i was on the kst 50 MHz reg 2 chat and i was showing them the PMSDR in action with MW dx and showing them it working with video carriers and 6 & 4 meters and they were very impressed with it but they were asking about the VAT on payments and i received the following mail from Martin Pernter

Regarding the VAT, every customer outside the EC have following conditions:

"The prices on our webshop are always displayed with V.A.T. (21% tax) included, but you don't have to pay the VAT (21%) as customer outside from the European union for orders above 154,95 Euros.
As usual, the customer outside from the European union use PayPal to pay the total amount including VAT, then we refund by PayPal the VAT after the delivery of the order.

For payments through bank wire transfer, we will send a VAT-free proforma invoice after receiving the order."

The final price is simply 21% (Italian VAT rate) less than the total amount on the webshop order.

Best Regards,

Martin

still nothing to report radio wise here and i have had a few alerts that the common single hop stuff were coming in strong but after all my years in TVDX at the moment i am only looking for double hop conditions or low power single hop stations as i am sure in the coming weeks i will get the more common stations to record. most of the alerts are coming from dxers in the southern part of the UK and as i have said many times before its a different planet up here when it comes to conditions on 50 MHz or tvdx and i have seen reports saying the band is wide open very strong signals etc while its totally dead up here.

there was a good example of this last night from Stuart in London who alerted me via skype he was getting good carriers on e3 55.250 and he was getting Italian feeders coming in on 53 MHz but when i checked the band there wasn't one single carrier coming in on e3 and even though its the end of May its still a bit early for the sporadic E to get really started up here.

still nothing to report apart from a band 2 opening to Spain yesterday and i am simply not in the shack as its too warm. in my attic there is only a small window and in the good weather we have been having it is just too warm to be in the shack and when the wife says we are going on a trip to the coast we all know we don't argue with them lol !

the following will sum up the past few days .... sunny very hot .... NO DX ..... not been in the shack much

nothing really much was happening today on b1 or b2 then at around 1738 b2 opened from nothing and Spain was in for about 20 mins up to 108 MHz but i was paying more attention to video carriers and i saw carriers come up on r1 and i received my first b1 sporadic e of the season which you can see on the following link
first sporadic e on b1 2012

even though the video was quite good the muf wasn't quite high enough for audio but i forgot to check the rec box in DScaler so it wouldn't have mattered anyway. good to see conditions finally reaching up here and hopefully more to follow

once again dxers in England had some amazing sporadic e yesterday with middle east and north africa heard on B2 and Paul Farley received some great middle east TV on B1 which can be seen on the following links
Jordan E3  Iran E2  and looking at various reports there could have been some exotic dx on B2 with various unid langs reported and double hop Es into the middle east and while all this was going on guess what was being received up here in bonnie Scotland ........ wait for it ........ NOTHING !!!! not one video carrier received apart from meteor scatter on R1 and i have a feeling its going to be a long boring season and when its like that i lose interest fast and move on to other things and sometimes i even pick up the mike and give a cq call .... yes it gets that bad LOL !

while Scotland might be good for MW dx one thing for sure B1 and B2 is a different story and once again dxers in England were enjoying Es on B1 and B2 yesterday with Libya heard by a couple of dxers on B2 and once again transatlantic carriers were received on A2 55.250 while there was nothing up here so i think i will stick with MW dx until the middle of June lol ! 

my D500 arrived back and it turned out the problem was a tuning pot in which when the D500 was switched on ( 12v) the tuning pot went non linear and on the dial when i went to E2 48.250 it was actually on around E4 62.250 and when i tuned to E3 55.250 or E4 it was somewhere around B2 so i am not surprised i was getting a big noise peak around E3 E4 so fingers crossed all is well now and hopefully i get some conditions to try it out.

i have got my moaning face on today as the big dx blocking wall at the Scotland England border is keeping the dx out of Scotland as dxers in England have been enjoying sporadic e on B1 and B2 and there has been virtually nothing up here apart from one opening to Spain on B2 and no TVDX received here as yet. Macedonia on E4 has been received in colour by dxers down south and at the time there wasn't even a carrier from it here which is so frustrating as that would be a new one for me on B1. i shouldn't really complain as i know myself the season really doesn't start up here until June but its so frustrating that a couple of 100 miles south is the difference in getting dx and not getting it.

yesterday i gave ken back his Perseus and i liked to be up for the peak when i was recording the MW band so i thought i would have a extra couple of hours in bed but !! my eyes popped open at 0345z and that was me up. yesterday there was a Es opening to Belgium on 50 MHz which is really short skip here in Scotland and a few OH LA were heard as well but this opening was coming from areas that didn't have B1 TV and its good to see the Es season starting early but i hope it doesn't finish early which happened a couple of years ago as the season started in the middle of may and it was all but over at the end of June.. i recorded the Es opening yesterday which you can see on the following link and there was some strong signals coming in 50 mhz short Es

meteor/aircraft/tropo scatter

i left the kenwood on 97.0 and was recording in the hope of some good meteor pings when 2FM Ireland came up which is roughly 180 miles from here and i was beaming east so it was behind the antenna and on the following link you can hear how it sounded and what do you guys think was it meteor/aircraft/tropo scatter ???
2FM VIA ??????

my last dx logging of this season on the MW band was at 0332z yesterday morning with Radio Clube from Brazil on 1200 but as usual the music was coming in strong and when the talk started it went down in qsb and i made a recording for the realdx yahoo group for help which Paul Crankshaw (Troon) came up with the id but it was too weak to put on here or youtube. lets hope i will be busy with double hop Es on B1 TV until the MW season starts again in the autumn

disaster has struck as my D500 has developed a fault as when i switched it on the other day i noticed i had bad qrm on E3 & E4 which at first i thought it was some kind of baby alarm as it was bad but after putting my log periodic into my JVC tv i found B1 clear and the noise was only there when the D500 was inline. a telephone call was made to Gary Smith of HS publications which he said the tuning coil or even the tuner itself could have a fault so the D500 was packaged up and sent to him for repair so for the moment i have to go back to old school tvdx with the JVC and its better to have it getting the fault now rather than when the Es season really starts.

nothing much to report radio wise and this morning i received some nice meteor bursts on 87.7 MHz which can be heard on the following link 87.7 MHz meteor scatter

nothing to report on the MW band  and very average conditions this morning. yesterday i had another sporadic e opening on B1 B2 with RAI on 1A quite strong and Italy and Croatia on B2. nothing much happening on the bands as i type ( 12.04 ) however i had a couple of nice pings via meteor scatter which you can hear on the following link and the last one the rock must have been the size of a small car lol
87.7 MHz meteor scatter