As I alluded to in a previous post, I'm in Italy until the end of next week. I haven't have much time to DX, and I'm in a center city hotel, which isn't a very good location anyway. Commencing tomorrow (Saturday), we move to our final destination, which is a villa in a remote location about an hour south of Florence (where I am now).
Yesterday, we drove about 120 miles each way to have lunch with a friend at a location about midway between here and Rome. When I got around to hitting the scan button near the town where we were going. it didn't stop at anything. It just kept cycling. The day before in the hotel, all I get in the hotel room was one MW station on 657. I'm pretty sure it was one of the RAI network outlets. In the car on my return trip yesterday, that station eventually tripped the scan function at a distance of about 30 miles. But still nothing else.
Given that a station low on the dial is only getting out about 30 or so miles (if that's correct), I'm assuming it's either a low-power local service or ground conductivity around here is really lousy. Or both. Our cab driver was telling us that the land around here....low mountains....isn't good for growing many crops other than what they're famous for.....grapes and olives.
UPDATE: Just checked the world atlas of ground conductivity (you can google it). Sure enough, most of the landscape in this part of Italy is either a 1 or a 3.
Of course, MW at night is a different story. A much less crowded band. And indeed, in the hotel, in my brief scans, stuff has been getting through. I should have more to report on that after we get to the rural location.
FM also was a totally different story. Both in the car and in the hotel, the band is loaded. There may also be some tropo or e-skip going on. In the room this morning, I was listening to what sounded like a local on 93.3 that was getting trashed by something on 93.2 if I moved the radio. Or, perhaps it could be that if Italy shut down MW radio, one result was short-spaced FMs.
Yesterday, we drove about 120 miles each way to have lunch with a friend at a location about midway between here and Rome. When I got around to hitting the scan button near the town where we were going. it didn't stop at anything. It just kept cycling. The day before in the hotel, all I get in the hotel room was one MW station on 657. I'm pretty sure it was one of the RAI network outlets. In the car on my return trip yesterday, that station eventually tripped the scan function at a distance of about 30 miles. But still nothing else.
Given that a station low on the dial is only getting out about 30 or so miles (if that's correct), I'm assuming it's either a low-power local service or ground conductivity around here is really lousy. Or both. Our cab driver was telling us that the land around here....low mountains....isn't good for growing many crops other than what they're famous for.....grapes and olives.
UPDATE: Just checked the world atlas of ground conductivity (you can google it). Sure enough, most of the landscape in this part of Italy is either a 1 or a 3.
Of course, MW at night is a different story. A much less crowded band. And indeed, in the hotel, in my brief scans, stuff has been getting through. I should have more to report on that after we get to the rural location.
FM also was a totally different story. Both in the car and in the hotel, the band is loaded. There may also be some tropo or e-skip going on. In the room this morning, I was listening to what sounded like a local on 93.3 that was getting trashed by something on 93.2 if I moved the radio. Or, perhaps it could be that if Italy shut down MW radio, one result was short-spaced FMs.
Last edited:
