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CIRR off the air? Or just obliterated by E skip?

M

Mikon8er

Okay, so it's been a late night for me over in Mississauga, I decided to kill some time and get out my Grundig S350DL to do a quick FM bandscan. I stumble across 103.9, and I hear Highway to Hell by AC/DC which would be an unlikely staple for a radio station the likes of CIRR (103.9 Proud FM). I hear the station bumper for "103.9 More FM". At this point, I'm rather excited, not at the fact that's coming in in general as I've had numerous FMs from Erie, PA to Rochester, NY come in at times, but at the pristine clarity of the signal. Right now, the clarity and stability is indistinguishable from a local Toronto station beaming from the CN Tower despite actually being about 100 miles away. I decided to take a peek at William Hepburn's tropospheric ducting maps and no measurable "opening" is forecast until Tuesday, September 17th. I didn't get too baffled and decided to take a look at the charts on dxmaps.com and have discovered a hint of Sporadic E (E skip) activity stemming from roughly northern South Carolina into Southern Ontario; possibly hinting at greater catches to come. So the question is, has CIRR's 50 watt signal been taken out by E skip activity bringing in the 51KW stick from London, or does this event merely coincide with a coincidental transmitter outage at CIRR?
 
That wouldn't be eskip, that would be tropo. Eskip is reception of stations usually more than 500 miles away where as tropo is reception is usually less than 500 This time of the year eskip is pretty much done, but there has been some really good tropo events going on which is common in early fall in the northeast US/Ontario area. Its possible that CIRR was off the air, but a low power signal like that can get overpowered by a strong tropo signal. CKDK from London actually broadcasts from Woodstock, ON so its not that far away.
 
This isn't surprising, but traditionally I have relied on William Hepburn's tropospheric ducting forecasts to alert me of events like this. Nothing was on the charts in Southern Ontario whatsoever that night, so I was really caught off guard, but I also heard WQBW "95.1 The Brew" from Rochester, NY which is quite a common catch for me so I knew something was up. Just before sunrise after I posted this thread, CIRR came back in which means that my radio was merely pulling in the signal that appeared stronger to the tuner whilst filtering CIRR out.

A little mistake on my part, the MUF (maximum usable frequency) on the E skip event was down in the 70 megahertz range; rendering it a non factor.
 
Back on April 22, 2013 CIRR did apply to increase power from 50 to 107 watts (250 watts maximum ERP) and lower the antenna height from 131.5 to 123 metres (EHAAT). The transmitter site will be relocated and the antenna radiation pattern will change from non-directional to directional. No decision yet from the CRTC that I'm aware of.
 
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