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)
