-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of bernieS Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2012 2:14 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Swlfest] Strange LPFM station in northeast PA
Following up on Bill Finn's FM station posting, yesterday while in northeast PA (Kingston, near Wilkes-Barre) I drove past a Seventh-Day-Adventist church with a crude sign nailed to its ADA wheelchair ramp that says "WHMN 107.9." So I tuned it in on the Sony car radio and found a not-full-quieting unmodulated FM carrier. Christian pirate? I looked around for an antenna, but it was dark and I couldn't see one. Later I looked up WHMN online and found it's actually a licensed 10W LPFM station of Abundant Life Ministry that transmits from a mountainside a couple three miles away from that church. A web search for Abundant Life Ministry directed me to RADIO 74 INTERNATIONALE which reportedly has its broadcast studio in southeast France--which may explain why I heard a bilingual sermon with sentences alternating between English and French. http://www.radio74.net/ Strange, since the French-speaking demographic in this part of Pennsylvania is practically nil. So, today I tried tracking down the WHMN 107.9 transmitter/antenna site on a mountainside without success (no RDF or GPS gear with me; just a car radio) and failed to locate it with a tight schedule, but the daytime audio sounds like they accept sponsored programming from various Christian sects. Their 10W signal covers much of the so-called Wyoming Valley including Wilkes-Barre, Kingston, and smaller nearby towns. http://www.angelfire.com/nj2/piratejim/LPFM5/whmnlp.html Will go back with a GPS when I have more time to find the transmitter/antenna site using FCC tower data. For a short while I was hopeful I'd found another(!) Christian pirate. About a decade ago I tracked one down in Corona, Queens probably running at least 100W from a Latino storefront church that was interfering with WUSB 90.1 MHz (SUNY Stony Brook, NY) on the same frequency (a friend with a show on WUSB told me he needed help with an interference problem.) The day after locating the pirate I called the pastor at the phone number on the sign out front and asked if he could move to a different frequency to avoid interference complaints--which could bring in the FCC--and he promptly did! Very neighborly of him--or perhaps his motivation came from concern about U.S. Federales raiding his packed Latino church. Problem solved. -Ed Cummings _______________________________________________ Swlfest mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swlfest To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above. For more information on the Fest, visit: http://www.swlfest.com http://swlfest.blogspot.com _______________________________________________ Swlfest mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swlfest To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above. For more information on the Fest, visit: http://www.swlfest.com http://swlfest.blogspot.com
