Mystery of 87.9 Mhz – Solved!

I think I’ve finally solved the mystery of these short periods of reception on 87.9 Mhz which lack the normal selective fading of some form of skip or the slow fading of ducting.

The clue was that while I was stopped at a light, all of the sudden the Howard Stern show came on.  Howard Stern isn’t broadcast terrestrially anymore but does have a satellite radio show on SiriusXM satellite radio.

It occurred to me that what I might be receiving on 87.9 Mhz is peoples SiriusXM radio converters.  That explains the usual short duration of the reception (they drive away).

Doing some research, I found that indeed the converters are tunable across the entire FM band but 87.9 Mhz, owing to it being clear across most of the country, is the most widely chosen channel.

I also found out there had been F.C.C. actions with regard to these SiriusXM converters being over-powered and causing interference to legitimate stations.  So it all fits, not real DX but bleed from satellite down converters.

More Weirdness on 87.9 Mhz – What Is Going On?

Today I received three different stations on 87.9 Mhz at three different times.

Around 11am, I went to the Post Office and then headed towards Fred Meyers.  I was on 175th Street just East of Aurora Ave N, and just stopped at the light.

A station faded in out of nothing, complete quieting, and it was playing a musical song with Japanese lyrics.  It lasted about a minute and a half.

Then later, around 3pm, I took my wife to get her check and head to the bank and on the way to the bank, again on 175th, another station came in, this time playing RAP in English.  But this time it only lasted about five seconds.

Then when we were stopped at a light on 164th Street leaving Walmart, around 6pm, a Spanish speaking station with Mexican music came in.  This one lasted about 30 seconds.

I’ve been interested in DX reception for many decades and I’ve never experienced propagation like this.  I have received TV DX over great distances like this but they usually lasted longer than these relatively brief periods of reception and involved a lot more fade and the video and audio were often distorted significantly by selective fading and multipath.

I’ve also received brief burps of signal, probably meteor trails, but those were much shorter than these events.

I’m convinced there is something new and different going on and I’m not even sure if it’s in the atmosphere.  Either there has to be some very brief ducting or multi-hop skip, because the distances involved are two great for a single hop which is limited to about 100 miles, but the characteristics are not like skip I’ve received in the past.

These are fade in fairly rapidly (going from no signal to solid full quieting in 1-2 seconds), remain complete solid during the time the signal is receivable which has been between about a second and maybe five minutes, and then fade out just as quickly and don’t come back.  There is no audible distortion or multipath distortion.

So I’m wondering if our atmosphere is acting differently because of altered chemistry?  Or perhaps something HAARP is doing?  Or maybe there is something providing a large artificial reflective surface such as an unacknowledged black project vehicle or maybe an alien craft?

There is definitely something different going on.  I’ve monitored these frequencies for many years and never received anything until just recently and now it’s almost daily.