Both 100.3 Braidwood and 88.5 Captains Flat are relaying The Station Of The Beast- and have been for some time. Only briefly was ABC NewsRadio heard on these frequencies. I even caught 88.5 relaying ABC Classic:
Initially both were fed off air from 666 AM but now relay the DAB signal (it’s available on the respective mountains). 88.5 could be DX’able from the Southern Highlands as well.
I don’t think I’ve ever received 92.9 Lismore here either, Toowoomba was too strong, even in the southerly facing parts. It would have been one to check somewhere like the lookouts at Springbrook but I guess now there’s no point.
Are you driving under the influence of 3RUM?
I did have a listen to 3RUM (Radio Upper Murray) on 88.7 and 98.9… it seemed like a decent regional community station… 107.7 from Tumbarumba sounded distorted - it didn’t seem like a reception issue.
It’s been that way for a long time.
3RUM often relays 2TVR (Tumut) programming.
Have had Rockhampton ABC’s coming in today in Brisbane, but without the usual associated increase in Wide Bay signals.
Mega West Coast FM DX last night. My turn for the 'rona virus so worked out well to be stuck inside infront of the radio.
Bucket list station MAMA 102.9 Carnarvon. 100w almost 1000km. Weak, but had MAMA 100.5 Geraldton to match the song to. About a 30 second delay between the two.
Then, foriegn language and music on 105.5. Google Assistant IDd 1 of the songs as…
I wonder if our brains trust have any ideas of playlist searches or websites or any other DX reports that may help.
The more prosaic guess would be an SBS Pop Desi relay from a remote mine site near Carnarvon or in the southern Pilbara. SBS FM do sometimes relay Pop Desi programming overnight, e.g.:
(SBS Canberra is also on 105.5, though this is pretty unlikely from Quokkaland 
)
The listed possibilities on 105.5 include:
6ABCFM Winu Mine. This is east of Marble Bar; too far inland for tropo from SW WA.
6FMS Nullagine Mine. Again in the interior of the Pilbara so unlikely to propagate via coastal tropo.
6JJJ Barrow Island. The most likely imo but still a long shot, extremely low powered at 20 watts.
No listed 6SBS transmitter on 105.5. Bear in mind that these self help sites can and do relay services different to the nominated service, particularly on mine sites.
We can’t rule out Indonesia as Indian/Pakistani music and culture is somewhat popular there. The ‘next stop’ for the WA coastal duct after Carnarvon is usually southern Java around Yogyakarta. But equally likely is an unlisted remote SBS relay somewhere near Carnarvon. I’d have to put this down as a genuine ‘UNID’ in the logbook, pending subsequent fresh and compelling evidence.
I think your song ID is a red herring BTW; this is the ‘track’ in question, which appears to be a reading of the Quran:
Had a look at the Pop Desi playlist and unsurprisingly, no Khalil Channa. So it doesn’t get us anywhere unfortunately.
However, if you did hear Quran recitation, this would be an absolute slam dunk for Indonesia! Call to prayers etc. are a staple of Indonesian radio.
Yep, that’s what I heard. Ive got 2 audio clips. I just zapped the 2nd one and got this…
This has been the bain of the DX season for many! 1 other from last night was on 106.3 (co incidentally 0.8mhz up from 105.5) with a program that didn’t match listings for
6SBSFM Wongan hills or
6ABCRR Southern Cross.
I guess option 3 is this was a nearby micro transmitter. I did hear 3 or 4 last night. Though usually they are in the 107.x range. 105.5 lasted 7 to 730pm with a trace on the waterfall for some hours after.
Thanks for your help! Case open still…
That does seem to tip the balance in favour of a genuine tropo signal (that gradually faded out). A car mp3 transmitter would simply fade rapidly to nothing as the car moves out of range, and a home mp3 transmitter would likely be constant strength and then switch off.
If a genuine tropo signal, Indonesia may be the most likely on current evidence. Intense tropo to Carnarvon- evidenced by the first ever log of 102.9- is usually a precursor to Indonesian FM tropo in SW WA. To my knowledge there are no Islamic broadcasters in remote WA, though there might be an LPON or two somewhere. The other possibility is a pirate FM station around Perth enhanced via short range tropo (I think you’re in Bunbury?)
Using Carl’s cliche, I require more evidence for the extraordinary claim of Indonesian tropo, however.
