Skipping long and far

Interesting propagation on MW this evening. I tuned in to 186 metres at around 1800 UTC and was met with a whole host of Balkan pirate stations coming in strongly between 1620 and 1670 kHz. Dutch pirate Radio Boomerang also reported strange conditions at the same time with signals much stronger at his location than usual.

There were a few Dutch pirates on air here and there but most were struggling to compete with their Balkan counterparts, except for Radio Meteoor, who was coming in very well on 1611. Unfortunately the station he was qsoing with was not faring quite as well.

Conditions have remained far from optimum all evening, although that has not stopped Wadloper packing a punch on 1645 kHz. He signed on at 1845 and has just announced he will be closing down soon. Sure, he's been fading around with the propagation, but he's been very strong on the peaks.

On a different note there was a nice delivery from the postman a few days ago when a qsl card (yes, a real one and not electronic!) arrived from the Netherlands. It was from Radio Wipkikker, who I recently heard for the first time. Such a nice touch to receive this as it's such a rarity these days to have a momento from a station that you can actually touch.