FM Opening to Portugal 4.6.2018
Es-season on FM has been a bit lame in Finland so far. We had nice strong Russian opening on the 11th of May, a bit worse one a day before, then there was a long silence till the 1st of June. The 1st of June started nicely with 20 minutes opening to UK. Midlands/Wales-area brought to me a couple of new ones such as 96.3 Radio Aire, Capital FM South Wales, Smooth Radio West Midlands, Dee 106.3, Sunshine Radio and Signal 107. Then es cloud switched to Middle-Europe, especially to Czech, Slovak and Poland. From Poland I got several new ones like Radio WAWA, PR Radio Opole, Radio ZET Bydgoszcz, Radio Elka and Radio Żnin FM.
The three days later in the 4th of July after 1520 UTC I noticed Es-warning from Botnia saying that band is open to Sevilla. Before this band had been totally dead in Finland but SW Europe had a huge ES-opening. By my suprise the first station I heard on 88.7 MHz was talking in Portuguese. Wait … A quick stream comparasion and yes, it was RDP Antena 2 from Serra de Montejunto, 3239 kilometres away! I just have had my first Portuguese FM station after 34 years of trying! Next went to 90.20: Rádio Renascença was booming there! And actually FM lowband was full of Portuguese stations. Unfortunately I couldn’t get ID from all of them. 89.70 Antena Livre was playing only music but 91.70 RMF IDed nicely. Huh! Propagation lasted 20 minutes and it was one of the highlights of my 38 year DXing career! ES continued with another UK opening. Now Free Radio Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Lincs FM and Capital FM Leicestershire were new catches. Then clouds moved to France and then to Italy but not much interesting was heard.
Suprisingly next day at 1706 UTC 88,7 MHz started to talk in Portuguese again! This time it was Rádio Comercial from Lamego-tx. Signal was not so strong as a day before but this station continued alone in the band for 15 minutes! Just few hours earlier I had received QSL-note from Rádio Comercial heard a day before on 90.80 MHz! You can listen to audio from here. It was booming on 90.80 MHz!
