I have been reading your threads and it all sounds really interesting I'ld love to have a go at DX'ing but I live in Plymouth

In the right conditions, there is always a possibility of reception from France where you are. There are main transmitters near Brest, Rennes and Cherbourg. If you were very lucky something in N. Spain might come your way.

It partly depends upon how good your view to the south is.

As I suspected ACL all a bit quiet on the TV front here. Will get around to sorting the 2m rig one day. As regards Band 2 I can pull in all the usual local stations and BBC Radio Essex on 103.5 fairly consistently. This was impossible in Lowestoft because of The Beach on 103.4 which obliterated it. I have picked up many French, Dutch, Belgian and German stations under lift conditions even with my 5 element loft aerial pointing south west. My best DAB reception from the UK so far has been BBC Radio Sheffield and BBC Wales... only once in four years!

What tuner do you use for band 2? I use an Elad and a horizontal dipole. I still get regular Dutch scatter on a daily basis alongside weaker Belgian and French. I have had some Dutch 70cm repeaters. It's not been great for along time here.

I am using a Naim Nat05 tuner. For UHF TV use a Technomate 6902 HD-T2 and for band 1 a trusty old JVC CX-60.

Hi folks,

Here is a short video I made today (22.7.14) of reception on Band I (channel R1), via Sporadic E.
http://youtu.be/GKIqk7PHLwo

Chris. Lincoln, UK

Hi folks,

Here is the second short video I made today (22.7.14) Reception of Band I (channel R1), via Sporadic E.

http://youtu.be/aD-kdv6Dv20

Unfortunately, YouTube makes the reception look worse than it actually was! I guess this is due to compression techniques used by YouTube.

Chris. Lincoln, UK

Well done Chris, great finds!

Excellent video clips. Really good examples of SpE reception. Today I only saw weak signals of 1+1 from Ukrain on R1.

In fact the noise disturbs the compression algorithms as there is no temporal correlation between the noise of two successive frames.
Thus a noisy picture looks generally much worse after compression/decompression.

Hi marceljack,

Many thanks for your explanation.

And thanks to others for your compliments about the TV reception from Belarus. (A transmitter we may not be receiving for much longer. Belarus are transferring to UHF DVB-T soon).

Cheers,

Chris.

Evening everyone

The West (CH 52) and Noord Holland (CH39) MUxes are active this evening.

Happy DX

Jon

Hi there overseas! Most of all reception you get from my country are the western transmitters from Zeeland, West, Noord Holland and sometimes Fryslan. For me these are the mid distance transmitters as well and I enjoy this similarly! But it would be great if we finally can bridge the gap with reception of our own region transmitters. In my case this is RTV Oost on channel 22, transmitted in SFN from Hengelo and Zwolle. I already spoke with brumlad36 and explained the rather full UHF spectrum here. The needed quality of propagation will be in the range of once per year comparing with an occasion I got Denmark from Tommerup. Unfortunately this was possible because of the abscence of the collapsed Smilde transmitter. So normal chances remain rather rare. Perhaps we should make a phonecall to warn, of send an SMS alert.
Today, around 18h / 19h I received the Noord Holland mux on 39 because of bad weather in western Holland and sunshine in my region. This causes bending in the middle of the RF path where the cold air flows under the warm air. I had this effect sometimes before so it was predictable. Unfortunately this situation is not very stable and ceases from the moment the warm air is gone. Anyway it´s fun to have tropo effects at daytime without the need for stable high pressure.
Regards, ofdm.

Slightly off topic for this thread but this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_utquXqPrUA
is a video of someone in Russia repairing a "Televizor KBH-49" made in 1956 in the USSR. He gets a picture of sorts around 6:30 although it gets better, he seems to be using a short length of wire as the aerial.

Notice the round CRT and at 8:00 there is a view of the valves in the set. I have seen similar, in 1930s radios, although I suppose Russia didn't have access to the latest western valve types at the time.

