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)
