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Offshore FM Broadcast Reception

K

K8PLW

Despite being (Nearly) surrounded by water here, I've never been any significant distance off shore. I'd love to go on a cruise at some point (Taking radio equipment along, of course!). I found an archived thread about someone receiving a Honolulu FM on the top deck of a cruise ship 300+ miles out.

So the question is: Has anyone been any great distance offshore and DX'd FM BC? Curious how far out you were able to detect the presence of "Anything" on the band. Any interesting propagation you experienced? (Tropo, Es, Meteor Scatter, etc). What equipment were you using?
 
I would think that with a good beam FM antenna, you could get out 250 miles or so on a fairly normal basis, at least the 50 and 100 kW FMs. Like some report DXing from airplanes, the high ERP stations would dominate and capture the lower ERP, high HAAT stations on tall buildings in large cities near the coast.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I would think that with a good beam FM antenna, you could get out 250 miles or so on a fairly normal basis, at least the 50 and 100 kW FMs. Like some report DXing from airplanes, the high ERP stations would dominate and capture the lower ERP, high HAAT stations on tall buildings in large cities near the coast.
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Years ago when WKQX Chicago signed off late at night I used to receive WIXX Green Bay, Wi with a very simple FM beam. This was not over water at about 170 miles and no tropo. WIXX' antenna is about 1000 ft above average terrain. I'm guessing over the ocean you can do much better.
 
radioman148 said:
Years ago when WKQX Chicago signed off late at night I used to receive WIXX Green Bay, Wi with a very simple FM beam. This was not over water at about 170 miles and no tropo. WIXX' antenna is about 1000 ft above average terrain. I'm guessing over the ocean you can do much better.
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I've had similar experiences here with propagation across Lake Erie. Cleveland FMs are nearly always present under some co-channel Detroit stations. Ive caught WFHM 95.5 (Then WCLV), WGAR 99.5, and WZJM 92.3 at various times over the years when these stations were briefly off the air for maintenance. Back in April, 107.5 WGPR was off the air for nearly the entire afternoon of Saturday 4/3. In this case I received a weak WCCW Traverse City at 200-ish miles.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I would think that with a good beam FM antenna, you could get out 250 miles or so on a fairly normal basis, at least the 50 and 100 kW FMs. Like some report DXing from airplanes, the high ERP stations would dominate and capture the lower ERP, high HAAT stations on tall buildings in large cities near the coast.
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I'd think so, or possibly even further. Ducting is common over open water and coastlines. I'd suspect that, with a "typical" setup (Vehicle radio caliber like you may find on a larger boat and 1/4~ antenna) it may be possible to detect the presence of signals on the band out to 500 miles with modest propagation enhancement. Not looking to spark up a debate on the safety/legality of DXing from an airplane (Yes, I have), but listening on a trans-Atlantic flight would be very interesting.
 
An overnight trip on an inter-island ferry in the Philippines was interesting. Some 20 years ago, before DTV. There were TVs in common non-sleeping areas. It was interesting to watch the analog signals slowly fade into 'nothing but snow' 2 or 3 hours out. No signals for about 6 or 7 hours, and then new signals from our destination port slowly fade in. You could kind of gauge how much longer it would be to our destination where the signals were coming from.
 
I've flown Chicago-London a number of times, sometimes listening to my Sony SRF-37 Walkman. The route is the circle route, which goes over the southern tip of Greenland. Going East, Ireland stations fade in about an hour before land. Going west, the first land you encounter is Labrador, which is very sparsely populated. Typically, you don't hear any signals until you're either over land or nearly so....and as often as not it's French language stations coming from Quebec.

I had the Walkman going mostly going eastbound. These were overnight flights. and the vacant FM band provided white noise that helped me sleep. Along the lines of what mofocat was saying, when the signals started fading in, it was time for me to wake up and get ready to land at Heathrow airport.
 
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I've DXed on planes with a sony walkman and I remember hearing one FM station and then as the plane turns hearing a completely different station on the same frequency. Both at pretty good distances.
 
cyberdad said:
I've flown Chicago-London a number of times, sometimes listening to my Sony SRF-37 Walkman. The route is the circle route, which goes over the southern tip of Greenland. Going East, Ireland stations fade in about an hour before land. Going west, the first land you encounter is Labrador, which is very sparsely populated. Typically, you don't hear any signals until you're either over land or nearly so....and as often as not it's French language stations coming from Quebec.

