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Message-ID: <200108171600.f7HG0Wf00116@galahad.joust.net>
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 12:00:33 -0400
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
From: "Steve Dove" <dsp@hifidelity.com>
Subject: LF: Odd Doings on Longwave
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Greetings,

This plays into the relevance of LF broadcast antenna
directionality, a la Saarlouis-to-ZL, long-or-short path.

Playing with a new untuned loop (late) last night it was quite
a 'good' night, in that Allouis (162) was louder than normal,
the audio being 'armchair' in normal AM bandwidth.  True
with Junglinster (234) too;  quite noticable QSB on both,
though.  The other usual suspect, Saarlouis (183) was
notable by it's weakness.  Now, this was odd in and of itself;
they're usually all there.   Droitwich (198) wafted up and down
but never amounted to much (on a really, really good night it's 
like being at home in Henley again).

The big surprises though were Atlantic 252, normally only
barely detectable, fading up a few times for short durations
to perfectly audible in the same league as Allouis, some 10-
15 min. at a time.  This station is beamed east-ish to 
England, away from here, so the ERP this way is much less
than the nominal 500kW.  On a second receiver, at the same
time as one of these lifts, Droitwich was still a mere mumble.
Go figure.

In lifts definitely not correlated with those for 252, a borderline
audible station (like 198) on 171kHz came up and down;
now this is a first here  -  presumably Nador, Morocco.

The rapidity, selectiveness and extremes of the QSB were 
the most dramatic ever noted;  252 was a stunner.  (Shame
about the programming, though it was 5am there. . .)

        Cheers,

                Steve        W3EEE