When will conditions improve?

Listeners to the Dutch pirates at the top of the MW band who are living at any distance from the Netherlands continue to struggle with the current propagations conditions which threaten solar blackouts every day. Let's hope things begin to improve soon. We have heard some activity over the last few days, but not nearly as many stations as usual and without the usual signal strengths . . . 

Saturday, May 12, 2012
1650       2208       Santana 33433 music progamme

1655       2210       Einstein 25422 non-stop music

1645       2223       Spakenburg 34433-44444 music programme

1650       2224       Moby Dick 32432 music programme

1665       2226       Polkaman weak signal music programme

1640       2226       UK44? weak signal non-stop music

1645       2307       Eldorado 34443 qsoing

1646       2331       Mustang 35533 qsoing

Thursday, May 10, 2012
1647       2142       Noordzee 45444 music programme

1628       2205       Studio Veronica 24232 music programme

1646       2245       Casablanca 34333-45434 music programme

1628       2305       Jack Sparrow 35543

Observations

• Despite the volatile conditions, Studio Veronica was doing well on Thursday evening with his 20 watts. There were some nice peaks during his long programme
• On Saturday evening, Doctor Einstein was busy with back-to-back music on 1655. I suspect the power was low and, again, the signal came up very nicely on a number of occasions
• 1650 and 1640 were busy frequencies on Saturday. Santana and Moby Dick were sharing 1650 for several hours, while there were also two stations on 1640 for some time, one of which might have been UK44. Although this can be hard to comprehend for us listeners it is possible, given the small size of the Netherlands, that one station operator cannot hear the signal of another station because of skip conditions