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What to listen to · Fax and digital signals
DWD weather fax on 13882.5 kHz: the daytime frequency from Pinneberg
The German weather charts on their highest frequency, 13882.5 kHz under the callsign DDK6. Best from noon until the evening, and heard far beyond Germany, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.
What you hear
The programme of the Hamburg marine weather office, identical to 7880 kHz: surface analyses, pressure forecasts up to 108 hours, upper-air charts, wave forecasts, sea-surface temperature, ice charts in winter, at 120 lines per minute with IOC 576. What the charts contain and how a fax transmission works is in the main article.
Who transmits and why
Deutscher Wetterdienst from the transmitter at Pinneberg near Hamburg, callsign DDK6 on this frequency. The high frequency serves ships far from Germany in daylight, when the two lower frequencies are short-range.
When and where to listen
13882.5 kHz lies close to the 20 metre amateur band and follows its habits: it needs daylight along the path, opens in the late morning, works best from noon to the early evening and fades after sunset, quickly in winter. Its reach is the point: in the afternoon the charts are readable in Spain, Italy, Greece, on the Atlantic and the Canaries, where the lower frequencies struggle. Close to the transmitter, in northern Germany, the signal can be weaker than on 7880 kHz, as the wave skips over the nearest few hundred kilometres. The tuning is 1.9 kHz below the nominal frequency: 13880.6 kHz in USB.
In ShackDeck
Station catalogue → Fax and digital signals → Fax DWD 13882.5 kHz (day). The program picks a public receiver with the frequency, tunes it to 13880.6 kHz USB, sets the WEFAX mode and draws the chart line by line; nothing of your own is needed. In the morning and at night use the 7880 or the 3855 kHz entry.