Radio 208 in the cabin
----------------------
In December my wife and I took a sort of "zero frills mini-break"
and spent a few nights in a small cabin on a garden allotment,
offered for rent on AirBnB, in a small city in the part of Czechia
known (rather aspirationally) as Bohemian Switzerland due to the
surrounding mountains. This is the way we desperately cling to the
appreciation for "mökkielämää" we acquired in Finland. The place
had electricity, so we were definitely playing on easy mode, but
at least the mains water supply was turned off for the winter.
We had a great time, despite the lack of sauna.
I brought the Sony ICF-7600A that I bought about a year before[1]
with me and spent some time in the evenings very casually DXing
the MW and SW bands. The reports of excellent MW performance by
this radio do not appear to be exaggerated! For the first time
ever I heard Radio 208 from Denmark[2] on 1440 kHz. Now, Denmark
to Czechia is not exactly a long distance by any stretch of the
imagination, but this is a very low power station, just 0.6 kW
according to mwlist.org. I suspect it's the least powerful station
I've ever heard. This probably wouldn't be considered impressive
by today's SDR crowd, but I was and am very happy.
Radio 208 is obviously a passion project, probably run by a single
individual, probably at not inconsiderable out-of-pocket expense.
It has no adverts and no announcements, it just plays classic
prog rock around the clock. To my surprise, it is a relatively
young station, having started in 2018, and it began as an internet
radio station before becoming "real", which must be an extremely
unusual direction to transition between those states these days!
Tiny stations like this are absolutely a dying breed and I fully
expect them to go extinct within my lifetime. It was a real treat
to stumble upon one.
[1]
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/radio-updates.txt
[2]
https://www.radio208.dk/
