QSL from Radio Club 91, Benevento, Italy. Another station I received during the beautiful opening on June 2nd, 2024. Radio Club 91 is a station in the Napoli Region. On 92.1 MHz I received a signal from their repeater in Benevento. It is listed with only 300 Watts! A recording of the ID I heard:
Radio Club 91 is a radio station in the region Napoli. The station started in 1976 as Radio Discoteca Maracanà. It broadcasted the disco evenings from the discotheque live. In the early 80ies the name was changed to Radio Maracanà Club 91. Soon thereafter that became Club 91, again supported by a discotheque with the same name in Casoria.
Another nice catch during the June 2nd opening resulted in a QSL from Radio Sintony. Radio Sintony is radio station from the island of Sardinia (or Sardegna) in Italy. I received them on 92.4 MHz. The 2.5 kW transmitter is located in Sant’Antiocio on the southwest tip of the island: 1473 km from my QTH. This is their station ID as I received it:
I sent my report to diretta@sintony.it and amministrazione@sintony.it. Valeria Cauli was so kind to return a fully detailed QSL:
Radio 24 is a nation wide commercial FM station in Italy. I received them on 93.2 MHz. This must be the 4kW transmitter in Gioiosa Marea, in the northeast of Sicily (1734 kms from my QTH). Not an easy catch as on 93.1 MHz I have the provincial station Radio M from Utrecht only 14 kilometers away with 630W. I can see their antenna from my roof terrace. Check my Youtube clip: Radio 24 93 200 MHz, 2024 06 02 17h00Z (youtube.com)
Radio 24 is owned by the editorial group Gruppo 24 ORE, which also owns the newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. So no surprise that Radio 24 broadcasts a news/talk format.
Jonica Radio started in the 80ies in the city of Cosenza. Today they can be heard in the regions Calabria, Basilicata en Puglia, the most southern regions of Italy as shown in the picture below.
I heard Jonica Radio on 93.3 MHz. FM List shows three transmitters but without details on power. So the exact location is a little bit of a guess. And it wasn’t an easy catch. I heard their station name on 33 and 40 seconds in this clip.
I sent my report to info@jonicaradio.it and received this fully detailed QSL email within a day. I’m very grateful to the folks at Jonica Radio for listening to my noisy recording and sending a confirmation!
Radio Kiss Kiss is a commercial station with an Italy wide network on FM. They focus on soul, funk and disco. I heard them on 92.2 MHz. I made a Youtube clip so you can hear for yourself: Radio KissKiss, 92 200 MHz, 2024 06 02 17h52Z (youtube.com)
There are 5 stations listed on this frequency, with the 5 kW station from Cupello being the strongest. As I heard a few other stations from that part of Italy I assume this might be the transmitter I received.
Email to QSL reception of Radio Kiss Kiss on 92.2 MHz
I sent my report to info@kisskiss.it , and received an answer within a day. In addition to Radio Kiss Kiss I also heard Kiss Kiss Italia en Kiss Kiss Napoli on June 2nd. They have the same parent company: Media Radio . Unfortunately I did not receive a reply on my reports for them yet.
The spectacular sporadic E opening on June 2nd resulted in quite a few QSLs. One of the first stations I heard was Radio Radicale on 88.6 MHz. Most likely from Rocca di Papa, some 20 kilometers southeast of Rome (1291 kms from my QTH). With 251 kW (listed) the transmitter is probably one of the strongest in Italy. As I couldn’t find an email address I filled in the webform their on their site. Within a day I received a simple reply attached to my message:
Yes,it’s Radio Radicale Thank you very much
Radio Radicale was founded in 1975-76 as the radio station of the Italian Radical Party. When I saw their logo I thought this would be a socialist party (as the rose is symbol of socialism). But apparently the ideology was liberal. “Was” because the party was dissolved in 1989.
Radio Radicale continues however, but as you can read on Wikipedia, not without controversy. The station has no commercial advertisements. It relies for funding on the party and support from the Italian government as part of an agreement that Radio Radicale broadcasts parliamentary sessions. Which is exactly the sort of programme that I received, as you can hear on my YouTube clip.
While searching for sporadic E DX I came across this regional station that I had not yet listened to: Regio 90 from Leersum. Via a webform on their site I submitted a report. The next day I received a kind email from Jos Sterkenburg confirming my reception. I happened to have tuned in to his program:
With 300 Watt Regio 90 is operating on 91.7 from Leersum. They suffer a bit from interference from the 50 kW VRT1 station in Flanders. Target audience is the Utrechtse Heuvelrug and the region just south of it. This is one of my favourite areas for cycling and I can definitely recommend anyone to visit the many castles around Langbroek and Wijk bij Duurstede!
At the start of this post I want to make clear that I don’t intend to make jokes about the very kind people of WDR5. Read my explanation at the end of this post.
Last year I was testing my FM antenna… more about that later. I came across WDR5 Langenberg, Germany on 88.8 MHz. As I read somewhere that they were still issuing dedicated WDR5 QSLs I decided to send a report to wdr5@wdr.de. Two days later I received a polite email:
Vielen Dank für Ihr Interesse am Programm von WDR 5. Bitte haben Sie Verständnis dafür, dass die Bearbeitung Ihrer E-Mail ggf. etwas Zeit in Anspruch nehmen kann.
If you don’t speak German: “Thanks for your interest, asking for your understanding that it might take a while”.
Two weeks ago I realized myself that I never got answer. So I sent a kind reminder. Within a day I received this reply:
Da Ihr Anliegen etwas sehr komplex ist, geben wir dieses Intern weiter und werden uns nochmal bei Ihnen melden!
This translates as “your question is quite complicated… we will forward and let you know”.
And last week I received a nice fully detailed letter from the Technical Information Department to QSL WDR5 Langenberg:
QSL Letter for my reception of WDR5 Langenberg on 88.8 MHz
As promised at the start of this post, my take away: I am very grateful that WDR5 is still sending out physical letters to QSL reception reports from listeners. There are very few stations that still do so, and I applaud them for this. But the correspondence does show how unfamiliar the front office public relation desk is with anything related to “technical questions”. Steve Canney, former engineer and QSL Manager of CFRB/CFRX Toronto made me aware of this. And you can see that the reply is from the Technical Department. This is why, when sending QSL requests to bigger stations, I always try to direct them to Engineering or Transmitter Engineering departments.
To finish this post, the beautiful QSL card I received in 1980 for my reception WDR Langenberg on 1593 kHz medium wave… those were the days!
BDXC : SWL 2262 PRe VERON : NL 14228 If you want to get in touch, just leave a message on one of my posts. Please note that I don't publish email addresses of verifiers which are not part of the public domain. So if you don't see the QSL address, just leave a message and I'll get back to you.
Feel free to copy anything on this weblog. A link back to my site is appreciated.
