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meriden ct radio interference

O

Ozman

cuious question for some of you...
In meriden on the train I was trying to listen to 106.9 WCCC, In meriden the signal comes in but is killed by cross channel interference of a few radio stations ie 104.1.. what suggestions might you have for me in fixing the signal issue or what kind of walkman i might be able to try. any feedback is appreciated thanks.
 
That's due to West Peak in Meriden. I get the exact same thing when heading towards New Haven. I get almost nothing from them south of Wallingford. By the North Haven/New Haven line, I start getting co-channel interference on 107.1 FM. There's a translator station in Hamden which relays WJMJ-FM 88.9 of Hartford. Does your Walkman have a DX/Local (possibly DX/City) switch on it?
 
chris560 said:
Is this interference new?
Click to expand...

Absolutely not.

The stations up on West Peak (coloquially referred to as "Meriden Mountain" include 102.9, 104.1, 95.7, 93.7, and more. Virtually all of the Hartford market stations transmit from the top of that hill. I've been told that if you stand on the hill 100 feet from the towers, holding a standard fluorescent tube light bulb in your hand, it will light up to full brightness with no wires connected whatsoever.

The phenomenon you are most likely experiencing is receiver overload. The combined, high power signals combine to interact with the receiver's intermediate frequency causing the radio to have problems demodulating the fm signal of the station it is tuned to.

-A
 
Alan Fletcher said:
Virtually all of the Hartford market stations transmit from the top of that hill.
Click to expand...

WCCC has its tower in Avon.
 
yes it does the problem is your just under the limit for being able to get it on local... i also tried 106.85 106.95 and 107.0 with no more luck..

Kevin Lagasse said:
That's due to West Peak in Meriden. I get the exact same thing when heading towards New Haven. I get almost nothing from them south of Wallingford. By the North Haven/New Haven line, I start getting co-channel interference on 107.1 FM. There's a translator station in Hamden which relays WJMJ-FM 88.9 of Hartford. Does your Walkman have a DX/Local (possibly DX/City) switch on it?
Click to expand...
 
chris560 said:
Is this interference new?
Click to expand...

its probably worse since HD radio went on air
would any of you agree???

maybe I should just take my carver tuner or kenwood tuner along with me for the trainride since there are outlets on the train LOL
 
And to think there was a TV tower on that peak once, too! Also, the NOAA Weather Radio station for Hartford/Meriden is also up there. :p
 
The technical term for the problem is "front end overload". The RF amplifier section of most radios just can't handle the tremendous amount of RF coming off of that mountain. This causes the amp to overload, creating images of the stations across the dial. Depending upon the type radio the problem usually occurs only within a mile or two of the mountain.

A radio with a local/dx switch might help. Or you can try shortening the antenna . . . with a walkman try coiling up the headphone cable a bit. Some radios are so sensitive they are extremely susceptable to this kind of overhoad and shortening the antenna can have the same effect as switching to the local postion.

Kevin, I'm surprised that you have trouble with the 106.9 signal south of Meriden. I can get it solid traveling south on I-91 from Hartford with no drop outs or multipath down to exit 11, and then there is just a small amount of multipath fading down to the I-95 interchange. The signal in downtown New Haven is spotty due to the terrain (East Rock?) and due to the buidings but the same is true of 96.5 and 100.5, the other two commercial FMs which have their towers in the Hartford area.

John
 
In new haven doesn't 107.1 cause the interference in new haven? I can put my walkman on 106.85 to fix some of the distortion from gateway community college to just getting ove the bridge next to the new haven train station]
rcs said:
The technical term for the problem is "front end overload". The RF amplifier section of most radios just can't handle the tremendous amount of RF coming off of that mountain. This causes the amp to overload, creating images of the stations across the dial. Depending upon the type radio the problem usually occurs only within a mile or two of the mountain.

A radio with a local/dx switch might help. Or you can try shortening the antenna . . . with a walkman try coiling up the headphone cable a bit. Some radios are so sensitive they are extremely susceptable to this kind of overhoad and shortening the antenna can have the same effect as switching to the local postion.

