A site about the radio listening hobby and my activities therein - longwave, mediumwave, shortwave, FM, and television DXing. A site about the radio listening hobby in all its forms, or at least the forms that interest me.

I am also a licenced amateur radio operator, callsign VE3LXL. Information about my amateur radio station is found on my station website.

Tuesday 26 June 2012

Some Neighbor on FM

Is this worth logging? It's not a "real" station, but it was on FM. Received tonight on 88.3 MHz at 0000-0100 UTC with a good signal. Television audio. For the first 45 minutes it was the audio from TV Ontario (a show about Queen Victoria's Britain), and then the audio started jumping around, as if someone were changing channels. It then settled on CBC television, (show "This Hour Has 22 Minutes") for the rest of the hour. I think this was probably a neighbor who plugged one of those tiny FM transmitters designed to work with wireless headphones into his television. It was only audible on my indoor FM dipole; on the outdoor FM antenna WCOU was coming in and there was no sign of the television audio.

OK, I'm adding it to the log. It's an FM transmission and I received it so it counts. This is station #160 received in Toronto.

Sunday 10 June 2012

Heard on FM Near Georgian Bay

I spent the day near Georgian Bay and found a few minutes to tune around the FM band. This yielded two new stations plus a third interesting logging:
  • CFRH-FM, Penetanguishene, Ontario, 88.1 MHz, at 1800-1810 UTC with fair signal. In French. "Vague FM". Country music. Received on Airport Rd. near the Simcoe/Dufferin county boundary, not far from Creemore. The station was still audible when I stopped in Creemore. New.  8.6 kW.
  • CISO-FM, Orillia, Ontario, 89.1 MHz at 2205-2215 UTC with excellent signal. "Sunshine 89.1". Real estate talk show. Received in Collingwood, when parked on the shore of Georgian Bay. New. 2.1 kW.
  • Unidentified station that sounded like Espace Musique (Radio-Canada, French language CBC) on 90.9 MHz at 2215 UTC. French talk, classical music. Received in Collingwood when parked at the harbour; signal was fair but station disappeared in the noise after I drove away from the shore. No ID but the only Espace Musique station in Ontario on 90.9 is CBBX in Sudbury (which I've logged already). That seems like quite a good catch, although maybe it's not unusual (the path between Sudbury and Collingwood would be mostly over water).

Saturday 2 June 2012

Unidentifieds on 88.1 MHz

Heard on the car radio today on 88.1 MHz while I was in Whitby, Ontario: a couple of stations battling for the frequency. Neither sounded like any of the semi-regular ones that come in on this frequency. Perhaps there was some tropo or e-skip in action. No IDs heard. First was a CBC Radio outlet with a program of acoustic music. English, but not parallel to either of the local CBC stations. This was mixing with a station playing country music. Both disappeared before any identifying material was heard. 1820-1831 UTC.