FM signal boosting
 

This is not strictly a ‘vintage’ radio question but hopefully you may be able to guide me in the right direction.
I have a small collection of FM tuners that I enjoy listening to, mainly R3. They range from a Troughline to Linn Kudos and include a Stereofetic, Sansui and Trio. All in good condition having been thoroughly serviced, recapped, new valves (where necessary) and realigned.
They are fed from a five element rooftop external aerial and are only fed one at a time. ie. there are no splitters involved, I move the connection as necessary. This aerial is aimed at the Wrotham transmitter which is approximately 75 miles away (I live in Tiptree, Essex).
My problem is that the signal I receive seems to be a bit low. ie. on the Troughline the magic eye valve only just about moves when tuned. The Kudos only shows about 65% on its strength meter. None of them have any full deflection on the meters. There are no significant hills or tall buildings in the path so I’m assuming it’s just a distance thing. The reception is ‘ok’ but I can’t help but feel that it should be better.
Would anyone care to recommend a booster or perhaps, an alternative remedy please?
Mike

Re: FM signal boosting
 

VHF propogation is line-of-sight for most purposes, so aerial height is the simplest way of getting more signal. That and accurate aiming, but I assume you've done that already.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

75 miles is a very big distance for FM, even with a good external aerial and a big transmitter. Isn't there a closer transmitter you can use?

Re: FM signal boosting
 

If you're only interested in signals from one site, then you could get more signal from a larger, directional aerial.

Is whatever you using pointed for best signal?

There is loss in coax cable, so is your run as short as possible. Is the cable in good condition? Water can go walkies down the braiding, tarnishing it. This can create a surprising amount of loss.

If the cable is OK and the antenna is a big as you can tolerate, then think in terms of a mast-head preamp. A good sensitive tuner isn't going to be much noiseier than a preamp, so putting a preamp down near the tuners is not going to help much. But not all tuners have state-of-the-art low noise figures, so a preamp even if near them would help.

But what gives the best advantage to a preamp, is getting it ahead of the cable loss.

There is a case of horses for courses. Some tuners are deliberately made to survive operation in high signal areas with lots of big signals whamming around. They will deliberately be less sensitive in order to optimise intermod and blocking performance. Some other tuners are optimised for long range use and have higher sensitivity at the expense of intermod etc.

The Tuner Information Center (American spelling) makes interesting reading, but be cautious, the contributors are a mixture of people with lab grade test and measurement facilities as well as people using ears and making comments about perceived 'speed', 'authority' etc. There are also contributors from areas needing extreme sensitivity and others needing extreme large signal handling.

As you know which camp you're in, you should be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Some more signal from a better aerial is always the best thing, if you can do it. Mast head preamps come second.

If you are interested in stations from other locations, the amateur radio suppliers do antenna rotators. A small one will do.

David

Re: FM signal boosting
 

A terrain mapping plot (megalithia.com) suggests that if you are in central Tiptree you are line of site but in the "first fresnel zone" so there could be obstructions causing signal diffraction problems. It might be informative to try with your exact location info.

The suggestions of more height, more metal in the sky (though a stacked extra 5-element will only get you 3dB) or a masthead preamp are all valid. Also worth checking how good your coax download is and the integrity of all the connections, particularly the most awkward one to get at, at the aerial.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Can the OP get a signal from Manningtree? That's where my FM aerial is pointed at.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

What about pointing at Tacolneston, 250KW transmitter across very flat land from you. There is also a small transmitter at Manningtree - just down the road

Re: FM signal boosting
 

For information this is an excellent article about the “new” Wrotham transmitter dates 1982, still in use. It shows Tiptree as in a decent reception area.
Well I found it a good read.
https://ia800504.us.archive.org/5/it...13/1986_13.pdf

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Thank you all for your contributions.
The aerial is quite high up, about four feet above roof ridge. The cable is about three years old and in good condition. There is no indication of water ingress.
I like the idea of Mannintree, I wasn’t aware there was a mast there. I may well have a fiddle and try and rotate the aerial and see if it improves the signal.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

You seem to be marginal for Manningtree too, though it's a lot closer. You may be able to do some experiments by attaching a simple indoor aerial to one of your more sensitive tuners.

