On the FM radio

This time of year, I don’t expect to work anything new on the FM band, but yesterday, I logged two new stations.

On an early morning grocery run, I noticed a handmade sign on the side of the road in Bristol, CT, that read, “105.3 Christian Radio.” I don’t recall logging many religious stations on FM, so I tuned the car radio to 105.3 Mc and found a religious station, WJYC, that was loud and clear.

I continued monitoring 105.3 during my grocery run and WJYC was solid until I crested South Mountain. WPTY out of Long Island took over the frequency.

After I unloaded the groceries, I looked up WJYC on Radio-Locator.com. It is the Riverside Baptist Church’s LPFM station transmitting 76 watts from Terryville, CT, 3 to 4 miles to my west as I drove around Bristol, CT.

Since WJYC was a new station right under my nose, I decided to check what other new stations might be under my nose and ready to be logged.

Using the Radio-Locator.com “find U.S. radio by your location” feature, the website came back with a list of AM and FM stations I should be able to hear. Perusing the list, only one was not in my log: W253BQ on 98.5 Mc. Their transmitter is 7 miles line of sight of my QTH, so I thought it was a sure-thing and sure enough, they were loud and clear on the C.Crane CC Skywave receiver. W253BQ transmits 250 watts 7 miles to my southwest and is is a relay station for Spanish station WSGG.