My subscription to Life expired, but I still have a subscription to Mad.

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

WNYZ-LP

Four years ago, I logged what I thought was a pirate radio station on 87.7 MHz listening on my Subaru's stock radio in my workplace parking lot. The station had a Russian language format and for some reason, I had it located in Brooklyn, New York.

VHF has been wide open most mornings this month and while tuning around the low end of the FM band with my IC-R8600, I noticed a weak signal below the FM band on 87.75 MHz. It was a foreign language format that I was unable to identify.

Hearing it again this morning, I researched 87.75 and discovered that it was the audio for "low-power television stations in the United States that operate on VHF channel 6 as radio stations." (Source: Wikipedia).

Wikipedia listed the Channel 6 stations and the one nearest to my location was WNYZ-LP transmitting from Brooklyn with a Korean language format simulcasting WWRU radio (1660 kHz) in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Wikipedia indicated that the station had a Russian language format ("Danu Radio") in the past, so my 2014 logging on 87.7 was incorrect, but that was due to the fact that my car radio tuned in 100 kHz steps. Considering the low power (3 kW) of WNYZ-LP and being off frequency by 50 kHz, I was lucky to hear them at all on my car radio!

And for what it's worth, I just checked (at 1600 UTC) and now that the band opening has collapsed, I can no longer hear them, whereas their signal was full-quieting although not strong two hours ago.

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