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/mapsys/map.php?mapid=41

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Around 20 years ago when I lived in Hereford I enjoyed Saga Radio from Birmingham (even though I was well under the target age-range back then). This was transmitted from Sutton Coldfield, around 60 miles away with Birmingham and the Malvern Hills in between. According to Wikipedia the current station on that frequency (Smooth Radio) is only 11kw but I think Saga was higher, maybe around 50kw.

At that distance, with a 5 element roof aerial pointing in the appropriate direction and a 12db booster in the loft, I could get good clean mono most of the time (apart from heavy rain or thick fog) and reasonably clean stereo if conditions were favourable (which was not very often, and relied on the programme material to mask the slight hiss).

I think under the circumstances I was lucky it was that good for the power, distance and terrain.

This does suggest 75 miles with 250kw and favourable terrain could be a bit better, but probably not much. I doubt you will ever get good clean strong reception from that distance, and will have to accept some compromise if it is the best transmitter for your location.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Are any of these valve tuners? If so the sensitivity will be very poor by transistor standards. In any case, clear stereo from Wrotham should be possible, it's the same distance as Sutton Coldfield is for me. Don't go looking for bigger aerials, there are none on the commercial market now and in any case you'd only get another dB or so. Until people stopped buying rooftop FM aerials there were still on the market the original design produced in the 50s when the band was 88-98MHz. At about 101MHz the gain was zero and above that the direction was reversed. If yours is a Triax you'll be fine with that.

There are plenty of general purpose pre-amps available covering Bands I to V. Choose one with plenty of outputs for all your tuners, and of medium gain. I'd go for a masthead type, even if you only use it indoors. There used to be bandpass types for Band II but valve front-ends won't be bothered by strong out-of-band signals.

Take a look at, say Grax UK

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Hi all, thanks again for the advice. I have today fitted an OXi-GOLD 6-way signal booster. This has had a dramatic increase in strength at the tuners. My Kudos has risen from 65% to 89% which is great. The Troughline (valves) though is a bit odd. It seems to be overloading as the sound has a lot of fuzzy distortions in the background. Not terrible but not a pleasant distraction. Can you have too much signal?

Also, and I appreciate to some this will be a daft question but, obviously the signal booster is amplifying the signal. As it is at the bottom of the aerial cable is it amplfying warts and all or just the pure element of the signal? The sound output is very good and I'm more than happy with the result but just curious about the theory?

I know, I know. I do have a few lives left though ;D

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Yes, you can have overload and yes, all you are doing is amplifying signal and the noise, then adding the noise of the amplifier. So now your signal to noise ratio is worse than before. That's why you were advised to put it before the feeder.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Some tuners leak some of their LO out of the RF input, and if your distribution system has other tuners running you can get interference and funny swirly noises if you have more than one tuner on at once. Most splitters (including those packaged with preamps etc leak any signal coming backwards into them out their other ports.

The troughline has a damned great resonator right up the middle of it, and LO gets everywhere.

David

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Ah, a perfect description, funny swirly noises. So should I split off for the Troughline before going into the signal booster?

Excuse my ignorance. What is LO?

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Local Oscillator. Standard superhet stuff.

I do think you are pushing your luck here. You are *never* going to get decent noise free stereo reception from a transmitter 75 miles away.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

You should be aiming for quality not quantity. Just trying to get enough signal level to make the meter swing across or close the magic eye by amplifying is unlikely to help unless the tuners are insensitive. But even then the signal level alone is not going to get you good noise-free reception.

You need a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio at the aerial before you start amplifying and distributing otherwise you are just amplifying the noise and adding amplifier noise.

75 miles from the transmitter is too far to get an adequate signal-to-noise ratio for good clean stereo reception, so whatever you do will be a compromise. It may well be that less amplifying means less added noise and actually cleaner reception even though the signal level indicator doesn't do much.

Normally amplifying is to compensate for distribution and cable losses rather than strengthening a weak signal. The more ways you split a signal (without amplification) the less of the signal each receiver gets.

