that it stops recording after a PI change so I have now unchecked (stop recording on PI change) in the options and I had already enabled super PI feature and I can say rdsspy is super.

Now I will have a look to see how long I have this new rsl from Ashton under lyme to put up with.

Edit just looked.

Hitmix
87.7 FM - Stoke on Trent
Community trial broadcast
On air from: 04/08/12 to 31/08/12

So at the moment I have Hitmix on vertical and Fast fm on horizontal.

Andy

Good to hear that RDS Spy is working well for you. Yes RSLs do have a habit of broadcasting when there is good tropo or during the E skip season, very annoying. So far I have been lucky in my area where only two stations have come on air so far only for a few days. At least we are not in areas like London where pirate stations are all over the band & make it impossible to get anything long distance since the airwaves are jam packed full of them.

It didn't last long - and unfortunately the frequencies that were active have multiple transmitters - so id'ing the stations was problematical.

11:59 89.80 E E2CA COPE
12:13 87.90 E E215 RNE-5 children/adult male counting numbers
12:18 88.80 E same programme as on 87.90
12:21 90.20 Spanish language
12:24 87.80 French language
12.27 87.60 French language on South facing aerial only
12:29 91.00 French language on South facing aerial only - weak - seemed more like tropo.

Still it gave a bit of excitement

David

Sittingbourne

Thanks I am going to look at the denon tuner to see if it's possible to do the same with that so I will have a look at the chips in it.

I am going to install rdsspy on my CCTV pc as that runs 24/7 so I don't have to run another pc.

If anyone wants a tuner for dxing in it's virgin state then don't buy a Sony st-se520 unless you want to run rdsspy with as it is really wide open more than the Denon was before I changed the filters.

Andy

There is a bit of a lift at the moment - with deep fading - but I'm getting signals strong enough to give pi code id on stations beyond 300 km. eg. 98.2 NED R4 from Loon op Zand (300km) and 99.9 BEL VRT! from Genk (334km).

For info here is a table taken from FM list of the polarisations for Belgium - some of the main stations. For myself I've found that I get better reception on vertical for most of the ones marked m - mixed.

David

Sittingbourne

MHz Programme City/Town pol
88.3 VRT NMN (1kw) Brussels s
88.5 BRF1 Liege m
89.5 VRT Klara St Pieters-Leeuw v
89.9 VRT Klara Genk v
90.4 VRT Klara Egem v
90.5 RTBF Vivacite Liege m
90.8 RTBF Classic 21 Profondeville m
91.2 RTBF Musiq'3 Bruxelles c
91.7 VRT Radio Een St Pieters-Leeuw v
92.3 RTBF Vivacite Anderlues m
92.5 RTFB La Premiere Bruxelles c
92.8 RTBF Musiq'3 Profondeville m
93.2 RTBF Classic Brussels c
93.6 Klub FM Egem v
93.7 VRT Radio 2 St Pieters-Leeuw v
95.6 RTBF Classic 21 Liege m
95.7 VRT Radio Een Egem v
96.1 RTBF La Premiere Wavre, Brussels m
96.6 RTBF Pure FM Anderlues m
97.9 VRT Radio 2 Genk v
98.3 RTBF Vivacite Profondeville m
98.6 Radio Twee Egem v
99.1 RTBF Classic 21 Anderlues m
99.3 RTBF Classic 21 Bruxelles c
99.9 VRT Radio 1 Genk v
100.1 Radio Twee Egem v
100.6 VRT Studio Brussels St Pieters-Leeuw v
101.1 RTBF Pure FM Wavre, Brussels m
101.4 VRT Studio Brussels Genk v
101.5 VRT NMN Egem v
102.1 Studio Brussels Egem v
102.7 RTBF La Premier Profondeville m
103.0 Q Music Egem v
103.1 Q Music St Pieters-Leeuw v
103.4 Joe FM Genk v
103.6 RTBF Musique 3 Liege m
104.1 Joe FM Egem v
104.7 NRJ Namur (5kw) v
104.8 Radio Extra Gold Koksijde v
104.8 RTBF Classic 21 AnderLues m

Interesting Dave. FMLIST the Bruxelles/Tour des Finances tx as 'c' which means circular polarisation I think.