This is the google translation of the russian notes
"First. What was not done? Change all eletrolity. No original. Tubes could not change with the new. There were several, but also BU. True to slightly better. Many minor faults were. 18LK15B tube - is faulty. Interrupted cathode apparently otgorelo or stroke. Very old and badly burnt. Five minutes later, when the glow warms, the cathode glow closes on. Then begins a little work, for this it had to flip 180 degrees. Not yet turned kontachit only after hitting a light through the tube, but it has implications not good. Working for a museum exhibit. Every time there knocking at startup will not. May eventually find a tube, then you can change it. Thing for me to keep all the original had. In general, working exhibit".

I wonder when Russia finally switch off analogue?

Thinking back, I suspect that those valve types were fairly contemporary with many that were in use here in the mid-1950s. B7G and B9A miniature valves were in fairly common use by then, but plenty of Octal based valves, glass and metal, were still around, and I believe some may still be in use. As for the CRT, our 1954 Ekco 9" TV used a round one.

This is going off the topic, see here
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showt...4#post73972204

Hello ofdm,
The Ost MUXes on CH 22 will be virtually impossible for me to get, because my local transmitter (a powerhouse transmitter called Belmont) transmits the BBC channels on that channel, so even with an extreme 'lift' the Ost MUX is unlikely to cross 300 miles and out do the local transmitter. I am guessing that in your neck of the woods the German channels and possibly Belgium and French MUX are going to be achievable?

Thanks for contributing to the thread it is always great to have contributions from everyone.

It would be great to have an early warning system, I post on here when I can, to help alert the other DXers.

Happy DX

Jon

Hi Jon,

The public and comm. German channels come in steady but real DXing Germany for me is Hamburg. In this direction Tommerup Denmark (ch 25) is my distance record with the current loft aerials setup. From Belgium I only got Wavre channel 56 strong but our own Dutch channels are good for testing the propagtion. As soon as Noord Holland ch 39, RTV Utrecht ch 50 or TV west ch 52 comes in I will check for H polarised signals from UK direction!

Wish you all a lot of superb tropo, OFDM

Very strong Dutch signals coming in now. CH39 (Noord Holland), CH50 (Utrecht) and CH52 (West) Muxes are active at the moment (No Fryslan or Nord yet).

Happy DXing.

Unfortunately channels 39 and 50 are out for me as Tacolneston only 15 miles or so away also uses these. I will keep an eye out on channel 52 as this is clear here.

Keep an eye out for 35,36 and 40 as well.

Thanks I will do,

Is the mentioned channel 40 overseas or UK? I managed to check possible receivable channels and the conclusion for me will be 56 from Sudbury and 55 from Tacolneston. But I find out that the latter uses a channel frequency offset! Finally finding some documentation about this there is a chance my receiver is not going to like that. My receivers are all Germany manufactured and this whole offset issue is an UK invention. Do they still use this?

UK is not the only country to use offsets, France also uses an offset of +166 kHz on all its channels (even if it's completely useless after DSO).
Normally all DVB-T receivers should support +166, 0 and -166 kHz offsets.
Even if they are made in Germany;

This sounds like it is part of the DVB-T specification. In that case my worries are not confirmed. I was thinking of analogue times with the UK sound carrier +6 MHz and all the trouble it gave. France contributed to different standards as well. I once picked up some positive modulated TV signals from France but manage to build a video inverter to get the picture, that was fun.
To get back on the chances of pickung up UK DTT: The nr.1 best chance for me will be channel 56 Sudbury! This channel is also used at Nijmegen V polarised 81 km 90 degrees angle. The nr. 2 best channel 55 Tacolneston is re-used at Wesel 74 km V polarised 90 degrees angle and Steinkimmen H polarised 140 km from the backside. Yesterday I could see both of these signals on a spectrum analyser. Only the Wesel part was relevant, about 4 dB above noise floor but this can easily rise 10 dB during tropo lift. All other channels I checked suffer permanent or tropo co-channel interference from Dutch transmitters in the same direction.
My distance record from Denmark could be achieved because the Smilde transmitter was off air during rebuilding. At this moment possible interference of the channel 56 from the Wavre transmitter is lower due to the fire which destroyed the cables.