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FM DX 86.5 - Spanish radio

R

radi0chik

Guest
While surfing through the frequencies this evening I heard a very odd signal - what sounded like a hispanic radio station on 86.5FM. It was stereo carrier, and very well done/processed/produced, making me rule out a "pirate" station locally. That freq is obviously below the US' radio band, however I don't know what each country in central or south america uses for their band plan. I don't know spanish more than a few words, and the only word I heard more than once was "Manana" or tomorrow.

Could this have been in Mexico? Farther south? I've never heard it before although I don't spend a lot of time listening to those freqs.
 
There’s a good chance you were hearing 97.1. If you add 10.7 (your radio’s IF frequency) to 87.5 you come up to 97.2 which is close enough, depending on the rejection quality of your tuner and how strong 97.1 is where you were when you heard it.
 
It's very unlikely, if I understand correctly, that an FM station can carry such long distances. Did you hear any identifiers?

IIRC, the FM spectrum in Mexico is allocated as in the U.S. - no Mexican station should broadcast at 86.5.
 
This is a real stretch, but is there any chance that what you heard as "Manana" could actually have been "Manila"? I know there's a fair concentration of Spanish speakers in the Philippines, and that some of the Asian bandplans differ significantly from ours... that would be some FREAKY-ass E-skip, but if we're going to dredge up possibilities, let's not stop too early! :)

Also... there are a few well-processed pirates out there with stereo carriers. Not saying HOW I know, I just know. ;) That, of course, still doesn't explain why on Earth it's at 86.5... excapt for maybe half-IF rather than full (ie have you checked 91.9?)

Also, one shouldn't rule out signal-mixing products, which happen due to some mysterious trigonometric property of electromagnetic waves that I don't quite fully understand. If it is a pirate, and you and the pirate are both near a strong RF source, you can get weird signal mixtures at spurious frequencies. For instance, if there's a strong local on 88.5 and a pirate on 90.5, you could get something on 86.5, from an incompletely repressed second harmonic of 88.5 minus the pirate (177.0 - 90.5 = 86.5).
 
radi0chik said:
That freq is obviously below the US' radio band, however I don't know what each country in central or south america uses for their band plan.
Click to expand...

Latin America uses the same FM band as the US.
 
The only part of the world that uses 86.5 as an active FM frequency is Japan, whos dial runs from 76 to 90 mhz. the former Soviet republics also use frequencies in the 60 mhz range but it's not a continuous band to 108...in other words, they have 2 FM bands.
 
This is rather late, but was this in October? Not likely E skip that time of the year. Is 86.5 the correct frequency? What radio do you use to go to that low? My regular FM tuner only goes to 87.5 where I have picked up Spanish and Mayan pirates during a strong E skip opening that included identified Guatemalans. Also on 87.9 there are Guatemalan pirates. There's an 88.6 "Los Cuarenta Principales" in Colombia and some others in that country on even FM frequencies. El Salvador has a 72.9 "Radio Selectos" that is 1500 watts. Using a Radio Shack PRO2004 scanner that tunes there I've heard them a few times on E skip. It's a special station that is used to distribute ads and music to their big supermarket chain. It sounds just like a regular FM station. Here's an audio recording of them from last summer: http://members.aol.com/randyinfla/mp3/72-9_Radio_Selectos_Jul19_07.mp3. There's another on 72.725 in El Salvador. It is possible there is a pirate station at 86.5 but very few would be able to listen to it without a special receiver. 82-88MHz is the spectrum reserved for TV channel 6.
As mentioned by others there are Spanish stations in the Dallas area including 94.1, 97.1, 99.1, 101.7, 104.9, 106.9, 107.1 and 107.9. Perhaps what you heard was an image of one of them if you are close to the transmitter?
 
KW4RZ said:
As mentioned by others there are Spanish stations in the Dallas area including 94.1, 97.1, 99.1, 101.7, 104.9, 106.9, 107.1 and 107.9. Perhaps what you heard was an image of one of them if you are close to the transmitter?
Click to expand...

97.1 is The Eagle with rock, and not in Spanish.
 
DavidEduardo said:
KW4RZ said:
As mentioned by others there are Spanish stations in the Dallas area including 94.1, 97.1, 99.1, 101.7, 104.9, 106.9, 107.1 and 107.9. Perhaps what you heard was an image of one of them if you are close to the transmitter?
Click to expand...

97.1 is The Eagle with rock, and not in Spanish.
Click to expand...

That's a new change in December 2007. 97.1 KEGL was "La Preciosa" when this thread was started. I should have worded that in.
 
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