A couple of corrections to frequencies:

RTBF Musiq' 3 is on 99.5 from Liège, not 103.6. The latter is used for RTL.

104.8 from Anderlues is NRJ, not Classic 21.

Can you hear Classic 21 on 87.6 from Léglise?

This list also reminds me: I believe I heard Club FM from Egem on the car radio yesterday afternoon. I parked up on a lay-by on the Andover-Whitchurch road which has a good take-off to the east. On 93.6 I had a station playing dance/pop music e.g. Junior Jack 'My Feeling', Ce Ce Peniston 'Finally', and Simple Minds 'Don't You Forget About Me'. The language was Dutch, and there was a jingle at one point but it was too weak to hear properly. The station was slowly fading in & out and did peak up reasonably clearly a few times, but not when any IDs were forthcoming. Club FM would seem like a good bet though as the main Egem frequencies of 95.7 and 98.6 were in.

Hi Nick,

Sorry for the typos - I've made up a crib sheet in Excel. For Class 21 on 104.8 - it should be Tournai on 104.6 - I'm only including the higher power startions on my crib sheet.

I'm not receiving Leglise - all except 94.1 have local stations on adjacent frequencies. I tried all of them and instead of Leglise on 94.1 I got WDR2 from Munster weakly fading in/out with Talconeston R4.

David

In the absence of RDS info, the fun thing about identifying Netherlands versus Flanders stations is listening to the presenters' accent to place it in the one country or the other.

There's a distinctive difference easily heard in the "g" sound of words like "geweldig". Hard at the back of the throat in central and north Holland; soft like "sh" in Belgium.

The French of Wallonia isn't as easy to distinguish from standard French but sooner or later there will be a number with "seventy" or "eighty" in it - "septante" and "nonante" in Belgium.

Thanks Dave.

Very good scatter from Langenberg at present: 95.1 is peaking up fully-quieting. It's interesting comparing it with the reception at Middlelharnis on the Global Tuners node.

Yes, I find this helps to identify which country I'm hearing as well - a Flanders accent is generally softer than a Netherlands one.

Just had two torrential downpours in the last hour - but scatter is still good. I've had 104.4 MHz in the background for the last 30 minutes or more and it's alternating between NED R1 Goes at 217km and 100%NL from Hilversum at 319 km. Both identified from their webstream.

Does anyone own a copy of the RSGB handbook or the ARRL VHF/UHF manual. I'd be interested in seeing the page that shows the path loss vs distance - as I clearly remember that it showed that path loss flattened out and stayed virtually constant for quite a distance before climbing again. All due the scattering effect. Trouble is I foolishly dumped the books about 10 years ago.

David

You might find a copy in your main library.

I have this morning turned my horizontal dipole vertical so I now 2 vertical dipoles feeding the Sony and Denon receivers and the horizontal fm 3 feeding the I kasu car radio.

Real radio Wales on 88.0 has a problem at the tx as the audio is garbled since 6pm yesterday when I noticed it the Llandonna tx is ok.

Andy

On 88.9 with RDS of "Index". No build up yet, gone quiet again. Keeping the radio on in case of a return.

Edit. Now Italy on 89.5.

Gone again. Last thing I received was a station on 91.0 which I could not identify the language, playing local music.

I have uploaded photo's of the Sony ST-SE520 tuner and the mod for rdsspy.

http://s593.photobucket.com/albums/t...ny%20ST-SE520/

Andy

I had a few stations at the bottom of the band a little earlier, the best signal being a Balkan on 88.3, up to 2 bars with stereo on the Kenwood tuner.

Italy at bottom of band now.

Andy