I guess Sunday evening is prime time for the gospel community. A community church maybe using a micro transmitter. The 2 tracks I’ve identified are on different Khalil albums - maybe using Spotify shuffle as background music??
Yes I’m in Bunbury.
I can also add, this was more likely a vertically polarized station. While you East Coast guys where basking in daily Es early this year, I rotated my 3 element antenna to vertical. The thinking was, we only have 2 horizontal polarized stations in Australia, might was well try vertical. Seams to be pulling in the low powered vertical stations quite well.
I find using an SDR a very useful tool in easily distinguishing the difference between a FM broadcast station & a micro-broadcast transmitter. Rarely (if ever) are these micro broadcast transmitters exactly on frequency. During open-carrier or silent periods looking at the IF spectrum with SDR software it’s easy to see if a station is on frequency. If it’s not on frequency it’s highly likely not to be a ACMA licenced station, but that said, I haven’t observed any WA mining stations with an SDR & don’t know if some of them could be off frequency a little?
Back to micro-broadcasters again; moving vehicles also have a distinctive propagation signature compared to Tropo or Es etc & I have also received these locally with users playing Islam sermons etc.
If you made a WAV baseband recording from SDR# or similar you should be able to look closer at the properties of the signal with IF & MPX spectrum etc.
What was the Hepburn Tropo chart showing at the time north of Carnarvon?
I have a few screen capture of the SDR. Looks bang on frequency during silence with nice clean carriers. I’d say a genuine broadcast station.
I know what you mean - how a station looks on the waterfall is indicative of how it sounds to the ear. Some of the 6SAT and 6FMS stations do look and sound average at best.
On the waterfall here, our mystery 105.5, 6BAY 105.1 Dongara ( which sounds and looks good) and 6iX 105.7 (which isn’t as sharp sounding as other commercial stations).
Tropo forecast from Saturday and Sunday looked brilliant!
Thanks for that SDR snapshot. Whilst I would have preferred to see the MPX & IF Spectrum Screen Windows as requested re frequency accuracy & levels etc, however looking at the main FFT Spectrum for the 105.5 signal during the silent period it looks like the Stereo Pilot 19kHz (presumed) sidebands look higher than the main carrier. I’ve never seen that, looks weird & most unusual, raising my suspicion levels. These cheapo RTL-SDR’s can also produce a lot of spurious signals too, but that said it doesn’t look like overload. That’s all I can say without requested SDR info.
From the Hepburn Map; the tropo looks good further north. The tropo duct should have extended further south & further inland to receive/show the great catches further north. No doubt it happened though 
I wonder what you would have heard with a better SDR, a bag full of FM DX catches I suspect.
I see what you mean. It does look wierd! Sorry, I didnt capture any MPX recordings, only video screen captures. I’ve lost a few hairs trying to recover Google accounts and will share some video tomorrow.
The radio used, is an SDRPlay 1A. I see the SDR# software does says RTL SDR as the source, this is the protocol my SDR server uses. The TCP stands for Transfer ? Protocol.
I like my SDRPlay. It’s served me well. No preamp, though i think it has 1 built in. No false images and doesn’t overload anywhere on the bands with gain set to max. The SDR is connected to a Raspberry Pi (in my shed) then a long length of ethernet cable to my NBN router where I can then access the SDR from anywhere - my Windows 11 computer in the next room, in this case.
I was tempted to head out to my secret DX spot! Though my car radio is very sensitive, its selectiveness is terrible. I’d say 6iX 105.7 would have wiped 105.5 out.
The ducting just extends to southern Indonesia on that Hepburn map, though of course you don’t take it as gospel. It does suggest that Indo reception may have been possible, though.
There is a 10 kW RRI outlet on 105.5 in east Java:
(Ponorogo Regency)
Central east Java, could be a bit elevated?
Google lead me to that website too. If I had to pick 1 station, it would have been that 1 - 10kw. I see it’s a relay for 99.7 Madiun, which has a steam on The Online Radio Box. The playlist this morning looks far from what I heard, but will be worth checking back on a Sunday Evening to see what their programming is.
For now here is ol’ mate Khalil rockin’ the church at the other end of my street, or maybe somewhere else.
I tested out 97.9 Radio National at Goulburn over the last couple of days.
On the Hume, the station was receivable from just west of Yass, and drops out at Colo Vale, where the Hume descends down from the Highlands.
