Quote:
Originally Posted by dtvmcdonald
Its interesting that the only LW stations I get from Europe here in
the central USA are the BBC on 198 and Ireland and Algeria on 252,
seldom interfering with one another. And only in winter and only sometimes.
I have no idea why only those, my only guess is that the transmitters
happen to have a side lobe aimed my way.
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You are of course relying on sky wave propagation at those distances, while broadcast LW coverage is normally based on ground wave. Many of the truly massive European and Russian LW transmitters have closed during the last decade, and the half of the band below 198kHz is sounding very quiet nowadays. The Icelandic mid Atlantic stations have also left LW, though those were never easily receivable in the UK.
The Algerian station causes serious interference to RTE1 in southern and western England and Wales, because Dublin is more or less due north and Algeria due south so the interference can't be nulled out. The Algerian transmitter is pretty huge, and I suspect it's also beamed north so that it covers France which has a large Algerian population.
France has always been a big LW user. In the era of cheap AM/FM far eastern radios it was normal for those for the French market to have MW (BC) replaced with LW.