From 09 UTC onwards the skip was getting more interesting when some Italian and Norhtwest Balkan stations (HRV, SVN, BIH) became audible with nice signals, many with RDS-levels. Unfortunately only lower FM-band was open, MUF staying mostly under 92 MHz. MWE was lucky to catch two personal new ones from ex-Jugoslavia: 88.1 HRT Radio Sljeme and 89.1 Radio Velika Kladusa. JKZ observed RDS-codes of the stations like 89.4 Radio Sisak, 90.0 Radio Maxi and 90.3 Zabavni Radio (ex-Radio Martin), all of which have been logged earlier. The only new one for Jouni was an Italian house music station 89.0 Party Groove, Alpignano (TO).
After 0930 UTC Es took 2½ hour nap but came back right after 12UTC. First sign was Radio Toscana PI-code on 88.0 and quickly the FM-band was full of Italian stations up to 108 MHz. This time the Es-skip reached only to the southernmost coast of Finland and even the capital city of Helsinki was missing most of the DX-action. For half an hour, Italy-opening was mostly hopeless. Noise level on every frequency was so high that RDS-codes didn't come through and only the strongest network transmitters were audible.
After 1230 UTC conditions improved a bit and started to get some direction. With the less stations audible on every frequency, also some RDS-codes started to appear. At the same time, some French-speaking stations became audible with Italians. On 104.6 MHz, JKZ noticed tropical jazz music and then some French talk. France Bleu RCFM from Corsica was listed on the frequency and Jouni had enough time to compare a program with RCFM's audio stream. And it matched!
At the time, there were already some other Corsica loggings from Finland in FMLIST's Visual log book. When checking those, JKZ noticed a peculiar music with strange language on 105.1 MHz. Station faded down but when Jouni came back to the frequency somewhat later music was there again with RDS-levels this time: PS: " VOCE !", PI: F499. Then the signal faded down again but came back exactly at the top of the hour and Jouni was able to hear clear "Voce Nustrale" -station identification and RFI news. Later on JKZ wrote reception reports to the stations and both France Bleu RCFM 104.6 and Voce Nustrale 105.1 briefly verified Jouni's first ever reception of Corsican FM-stations!
Meanwhile MWE was forced to do some mobile FM-DXing because of domestic duties. Although DXing with mobile phone is by no means enjoyable, Marko proved that it is indeed possible. Using Global Tuners for Android app tuning our Kasnäs receivers was possible and even RDS decoding worked well as can be seen from the mobile phone screen capture below. The best mobile logging for Marko from the afternoon was probably Italian 106.3 NBC Rete Regione with audio id.
