It's time for the Weekly? Monthly?, or when I find a new one Pirate report!

[DJKraze]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this one yet, but here we go with downtown New Britain again, and don't place bets on a different format, it's yet again another religious pirate in spanish.

I have yet to get a good ID on it, but I think it's safe to say this signal is possibly put forth by the same one who brought you 90.9, 92,9, (I think 107.5), and currently non-religious 105.3 not to mention 1700 AM.

The AM 1640 signal was very distorted, and sounds off frequency just like I've monitored before from 90.9 on occasion.

I checked 1700, which was a good, clean signal, as was 105.3, but I neglected to run checks for the other frequencies (I've noted recently 90.9 usually is running at very low power as if it were an attempt to be part 15 compliant). I might do this Saturday when I return to New Britain for a short time this weekend.

I found something kinda interesting as I was doing this downward bandscan (I started with AM, then worked on FM, but was out of the area before I could log below 102.1) WODS was in nearly at local signal levels and was battling for dominance over the Caribbean pirate on 103.3. This was all mid-afternoon this past Saturday, and I don't know that there were special conditions that day.

 

[KML0224]

A check of the dial here in New Britain's south end at 2:30 AM resulted in the 105.3 FM station you mentioned. It was a bit noisy but coming in with stereo separation. There was a very weak Spanish station on 1700 AM and a somewhat stronger Spanish broadcaster on 1690 AM.

 

[MarcB]

There's one I've heard twice on 91.5 FM. The only licensed thing on 91.5 is a couple of repeaters or WMNR and it's not them. I heard some music on it. And then an announcer gave out the web address for the Hartford Public Library.

 

[Ozman]

There's one I've heard twice on 91.5 FM. The only licensed thing on 91.5 is a couple of repeaters or WMNR and it's not them. I heard some music on it. And then an announcer gave out the web address for the Hartford Public Library.

if that signal even comes close to Waterbury, I will make sure our Lengondary Engineer for 91.7 WXCI will go door to door and hunt him down!

 

[DJKraze]

Checked the dial while passing through south end of New Britain this past weekend and still got the same as usual, nothing audible on 1690 though.

I did get something on 1690 earlier on the day, but it was weak and mixing with another station, but between the two stations (I only heard programming in English) I heard a public service announcement sponsored by a CT agency (I forget which one, but it was the same voices I've heard in the past in spots from that same agency) and I heard a phone-in talk show.

Around that time I drove by the transmitter location of 105.3 and noticed only one short antenna on the main building. I couldn't get anything on 90.9 (I think they might have given up on that one) and of course I got 1700, but it didn't seem as though 1640 was as strong from there, I actually was getting it better just north of the Boy & Girls Club (look for those large brick buildings that are being rennovated on Washington Street, seems to come in pretty good right there).

I am in the mood to do a bandscan this morning but not from New Britain, I'm going to find a location here in Middletown and see what I can get with so much snow on the ground (pretty sure there's nothing on FM, but with the renewed interest by certain pirates in AM, who knows what I've missed by neglecting it locally.

 

[DJKraze]

I'm back from the rear parking lot behind Guida's in Middlefield with my bandscan results. I chose this location as I wanted to see what a location near the top of the mountain would bring in without being line-of-sight and being overloaded by Meriden, and I did the bandscan today as there hasn't been this much snow for signals to reflect from in a very long time (yeah, I know, there are some who believe it doesn't work that way, but I noticed much more distance than I usually get this time around).

I think it worked out pretty well as I was getting mostly everything from Western CT to RI and from Long Island to Holyoke and more. I used the Car Stereo (a stock model typical of a Dodge Intrepid) and a portable insignia HD radio to see how HD is these days as I can't get most of them from where I'm sitting due to blocking structures locally.

On AM all was normal an the station that prompted this search was not to be heard but on the way up to this location I heard what could be best described as Irish music or folk? was followed by top of the hour news at 10AM. I don't know that there is any licensed stations within 200 miles on this frequency so I'm still at a loss to where these different signals monitored could be from.

Some notes about things heard on AM:

- HD noise was heard +/- one channel on WOR, WCBS & WELI, which I did not expect due to distance, it was +/- two channels for WTIC, which was expected.
- 1670 appears to have multiple CT-DOT information stations on it and are mixed as they battle it out.

FM was a bit interesting as the HD status of stations on Meriden should have been obvious, but there seems to be a few changes:

-no HD from WZMX, in fact, the signal was only 1 bar, RDS was there though
-WWYZ was HD1 only, no HD2
-WPKT showed up as HD1 & 3, but after going off channel and going back there was only HD1, possibly an error with the radio?

Other notes on FM:

-WESU is broadcasting in Mono, I know that they are working on it and will be back in stereo soon.
-WFCS appears to be off the air during winter break
-WTIC HD display seems to be stuck on one song alot, currently "Pink - Raise Your Glass" song playing was by Train and this was after a different song also not by Pink. Could be incomplete info in the tracks on the server or something.

Though mostly the same, there were times that the HD radio and the car picked up different stations even though the antennas were both non-directional, this happened a few times:

97.1 WQHT (I'll miss this one when La Bomba moves) was on the car only
97.5 Car got WQHT, HD got W248AB
98.7 WNLC was the car only
100.9 WRNX was car only
101.9 WRXP was car only
103.3 W277AB was car only (at this point, I noticed only 2 bars left on the battery of the HD, might have been the reason for lesser reception, but not the different station on channel)
103.5 WKTU car only
104.5 WXLO? car only
104.7 WELJ? car only
105.5 WQGN in the car, WVEI on the HD
107.3 WNLM? in the car, Local CATV leak detection signal on the HD
107.5 WBLS car only

One last thing, I expected to hear the usual noise on 94.9 of all the stations on Meriden MTN combined here, but instead heard religious programming in mono from WCSE/W235AJ in Montville, first time I've heard this one.

 

[KML0224]

WFCS-FM 107.7 is on the air as I type this from the south end of New Britain. Nothing on 90.9 FM here, but the other station on 105.3, albeit weak, was there.