Kevin, I'm surprised that you have trouble with the 106.9 signal south of Meriden. I can get it solid traveling south on I-91 from Hartford with no drop outs or multipath down to exit 11, and then there is just a small amount of multipath fading down to the I-95 interchange. The signal in downtown New Haven is spotty due to the terrain (East Rock?) and due to the buidings but the same is true of 96.5 and 100.5, the other two commercial FMs which have their towers in the Hartford area.

John
Click to expand...
 
I live in Southington behind the abandoned Shaw's and Abandoned Pratt & Whitney Factory and WPLR and KC 101.3 are not listenable at all. It's very staticy on my walkman and on my boombox. And the damn Meriden Mountain signals are all over the FM band. Hell if I don't have the antenna up on my boombox or it's not pointed properly I can't even get WPKT 90.5 (CT Public Radio) clearly. So if I'm not working and I want to listen to Car Talk I listen either via CT Public Radio's website or I tune the TV to Channel 16. Southington High School TV runs CT Public Radio as their audio.
 
I would second everything that RCS said.......

I've lived near AM and FM towers alot in the last several years, including 50kw/300 feet only 3 blocks away and 20kw/80 feet only 1/2 mile away.
 
The signal overload of Meriden is not limited to their city alone. I've received some of that multipath here in New Britain's south end many times, even on my Sony home stereo with a decent FM tuner on it (Model #LBT-XGR6, received as a gift on Christmas 2002). The worst single spot on the dial? 94.9 FM.

On a semi-related note, I get a sligh bit of overload from WRCH-FM 100.5 here too, but not nearly on the same level as West Peak.
 
yep, I've mentioned 94.9 in a post a few months back, in fact the strongest part of that noise is closer to 95.0 than 94.9.
 
Alan Fletcher said:
chris560 said:
Is this interference new?
Click to expand...

Absolutely not.

The stations up on West Peak (coloquially referred to as "Meriden Mountain" include 102.9, 104.1, 95.7, 93.7, and more. Virtually all of the Hartford market stations transmit from the top of that hill.
-A
Click to expand...

no wonder why in old Greenwich all those stations come in at about the same strength as inadible signals in the backround. if only they could pump out just a bit more power maybe they could be audible... not gonna happen..
I hope for another NYC blackout soon.. I got em on all on my walkman as well as WCCC 106.9 during the 2003 blackout (except for 95.7 because of WEFX 95.9) the sideband stations from nyc were either dead or with little back-up power and there was no HD then. what I would do for just another night like that...
 
Geez! Wishing for a blackout just so you can hear some precious radio station? How mature...
 
Word has it, that if you go up on West Peak (Meriden Mountain), carrying a fluorescent light tube, it will light up in the dark with no wires attached, just from the intensity of the freely radiated RF. Most of the cheaper, analog inductor- tuned boomboxes and walkmen, as well as most car radios- especially aftermarket shoddy installs, do not have the rejection to eliminate the overload that occurs in close proximity to that site. They will overload and produce all kinds of nasty problems. On really crappy radios, in certain spots in the area you can even hear FM on AM. I believe that currently, there are about (9) 50KW ERP stations up there (which can range anywhere from 20,000- 45,500KW TPO H/V depending on the antenna setup), as well as numerous cellphone and pager transmitters. I think there's even a Weatheradio transmitter up there. Add to that the problem of IBOC emissions and you have some serious spurious crap.

Some of the stations up there include:

WWYZ 92.5
WKCI 101.3
WDRC 102.9
and WZMX 93.7

There are a few more but it's late and I'm having a memory lapse.

However, Marc, if you're having problems hearing KC 101 in Southington, it's time for a new walkman and/or (boom) box. "Where's the KABOOM!? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering KABOOM!!!?" Better yet, time to invest in some better quality receiving equipment... LOL

-A
 
Hell, here I can get one certain AM all over the FM dial *grins*
 
PaulBWalkerJr said:
Hell, here I can get one certain AM all over the FM dial *grins*
Click to expand...

hmm... wouldn't happen to be one of those struggling AM's that decided to install a NEXTEL repeater on their driven AM tower, would it?

<grin>

-A
 
Nope, we don't have any Nextel or cellular junk on our AM tower.. I just happen to be about 200 feet away from a 1KW stick.
 
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