A few comments to FUBAR this whole thing up.
Observations the last two late afternoons have convinced me that at my location I am seeing two carriers. There is a weaker one, typically around 3219.8 +/- change. This carrier seems to be "fairly" stable in frequency, and is usually noted as a faint trace in the waterfall, although it does from time to time diminish in strength, only to reappear. I have not been able to get any audio from this, even in USB, with either the SDR or an R8.
The second carrier I note is always stronger, and lower in frequency. It typically varies during a one hour listening period from a min of about 6219.397 to a max of about 6219.576 and between. I have been able to get trace audio from this, and have been able to ID maybe 10% of the songs.
I use a small loop to DX. I absolutely do not DF pirates, and if I did, I would definitely not put that information into the public domain. The loop is mounted on mast at a fixed (although rotatable) azimuth which benefits my non-pirate targets as well as suppressing QRM from the closest house.
Many of the above comments, especially those by CM and Pigmeat, taken together kind of forced me to believe that this UNID, at least the one I was hearing, was not a pirate, a commercial station or harmonic, or an int'l broadcaster. That left a Part 15 op as a possibility. I supposed that it would be possible for a bit of 2nd harmonic to go NVIS and make it here to Chicago. I did an "exhaustive" search for Part 15s here in the Tri-State area. I realize that they are most likely not all listed, but there were two in the area listed as using 1610. One, in Michigan, had religious programming. The second, near Rock Island IL, had a website with an embedded stream player.
Yesterday afternoon (Thursday 29Mar12) I compared audio from the web stream for the Part 15 to the trace audio on 3219+. Listening to about 15 songs, the audio of about half of what I heard on both the radio and the web stream seemed to jive in their tempos and bass lines. Two songs (Magic Carpet Ride and Bad to the Bone) were definite. A third (Green Onions, unmistakable at any S/N ratio!) I was able to ID via the radio prior to checking the web stream. Dead air between stream songs was consistently and accurately rendered in the SDR waterfall.
I was a little stunned, but convinced that the lower of the 2 carriers was indeed a harmonic of a listed Part 15 named Good Time Oldies 1610 in near Rock Island IL. That being the case, I DFed it. 3 measurements taken over a half hour period of running in and out of the house and manually rotating the loop by hand put this about 5 to 15 estimated degrees South of due West (and also North of due East); Quad Cities.
I repeated this exercise this afternoon (Friday 30Mar12) with the same results. The DFs were the same. Out of twenty songs, I was only able to ID one first via the RF. But it was impossible to mishear Frankie Valli singing "Girl, you make me lose my mind!"
So, I think this may actually make things worse for n8! The playlist and presentation of GTO 1610 does not seem to, at least in this late afternoon time slot, match what he was hearing. I would like to hear GTO far later at night, as possibly he goes off the playbook. It's been a little too noisy the last couple of nights to do this.
There are two carriers there. It may be that I can hear one and not the other, the one that n8 is hearing. And vicey versy...I just dunno. Still need some boots on the ground for the second.
