What's On - VLF to MF

Disclaimer: The comments with the station name are those of the author and do not represent the opinions of the publisher. He writes like this in the hope he will get invited to parties. We have taken the Devil's Advocate stand so you can form your own opinions.

9KHz
SFERICS frequencies allocated to track the electromagnetic effects of thunderstorms. The receiver itself is quite a simple device but its portability is rather limited by the 16-kilometre antenna. In practice much shorter antennas are used, the figure quoted is a full-size antenna for around a wavelength of 33,000 metres.

10.2KHz
Lower limit of a 3KHz band allocated to The Omega Global Navigational System. The days of this world-wide network of super-stations are numbered as Global Positioning goes up onto the satellites.

60KHz
National Physical Laboratory Standard Time and Frequency Service. Colour supplement readers will have seen adverts for Radio Clocks. These use MSF to pick up time data signals to constantly update an otherwise free-running clock. Accurate to one part in 1,000,000,000,000 per day, this adds big science to boiling an egg. The frequency is a Standard for the electronics industry, drifting only a maximum of two parts in 1,000,000,000,000. Well, we promised you real numbers.

100KHz
LORAN-C Navigation Chain. Using the phase-relationship of a chain of coastal transmitters to cast a radio grid on the waters for our ships to sail by, LORAN is one of the many users of MSF Rugby for standardisation. Audible in the UK is the station at Sylt.

198KHz
BBC Radio 4. The Father of Talk Radio. World Service continues overnight, the carrier also carries data for Economy 7 switching, the accuracy being a mere two parts in 100,000,000,000.

252KHz
RTE Radio 1. The last major AM development in Europe? You can't leave a half-megawatt of RF plant idle after the demise of Atlantic 252 and the sport channel that followed it. RTE now have a European voice to go with the new culture.

283.5KHz
Lower limit for Marine Radio Beacons.

315KHz
Upper limit for Marine Radio Beacons.

396.5KHz
Plymouth Marine Non-directional Beacon. This is one of many NDBs dotted around the coastline. Their large service area means a ship can get a lock on one from quite a distance. Rather reassuring for Jack Tars coming home from the sea.

484KHz
GKZ Humber Radio. If you are on the way to becoming a fully-fledged radio ham, this sub-band is full of machine-sent navigation and weather information in Morse code. Vital to shipping and excellent revision for the Morse test. There is also a rich cocktail of interference from our electricity supply industry to give you the chance of reading it under real battle conditions. We have often wondered if ITV could have endeared themselves to an extra fifty thousand radio hams by giving Inspector Morse a daughter called Dot.

518KHz
Marine Navtex. A digital error-correcting message system for shipping.

525KHz
The lower limit of The Medium Wave or AM Band. In the rush for FM, the fortunes of steam radio wax and wane. A perfect vehicle for speech and rolling news, The UK Radio Authority only see it as a dumping ground for Gold-format - that is, endless golden oldies played by someone who was yet to be born when the record was a hit. Music programming made on the assumption that its audience is too old to appreciate FM.

In the early days of commercial radio in the Seventies, one of the contributors to the IBA Yearbook suggested they should give away a school pencil with a rubber at one end so the reader could sketch in all the changes as take-over fever hit the industry. The same is still true today. The Gold stations do make money but a young management does not know what to do with them. So, it's all change but everything stays the same.

Our American readers can only wonder why we have so many problems in our radio industry. We, the Brits, need to see our broadcasting as art, whereas in the States it is simply a resource. Our American readers may also like to substitute the word "eraser" for "rubber" in the last paragraph unless you are Howard Stern...

545KHz
Lichfield Aeronautical Non-directional Beacon. Very popular with "P for Popsie" pilots in the UK Midlands but why is it in a broadcast band? Its placing outside the 9KHz spacing used on this band leaves two channels that can't be developed. Callsign LIC.

558KHz
Spectrum International. We have been asked what a "multi-ethnic incremental" is. Simply, it is a small station using many languages, quite successfully too.

567KHz
RTE Radio 1. As this was being compiled, the threat of peace hangs over this troubled country. To form a true opinion, free from the rhetoric of career journalists, listen here for the news and a gentle style of radio we have not heard since The Home Service became Radio 4. Also 252KHZ.

612KHz
RTE Radio 2. Can pop music be treated intelligently? It can and can be heard as evening gathers. A useful one to pre-set on the car radio for night drivers.

648KHz
BBC 648 for Europe. A special service for Europe from Orford Ness with opt-outs in German. Essential listening in the south-east for those in the know and the many who hold the more traditional broadcasting values dear. But for how much longer? The BBC has already branded World Service as a "rolling news" station. Too much, too soon?
Watch out for time-checks in CET, Central European Time. A listing can be found on CEEFAX Page 648, programme times shown in GMT/BST, the local time in London. Also in the better broadsheets and on subscription from Bush House and where ever better books are sold in and around London. End of commercial.

Among the yellowing cuttings that form the research - indeed, research was, believe it or not, done for this Guide - is one from The Guardian that reads, "Friday 1615, Science in Acton."

