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Real Or Pirate Station On 90.5 In Haverhill Plaistow Area

C

chrisradioanimal

For The Past Couple Of Months I Have Been Able To Recive A Signal Which Plays Commericial Free Oldies And It Brands Itself As 90.5 The Wave. It Sounds Simular To Whav.net But With Different Jingles At The Top Of The Hour.
 
chrisradioanimal said:
For The Past Couple Of Months I Have Been Able To Recive A Signal Which Plays Commericial Free Oldies And It Brands Itself As 90.5 The Wave. It Sounds Simular To Whav.net But With Different Jingles At The Top Of The Hour.
Click to expand...

Are there any call letters mentioned near the top of the hour, or at anytime? If not, it's most likely a pirate.

If the power is very low and it only covers a very small area, like a couple of blocks, it could be a Part 15 operator. If it's covering more ground than that, it could be someone who thinks (or claims) they're broadcasting within Part 15, but they're exceeding and breaking the law.

The current WHAV has been known to broadcast on a low-power 1640 AM signal at times recently. I don't know what the legal status of that is/was, I haven't been in the area to hear it. Maybe they're trying on FM now.
 
I Have Never Heard Any Call Letters At Any Time It Just Mentions that you are listening to 90.5 the wave. I Can Get The Signal Throughout The Plaistow/Haverhill Area. I've Logged It Near Haverhill High School, Ive Also Got It At Walmart In Plaistow. Near CVS In Plaistow, And Also Near Mr.Mikes In Plaistow. It Fades In And Out Sometimes and i can never pick it up as a local station on my walkman. So I Have Know Clue Where The signal Is Coming From. i also barely can pick it up in salem.
 
I too have caught it - but very sporadic (at best) around the Ward Hill exit, getting lost in the "hilly terrain" of the Bradford section of Haverhill. But, I think I caught it on 91.5 (could be mistaken). The schedule is sporadic as well. I've never heard an ID or any identifyers of any sort. Very "eclectic" music format as well...

However - nothing beats the Lawrence pirate on 99.1 - stereo signal relatively clear into many parts of Haverhill, Methuen, Andover, North Andover, and up into Plaistow & Salem NH. What sort of TX/Stick combo could they be running - and for that matter - from where?

Marc Lemay
 
I get my bottled water from the running spring on May Street near the border of Lawrence and Methuen, and 99.1 comes in with a very strong signal there. I believe someone in the past has located its antenna atop Tower Hill in Lawrence, just around the corner. The 'tower' is not a broadcast or communications tower, but a water tank.
 
When they were on 99.9 a couple years ago, I found them. It was a multiple bay antenna located on a house, on Haverhill St in Lawrence, on a pretty good sized hill. I'd imagine they're still at the same spot on 99.1.
 
Laurence Glavin said:
The 'tower' is not a broadcast or communications tower, but a water tank.
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If it's the water tower I can see from my office (that just got repainted) - I believe that's a city owned water tower and I would wonder how they got up there to put an antenna on it. It's not that easy I would think...

Question for the tech folks - if the pirate turned off the stereo signal and simply went FM mono - would the signal travel even further?
 
Eli Polonsky said:
chrisradioanimal said:
For The Past Couple Of Months I Have Been Able To Recive A Signal Which Plays Commericial Free Oldies And It Brands Itself As 90.5 The Wave. It Sounds Simular To Whav.net But With Different Jingles At The Top Of The Hour.
Click to expand...

The current WHAV has been known to broadcast on a low-power 1640 AM signal at times recently. I don't know what the legal status of that is/was, I haven't been in the area to hear it. Maybe they're trying on FM now.
Click to expand...

I know that Tim Coco (owner of WHAV.net and a big fan of over the air radio in Haverhill and the Valley) would have loved to resurrect the broadcast license that once sat at Haverhill High School, but I don't think Tim would mess with a pirate-type operation. He has too much invested in the internet operation and his own business to be playing the part of a pirate in greater Haverhill. Besides - on my way home yesterday, I punched up 90.5 and IMHO, it's too sloppy to be a "Tim Coco production" - he takes pride in his projects and takes his webcast operations very seriously, and very legit.
 
Question for the tech folks - if the pirate turned off the stereo signal and simply went FM mono - would the signal travel even further?
Click to expand...

