94.5

Tuesday evening, I was monitoring 94.5 MHz with my C.Crane CC Pocket AM/FM/WX Radio and I could hear a station way down in the mud. It was playing Rat Pack tunes: a string of Frank Sinatra songs followed by a Dean Martin song. There was very little chatter between songs and the signal was so weak that I could not understand a word of what was being said.

I decided to try my other radios. The C.Crane CCRadio-SW detected nothing on 94.5, while the C.Crane CCRadio 2E Enhanced heard the signal at the same muddy level as the C.Crane CC Pocket.

I left the 2E tuned to 94.5 while I worked in the shack. Suddenly, a different station came up from out the noise at 2311 UTC and put in a solid S-3 signal for about four minutes: WPST running 50 kW out of Trenton, New Jersey, 140 miles southwest.

After WPST faded away, another signal came up from out of the noise at 2322 UTC with an S-2 signal: WJMN running 9.2 kW, 100 miles east-northeast from a 1200-foot tower in Newton, Mass, just southwest of Boston. The tower is one of the big four towers in the Newton-Needham area that you cannot miss when traveling in that neck of the woods.

After WJMN faded away, the Rat Pack station was still wailing away and then it faded out, too. I will monitor 94.5 again this evening to see if I can pin it down.