Didn't think there was much chance of hearing it so listened on the online recievers instead, heard alot stuff, like a pirate on 86.3 , I think another receiver may of been tuned to a pirate the rds was scrolling, with polka music, 101.4 or 5 or something, heard a station on 108 on it too.

Does anyone know the song that gose dance dance to the reggae beat it got stuck in my head, I think it may of been a legal station, I do like alot of music that is out there but alot of it everyone is so serious, this was fun.

There was a guy directing his signal towards the uk last week on 87, apparently all the signals below 87.5 are horizontal, even if you do have something with an aerial socket that can recieve down there likely your aerial is in vertical mode too. I think they maybe out of luck anyway it was favoring ireland, I think afew people did point their yagi's over that way

How much power would he have had to be using to reach Ireland?

I think I only have one radio that goes below 87.5, a Sony SW-100E.

Some of the new chip tuners go down to 76mhz if you set them to the Japan/Brazil bands

Interesting post Northeast. marqueemoon the power required would be a function of a few factors. Firstly the usual, the antenna height and gain, the watts in RF energy and the mode of propagation. Either E layer or enhancement by tropospheric ducting, warm air layers, persisting fog is a decent sign that extended long distances at upper HF and VHF may be possible. And of course height and gain and directionality of receiving antenna. I would say anywhere between 200W and 1,000's of watts could do it, the big factor is the propogation which is immensely unpredictable for both E and ducting. Warm spells and high moisture levels in the atmosphere tend to give an indication.

Especially fog that lasts beyond 9AM onwards.

I reported on here having Denmark coming in all day in mid winter Christmas eve, Boxing day or something. That was probably E layer as it has a smaller second peak in late December as well as the June. Seems to be effected by summer and winter solstices for some reason.

Hot humid evenings tend to help with distances.

Propagation is a trul amazing thing. Very interesting. Tecsun Chinese radios that are very good receivers can tune below 87.5 as jvok suggests, you just switch a mode a few button presses.

You did well to hear those long distance signals northeast,

jvok wrote: ↑Mon Oct 20, 2025 9:45 pm Some of the new chip tuners go down to 76mhz if you set them to the Japan/Brazil bands

The ubiquitous TEF radios go down to 65MHz. I've seen the bandscan from one, but never heard any stations down there. If that part of the range works as well as Band II does however, it's definitely an option.

Interesting. Sounds like the TEF could be a cheap option for a band 1 link rx too

Kind of - the lower part of the range does overlap with the top of "traditional" Band I. It's certainly cheap, too - my headless TEF lash-up using parts from aliexpress and a JLC PCB cost way under £20 and performs well. For a link RX, you could program the chip simple enough with a low-end PIC and get the RSSI back out to drive your rig remote control. As far as I can tell though, you can't get baseband out (why would you when the chip has built in stereo and RDS decoders) so you'd have to re-code these at the rig end, unless you want basic mono.

Interesting thread!

FMEnjoyer wrote: ↑Tue Oct 21, 2025 8:48 am Tecsun Chinese radios that are very good receivers can tune below 87.5 as jvok suggests, you just switch a mode a few button presses.

I've got a Tecsun set, can't remember the model number but it's the cheapest one they do with SSB (about £35 from AliExpress). Will check it out...

jvok wrote: ↑Tue Oct 21, 2025 1:29 pm Interesting. Sounds like the TEF could be a cheap option for a band 1 link rx too

If you do, remember to get a notch filter for the receiver of the FM transmtter's frequency.

These receivers get 'deafened' on ALL VHF frequencies by just one (or worse still more) very strong frequency