The signal goes the same regardless of whether or not a stereo pilot is present. The issue is that a stereo signal inherently has a lower signal-to-noise ratio (about 20dB worse than mono). So if you're a listener in the fringe reception area, it may very well SEEM LIKE a mono signal "goes further" than a stereo one. But if you've got a good radio and good antenna, there's really no difference.

As a side note, though, a stereo signal is inherently more susceptible to multipath interference, and Greater Boston - especially downtown - is notorious for a lot of multipath despite the relative absence of tall buildings or hills. Between this and the stereo quieting, it's the major reason why WBUR is in mono almost all the time, and WGBH switches to mono for most of their news programming. A lot of NPR feeds come down in stereo - although admittedly for a lot of them, it's kinda odd for them to be in stereo when most of the show is mono (talk).

WTKK, OTOH, usually is in stereo (last I checked) because the commercials usually are in stereo and the sponsors want to hear that. It's also partly a throwback to the analog tuner days when the stereo pilot light on a radio was how you knew you'd tuned in a given station as best you could.

I thought about trying to rig up a control on WZBC to force it to mono whenever they played Democracy Now and sports shows, but their Marti PnP1000 transmitter cannot transmit mono; if you don't feed it a stereo pilot through the composite input, it will assume the composite input is not in use and automatically switch to the line-level inputs and it'll generate its own stereo pilot. Grrrrr... I asked Marti about it, there's no easy way to disable it, short of yanking out the PCB and destroying very specific components on it (which, of course, voids the warranty).
 
Will said:
Yes! Pirate on 90.5 rules!!! Boston Need more Urban Radio! Radio one Sux!!!
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I could not agree with you anymore! I co-sign this post ;D
 
SonicAl said:
This Really Doesn't Have A Lot To Do With The Post But Why Do You Start Each Word With A Capital Letter?

also, this typing style is semi-similar to Rapking's!
Click to expand...
My Style is Great !
 
Wow. I should Google "WHAV" more often.

WHAV does broadcast its Internet feed on a Part 15 station at 1,640 kHz. For those interested in the technical details: a Hamilton Rangemaster type-certified transmitter is used and it is properly tuned with the power limited to 100 mw. It is on top of a approx. 20-foot stick on the Haverhill/Plaistow border. Audio is processed by an Inovonics 235 for maximum positive peaks. A similar set-up is planned for Ward Hill.

Despite my best efforts, the range seems to be, at best, from 495 Exit 51 to just over the Plaistow border along Route 125.

Now, as to 90.5. I have nothing to do with it. I have heard it myself and it seems to play "Muzaky" kind of music. We used to give away those Belkin iPod transmitters and suggested 90.5 for those who wanted to hear WHAV throughout their own home. Whatever is on 90.5 in the area is too powerful to be using one of these.

Tim
 
It's a pirate. A quick check of both Radio-Locator and the FCC CDBS reveals nothing licensed on or near Haverhill for 90.5FM.

The Haverhill Public School District had an application for 100 watts on 90.5FM for ages, but it was dismissed in October 2007. I think it was one of those apps that was caught in the freeze back in 2000 or so, and (by the rules) it would've had to be re-applied for during the NCE window in October '07 or it would be automatically dismissed. Somewhat surprising that they let it go; IIRC they would've had automatic preference for the license.

Interestingly, right before the window...WICN filed for - and got - a CP that expands their ERP to 13kW H / 18.2kW V. Pretty goofy pattern, though. :) It looks very much like a protective filing, but I wonder if they can modify it to take advantage of the loss of the Haverhill app. Probably not, though...it's already pretty crowded to the east between WZBC on 90.3 and WSMA on 90.5
 
aaronread said:
Interestingly, right before the window...WICN filed for - and got - a CP that expands their ERP to 13kW H / 18.2kW V.... It looks very much like a protective filing, but I wonder if they can modify it to take advantage of the loss of the Haverhill app. Probably not, though...it's already pretty crowded to the east between WZBC on 90.3 and WSMA on 90.5
Click to expand...

In that area, WPEA 90.5 Exeter, NH may also be a factor. It could be heard (faintly) in that northeastern tip of Massachusetts near the NH border, when there's no pirate on the frequency.
 
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