My God! What is this? (Oh God, what is this?)
Looks like it’s a radio station in Haywards Heath … anywhere ?? (Looks like it’s a radio station in Haywards Heath … anywhere?)
Yes, Mid Downs Radio, Princess Royal’s own radio station, on 1350AM received an email from a Swedish listener 995 miles away.
The station gets random contacts from foreign listeners, but it’s always exciting when it happens.
As Paul Barnett, the station president, says, “It has a powerful receiver – it has to be, because our transmitter only has one watt!”
We receive these messages from time to time from radio stations across Europe.
But it’s good to know that nowadays internet streaming they are still there.
The email was sent to one of the station’s leading veterans, Kevin Payne, whose weekly Motown Magic program airs on Monday night.
Kevin told him: “Greetings from sunny but windy Middle Sussex in the heart of South East England.
“I was excited to receive your wonderful email with a video from a radio show that I present regularly on Monday nights.
“Mid Downs Radio has been broadcasting to patients and staff at Princess Royal Hospital and the wider community since 1976.
“I’ve been doing MDR since 1984.”
Swedish listener Goethe Lindström, 67, from Tenhult, near Jönköping, in southern Sweden – a 1969 radio amateur with the call sign SM7XUF – said: “It’s raining and cold here, only five degrees.
“Maybe snow tomorrow morning.”
He said he was able to pick up signals from 1,700 stations in 158 countries using “directional antennas transmitted to different parts of the world.”
He added: “I also use a Kiwi-SDR remote control in the Scandinavian countries.”
Goethe, a media teacher with his wife Karin, also runs a sheep farm.