Just a couple miles away is Machen Mountain, which hosts great views across the Bristol Channel and up the Welsh Valleys. From the peak, Irish radio and VHF Band 3 television stations can be received. Wenvoe's BBC TX interferes with RTE, but scrapes through. Many Irish Independent Radio Stations blast through in glorious stereo, my favourite being South East Radio, broadcasting from Wexford Harbour. Walk a few hundred yards south and the DX zone (Long Distance Reception) totally changes when the southern UK stations start appearing from London in the east to Lands End in the west. Stations such as 2CR from bourn mouth and Lantern FM from Devon boom through along with 2 Ten FM from Hampshire. It is possible to drive up the Western side of the mountain from Risca and take advantage of the great take off on the VHF and UHF ham bands. The whole of Wales and Southern England can be contacted on 145MHz and 433 MHz from up here using just 10watts. A great DX spot. The great thing about the radio hobby is that is fully portable and you can take it on holiday with you and my favourite holiday locations are Wales and southern Ireland, a DX'ers haven. The funny thing is, I DX Irish radio stations when in Wales and Welsh stations when in County Wexford, south east Ireland. As I holiday'd in Ireland with mum, dad and my sister in the 1980's, car space was minimum, hence my DX was limited to RX only. Cardiff's CBC (now Red Dragon Radio) could be heard on 103.2MHz and Gwent Broadcasting on 97.4MHz just scraped in. My latest Trip up Machen Mountain brought many reception surprises, firstly Radio Pembrokeshire on 102.5MHz blasting through in glorious stereo. The next surprise came along whilst tuned to 145.500MHz when a familiar callsign from Ireland broke the squelch. It was an old scouting friend of mine in Dublin and we managed to chat for a few minutes whilst both using handheld 2m radios only outputting a couple watts. Within moments of chatting to Robert, several other stations from Ireland and Isle of Man made contact and made my day. As I was about to descend Machen Mountain, I detected many central european radio stations fading in and out on band 2, but as time was limited could not hang about to log them all.