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FM Frequency Discussion of the Week - Your unsolved DXstery

B

Buckeyes2001

Since all of the commercial FMs have been discussed in the frequency of the week threads in the past year or so (as far as I can discern), I thought we could try this: Are there any FM receptions (or TV for that matter) that you have yet to ID or maybe it's a mystery as to what DX mode you received it. (E-skip vs. meteor scatter, etc)

Back in summer of 2004, I received KATR 98.3 from Otis, CO here in Vermilion, OH one night shortly after 9pm EDT. The station came in like a local for a good 10 - 15 min then gradually faded out. It also came in MONO. What was particularly odd was that I didn't notice any other unusual reception at the same time as this. I heard their ID as 'Kat Country, KATR' It's still a mystery to me how this signal was getting all the way over here from there.
 
Back in the summer of 2011, I had a possible double-hop E skip signal on 95.1.

I was picking up KATC Colorado Springs, CO pretty well with country, as Colorado was tearing up my radio that night (6/22/11). A few minutes later, it started to swap with a station playing Pitbull's "Give Me Everything" (feat. Ne-Yo). I looked at KORQ Abilene, TX's playlist and it matched what it said. But as I ran back outside to get that "95Q" ID, it faded out back into single hop (KATC). I have never received any other tentative double-hop EVER in my DX career. I cannot count it due to not having an ID, but I tried. KORQ would have been either super-long single hop or short double hop at 1,582 miles. Usually double-hop skip is around 1600-2100 miles.

-crainbebo
 
I have three, but no recording to prove any of them.

Back in the late 70s or early 80s from south FL, my JVC radio* was tuned to a blank 96.1 and heard "Montrose" mentioned. Indeed there's a 96.1 in Montrose CO. Did I actually hear double hop E-skip on a radio using a whip antenna? Who knows?

Also in spring or summer 1981, using this same radio*, I heard 2 Spanish stations on 101.3 and 102.1, and one of them seemed to mention Veracruz. This was Tropo BTW, as it was late in the evening and was fairly consistent. That's a lotta miles with that same radio/antenna. I had Spanish-speaking neighbors who translated my recording, but there was no ID on either of them.

In 1977 on 96.9 was the tune "Finger Lickin' Good" by the Brecker Brothers. Certainly not a commercial hit. The DJ was Spanish. What I seemed to remember was "Bienvenido a Doble-oo FM." I am 99% sure now that it was XEW-FM Mexico City; back then, the only guide I had was the Vane Jones one which did not list Mexico FM beyond our border.

[*The radio was a JVC 2" B&W TV + AM/FM/PSB On the face of the radio it said "A & V." Does anybody remember that unit? It was a nice thing to carry around....my first battery TV. I think the practically-XEW was on that unit as well.]

cd
 
My biggest DX mystery occurred many moons ago when I was young and driving a friend to a concert in Atlanta from Birmingham. We got caught in a torrential downpour on I-20 near Pell City, AL and I began looking for weather information as the rain brought the interstate to a standstill.

No one was breaking in locally with weather bulletins, but there were some odd stations popping up on the dial. One of them was French-language talk radio (or commercials) on 93.3. Because I don't speak French and this was pre-Radio-Locator and RECnet and all the other online tools, I was at a loss to get an ID until I got home and consulted the FM Atlas.

As far as I could tell, it was CJMF-FM in Quebec City, QC. It appeared to be the most likely candidate as there were no other French 93.3 stations anywhere that I could find. Since I'm not a serious DX'er I do tend to count this as a legitimate log since it was so unlikely to be anything else.

The mode of this DX is also a bit of a mystery. Right before I caught the station, I happened to consult the weather radar on my PDA (tethered via Bluetooth to a GPRS connected cell phone, the height of nerdy tech cool at the time) and saw the line of storms stretched from the Gulf of Mexico, up through Alabama and made a bee-line all the way up in to Canada. I figure the squall line had something to do with it, as all the signals faded when I finally outran the line of storms. But beyond that, I dunno. I don't know my DX modes all that well, to be honest.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
There is a Montrose, MI in WHNN 96.1's 70 dBu contour. I have occasionally heard South FL from near there on E Skip.
Click to expand...

Thank you, but Radio-Locator shows that the station's license began in 1992. Unless the info is wrong, WHNN was not on the air when I heard this. Maybe I was dreaming this. Dunno!

cd
 
cd637299 said:
Schroedingers Cat said:
There is a Montrose, MI in WHNN 96.1's 70 dBu contour. I have occasionally heard South FL from near there on E Skip.
Click to expand...

Thank you, but Radio-Locator shows that the station's license began in 1992. Unless the info is wrong, WHNN was not on the air when I heard this. Maybe I was dreaming this. Dunno!

cd
Click to expand...
WHNN has been on since 1964 and has had the WHNN calls since 1974, according to Wikipedia
 
1992 may have been the latest license, but the station has been on since circa 1960, and the present call letters WHNN have been used since around 1972, when it increased to 97 kW. It was 97 kW before it was 100 kW directional from a new 1000 foot tower in Quanicassee, but I can't remember when it moved there.
 
