Re: [HCDX]: France & Malta

[Remy Friess <rfriess@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Bengt, hi all..

A 14:32 30/10/99 +0200, Bengt Ericson a écrit :

>I have been visiting France last week. Acc.to reports there shall be Radio
>Bleue transmitters of 1 kW in Mulhouse and St Brieuc on 1044 & 1197 kHz. I
>stayed in both cities, but no signals on the indicated frequencies. Is
>there any HCDX reader in France that can confirm ??
>

I don't know about St Brieuc but there is certainly no station on 1044 kHz
in Mulhouse. I drive through Mulhouse 4 times a week and have never noted
any signal on that frequency.

This is a good example of how "ghost news" can creep through DX
publications, electronic or not. For instance the otherwise very good
German publication "Sender u. Frequenzen" carried it and I have seen it
mentioned in several club publications of late.

Now how does such ghost news appear? Well, someone, someday hears Radio
Bleue on 1044 kHz in Mulhouse and says the signal was week, certainly 1 kW
or less. Someone else hears the news and says there is a 1 kW transmitter
on 1044 kHz in Mulhouse. Someone else takes up the story and so on and so
forth...

For the first person it is just an interrogation, number two knows it may
not be true, but since it may also be a scoop he passes the news on. But
the third, fourth etc... have no way of knowing something is wrong with the
story...

Of course the real question is why number one mentioned such a signal in
the first place?

In the case of Mulhouse, I think I can easily trace the origin of the story.

Some fifty miles north of Mulhouse, in a place called Sélestat (mentioned
in the WRTH as Strasbourg), there is a powerful mediumwave station. There
are two transmitters, a 200 kW unit on 1161 kHz and a 300 kW unit on 1278
kHz. The latter carries Radio Bleue in the morning. When both transmitters
are on, they produce a mixing product on 1044 kHz that can easily be heard,
even at a certain distance from the site. Specialists will be able to
determine easily why the mix appears on that frequency.

Now here comes the funny thing about it all: 1161 kHz has been INACTIVE for
several years (!!!), which means that our ghost story has been going around
in some DX circles for that long too.

This should teach us a lesson, DX-editors and end-users alike. Do not
blindly trust what you read in DX publications!!! Keep all the news you get
as "maybe" and not as "is"...

73s to all of you out there...

Rémy Friess
Montbeliard - France
MW-LW editor for "A l'Ecoute du Monde"
(published by Amitié Radio, Créteil, France)

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