It would be worth trying the other transmitters in the area that others have suggested and see if either of them is better. Otherwise, short of moving house, there probably isn't a lot more you can do.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

You don't just get signal from an aerial, you get thermal noise created by the resistance of the elements and their temperature as well as thermal noise from the world around it. The effective temperature decreases if you aim above the horizon. Space is cooler than the earth. with the notable exception of stars! It was someone noticing this on a microwave link that led to the discovery of the 3 Kelvin background radiation anf thence the big bang theory. So if you have a very low signal and you stick in even a good amplifier every dB of gain you give to the signal, you give the same to the noise.

The preamp pays its way if your tuner has a poor noise figure, because then a low noise preamp can lift the signal and although it also lifts the incoming noise, the tuner was dominant, so you can get a net gain in signal to noise ratio.

Cable loss adds to the noise figure of whatever gear follows it. So mast-head preamps with a fair amount of gain can take out this contribution. Once you lose on noise figure, you've lost it forever.

Most people avoid studying noise because no-one likes it, but it's a case of know thine enemy and you can if not win, at least lose by less.

David

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Thanks Paul, I do take your point but it does leave me with a couple of problems. 1. My ladders (and my legs) are not long enough to comfortably reach the aerial mast to allow me to turn it and 2. We only moved in a couple of years ago and I swore to my better half that at 72 there was no way I’d be doing it again ��.

Seriously, I recorded the R3 concert this evening using my Kudos tuner with nothing else connected to the booster. The quality is extremely good so perhaps that is the answer. I can’t say hand on heart that I have ever been overly impressed with the Troughline. I’ve always likened it to what my mum would say about the radiogram in the fifties. “It’s a smashing bit of furniture and has a lovely tone”.

I will try some of the alternative transmitters as has been suggested though. Thanks again all.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

In my experience at VHF, aerial height is the most dominant factor for long-distance reception with the amount of 'resonant metal' in the clear and accurate aiming being close seconds.

Al.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Can I add a footnote to my previous statement. Following my posting last night I sat and listened to the recording in its entirety. Although initially the sound appears very good in places there are passages that did have an element of distortion, as if overloaded. It’s not the tape deck as I removed the booster out of the loop and went back to just the aerial and the Kudos. The result was much better, even though the signal level being received was lower. I think this is my compromise. The advice regarding quality over quantity appears to be correct. I will test out the alternative transmission sites as suggested and report back, if anyone is still interested.
Mike

Re: FM signal boosting
 

If you are in the service area of something closer, this should be worth a try - after all, the sound out of every transmitter is the same, given the PCM distribution network. Wrotham signal was rightly prized in the early days of stereo, because it had the best landlines from BH.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

You could also try inline attenuators if the problem (now) is too much signal. I've got a selection of vintage Belling Lee ones.

One more thing, I recently had a new FM aerial erected and the rigger said that the connection to old one was non existent. So, yes, I realise that it's hard to check but poorly made or non-existent connections are often a problem, especially once a few winters have had their wicked way.

Otherwise I agree with the general sentiment on here that you're doing well to get a decent signal at 75 miles. Excellent in fact.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

From looking at various service maps it does appear that the area south of Colchester has poor coverage. If the signal from Wrotham is clean then it may well be best to stick with that, even though it isn't very strong. I can't find anything that is obviously better. A low noise masthead amp on the mast may improve things a bit.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Looking at the polar diagram of Wrotham it’s not true omni directional, luckily Tiptree appears to be nearly at the apex of one of the lobes, if you were further south the field strength would be less.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Maybe a bit off topic and naughty but FM rebroadcast units are very available some of these have a built in DAB receiver which I know the purest will frown upon heavy. But I am finding this as the only possible solution to the talks sport rubbish that appears to fill what’s left of the broadcast bands. I have been surprised at the quality of modulation produced on both am and Fm using my signal generator and IPAD as the source. If kept to minimum power levels and with careful frequency selection could be an option. Saying that my music appreciation is appalling anything over 3khz is a waste of bandwidth.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Even the very cheap FM microtransmitters intended for use in cars do produce a very clean signal, but it's a bit pointless to use an internet streamer or other digital source to drive a modulator rather than just hooking the streamer up to the hifi system directly. There will inevitably be some degradation.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Christian's dropped us all right in it.

