Travelling home last night, Southbound on the A417 near the Air Balloon roundabout in Gloucestershire (the one Sally Traffic mentions every week) when my traffic announcement picked up the TA from BBC radio Leicester, this must be at least 100 miles as the crow flies. Then about 30 seconds later - Radio Shropshire !! again another 100 miles away at least.
Conditions were still and clear (wonder if that had anything to do with it?)
Got me thinking - what's the most distant TA your radio has announced? I'm sure a radio expert will tell me why this happened but I've never received signals from as far that before.
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Generally VHF radio follows a line of sight. Whilst hills and even trees can prevent reception of quite local stations a receiver on high ground may "see" for miles. Clear conditions will also help, though exceptional propagation will have you picking TA's for Paris.
Birdlip hill is on the edge of an escarpment, and there are good lines of sight from Shropshire's heights (eg the Long Mynd) down the Severn Valley. While the Cotswolds break the line to the East there is probably little high ground up the vale of Evesham towards Coventry and then Leicester.
Personally I up on TA very quickly. Here in Northampton, as well as the local alerts, I'd get Oxford, Cambridge, East and West Midlands and all stations to to London. Radio 5 carries the stuff that matters - and tells me if the trains are stuffed as well.
Edited by Bromptonaut on 19/02/2008 at 21:07
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SWMBO likes to listen to Welsh Language radio when we travel, the record was about 10 miles east of Manchester on the M62, widely receivable on the M6 in the Midlands and the M5 near Worcester.....don't know if they had any traffic reports though !
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I live just north of Belfast in Co. Antrim and have noticed that in calm periods of high pressure, I often pick up the TA from BBC Radio Scotland, quite often while travelling down the hill section of the M2 past Sandyknowes to the shore section into Belfast. At this point there is a bit of elevation and on a good, clear day you can see the Scottish mainland (around Portpatrick) so potentially a clear path for any signals to travel. I think this only occurs in certain weather conditions and has something to do with large and stable high pressure air masses, as we have had over the last few days, but am not sure of the exact reasoning why.
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when i go out in the boat, I often pick up vhf transmissions from vessels way out of (line of) sight over the horizon, and as vhf travels in a "straight line", i must pick it up after it has bounced of a cloud or thermocline, or some thing.
Billy
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