Results Summary
I recorded this station at 1115 UTC on Monday November 29, 1999 when tuned to 87.7 MHz FM.
The tuner is a Sony SA3ES Hi-Fi tuner fitted with throughout with 110 kHz IF filters and the aerial is a Triax FM8 at about 10 meters above ground. The tuner could also therefore receive 87.75 MHz (channel A-6 tv audio) quite happily, but not 87.6 or 87.8 MHz. I was monitoring 87.7 MHz for meteor scatter pings, recording the audio for later playback. The tuner's RDS decoder IC is hooked up to a PC for automatic logging RDS data, but no RDS data was present during this reception. The audio recording was made on a Mac ... 16 bit, 11.025 kHz sampling in mono.
Just about everyone says that they hear 2 stations here.
The male voice is apparently that of KNBC's early morning news anchor Kent Shocknek. (KNBC is the NBC station in Los Angeles, California and is on channel 4.) It appears to be a recording of him "live" on-air as an aftershock of the Northridge earthquake in January 1994 rocked the studio. The main quake hit at 4:31, and there was a powerful aftershock at 5:26:45. KNBC did indeed have a seismo-cam - though mention of it seems to have now disappeared from their website.
"... we are feeling right now, at five twenty-six.
You're looking at a live picture from our Channel 4 seismo-cam ..."
What we still need to find out is who was transmitting this recorded clip on Nov 29, 1999. Was it part of a lookback at the 1990's, was it a news item or documentary about earthquakes or famous news anchors, or possibly a commercial?
The female voice has been identified by WECT's Chief Engineer as one of their news anchors, Frances Weller. WECT is on the coast in Wilmington NC. A second person also recognised the voice to be hers.
The Reception