It could have been changed to WHNN as late as 1973, but 1974 is the first Broadcasting Yearbook to show it as WHNN. All say it came on as WBCM-FM in 1960. I have a tape somewhere with Lowell Homburger, Jr. as the DJ, and I think it was 1973. I think Lowell Homburger, Jr. once owned a station near Buckeyes2001's area. Seems like it was a Docket 80-90 station.
 
R-L is good for a lot of things. Determining when a station signed on the air is not one of them. "License granted," in the case of R-L, tells you only when the last license-to-cover application was filed...but not how many other licenses a station may have had before the current one.

To determine that, you need to either trust Wikipedia (often reliable, but not always) or start digging into the phenomenal collection of history at ww.americanradiohistory.com.
 
ALL of my E-skip logs have been with either a Grundig G5, Sangean ATS-909, or Grundig G8, all using the telescopic whip. I'm not the only one who has received loads of E-skip with just a two foot whip! Back before DTV, you could hook up rabbit ears and Channel 2 would be loaded with stations.

-crainbebo
 
OK on the Montrose thing. I thought maybe that WHNN was one of those Docket 80-90 deals....

Likely, WHNN was what I had then. Thanks!

cd
 
There are a dozen or so Montroses in the US, and one or more in addition may have a 96.1 in the market. And if they were doing news, then it might be a state story. What kind of music were they playing? Were you getting any other nearby stations from Michigan like WKCQ 98.1, WIOG 102.5, or WCRZ 107.9 at the time?
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
There are a dozen or so Montroses in the US, and one or more in addition may have a 96.1 in the market. And if they were doing news, then it might be a state story. What kind of music were they playing? Were you getting any other nearby stations from Michigan like WKCQ 98.1, WIOG 102.5, or WCRZ 107.9 at the time?
Click to expand...

I wasn't heavy into the hobby then as far as FM, Cat. The voice on 96.1 just seemed to come out of nowhere. So I didn't check the other frequencies. I did have a Vane Jones book, so when I saw Montrose, well, Colorado was what I thought. Like I said, I wasn't even sure what year I heard it.

cd
 
While I'm pretty sure I was hearing a trace of WCBS daytime from Daytona Beach, I can't say for certain that's what it was but being that 880 from Cuba is barely audible here in Tampa daytime and it comes from the western part of Cuba, I can't imagine any of the signal could last passing through the spine of the state to get to Daytona Beach.

So WCBS seems like the only other station that could be heard causing co frequency interference fluttering along with WZAB.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoNF4v6i5b0
 
On a summer day(sometime in July of 2011, I wanna say) I was just leaving a family reunion near Mound Valley, KS. In the middle of NO man lands, let me tell ya. Sometime around 7 P.M. CST, I heard something other than Tulsa's KWEN on 95.5, which is the normal station to receive in the area on 95.5. But I heard what seemed to be Kanye West's song Stronger. Just for fun I went on tune-in and searched WPGC out of Washington D.C.. Sure enough it happened to be playing the same thing. I heard some mention of A Wizards game, (which is an NBA basketball team based in D.C.) but I never exactly got an I.D. To this day, I still find it hard to believe I could've logged in a station that's 1,010 miles away. Especially when NOTHING out of the ordinary was going on in any other part of the dial.
 
CalebC said:
On a summer day(sometime in July of 2011, I wanna say) I was just leaving a family reunion near Mound Valley, KS. In the middle of NO man lands, let me tell ya. Sometime around 7 P.M. CST, I heard something other than Tulsa's KWEN on 95.5, which is the normal station to receive in the area on 95.5. But I heard what seemed to be Kanye West's song Stronger. Just for fun I went on tune-in and searched WPGC out of Washington D.C.. Sure enough it happened to be playing the same thing. I heard some mention of A Wizards game, (which is an NBA basketball team based in D.C.) but I never exactly got an I.D. To this day, I still find it hard to believe I could've logged in a station that's 1,010 miles away. Especially when NOTHING out of the ordinary was going on in any other part of the dial.
Click to expand...

Ah, that's sporadic-E reception, especially if that's in July. *If* you had your digital TV, if you were getting DC, you could have checked DTV channel 3 and possibly seen WBRA out of Roanoke VA, which is the only station using DT 3 (running full power, anyway) in the East!

The sporadic-E season is coming soon....if you are in no-man's-land again, you just might snag something 1000 miles away again.

cd
 
From my location in Michigan, I've heard stations from as far away as Idaho, southern Texas, Florida, Maine, and Nova Scotia via E-skip (some even with RDS!). The most memorable memory of E-skip was getting a station that was running the same satellite feed as a local. A few summers ago I was picking up KTZZ out of Conrad, MT, which was running the same satellite feed as local WWKR (and they're also right by each other on the dial!)
 
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