DXing Upon the Baltic Sea by Stephen P. McGreevy Ver. 2 - Updated September 2010 Between 04 to 20 September 2009, I visited 11 countries in northern and eastern Europe as part of a tour group with Cosmos Tours. Naturally being an LF, MF and FM DXer, I brought along two receivers and two digital audio recorders--a Sony ICF-SW7600GR, a 1981-era Realistic Am/FM/TV receiver (analog, for doing seamless band-scans on MW and FM), a Zoom H2 and Olympus voice-recorder. Besides London (where I transferred from Heathrow Airport), we stayed in Copenhagen, Berlin, Poznan (Poland), Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga, Tallin, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, and lastly, Stockholm. In each city, I recorded bandscans of the local FM broadcast station scene and also made recordings of wonderful longwave broadcast DX, and I also DXed the MW broadcast band, which is so uncongested compared to the MW BCB in North America, and where a lot of stations still leave the air in the wee hours, even clearing up more channels, too. Contrast that to the 24/7 crush of signals on what a friend and I call "The Graveyard Band" which one could consider the entire MW broadcast band in the States now that they (Fcc, CRTC, etc.) have completely ruined/filled-up the once clear-channels in North America. Anyway, I made fascinating bandscans and airchecks of FM stations in each city. Berlin had a great FM dial with a good variety of formats, but Warsaw was the truly best, with three jazz, three classical stations, and an incredible variety of music, including stations that played ambient electronica music and traditional Polish folk music--the FM dial was so jam-packed in Warsaw - channel spacing seemed like 400 or 600 kHz max. I also enjoyed the FM band in St. Petersburg, Russia, and there was a surprising amount of local St. Petersburg AM stations, unlike in any of the other European capitals we visited, which only had a few, or even none as was the case in Copenhagen (Denmark has no MW stations on-air now). In Vilnius, Lithunia, there was one station in English - BBCWS on 95.5 FM and only one MW station on 612 kHz that went off-air after midnight, leaving the MW dial totally free of local stations. I wish we had this situation in North America! In Tallin, Estonia, I found a nice opera/classical music station on 87.9 that was so strong that I could listen to it in our hotel room with just 10-inches of whip antenna extended - turns out it was from Espoo, Finland with 60 kW, across the Gulf of Finland. In fact, more than half the FM stations audible in Tallin were coming from the Helsinki area and were semi-local in strength (the Estonian language is very similar to Finnish). Beginning in the 1970's when Helsinki, Finland put up a tall TV tower, television broadcasts from there were viewable across the waters in Tallin, which was part of the Soviet Union back then. Hundreds of TV antennas sprouted up on rooftops and were pointed at Helsinki, and people could watch western TV broadcasts (and assumably could listen to western FM stations as well as I did from Tallin). This fascinating scenario is documented on a new film entitled "Disco and the Atomic War" with a 5 minute trailer viewable on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watvh?v=D80cuy6LsDw). This created a crisis for Soviet radio/TV technicians on how to jam the TV signals from Helsinki, which never came to pass even by the time the Soviet Union fell in 1991. One of the highlights of the trip was a the 13-hour ferry crossing (Silja Line) between Helsinki and Stockholm. The ferry left Helsinki at about 1700 local time, and the next morning about 0230 (I figured by then we would be half-way between Helsinki and Stockholm in the middle of the Baltic Sea), I left my berth and brought my Sony portable receiver and Olympus voice-recorder up to the top deck and walked back to the stern of the ship. The weather was mostly clear with some high-cirrus clouds, but a bit cold and windy due to the motion of the ship. I pulled up the whip antenna of the Sony and was quite plesantly surprised to find the FM dial full of signals, including a still strong 87.9 MHz classical-music station from Espoo, Finland, but most of the signals had slow- fading (10-20 sec. cycles) similar to an Es opening - likely also due to the movement of the ship, and if a signal faded out all I had to do was slightly shift the position of the whip antenna and I would regain good reception (probably polarization fading). I assume there was considerable oceanic-tropo occurring to have such a full FM dial out in the midst of the Baltic Sea. As I was scanning the FM-dial out in the middle of the Baltic Sea, recorded a Russian-language FM station on 90.6 MHz! It was tropo - almost 300 miles/480 km distance from Saint Petersburg, Russia! (listen to the MP3 audio-files on this archive.org site). Now if only the Olympus recorder was more high-fidelity. I also did some MW and LW (broadcast and NDB) DXing, which was very fun. Also noted onthe mediumwave dial were carriers on the extended-band segment of the MW dial (1620, 1630, 1640, etc.) coming from North America! This was just on the loopstick antenna of my Sony ICF-SW7600GR, a very sensitive receiver! At 0500 local time, I went back out on deck and to the stern of the ship again - first-light was occurring and I was beginning to see the gorgeous Swedish Archipelago pass slowly by as it grew lighter. We were still about 3 hours from port in Stockholm, in the shipping passageway admidst the Archipelago. I was fascinated to be able to still receive 87.9 Espoo, Finland quite strongly even within the multitude of those islands to the east of Stockholm. And so I would heartily recommend bringing along a radio if you plan on a European trip, especially if traveling by ferry across any of the many routes ferries take in Europe for a great DXing experience. 73, Stephen P. McGreevy, N6NKS, November 2009, updated September 2010.