On Mon, 30 May 2005 11:46:48 +0000 (UTC), "Derek Hardy"
wrote:


Down in South Devon the entire Band 2 VHF spectrum has been alive with
foreign broadcasts coming through in sort sharp bursts of up to 10 seconds,
and in some cases longer. They originate from Spain, France, Holland,
Germany and even one from an eastern European sounding language which I am
unable to recognise. They are so strong that the local tranmissionms from
North Hessary Tor are heavily compromised, especially R4 on 92.5. These
conditions are normally associated with low or medium level temperatiure
inversions which allow ducting along the boundaries, but to get such a broad
geographical spread is indeed unsusual.

If you are getting sharp bursts of stations this is due to Sporadic-E
which is relatively common from May-August. If you dwell around 87.6
or 87.7 ayou can sometimes hear a sharp burst of Algerian stations
when conditions are right.


The conditions you describe at the end of the paragraph relate rather
more to tropospheric conditons - you will hear distant stations for a
long period with gentle fading. There is tropo about too just now -
people in the south of England reporting French and Spanish stations
on FM. Here in Troon, I use two stations as beacons for trop
conditions. On 87.8 there is Lyric FM from the Irish Republic and on
105.4 there is a station whose name escapes me (Century FM?), from
Winter Hill near Bolton. When I can hear them, there is a tropo lift!