It's time to question what the root purpose is.

With a stereo audio frequency signal pair being sent to a small transmitter and then received in a tuner and played through a hifi system, you have a system for showing the tuner working as it would have been used, back in the day and in a good signal area. This might be the interest in it. You could show a visitor each of several tuners, classics in their own era, working on real, current programme material. You'd be able to hear differences between the different tuners, but the quality reaching the ears with the best tuners would not be up to the standard the same tuner would have produced in its era, in a good signal area. Certainly not with DAB, and to a lesser extent with an internet or digital video broadcast source. DVB-T quality is better than DAB.

If, alternatively, the aim is to listen to the music in the best possible quality, then you can say that extra stages and processes cannot be making what existed earlier up the chain any better, so you connect the audio from your DAB/Internet or other source direct to the hifi amplifier and switch the tuner off.

I have two good quality tuners. One Sony 'ES' model with a few tricks in it, and a carefully restored Revox that used to belong to the BBC as either one of their monitoring receivers, or as part of a re-broadcast backup. Not a bad credential for a tuner!

What they serve to do for me is to allow me to hear just how awful is the processing applied to all stations except Radio 3.

They're only turned on when there is some content I particularly want to hear, or Radio 3 when I want to hear something different.

They are nice objects to have and things of engineering interest in their own right, but I may be in the position of someone with a couple of racing cars in his garage, but no access to a racing circuit.

Whether or not this makes sense is a matter of opinion, but it's my choice and my freedom.

David

Re: FM signal boosting
 

I still prefer decent FM stereo to any other broadcast source - for one thing, it doesn't drop out the way online does and for another it hasn't the compromises imposed by the data rate of DAB as she is spoke.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

I suspect you have answered your own query here. The Troughline is of an earlier time and place. Pension time, comes to us all eventually.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

I'm wondering what antenna you're using, and whether it is polarised correctly to receive your preferred transmitter.

In times-past (1970s) I used a FUBA UKA8 with a rotator - it was horizontally-polarised. These days most FM transmitters are either slant-polarised (the main BBC/commercial stations) or vertically-polarised [the rather-more-listenworthy licence-free stations with transmitters on top of tower-blocks].

Choose your polarisation according to your taste - but always remember that directional antennas provide 'free' gain - which comes without amplifier-noise, and can help exclude 'multipath' background-twitternoises off the back of the beam.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

From the BBC doc in post #8.for the upgraded Wrotham transmitting aerial which I understand is still in use.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Line of sight the distance from Wrotham to Tiptree is 40 miles, not 75 miles. A three or five element horizontally polarised Yagi antenna should give you a very strong and multipath free signal, the output of Wrotham for R3 on 91.3mc/s is 240kW!

Re: FM signal boosting
 

40 miles is much more viable with an outdoor aerial, but the signal still won't be 'very strong'.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

It's a similar distance (37 miles) from Wrotham to where I live in Eastbourne, I am at sea level and get a signal of over 1mV (60dBuV) on my calibrated Sony ST-SB920 tuner using a 3 element yagi in the loft.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

I have a five element yagi horizontally orientated. Very comfortable for the pigeons apparently.

As previously advised, I think I’ve found my answer to the question. Although according to the handbook for the Kudos the signal strength should be in excess of 70% to enable ‘cd quality’ reception. I’ll resign myself to the 64% as indicated. The quality is extremely good in comparison to my other tuners and perfectly acceptable. I’ll put the Troughline at the end of the queue on Thursdays at the Post Office 😎

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Good points David.
I'm in the unfortunate situation of living in a shadow area from the local BBC transmitter at Caldbeck. Our house in the Eden valley is situated nearer to the valley bottom and on the "Wrong side" so that no Aerial can give me a clean and strong signal. I'm using a 17 element!!!!!!! Ron Smith Galaxie aerial, professionally installed and its still not able to get a clean signal. Various reasons including multipath.
Had we been able to get the bungalow we were after originally at the top of the village, we'd get a really good clean line of sight, at the crest of the hill I can see the lights on the mast. That's the way the biscuit crumbles.
Anyway given my interest in radio for its own sake, I quite like the idea of being able to rebroadcast good quality source material to my collection of FM tuners including a couple of troughlines, which I think have an excellent sound quality but they do need a very good clean signal.
I did wonder about repurposing one of those Pure DAB car adaptors, I can lay hands on one I used to use in the car. line input as well as DAB, ironically we have a good DAB signal from the transmitter in Penrith, the BBC didn't see fit to put an FM repeater there and no surprises really.

