I was already checking the FM band almost every day to see if there were some Sporadic E (Es) conditions. On the FM list site I saw some colleagues making receptions from the Baltic a few days ago. But I didn’t receive a thing. Unfortunately in that direction my view is blocked by an apartment building. Between South East and West however I do have a relatively clean line of sight. But many of you know how it is: you start to doubt your set-up and coax connections if nothing materializes.

Yesterday afternoon the FM band almost exploded however. From 1400 h UTC I heard multiple stations. Initially from Algeria and Tunisia, towards the evening from Italy. I still have to browse through my recordings on the Elad FDM S3 (the first time that I tried to make 24 MHz full band width recordings) and see how that worked out. But below you can see what I already logged in parallel on the ICOM R8600. The antenna is a 5 elements Yagi at 7 meters.

Only problem is that in Italy many stations have multiple locations on the same frequency. So I guess that my receptions from Northern Italy are in fact from locations a little bit more to the centre of Italy around Rome. This makes more sense for a single hop. But I’m learning as I go.

Es logs on June 2nd, 2024.

87.6 ALG Radio Laghouat
88.2 ALG Chaîne 2
88.5 I RAI Radio1
87.5 I Radio Maria
87.6 ALG Chaîne 3
88.3 E COPE
88.4 I RTL 102.5
88.0 TUN Radio Zitouna FM
89.1 I RAI Radio1
88.6 I Radio Radicale
95.1 I Radio Maria
101.9 I Dimensione Suono Roma
107.3 I Radio Radicale
92.0 I Radio Kiss Kiss
91.8 I RDS
105.1 I Radio Kiss Kiss
94.6 I RAI Radio1