I had the Walkman going mostly going eastbound. These were overnight flights. and the vacant FM band provided white noise that helped me sleep. Along the lines of what mofocat was saying, when the signals started fading in, it was time for me to wake up and get ready to land at Heathrow airport.
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Very good. I didn't consider the flight path to London would take you over any portion of Greenland. KNR radio is on my MW DX bucket list. I received an NDB Beacon from Simiutaq several winters ago (Near southern tip of Greenland - 'SI' 279 Khz, 2kw) so I believe its possible. Some winter nights I rotate my loop and monitor 650 and/or 720 khz in hopes of catching it.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I am told that WLXT 100 kW 96.3 Petoskey easily captures WBBM-FM 3.3 kW 96.3 Chicago over West Central Michigan. That's around a 15 dB ERP advantage.
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WLXT does get out quite well. Ive received it from the car as far away as West Branch, continuing south until 1st adjacent WHNN makes it pretty much impossible. Also received well into the upper peninsula, aided by propagation across Lake Michigan.
 
I tried to look for the abandoned WLXT (WMBN-FM) site near Good Hart last Summer, on Island View Hill, but I got stuck in the sand. Luckily, we got out with the rear view camera. I think it was too difficult of get to for Winter maintenance. I don't think they used it for much more than a year. The FCC soon came up with Class C1, which allowed them to move much closer to WHNN. The First Adjacent Class C to Class C Distance Separation requirement was and still is 150 Miles. Class C1 to Class C is 130 miles. WHNN finally had to downgrade to Class C0, because there was no way to get a 450 meter HAAT anywhere near Bay City.
 
Checked it out on Google Earth, tower base may be about all that remains. Speaking of abandoned sites, the single tower for now long gone WMRR 1540 khz Marshall, MI is clearly visible just off I-94. The station has been off the air since 1967, the tower now stands in the middle of the woods.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
You could see the tower base of the Good Hart tower? On a good day, I thought I could see the guy anchors.
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I see a white dot in about the right location according to the coordinates. Assuming that may be it, or something related to it. Im sure you'd find some evidence of it if you visited the site. Probably more underground than above now though: Concrete, grounding/radial wires, utility lines, etc, I'm sure are all still down there as they're not easily removed.
 
In Southeast Alaska, it wasn't that great, but the terrain of the area (many islands) would block the line-of-sight of about anything. Course, ERPs for the stations in the hub communities aren't that high either.
 
K8PLW said:
I see a white dot in about the right location according to the coordinates. Assuming that may be it, or something related to it. Im sure you'd find some evidence of it if you visited the site. Probably more underground than above now though: Concrete, grounding/radial wires, utility lines, etc, I'm sure are all still down there as they're not easily removed.
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I was only able to find the coordinates from an FCC comment on the application found in the period between History Cards and CDBS complete applications. I found that on fccdata.org. Where did you find it?

Here's what I found.

Public Notice Comment

Federal Communications Commission
licensing.fcc.gov
 
I looked it up on Google Maps using Good Hart then Island View Hill and I got a view of an interesting site. Then I looked up the coordinates from your last post and it is slightly south on the other side of the road which appears to be in the woods with only a small clearing. Both locations are approx 4.2 miles south of Cross Village. Look up Island View Hill and it may be the site in question.
 
I would assume you can see Beaver Island and perhaps some other nearby Islands from Island View Hill. Beaver Island might be interesting to DX from. Higher elevations there are close to 200 feet higher than Lake Michigan.

There is an LPFM on Beaver Island, WVBI-LP 100.1. At one time, there were a couple of Class C2 fully spaced openings, but they have been used closer on the mainland. Besides, you'd just end up wasting your signal over the water. I heard WJML 1110, about 180 miles away when they first did tests in 1966, by accident. It was late Fall, during CH, and they said they had to go out to Beaver Island the next day to do some signal measurements. They were concerned about storms when boating out during that time of year. I would assume that they were DA Proofs of Performance before Licensing, which occurred Demember 6, 1966, begun by Chicago Radio news reporter (WBBM in later years) John Harrington. It was a CBS Radio Network affiliate. The FM signed on first the previous year. Bob and Tom met and began their talk show there before taking it on the road to Indianapolis and syndication.
 
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Not strictly "offshore" because it's an island, but at sea level in the far north of Shetland (which itself is north of Scotland) it used to be possible to receive the FM signals from Bergen and Alesund on the Norwegian coast about 250 miles away. These high power FMs have now all been switched off and replaced with DAB stations on a much higher frequency. It helped that the Norway stations were on very high mountains next to the coast, so there was a direct path of nothing but sea.
 
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