BBC World Service can be heard overnight on your local BBC Station. And on Radio 4 Long-wave, Regional Radio, DAB and on Astra. If the satellite technology defeats you, you are in good company.

In the Southeast, daytime World Service can be heard on 648. This is good enough for in-car reception in Central London, the only drawback being the opt-outs in German and other main European languages. This has some value for language teachers stuck on the M25 marking German homework. Meanwhile, back in Germany they are all teaching English...

It's open season for the rest of us. We must resort to DAB if we want uninterrupted listening to World Service. Meanwhile, it was one Jasper Carrot who remarked that the chances of finding a radio station in English after midnight driving home from a gig were on a par with a snowball in Hades. The same skip effect that brought you Radio Luxembourg from the Grand Duchy is also responsible for the foreign voices fading in behind the Sony Award winning sound of your favourite local station as darkness falls. The skip is perfect to bring Central Europe to your door so, as the good Carrot observed, most night reception seems to German. Looking back, they do seem to have thrown a towel or two over some of our popular channels.

873KHz
AFRTS Europe from Frankfurt. The American Forces Radio and Television Service serves a slice of apple pie to the troops in Europe.

930KHz
CJYQ Newfoundland. One of the benefits of a falling sunspot count, the North American DX season opens up. Stations from across the pond can be heard around midnight as UK local radio closes down. Signal strengths can be high enough to allow reception on modest sets, the problem is the Americans use a 10KHz spacing where we use 9KHz. This will cause interference in all but the best receivers but the variety of frequencies a 9KHz spacing produces gives more interesting work to UK jingle writers.

945KHz
SOLID GOLD GEM AM from London's Capital Radio. Don't look away from the monitor too long or it will have changed it's name along with the other "Gold Format" AM stations. While researching this, I was in touch with OFCOM asking for a general listing of which contractor is using what frequency. They, the controlling body did not know - contact National Transcommunications Ltd who run the transmitters. NTL did not know - they only send it, they don't know what it is. Could I write to each station in turn?

Well, not really. But it does concern me that the industry changes faster than its governing body can monitor it. It is difficult to identify Oldie stations as, not only do they sound the same, they are the same. A feed for up to five transmitters comes from one studio. Digital sampling is used to insert the local ident in each feed to an area transmitter on a command from the main studio.

You think you have local radio, but it is only a part of a regional or national set-up.

1215KHz
Virgin 1215. Poor old Richard Branson. Those who remember Brian Matthew on Saturday Club will recall the upstart Radio 1 starting up here in 1967. They called it 247 metres in those days and even then BBC engineers said this channel had a jinx on it. Louder in Holland than it ever was in the UK, Radio 3 used its experience here as a real case for FM-only during the mid-Seventies. In the meantime, the Radio Authority will have to keep building Richard AM relays in a vain attempt to beat off the night-time joys of Albanian Radio from downtown Lushnje.

1368KHz
Manx Radio, Isle of Man. Listeners on the west coast can hear TT Race commentary. This is the UK's first commercial radio station. It may not have been this station but the first advert we remember was for Camel Lites, an American cigarette brand. What my four-year-old imagination could not handle was the need to ride a camel after dark anyway...

1386KHz
Radio Moscow via Kaliningrad. There's a name off the old station glass...

The trend over recent years is to have your message broadcast on the normal AM band of your target country in the hope of higher audiences than could be expected for short-wave. Bless you, short-wave radio fan, but in the ratings game - the game accountants play more part in these days - the figures can be all but dismissed. You can do this by hiring airtime on local radio for a fistful of roubles or you can buy land in your target area and set up a relay station. Moscow got in early with this million-watt powerhouse, now audible in the UK.

1630KHz
WAFE, Baltimore. Our sudden interest in FM is not new. Over in the States, the rate of take-up of FM frequencies is great, the regulating body - the FCC - is trying to revitalise AM by extending the band to 1750KHz. Just who will have the radios to hear the new stations we don't know, but on this side of The Pond experimental stations like this one are real catches.

Future experimental stations will have a 2 in the callsign.

AM Dx'ing

It has to be said. Sometimes, a portable radio will outperform a communications class receiver costing up to fifteen times the price, or seem to. True, it will only be at these lower frequencies when the ferrite rod antenna is in use. The ferrite rod only reacts to the magnetic part of the electro-magnetic radio wave. This component is much less prone to the interference suffered by a long-wire swinging about in the electrical part of the passing wavefront. Most interference has a strong electrical field, so medium wave listening on a portable often seems clearer - a better signal-to-noise ratio - than on the big receiver.

The ferrite rod is directional. This means by the simple idea of turning the radio around, we can favour the station we want and quite literally turn our backs on the interference, or some station arriving from a different direction that we don't want. The long-wire connected to the receiver has no directional properties so takes on all comers equally.

Directional wire antennas at medium wave are not really practical. We mentioned a Rhombic Antenna a little while back. You can treat yourself to an antenna design handbook and get a handful of wet change from forty quid. From this, spend an even wetter afternoon working out the dimensions of a rhombic for say, RTE on 567KHz and which way to point it. No prizes and not practical...

To save you e-mailing in, we do know about loop antennas. Many a specialist book has been written on the subject and they are a great construction project.