Late Winter Misc.

Odd 'n Ends and whatever.

What a winter. Warmer and very rainy. Almost like last winter. So far I only needed the snowblower twice, which is good since it runs ratty anyway, even with a new plug.

In early winter there was a large amount of ice on my AM loop. The back end keeled over. I replaced it with 15 feet of aluminum tubing. That was a mistake. Aluminum tubing can't handle ice buildup. What was I thinking.

WWMM-LP (107.5) came back with higher power and RDS.  It decodes quickly.  I also heard that WNHA-LP New Haven is running a lot more power than they are supposed to. I believe it, based on reception here. The Springfield area has around 6 applications going for a new LPFM station on 107.5. 107.5 is one of about 4 or 5 DXable frequencies here. It will soon be gone. Oh well.

Pirates and more pirates. Springfield had them on 92.1 and 92.3. Those seem to have disappeared. There's  one on 103.1 now (Spanish) and two days ago I found another Spanish station on 95.5 while in the car. You gotta feel bad for pirates. All that's left for them are those throwaway HD-covered frequencies unless you want to transmit below 88mhz. There was another Spanish one on 87.5. Somewhere around Farmington, CT there's another pirate on 87.9.

Hartford still has two pirates. There's 99.5 (Energy Radio) that has been around for years. It *might* be displaced by  a new LPFM app. Maybe. And there's Busy FM on 92.9 that get buried by WHYN's HD sideband not too far from Hartford.

I've updated by 2023 logs. Look under 'Raw Logs' and you'll find it. There's not much, only 3 pages. Summer 2023 sucked for FM DX.

I also just did an article on Installing SDRConnect to a Linux computer. Works on Mint and Ubuntu and I know many other distros.

Okay. When we go out to dinner, nothing beats a cold glass of Blue Moon. Nothing. But Sam Adams Octoberfest is darn good.

However, I will never pass up a bottle of Shock Top or White Tide (Aldi's brand of Belgian Wheat Ale).

And what makes DXing even more fun is a bottle of Miller Beer or a 25oz can of Fosters. Fosters is yummy.

2022 DX

The first skip of the season noticed on May 7th, 2022 MAY 7, 2022 Es 1530 WJXM 95.1 Marion, MS PI:6ECE 1538 WAFN 92.7 Arab, AL PI:5537, Adult Hits, PS:FUN92-7, Radiotext: The Greatest Hits on Fun  Radio 1542 WKUL-FM 92.1 Cullman, AL PI:0000, PS: WKUL-FM, Pty: Undefined 1546 WMPR 90.1 Jackson, MS PI:  […]

Continue reading

Backyard Antennas

aps13.jpg, Mar 2022

This is what I use for an FM antenna. It's a ten element yagi, and probably one of its kind. It started out as an APS-13, made by Antenna Performance Specialists somewhere in the 80s. It had thirteen elements and it was a monster. It stayed on my roof for years until, one winter, an ice storm bent  […]

Continue reading

Page top