As to sound quality, I can get the Hi Res BBC feed from the internet and feed it into the DAC on the Hi Fi, we have amazing fibre broadband out in the sticks! Very little if any dropouts and as good an audio feed as the BBC gets on R3.
But it doesn't have the romance of FM and I cant describe it but I feel the actual sound quality on FM, given that its from a fairly basic digital feed has something that doesn't set my ears on edge. Its probably my imagination.

Ho Hum I did wonder if its worth trying to rotate "Jodrell bank" as the wife calls it towards Pontop Pike as I can just about get a signal from there with the aerial pointed away from it and hope the pennines haven't blocked too much. or too much multipath reflections.

A.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Give me straight PCM, albeit companded, any day rather than the data rate chomping that goes on elsewhere. There's nothing imaginary about DAB artefacts.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

I've just done a quick calculation, that's 120km.

The Life FM Mid Dome site is 110km from here, 33 dBW (around 2 kW) EIRP and I'm getting a pretty good signal here from a 3 element yagi, cut down from our old band I/III TV aerial. It's ok around town in a car as well, but a bit of fade sometimes behind tall buildings.

Reception on portable radios can be a little hit and miss but it still works.

I suspect the difference is that Mid Dome is 1478m ASL and a clear line of sight.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

Some UK outlying VHF/FM stations had a receiver with an antenna aimed at a main station. This was either used as the source for rebroadcast, or as a back-up if the minor station's audio feed went down.

I wonder what sorts of distances were covered?

Of course, both antennae would be on tall masts, but the poor receiver would be very close to transmitters banging away in the same band.

David

Re: FM signal boosting
 

It'd be a proper relay receiver. We use an Inovonics one to do linking between Gore and Mid Dome, but it's at an intermediate site with a view of both to save the cost of two STLs. Picks up Gore off-air, STL to Mid Dome (pic is with a temporary STL tx when our main RVR one died). Composite out, composite in to the STL so MPX and RDS are passed.

It's an oldie now, I see the current version is the 650 with more bells and whistles.

RVR used to do one as well, based on the same form factor as their RXRL-NV STL receivers, but it doesn't seem to be in their catalogue now.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

This is fascinating stuff! Mainly because of my late fathers love of classical music and R3.

He had a good enough everything (details are sketchy, but there must have been an FM antenna) to record especially interesting R3 content onto cassette and still be happy with the result.
We lived in Kent, near the top of a hill, so I guess strong signals were at hand - which from this post seems to be the best starting point.

I'm diametrically opposed here in BANES (BA1). I live in a bowl, with hills literally all around. I'd like to know where I'm actually getting a signal - it is probably bouncing off of seagulls!
I don't listen to R3 or classical music much - preferring to select the music I listen to and receive mainly talk radio (R4). This shows up interference excellently and my NAD 4020A is being fed mush from my room mounted di-pole. I've seen the stereo light go on once or twice - but that was tuning through the scale listening for something different (the Archers must have come on!).

My mind is racing (as usual) to a solution to this and the OP's issue.

If there is enough signal (enough being difficult to quantify) then there is not an issue, but when on the margins of decent reception, height seems to be important.
This height leads to long lengths of coaxial, which can negate the reasonable signal back down to marginal! I see an equation in there somewhere!
Please feel free to shoot this idea down - it no doubt has been done before, originality is difficult!

If you:
• Received the reasonable signal (at height)
• Rebroadcast it at a different frequency (double it as a poor example)
• Then with a matching receiver capture it back in the house
• Halve the signal back to originality
• Put the signal into your receiver

you surely would have the best of both worlds. Modern surface mount components could have this done in the size of a box of household matches.....
It might seem overcomplicated, but the units could be calibrated to be matched, so barely any quality loss would be added to the mix.

