Often, during the summer months, it is often possible to hear FM broadcast stations from far and wide thanks to the Ionosphere and Troposphere bending signals over the horizon. There are a few tricks to getting the most out of tuning the broadcast band looking for that distant station however.
At the next AREG meeting on Friday the 20th of November, Andy, VK5LA will give a presentation on “DXing” the FM band. He will discuss, what gear is needed, what gear works best and how to identify stations you don’t normally hear and cover topics like locations, antenna polarisation, and explore the RDS station ID feature built in to most modern FM receivers.
Andy will also discuss using the ACMA database to determine if that exotic station you’ve just tuned in to is 70, 700 or 1700 km away and describe the various propagation modes that make this interesting activity possible. Finally he will take a look at how that information can be used to predict openings on the 6 metre (50MHz) band and above.
How can you take part in this meeting?
- Due to the latest COVID-19 restrictions, the presentation will be via Zoom for members starting by 7.45pm South Australian Summer Time.
Visitors will be able to watch the lecture via Hayden VK7HH’s HamRadio DX Channel on YouTube.
We hope to see you there!
For interstate viewers the times are:
- 8.15pm AEDT (Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, Canberra)
- 7:15pm QST (Brisbane)
- 6.45pm CST (Darwin)
- 5:15pm WST (Perth)
- 09:15 UTC