When listening to the radio (Radio 5 on am) I have a lot of problem with interference from late afternoon onwards. The intruding station is obviously in a foreign language and plays a wide range of music (from classical to other stuff) but on the hour it plays the theme from Great Gate of Kiev... Anyone have any idea what it is?

W

Sounds like a Russian radio station, some of which use very powerful transmitters.

The problem you have is that the ionosphere is affected by sunlight, and in hours of darkness it reflects radio signals back to earth rather like a mirror, so they can be picked up many hundreds or thousands of miles away. The efficiency of this process is dependent on the frequency of the radio signal, but short wave radio transmissions can sometimes be picked up all over the world after dark. (This is why we could only ever hear Radio Luxemburg when tucked up in bed ).

There is a list of UK radio and TV transmitters and their power outputs, which is freely available online, (and used to apear in the back of the Maplin catalogue). There may now be something similar for Russian radio and TV transmitters.

There is no easy solution to this problem, (apart from using FM or digital radio), but rotating the radio may help to improve the signal from the transmitter you want to listen to.

SB