Post by musicradio77 on Jun 9, 2005 20:31:52 GMT -5
This Saturday, June 11, a special broadcast will originate from Alpine, New Jersey, home of the world's first FM radio station. Seventy years ago, Major Edwin H. Armstrong made his first experimental FM transmissions from Yonkers and from the Empire State Building. Three years later, Armstrong signed experimental W2XMN on from his tower site in Alpine, New Jersey, using a frequency of 42.8 MHz.
Starting at noon on Saturday, special experimental station WA2XMN will broadcast commemorative programming on that original 42.8 MHz frequency, using a replica of an early Phasitron transmitter at a power of 250 watts. It should be receivable on any scanner receivers capable of receiving wideband FM. Those now-rare prewar FM receivers will also be able to pick up this broadcast. The programming will be simulcast on WFDU, 89.1 MHz, which also has its transmitter at Alpine. Programs will include recordings of the old Yankee FM Network and the special program aired over Armstrong's station as it ceased operations five weeks after Armstrong's death in 1954. WFDU also plans to stream the broadcast on its Web site.
By 1940, when a channel plan was finalized for the FM band, W2XMN was operating on 44.1 MHz. When the FCC announced plans to move FM to its present-day band, Armstrong operated W2XEA on 92.1 MHz, parallel with W2XMN on 44.1, and later moving to 93.1 MHz. The call letters of W2XEA were later changed to KE2XCC when the FCC changed the format of experimental station callsigns in the early fifties. Neither the Armstrong estate nor Columbia University, where Armstrong held a professorship, ever reopened KE2XCC and the 93.1 frequency went to WPAT-FM in 1957.
Starting at noon on Saturday, special experimental station WA2XMN will broadcast commemorative programming on that original 42.8 MHz frequency, using a replica of an early Phasitron transmitter at a power of 250 watts. It should be receivable on any scanner receivers capable of receiving wideband FM. Those now-rare prewar FM receivers will also be able to pick up this broadcast. The programming will be simulcast on WFDU, 89.1 MHz, which also has its transmitter at Alpine. Programs will include recordings of the old Yankee FM Network and the special program aired over Armstrong's station as it ceased operations five weeks after Armstrong's death in 1954. WFDU also plans to stream the broadcast on its Web site.
By 1940, when a channel plan was finalized for the FM band, W2XMN was operating on 44.1 MHz. When the FCC announced plans to move FM to its present-day band, Armstrong operated W2XEA on 92.1 MHz, parallel with W2XMN on 44.1, and later moving to 93.1 MHz. The call letters of W2XEA were later changed to KE2XCC when the FCC changed the format of experimental station callsigns in the early fifties. Neither the Armstrong estate nor Columbia University, where Armstrong held a professorship, ever reopened KE2XCC and the 93.1 frequency went to WPAT-FM in 1957.