Free radio pirates on medium and short wave messageboard of alfa lima

Inspired by Dave Martin's post,I had a quick tune on MW last night and was pleasantly surprised to hear;

All on 1647Khz;

2220-2225 - Radio Barones - 44544 - S9+20
2225-2230 - Radio Bandung - 34433 - S8
2246-2249 - Radio Delmare - 35434 - S9


Interestingly,Delmare were stronger here than Bandung.


Andy Richards

andyrichardz@msn.com

Hello Andy,

thanks for the MW loggings.

Interesting to see Baro being much stronger than Bandung. I always thought Bandung being one of the strongest stations on MW.
Maybe however he was using lower power that time, also because of the Delmare signal being more powerfull.

Hi Boomi,

This is very interesting.

From your post,you suggest that Bandung has a stronger signal in NL than Baro.(Or at least at your QTH)But my logs over the last few years have Baro usually quite a lot stronger than Bandung here.
Bandung has been stronger on occasion but it has been rare.
So Bandung has a better groundwave & Baro seems to sky better.


Analysis of aerials & earths used might be useful here.

What about power comparisons?

Andy Richards.

Andy Richards wrote:From your post,you suggest that Bandung has a stronger signal in NL than Baro.(Or at least at your QTH)

No that's not quite the case. Baro is relatively close to my QTH whereas Bandung is some 150 Km's away. However, related to the average and more distant Dutch station, Bandung mostly does have a strong signal overhere.

Bandung has been stronger on occasion but it has been rare.
So Bandung has a better groundwave & Baro seems to sky better.

Analysis of aerials & earths used might be useful here.

I know Baro mostly does use a vertical, and I think Bandung does use some kind of horizontal antenna, especially because of the none-constant signal overhere.

It's interesting to see (if you ask me) that a vertical is strong on short distance (due to ground wave), then up to some 150-300 km, the horizontal does seem to do the better job (high angle sky-wave) and beyond this the vertical is again superior (low angle sky-wave).

What about power comparisons?

I do not know exactly. However on MW I know most Dutch stations use power-levels in range from 1.5 to 4 kW. This should not give that mucht difference in signal strength.

Hi Boomi,


I think you have answered the question.The different characteristics of vertical & horizontal aerials seems to be the answer.
Most of my experience as a Pirate was of MW,though mostly during the day(And with much lower power than the Dutch stations),but on the occasions we did night broadcasts we did have an increased range but it was never really skywaving.
We used inverted L 's,which gave us some of the advantages & disadvantages of verticals & horizontals!!


Do any Dutch MW Ops use inverted L's?


Andy Richards.

The most use converted CB verticals for mediumwave.

Andy Richards wrote:Do any Dutch MW Ops use inverted L's?

I did. However, I also tried a 'sloper', an inverted-V/dipole (2*45 m), a 2*20 and even 2*45 meter T-antenna.

The T-antennas did produce a very strong local signal (within some 100 Km). The inverted-V did not, but the signal beyond 150 Km was much stronger than on the T. The nearby inverted-V/dipole signal however was very unstable due to interference between local ground- and skywave. The inverted-L seemed to be a compromise between them.

Nice to see some agreements concerning the thoughts and experiences about this between the both of us.

Arie.

I know Cupid radio use also he inverted L eigther for 76mb and medium wave.

RadioRamona wrote:The most use converted CB verticals for mediumwave.

' Lamstralers' as I call them..

Hi Arie & JoJo,

It is interesting to share experiences in radio.Radio can always surprise but there do seem to be some constants.It helps us to keep our sanity when we can trust in the constants even when the variables keep surprising us!


Andy Richards.

hi there
i saw this post and i would say that i use a inverterd L antenna for 1.6 to 7 mhz , for me i gues it works great, i have play with it last winter on mw and i even got reports from sweden and norway on mw
i have tuned it also for 76 mtr it was also a good at night i make it on 76 mtr very offen to the usa ,so my opinion
it runs great but with receiving it got some loses this is from the antenna tunner
so every one that would like to experiment the tip of the day
make sure the wire is going at least 9,5 mtrs up and then 21 mtrs from the tower to a tree or a house ,build a antenna tuner you can find it here
http://www.xs4all.nl/~pa0fri/ATU/Smatch/smatcheng.htm
and put some power on it ,awesome
cheers rinus