Mid-morning coffee and pirates

On Monday I had a real surprise. I turned on the radio at 11am and was scanning the bands when I came across a signal on 1638 kHz. At first I thought it was some local interference . . . but then I heard the voice of Radio Bluebird. A few minutes later I heard Utopia on 1630. Then Havanna on 1636. Then Kontakt on 1645. I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing as daytime reception of the Dutch pirates at our location is very rare. At this time of year signals occasionally arrive at around 1400, and are also audible until around 0830, but it is unheard of to hear them mid-morning.

The four stations were qsoing, along with Alaska, who I couldn't quite hear. What was also interesting was that Havanna was stronger here than he was on the SDR at Enschede. His signal was generally around 35333 with very slow, long and deep fades. On the peaks, he sounded excellent.

On Monday at around 1845 it was nice to hear Toulouse on air. I remember this station from 20 years ago and visited him on one of my first trips to the Netherlands. He's not on air so much these days, but it's great that he still switches on his transmitter every now and again. His sinpo here was around 34433.

On Monday night there was another great signal, with Sluwe Vos blasting in on 1645. It was very quiet at the top of the MW band that night, so I listened to pretty much all of his broadcast and then his qso with Jeneverstoker and Snowman.

I was thinking recently that I had not heard Radio Batavier for a little while. But that was rectified on Wednesday evening when I heard his signal on 1660 - an unusual frequency for him as he can often be heard around 1625. His signal was peaking at around 34333 and it turns out he was using only 40 watts of power with a new coil antenna, which you can see on these pictures kindly sent to me this morning.