LF: 1476 kHz AM

[Markus Vester <markusvester@aol.com>]

After the sad demise of all LW and MW broadcasts in Germany, a handful of pioneers came up who are operating legal low-powered medium wave stations in the context of a radio museum or for educational purposes. One of them is Ralph (DL2NDO, one of the participants in the legendary Donebach 137 kHz activation in 2002). He has obtained a transmitting license for 1476 kHz (former frequency of Vienna Bisamberg), built a 3 Watt AM transmitter, and with the help of a small team raised a quarterwave antenna on the Fraunhofer premises south of Erlangen (JN59MN21HF).

Yesterday they got on air for the first time, running a preliminary test transmission consisting of a switched 1000 Hz beeps (one second on, one second off, audio frequency locked to the RF carrier). This pattern will be continued for a few days, before they will eventually.take over the audio from the local DAB student radio "funklust".

The current test pattern is relatively easy to make out in the noise so it may be a good chance for some DX detections.  At night we've actually heard the beeps on Twente SDR and a couple of German Kiwi-SDRs. But I guess using narrowband signal processing techniques, the carrier and coherent tones coud make it much further. The carrier frequency is derived from an OCXO and is currently at 1476000.411 Hz.

Will anyone in the group take the challenge?

Best 73,
Markus (DF6NM)