Peter's DX Corner

"It's not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on" - Marilyn Monroe

Tag: VHF (Page 6 of 6)

QSL Radio Radicale, Rocca di Papa 88.6 MHz

June 17, 2024 / / 1 Comment

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.

UPDATE: fully detailed QSL email received!

QSL Regio 90 Leersum on 91.7 MHz

June 9, 2024 / / 0 Comments

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!

QSL WDR5 Langenberg 88.8 MHz

June 2, 2024 / / 0 Comments

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!

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