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Pulse 87.7 Having Signal Problems

L

larryb1

Saturday, I was scanning the FM stations as I was on the beach in Long Beach, Long Island. Many may have noticed that the left channel on Pulse 87.7 was either badly distorted or non-existent since the early morning, Saturday, and continued, uncorrected, throughout the late afternoon. (It has since been remedied at the time of this writing.)

But there is a potentially more serious problem that could adversely affect their success. As I was tuning in the station on my Sony Walkman, I could not get a decent signal from them that would make me want to listen on the beach. (Long Beach is on the South Shore of Long Island.) Any adjustments or relocation to the antenna (headphone cord) were fruitless. However, I had perfect reception of all the local educational stations, NYC commercial stations, and even the Breeze and WAYV(?)/95.1 out of Atlantic City. These signals were all ground wave with no Troph.

The Pulse is promoting itself wisely via banner planes over the beach area and often mentions Jones Beach in its promo spots...a perfect demographic for their format. But you can't hear the station! (In the car it was spotty.) But I figure most of the listeners will be listening on walkmen radios. Maybe the transmitting antenna should be relocated on the Citicorp site to allow a more easterly signal path.

I wonder if the same problem is on the Coney Island beaches of Brooklyn, another prime area for listening during the summer!
 
Today there was tropo in our area. The Channel 6's from Philly and Providence would have interfered with Pulse today. I happened to get stations from Richmond to Boston. That's why you got WAYV and 99.7/107.1 The Breeze, normally you wouldn't hear WAYV that far. Try for Pulse 87 another day :-/
 
Odds of improving their signal eastward at all is virtually zero. Right now they have to protect WLNE in the Providence market. Once the digital transition is complete it might get worse. WEDY in New Haven is going to take up residence on Ch 6. There's a reason why the directional pattern is so sharply nulled to the northeast. If they could send more power that way, they would have done that a long time ago.
 
Pulse does seem to have signal issues every so often. A few days ago, audio from the right channel wasn't coming out for a few hours. In recent months, there's also been a few instances where their audio sounded like it was coming off of an ISDN line or dial-up internet connection, but those problems were intermittent.

On the flip side, they recently began broadcasting an RDS signal.
 
All week last week they were only coming in through the left speaker... then starting Saturday night, it switched to only coming out the right speaker.
 
Please note that "The Breeze" at 107.1 comes in full quieting and in stereo on the same Walkman at my home in Garden City (central Nassau County, NY) all year round...tropo or not. WAYV comes in most of the time, but is much stronger during a tropo at 95.1. Most of WAYV's reception problems occur against a non-stop bootleg Caribbean formatted co-channel station out of NYC. Remember, these two Jersey stations (107.1 and 95.1), along with many others, have direct ground wave signals hitting Long Island over the water!

The Pilly TV audio was not audible during the Pulse 87.7 reception "crisis"!

The bottom line is that they (The Pulse) have a problem and needs to attempt to correct it-it's a good up and coming station and I would like to see them succeed!

By the way...Pulse's left channel is down again today, Sunday at 1:30 PM....
 
neo11 said:
Pulse does seem to have signal issues every so often. A few days ago, audio from the right channel wasn't coming out for a few hours. In recent months, there's also been a few instances where their audio sounded like it was coming off of an ISDN line or dial-up internet connection, but those problems were intermittent.

On the flip side, they recently began broadcasting an RDS signal.
Click to expand...

Doesn't the RDS take away from the signal a bit? no good for a station that has a weak signal to begin with.
 
As I said a while back that "Pulse 87" signal isn't coming into Poughkeepsie, It comes in well in Putnam Valley if you are on a mountain. I remember back in June when we had a picnic, I tuned to 87.7 and I found "Pulse 87.7" comes in weak a little bit, because it was covered by WRGB's TV audio on channel 6 in Albany. Same as with WPVI's TV audio in Philadelphia on channel 6. Both of these are TV audio running on 87.7 in both Philly and Albany.

What's going to happen in the next 6 months, maybe all of the TV stations will be digital after channel 6's TV audio will be going off the air after February 17, 2009. They should be calling it WPVI-DT and WRGB-DT instead of calling it WPVI-TV and WRGB-TV. they call it TV anymore, it should be DT.
 
According to the FCC website, the only digital authorization WPVI has is also on Ch 6. You won't be able to hear it on an analog radio, but it could mask WNYZ's carrier. The most recent filing for WRGB-DT is also for Ch 6. Sorry.
 
They likely still will have interference issues, because WPVI and a station in New Haven will be broadcasting their digital signals on Channel 6 VHF, so while the actual audio of those stations will no longer be audible on a radio, there will likely be digital hash on the frequency that will interfere with Pulse 87.7. Whether the overall level of interference will be the same, more or less probably remains to be seen.
 
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