My station had been off for awhile but the radio was still on 1550 hearing all the faraway gobble, when one station started coming though the clouds and being fairly clear. A woman’s voice was promoting a gospel event and several times I thought she said, “WELC 1550” but when I looked it up I found that WELC is on 1150, so that wasn’t right. The closest “sound alike” call letter I could find was WPFC in Baton Rouge, Louisiana which has 42 Watts at night, but does play gospel music. So I turned my transmitter back on and am streaming 1550 Baton Rouge, which should make any other DXers out in the night really think the dial is alive.
Then I thought, there are Part 15 transmitter buffs who are not interested in programming. What they should do is stream audio from a far away station on their same frequency, and no one will have any idea the signal is local. Everyone will believe it is a DX skip from far away.
Radio Gaa Gaa…Radio Goo Goo
“stream audio from a far away station on their same frequency, and no one will have any idea the signal is local. Everyone will believe it is a DX skip from far away.”
That could be quite humorous!
Just picturing a hard dedicated DX’er anxiously awaiting to hear that most distant station to write down in the log book and it turns out to be a transmission from someone who just put their brand new kit together testing for that “sweet” spot! 😀
RFB
DIZZIER DX
Wow I thought I was the only one pulling that stunt! It gets REALLY fun when you acutally run into one of your “listeners” who insists that he’s able to hear a station from California, in Florida, almost every night. I never tell ’em it’s me. Adds to the fun! Works on FM too, except your victims uh…I mean listeners…have to be practically right next door or across the street. With the potential of broadcasting a mile or more on AM, you would think the FCC would give us a little more than 250uv/m @3m on FM. Sure ain’t much! Why is that?
Things That Make You Go..Hmmmm
“With the potential of broadcasting a mile or more on AM, you would think the FCC would give us a little more than 250uv/m @3m on FM. Sure ain’t much! Why is that?”
Yeah it is a bit unusual isn’t it! But then again there isn’t many aircraft that I know of that relies on the bands equal to the 2nd or 3rd of fundamental off the MW band, the 209 specifies only a 20db down of that fundamental, which by comparison is not a whole lot of attenuation requirement!
In the VHF range its a lot easier for a fundamental to cause spurious, and more prone to wreaking havoc with other far more crucial communications bands…say aircraft for example!
Funny thing though is a lot of these certified FM iPod type transmitters have no filtering in them whatsoever!!
Maybe too costly to add couple of caps and a simple coil.
RFB
On 1550 AM In My Location
On 1550 AM In My Location KMAD AM in my location it has 250 watts daytime and 95 watts nighttime.