@keithma Darn. 
Does she still have all the old transmitting gear aboard? I went on a tour many years ago when she was up in one of the London docks. I sail past her pretty often from just up river.
It’s largely all there but sadly, not in any usable state. It looks good when people do the tours though.
That’s a shame, but I suppose there’s not too much point in spending the time and money to restore it, if that’s even possible.
Oh it would be possible but there’s no need. It looks good and they even power up the heaters to the valves sometimes so they glow nicely. The studios all work though and the monthly broadcasts from on board are always popular. I’m assuming you know that the station is licensed and transmits on 648kHz MW now?
Yes, I have listened occasionally when I’m visiting my Dad, as he lives very close by. I can’t receive it where I live however.
Ahh OK, as you mentioned sailing by, I assumed you were relatively close. The coverage is surprisingly good though… I’ve listened to it all the way up the A1 past Newark and last year I could hear it while I was driving around Guernsey. Naturally the transmitter site and aerial help but it’s pretty good for a station that’s ahem supposed to cover just north Essex and Suffolk.
With 1kW on AM broadcast I’m not surprised it travels well. The problem I have here is that it’s so electrically noisy that without a decent antenna it’s hard to receive much on MW or HF. I’ve tried a random long wire with a balun, that helped a bit but it’s still not that great. I need to invest some time into sorting something more reliable.
And now I hate you 
I had to raise my antenna in a tree in my yard…
3 Likes
Impressive stats, at that rate it should be good enough for a top 20-25 place globally within a couple of weeks! Don’t forget to wave when you jump over me 
10 Europeans in the top 15 at that moment, how is that possible, Air Traffic Controllers in the USA on strike?
Height of summer, everyone going on holiday, lots of planes in the sky.
2 Likes
US people are the ones vacation is Europe, not the other way around
1 Like
Let me think about it… eh… no!
I like how your heywhatsthat profile is basically a circle.
There’s an interesting pattern in the elevation plot:
I wonder what’s causing that banding effect.
2 Likes
It’s a pretty good estimate as well.
I’m not really sure how to read some of those plots.
Here’s a similar plot from the feeder in my loft. It’s very different, you can really see how it’s restricted in some directions. This is quite fascinating.
The heatmaps are just top down views of each recorded aircraft position, coloured by RSSI. They should indicate where there are any blind spots cause by terrain or other obstructions. You can see that effect pretty clearly when comparing the one from your loft to the external receiver - It shows how important having a clear view is to coverage. I think the effect is actually more striking with rtl dongles as they have a wider range of signal strengths to see. The airspy rssi values tend to have a smaller range.
The elevation plot is just compass bearing on the x-axis with angle of elevation from the the horizon to the aircraft on the y-axis. The dark areas are shadows where the signal is blocked somehow, which is what makes that banding rather curious. From looking at your video, there’s not much in that direction that could account for it. They are almost like the diffraction pattern you get from a double-slit experiment.