From Christmas to New Year I participated in the Coordinated Listening Event CLE299 organized by the NDB list group. I like CLE’s as they give you a bit of insight in the performance of your equipment. The goal for this event was to:

  • Choose a bearing (antenna direction); both forward and back bearing counts.
  • In any country crossed by your bearing log up to maximum 10 NDBs.

There is obviously a bit of strategy involved in this one. Initially I thought I should go for the former Yugoslavian republics, as Croatia in particular brought me many stations in the past. But that would have given me only Scotland and England on the back bearing.
So in the end I went for 117/297 degrees as this added Ireland and North Ireland to the list. Targets in the direction South East were Germany, Austria and Czechia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. In addition to The Netherlands I was allowed to count the North Sea as a “country” as well.

My results during CLE299: 94 stations along the 117/297 bearing.

Most of the 94 beacons I logged are shown in the picture above. With 2284 kilometers Izmir/Cigli (CIG) was the most distant beacon heading SE. It is the first NDB I received from Turkey ever!!! Benbecula (BBA) on the Outer Hebrides towards the NW is 985 kilometers from my QTH.

NDBs per country: IRL (7), NIR (2), SCT (10), ENG (10), XOE (2), HOL (1), DEU (10), AUT (10), CZE (9), HNG (5), SRB (10), ROU (10), BUL(7), TUR (1)