Possible? Well my wireless headphones work up at the end of the garden, they are the same technology . . .

SEAN

Re: FM signal boosting
 

In that case, why not just use a masthead amplifier? They say in (American) motor racing circles that there is no substitute for cubic inches - in stereo FM reception there is no substitute for uV/m.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

A low NF mast head preamp would probably be a lot simpler solution to overcome feeder losses.
Crossed post with Ted but same thoughts.

Edit. There are always going to be areas where good stereo is difficult but mono requires a lot less signal, I would rather listen to clean noise free mono than hissing distortion in stereo.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

The BBC used modified Revox B261s for their emergency backup chain for about 20 years (David owns and has restored an ex BBC example). The hops were 40-60 miles, but were in mono and they had good aerials on tall masts. Nevertheless, the signal was pretty grim by the time it got to northern Scotland.

This was actually activated in anger for several hours about a decade ago when a combination of human error and aircon failure took down the standard Nicam distribution system, which is supposed to be multiply redundant.

I think they use satellite backup now.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

The mast-head preamp has to be worth a try.

Feeder cable loss before you get any amplification in has exactly the same effect as path loss. So 3dB cable loss is the same as living 41.4% further from the transmitter. If you then add a masthead preamp, you take out this much loss. If your preamp has a lower noise figure than the tuner (not usually very difficult) then you gain even more.

Unlike bigger, gainier antennae, the preamp doesn't take any significant space.

So the priority is to get the best antenna you can, pointed accurately or on a rotator, have it up outside in the clear with minimum cable length to a weather sealed preamp (possibly peaked for the stations you want) and then good quality cable to the tuner indoors.

Look for cable with a foil layer under the braid. Satellite TV grade.

David

Re: FM signal boosting
 

I've checked on a map and its not 75 miles/120km, its 40 miles/64km.

Re: FM signal boosting
 

It's what lies in between that can be the make-or-break issue.

Where I live, some of the houses do not have a clear path to the nearest TV transmitter and therefore use a more distant one, without any problems. Along came channel 5 and their retuners. In these houses they swung the aerials round to the one they'd been told to use in that postcode. No signal. So they sent round an aerial fitter who tore down the perfectly fine antenna in bent pieces and fitted a broadband lower gain one. Still no signal, but with careful adjustment an unwatchable picture was achieved on the 3 higher power channels. They beggered off muttering about sending a specialist. Aye, right.

I sorted a couple of neighbours out. Straightening and welding back together the remains of the antennae which had been literally torn out. Then with the greatest precision, and photographs, I tore out the new antennae exactly as the old ones had been. I tried to get them out in as many pieces. It had been fitted by driving nails through some of the elements into the attic framing.

A quick bit of aiming, being able to see all signal strengths at once on the spectrum analyser, then tune the telly onto a sig gen and I could then do the bit of showmanship of plugging the antenna cable into the telly to have all five channels working with no further twiddling. They had offset the VCR reasonably well, but I provided a few SCART leads and showed people the difference in quality.

All because of someone's over simplification of a coverage area map. And it being blindly followed.

Grrr. One of my neighbours said if the channel 5 people ever came to get their aerial back, she would show him an entirely new way of carrying it back to his van.

David

Re: FM signal boosting
 

I spent time this week in the middle of Dorset. In some idle hours I was doing some SDR experiments with GNU radio and Band 2 FM was the most convenient source of signals - with a helical whip indoors at ground level I didn't expect much.

All I could find were the BBC national stations. Hardly surprising except the frequencies matched the Wenvoe transmitter. Well that just couldn't be - there is steep rising ground in every direction except a gap to the South. The frequency groups of main stations do tend to be re-used on relays but none of the local Dorset ones matched.

The only station I could find that has the correct frequency group is Ivybridge but that is just outside Plymouth. It's a very long path 100km + to the SW but quite a bit is over the sea.

No sign at all of the intended relay for the area which is about 10km South through the gap in the hills. Strange stuff RF.