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Mystery station (late '80s)

N

NoWayNoCC

Well, this is an odd one.

A friend who lived in Highland Heights KY around 1988 says there was a mystery station that came in very clearly for quite some time. They said it was near the lower end of the FM dial, but they don't know the exact megahertzage, since it was on a boom box with an analog tuner. Apparently, the format was something sort of like hot AC from very scratchy records. Reportedly, the DJ sounded like a teenage girl talking through a horn like Charlie Brown's teacher. You couldn't understand a word she said, so no call letters could ever be identified.

I lived in Highland Heights and don't remember anything like this. There were a few high school stations back then with weak signals, but trust me, the schools in Campbell County would never have anything as useful as a radio station. I don't know what high school station would have reached Highland Heights clearly.
 
Kind of hard to tell these many years later what it may have been or where it was coming from. Of course, the lower part of the FM dial is where the high school and other non-commercial radio stations seem to be located. Based on the bad quality of the sound you noted, I wonder if it may have been someone in the Highland Heights community using some home-made or put-together equipment. Many years ago, HeathKit or a similar company sold tiny three-tube transmitters that enabled people to put out a signal on AM frequencies.
 
I remember a pirate station on 90.5 I think that was playing heavy metal in the late 80s and early 90s that was pretty high powered since I was living in the Erlanger KY area at the time. The went by the fictional call letters WKIL. I think they were located in that area.
 
OK, I was listening back then...

My bet is it was WJVS 88.3 (Scarlet Oaks Joint Vocational HS radio station). They shared a license with WAIF. From 8 am- 4:30 pm (estimated) The high school students ran their station on 88.3 from Sharonville. From what I recall they also had less power than WAIF (under 500 watts?) but maybe it was directional towards that area (?)

The students usually played whatever they wanted but it usually was contemporary pop and rock from that time.

Now if your friend was listening from 4:30p-8am it might have been WAIF....and here is a curve ball. Since WJVS was a HS and they went on summer vacation...WAIF would pick up the dayshift with summer volunteer programmers for the summer months.

SO if it was summertime and they were listening during the day...it might have been the WAIF summer programmers.






NoWayNoCC said:
Well, this is an odd one.

A friend who lived in Highland Heights KY around 1988 says there was a mystery station that came in very clearly for quite some time. They said it was near the lower end of the FM dial, but they don't know the exact megahertzage, since it was on a boom box with an analog tuner. Apparently, the format was something sort of like hot AC from very scratchy records. Reportedly, the DJ sounded like a teenage girl talking through a horn like Charlie Brown's teacher. You couldn't understand a word she said, so no call letters could ever be identified.

I lived in Highland Heights and don't remember anything like this. There were a few high school stations back then with weak signals, but trust me, the schools in Campbell County would never have anything as useful as a radio station. I don't know what high school station would have reached Highland Heights clearly.
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