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FM STATION/TV CHANNEL OF THE WEEK: 87.7/CHANNEL 6

Here in Charleston, you can pick up several stations over channel 6. On any good skip day, WJBF from Augusta comes in, sometimes just as clear as if you were in Aiken, and you can tune your antenna to the other side and pick up WECT in Wilmington, NC well.

Other times, you can pick up WKMG from Orlando during a good outbreak to the south, and one time during a very good DX outbreak, KOTV from Tulsa, Oklahoma came in with an American Lemans race.

It's too bad that this frequency will be lost in nine months...
 
WSYX in Columbus audio and sometimes video. It certainly would be possibe to DX WRTV Indianapolis from Dayton, OH with the right conditions and antenna. From Lafayette IN I DXed a channel 6 in the Lansing MI area, and growing up I caught Cuba on both 3 and 6.
 
It's too bad that this frequency will be lost in nine months...

Not true. Channel 6 will still be used for television post-transition. For example, here in the Phoenix area, there is a construction permit for KTVP-LD 6, which will replace KTVP-LP 22.
 
I normally use 87.7 for my transmitter for my MP3 player, but I can occasionally get the audio from WPSD NBC 6 in Paducah, KY there on my car radio in Alamo, TN, which would be about 125 miles away.

MW_FM_DT_DXer said:
It's too bad that this frequency will be lost in nine months...

Not true. Channel 6 will still be used for television post-transition. For example, here in the Phoenix area, there is a construction permit for KTVP-LD 6, which will replace KTVP-LP 22.
Click to expand...

But won't the audio no longer be receivable on FM radios after the transition?
 
From Northern New Jersey:

Pulse 87 out of NYC and 6 ABC WPVI out of Philadelphia depending on where I turn the antenna.
 
I get the occasional weak signal of WLNE-TV (ABC) channel 6 from New Bedford, MA (Providence, RI market).
 
If the station on 6 is an "-LP" station staying analog after Feb 2009, then yes, you'll still be able to get the FM audio on 87.75 MHz. However, if it's going to be a high-power digital "-DT" or low-power digital "-LD" station, there will be no analog FM audio on 87.75. The only thing you may notice on some receivers as you tune below 88.0 is a strong level of what sounds like thermal noise.
 
During next summer season and years to come don't forget Mexico will still be transmitting analog on channel 6 as will be Canadians for a few years and other countries. Folks in the northeast will have an improved opportunity to catch ultra rare E skip from Europe as there are FM stations on 87.7, 87.8, etc. without having the frequency jammed with 1 hop Es from the US which now, will most likely always be present when the long distance conditions are there.
 
In Durham, NC, its WECT-TV 6 in Wilmington, NC pretty consistently day and night in any kind of weather, even when you can't get a picture on TV (their transmitter, one of the nation's tallest, is located in Bladen County, NC, which, though not in the Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville TV market, sits adjacent to Fayetteville's home county of Cumberland).

I've never received anything else there besides e-skip channel 6's.
 
100 kW'er KBJR-TV, 9 miles away, dominates the frequency. The only thing I've ever seen (I don't think I got any audio) was KAAL in Austin, MN, when KBJR was down. This was back in 2000 when my DX logging standards were more lenient, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was. Once during an E-Skip opening ch6 broke up, but I've never actually logged any skip on it.

Interestingly, KBJR's audio signal doesn't seem to travel too far on a car radio, maybe 55-60 miles, while the standard FM stations apparently have better range.

In New York, I heard Radio Vsyo on this frequency, which I understand is now Pulse 87. Anybody know what happened to Vsyo as a business?

Driving in southern Minnesota, I could hear KAAL Austin, MN here.
 
I'm right in the very middle of KOIN country!! ;o)

Should be interesting after next February, tho.........
 
I get KSBY NBC afilliate for Central Coast CA@ KVIE PBS from Sacramento .Does Anybody Know what the FCC is going to do with the 2-6 frequencies.After 2009. I hoping they expand the FM band. It really needs it.
 
I have no idea what was happening in the mid-80s. My father and I were together going to the mountains and I was just turning from one FM station to another, just seeing what I could find. We found a rerun of the TV sitcom "Alice". It was nowhere near the left end of the dial, and we were not that close to Knoxville, which I know has a Channel 6.
 
On the FM, we can almost always hear WECT just north of Raleigh, NC, but I've never seen WECT on the TV here (WRAL channel 5 must affect it).
Every once in a while if we're driving just a few miles north of here, we can hear the channel 6 in Richmond on the radio.
 
During good tropo ducting conditions, I can often hear the audio for CJOH (CTV) from Ottawa. Though, actually, this isn't the main CJOH frequency. It is their repeater station in Deseronto, Ontario.

I've also picked up WABG-TV from Greenville, MS via E-skip.
 
kc0ltv said:
Interestingly, KBJR's audio signal doesn't seem to travel too far on a car radio, maybe 55-60 miles, while the standard FM stations apparently have better range.
Click to expand...

The audio portion of a TV signal is, if I'm not mistaken, 1/10th the power of the visual. On your channel 6 that 100kw is visual power which leads to 10kw aural power. TV audio is never as "loud" as conventional FM stations, either, so that adds to the perceived weakness, at least for me.

WABG-TV is all that's on 87.75 here; despite an antenna height of nearly 2000' above perfectly flat ground, it doesn't get out as good as the area's sole 100kw FM outlet at half the height.

vchimpanzee said:
I have no idea what was happening in the mid-80s. My father and I were together going to the mountains and I was just turning from one FM station to another, just seeing what I could find. We found a rerun of the TV sitcom "Alice". It was nowhere near the left end of the dial, and we were not that close to Knoxville, which I know has a Channel 6.
Click to expand...

Funny you mention that, I remember hearing "The A-Team" as a kid on a police scanner somewhere in rural lower Louisiana. My parents and I were going to visit relatives in Texas and I was playing with the scanner. IIRC it was on UHF (no 800mHz back then). One of my weirder "catches" on the public safety bands.
 
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