Friday, January 02, 2015

Quiet start to 2015

Well it's a Friday night and typically the top of the MW band would be busy with pirate activity from the Netherlands. But it's very quiet, perhaps due to stormy weather and high winds on the other side of the North Sea, which might have resulted in pirate operators lowering their antenna masts.

As I write, I can hear three stations. On 1615 kHz is Desperado with a music programme, but the audio seems a little over-modulated. Next up is Snowman from Friesland on 1656 kHz. He uses only very low power, but his signal as usual is arriving here quite well - there is some fading, but it's perfectly listenable, especially on the peaks. The best signal, though, has been from Hooiberg, who has been on 1670 for several hours and has just closed down. I first heard him today just after 1800 utc, when he was coming in very well indeed. It seems this sort of time is still currently best for reception of the Dutch guys here in England. Just a shame there aren't more stations on air. You can get a flavour of how I was receiving Hooiberg from this recording . . .




Yesterday night, although I wasn't listening all evening by any means, I heard only Batavier, Turfsteker and Noorderzon with identifications -  all low power using in the region of 60 watts. It's still great fun to hear these stations running just a few watts of power, though. Another one I suspect was using low power last night was the station playing non-stop Dutch music on 1699 kHz. I listened for some time and heard no speaking, so I haven't got a clue who this might have been, but it was certainly an interesting choice of frequency and not one I have heard used before. 

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