A Good Week

Conditions were very good Tuesday evening at 2300 UTC. I recorded the top of the hour and it took me a few days to sort through it all resulting in five new loggings.

WWRU on 1280 kHz transmitting 5 kW from Rochester, NY, 258 miles to the northwest

WKBI on graveyard frequency 1400 kHz transmitting 1 kW from Saint Marys, PA, 291 miles to the west

WAMC also on 1400 kHz transmitting 1 kW from Albany, NY, 85 miles to the north-northwest

WNCA on 1570 kHz transmitting 5 kW from Silver City, NC, 539 miles to the southwest

WWRU on 1660 kHz transmitting 10 kW from Jersey City, NJ, 80 miles to the southwest

(Equipment used: ELAD FDM-S2/SW2 receiver and HyGain 18AVT/WB-A antenna)

On Monday, conditions were not so good, so I checked out the FM band and logged two new locals:

W231CZ on 94.100 MHz transmitting 32 watts from Hartford, CT, 14 miles to the north-northeast

W233CF on 94.500 MHz transmitting 99 watts from Danbury, CT, 31 miles to the southwest

(Equipment used: ELAD FDM-S2/SW2 receiver and ICOM AH-7000 discone antenna)

500

I logged my 500th AM station this evening! And appropriately, I did it the old school way. Instead of listening to a top of the hour recording of the whole AM band, the radio was tuned to 1600 and I listened to three or four stations mixing it up. At 2316Z, as clear as a bell, I heard the musical ID of WAYC transmitting 2700 watts out of Bedford, Pennsylvania, 310 miles to the west-southwest.

Coincidentally, Bedford is the half-way point on my annual 700-mile trek to Hamvention and on many of those roadtrips, I have stayed in a motel about a mile up the road from the WAYC transmitter.

Now on to the next 500!

(Equipment used for this logging were the ELAD FDM-S2/SW2 receiver and HyGain 18AVT/WB-A antenna.)

Six on FM

Not much of interest on the LW and AM bands last night, so I tuned up to the FM band where conditions seemed to be a bit enhanced and I logged two new stations. I revisited the FM band this morning and this afternoon. Conditions still seemed enhanced and I logged four additional new stations.

96.900 MHz: WPRF in New Britain, CT, a low power FM station (LPFM) transmitting 49 watts, 9 miles to the east-northeast playing Spanish music

97.700 MHz: W249DP in Ware, Mass., transmitting 200 watts, 47 miles to the northeast, a WARE translator playing "real oldies 1250"

103.700 MHz: W279CI in Danbury, CT transmitting 251 W, 32 miles to the southwest, a WDAQ translator playing contemporary music

103.900 MHz: WRCN in Riverhead, Long Island, NY transmitting 1.4 kW, 55 miles to the south, with a right-wingnut talk format

104.500 MHz: WXLO in Fitchburg, Mass. transmitting 37 kW, 83 miles to the northeast, playing contemporary music

105.500 MHz: WQGN in Groton, CT transmitting 3 kW, 48 miles to the east-southeast, playing contemporary music

Equipment used: ELAD FDM-S2/SW2 SDR receiver/software and ICOM AH-7000 discone antenna

Flu

The reason I have not posted anything in over three weeks is because I had the flu. I was so ill that I seldom turned on a radio during that time.

My health is almost back to normal, so I expect to be more radioactive and will be posting here again.

Power Down, DX Up

AWS in Fort Mitchell, Alabama

We lost power mid-afternoon on Friday. After I phoned in the outage, I got on the radio to take advantage of the lack of noise in the neighborhood.

Conveniently for power outages, the ELAD FDM-S2 SDR receiver gets its power from my laptop. So I don't need to be on the grid for some serious monitoring. The only problem yesterday was that I had been using my laptop for hours and the battery was down to about 40% capacity.

During the day under normal noisy conditions, I may hear one local navigational beacon (JWE), but yesterday, I could hear many more and I logged six new ones. Five were located nearby in Massachusetts and Eastern New York, but one was 925 miles away in Fort Mitchell, Alabama (AWS on 335 kHz).

When the laptop battery ran out, I switched the C.Crane CCRadio 2E Enhanced receiver, which was loaded with fresh batteries and connected to the outdoor antenna switch.

When I turned on the radio, it was tuned to 1710 kHz and I was very surprised to hear an old friend that I normally only hear at dusk, the unidentified mystery station playing Spanish music. Occasionally, the mystery station had competition from the Hudson County (NJ) TIS (WQFG689), which I only heard at night in the past.

After monitoring 1710 for about ten minutes hoping to hear a voice ID from the Spanish station, power was restored and the stations on 1710 disappeared into the noise.