Receiving Dublin stations in Donegal

Dr. Fell

Last night (11 Dec 2010) around 9pm my car radio picked up Nova and Phantom FM in Kilcar, South West Donegal, which is over 200 KM from Dublin.. It was a clear night but nothing out of the ordinary. I was on the R263 in the townland of Largymore which overlooks Donegal Bay over to Sligo/Letrim. This area has a direct line of sight to Truskmore radio mast in Leitrim. Any explainations?

tigerblob

Wow, I haven't a clue, but that's well weird. I'm from Roscommon and I've never gotten any Dublin station while I was at home and that's about 100km nearer than you! I'm interested to see what explanations come up or if anyone else has experienced this.

ScouseMouse

I can occasionally get q102 on the pettigo road at the back of Laghey.

Only on some stretchs though.

Must be line of site and good conditions.

Poly

Afaik, on very cold nights, radio signals can bounce off the stratosphere increasing the distance they can be heard

Liam Byrne

Google Sporadic-E

coylemj

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Google Sporadic-E

Couldn't you just paste the link...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporadic_E_propagation

I once got BBC Radio 2 and Channel 4 from Belfast at my parents' place in Kerry. It can happen in certain high pressure conditions. I don't think we'd see Channel 4 there again though since UHF channel E21 is now in use by Saorview DTT from Mullaghanish (which would probably drown it out)

Dr. Fell

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Google Sporadic-E

Seems a likley explaination. It probably answers a family mystery dating back to a summer 30 something years. My older brother was trying to tune in a channel on our tv (an old bush model that had a knob on the back) he stumbled on some swiss TV channels and within minutes the kitchen was jammed with neighbours watching the evening news in french. This was years before SKY and it was quite a novelty. The signal faded after a few hours.

Dr. Fell

coylemj wrote: »

Couldn't you just paste the link...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporadic_E_propagation

Cheers for the link

GerardKeating

Dr. Fell wrote: »

Seems a likley explaination. It probably answers a family mystery dating back to a summer 30 something years. My older brother was trying to tune in a channel on our tv (an old bush model that had a knob on the back) he stumbled on some swiss channels and within minutes the kitchen was jammed with neighbours watching the evening news in french. This was years before SKY and it was quite a novelty. The signal faded after a few hours.

A few years ago her (near Ros an Mhíl) one afternoon, got in the car and turned on the radio and could not get RTÉ/Today FM etc, but some German stations (Stuttgart based i think) were coming in loud and clear...

FREDNISMO

I DONT LIVE TO FAR FROM TRUSKMORE AND CANT GET ANY RADIO STATION IN THE HOUSE OR CAR SINCE THEY CARRIED OUT SO CALLED MAINTENANCE WORK IN THE SUMMER MONTHS

coylemj

There is an elevated spot about two miles north of Athlone on the Roscommon road called the Hill O'Berries, it's a clump of trees that's visible for miles around and is the highest spot in an otherwise flat part of the countryside. One day I drove there and on my car radio I scanned the FM band and picked up RTE Radio1 on seven different frequencies, I also picked up Highland FM (Donegal), Radio Kerry, Clare FM and all of the main Dublin stations.

When I was a kid and we lived in single (Telefis Eireann) channel land in Athlone, we used to pick up Spanish TV stations the odd time during the summer if the atmospheric conditions were right.

tigerblob

I'll be driving home this evening, I'll be sure to check my radio when I get to the Hill of Berries, on the off-chance that this might happen