Sunday 5 June 2016

CITO-TV 3 Timmins turns into a police car

This morning fellow DXer Ed Phelps in Kentucky reported hearing an analogue TV video carrier on channel 3+ that sounded like a police siren. Intrigued, I checked and found it too.

It appears to be CITO-3 Timmins, Ontario. At a distance of 376 miles, I can normally see the carrier from this station, and occasionally hear the audio. This morning the signal was enhanced. What you see below is a screen capture. At 61.25 you can see regular CICI1 Elliot Lake. At 61.26 you can see the misbehaving CITO carrier.


It really does sound a police siren, especially when off-tuned. The first audio file below is the sound of the carrier in USB. The second file is the carrier off-tuned.

CITO video carrier

CITO off-tuned video carrier

Now Ed Phelps is 878 miles from this station. He is likely receiving it via meteor scatter mixed with some lingering ionoscatter. Mike Bugaj in Connecticut also reports hearing the signal.

CITO's actual FM audio on 65.76 does sound normal, by the way.

For how long will CITO be an unintentional police siren alerting DXers of its presense for hundreds of miles around?









2 comments:

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  2. A video carrier is supposed to broadcast at one steady precise frequency. In this case, the carrier was varying in frequency instead. When listening to the carrier in USB, it sounded like a siren rather than what should be a steady tone.

    ReplyDelete