Handbag Heaven - One year on

Last year I put up an appeal for Galaxy Radio "Handbag Heaven" shows on behalf of a reader.

Thanks to Steve Baker who has just added a couple of comments to the original post, we now have a couple of shows to share with you...

SWU FM - 87.7 MHz - 1st May to 27th May 2016 (RSL)

http://swu.fm/

https://twitter.com/SWUfm

https://www.facebook.com/swu.fm/

In May 2016 SWU will be celebrating Bristol music culture with an exclusive radio station dedicated to the city’s Urban, Electronic & Dance music.

Finally, a decent station in Bristol, if only temporarily.

Unfortunately, I don't think the FM has been set up to work at it's best. This may be an Ofcom ruling that the aerial should be located on a low building or it could just be a lack of decent transmitter site. It could also be lack of experience in setting up.

This signal isn't all that good outside central Bristol. The 10 Watt rig is putting out a stereo signal with RDS 'SWU FM' and the aerial (gold plated dipole from the looks of it) is located on top of Hamilton House in Stokes Croft / Cheltenham Rd, so this is one reason for the poor signal. It's surrounded by hills and taller buildings. The aerial is also only half way up the thick white flag pole it is on, and may do better with the boom fastened at the top of the pole. I had trouble hearing it on my mp3 player's radio once I started heading towards Whiteladies Rd from Park Street, not that far away! I can only just hear it on my SDR setup at home in North Bristol / South Gloucestershire, the signal gets pretty weak by the time you get to Horfield Sports Center (I was using the Tecsun PL310 on the top deck of a bus for this). That said, if you get onto the M32 at Frenchay and travel into Bristol you'll have decent reception on a car radio all the way in. I've not yet explored how well it does going in other directions.

I've been listening on the stream (link below) and I like the pirate sound of the station. No jingles that I've heard, no ads, just back to back shows.

A lot of Bristol legends are involved, Roni, Krust, Die, Jakes, etc...

Handbag Heaven (Galaxy 101)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I've just had an email asking if I have any recordings of Handbag Heaven on Galaxy Radio from around 1997/8.

Has anybody else got any? If so, leave a comment below....

North Bristol Bandscan 23rd July 2015 - IQ Files

Here's 5 IQ files covering the complete 87.5 to 108 band taken late July 2015. It's taken a while to upload them as they are 1gig each. They span 8MHz each as they were made at home using my SDRPlay...

https://mega.nz/#F!bd8lxCaC!DxO2rpzvO9jdO7lhQe7W5Q

Tecsun PL-310 and PL-380 dB Meter Comparrison

I use Tecsun radios for portable station finding and listening.

Ujima 98FM is a community station in central Bristol, and just North of Bristol it comes in the weaker of the two community stations currently on air. I used it for this test as it is a good example of a weak but audible station.

First, the PL-310 without being affected by inductance from my hands / body was reading around 4dB on the level and 0 on the S/N meter.

Second, the PL-380 without being affected by inductance from my hands / body was reading around 18dB on the level and 0 on the S/N meter.

With inductance (holding the radio, or trying to record holding the camera close) I can increase these to 6dB level and 1 on the S/N for the 310, and 20 or 21dB and 1 S/N for the 380.

There are major differences in the readings for some reason, yet the reception (though you can't hear it in the video so much as on the 380 I had to hold the camera away and zoom in) sounded roughly the same.

When I get my 2nd 310 in a few weeks, we'll see if there is a difference even on the same model.