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

Monday, June 28, 2021

More E Skip

Around noon today, signals started popping up on normally quiet 90.9 MHz. And an hour later, I had three new entries in the log.

1600 Z, WJKV in Jacksonville, Florida, transmitting 41,000 watts, 920 miles to the south-southwest

1620 Z, KTBG in Warrensburg, Missouri, transmitting 100,000 watts, 1129 miles to the west

1646 Z, WAQV in Crystal River, Florida, transmitting 5,000 watts, 1021 miles to the south-southwest

I heard a few other stations, but could not identify them. One of the unidentified dubbed itself “Wild Radio,” but I have been unable to match that slogan with any 90.9 MHz radio stations. If anyone has a clue, please clue me in, too. 

All were received with my ICOM IC-R8600 receiver and ICOM AH-7000 discone antenna.

Daily email delivery

In July, Feedburner, the email delivery system we use for daily email delivery of this blog will discontinue email delivery. So, if you subscribe to this blog via Feedburner, email delivery of the blog will stop.

I am looking for a substitute and will let you know when I find one.

Friday, June 25, 2021

What’s New

I seldom QSL non-ham stations, but when
WENR AM ran a DX test back in March, I sent
a reception report and received this E-QSL a
few days ago.
I have been monitoring 90.9 MHz for band openings, but nothing has occurred like the big E-skip opening on June 11. 

Conditions were promising this morning when I tuned through the NOAA weather channels and heard WXM60 in Southard, New Jersey on 162.450. Normally, 162.450 is dead quiet here, so any reception on .450 bodes well for the FM band. And I began monitoring 90.9.

There were stations just above the noise on 90.9, but I could not identify anything. One station was stronger briefly and announced a Missouri area code phone number, but that was not enough information to identify it (the “Missouri” station was playing jazz and none of the 90.9 Missouri FM stations listed on Radio-Locator had jazz as their format).  

And that’s all she wrote.

Friday, June 11, 2021

90.9 was jumping!

The past few weeks, I have been checking 90.9 MHz every morning for DX. (90.9 is one of the few unoccupied FM channels around here, so if I hear anything on 90.9, it is DX and the band is open.)

WBUR out of Boston was strong a couple of mornings and an unknown religious station was deep in the mud a couple of mornings (too deep to identify).

Friday morning, the band went wild! At times, there were two or three stations fading in and out at the same time. The E-skip lasted for almost three hours and I probably heard eight stations that I could not identify and four stations that I could identify (three new stations for the log and one relog).

1500 UTC: W215CJ in Tampa, Florida, 1096 miles to the south-southwest running only 25 or 38 watts!

1604 UTC: WOWB in Brewton, Alabama, 1058 miles to the southwest transmitting 100,000 watts.

1620 UTC: WJAB in Huntsville, Alabama, 876 miles to the south-southwest transmitting 100,000 watts.

1700 UTC: KUNI in Cedar Falls, Iowa, 971 miles to the west-northwest transmitting 94,000 watts (KUNI was a relog that I heard last summer)

All stations were heard with my ICOM IC-R8600 receiver and ICOM AH-7000 discone antenna.