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AM frequency of the week-1380khz

cyberdad

cyberdad

So what are you guys hearing on 1380?

Here in the far northwest suburbs of Chicago for me days it's a fair signal from WBEL, in Beloit, WI. That's a 5kw ND about 45 miles west-northwest of me.

At night, WBEL stays at 5kw, but nulls just about every direction but north. The result is WBEL completely disappears, and all that's left is indecipherable slop.
"Back in the Day", KWK out of St. Louis was a fairly easy catch here. But KWK is long gone, as is any reliable 1380 signal from St. Louis.

And finally, IIRC, 1380 is the channel for one of the most impressive catches experienced by any of us on this board. That would be David Eduardo snagging 5kw KPOI, Honolulu in the Cleveland, OH area one pre-dawn Monday circa 1963. Am I correct, David? (I believe kilokat may have also heard a couple of Hawaiians at his QTH in Michigan.)
 
KRCM Shenandoah is at 1380, both in Houston and Bellville. Spanish religious "Radio Aleluya".

This is a fairly recent move-in from Beaumont.
 
East Tennessee, depending on where is WYSH, Clinton, and in Sevierville it's a tossup between WYSH and WKJV, Asheville.
In Dayton, it was WKJG, Fort Wayne. I did get WKJV around sunset. Where I grew up in West Central Ohio, I grew up with this facility as WMEE. Their night pattern excluded us just 50 miles southeast of Fort Wayne, and at times in the 70s WLCY in Tampa, WAOK in Atlanta and WBEL would drift in.
 
Here in Southeastern Michigan in the Daytime, it has always been WPHM Port Huron and WPLB..WGLM Greenville at various places and times. WKJG/WMEE/.../WKJG has always been a major factor at night. I have heard WBEL...WTJK South Beloit, and CKPC Brantford, ON and various others. Seems like I heard KWK, but didn't they downgrade from 5000 watts night because of flooding on their site? Seems like they had to downgrade or move and it was never powerful after that.
 
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Days - noise level KRKO Everett, WA (Sports)
Nights - mainly KRKO
Sunset - KSRV Ontario, OR (Oldies) appears a lot as well as KRKO and KTKZ Sacramento (Talk)
 
In the mid-atlantic states for many years was the legendary WAMS in Wilmington, Delaware. Was a Top 40 mainstay from 1956 to around 1981. After that the Urban Cowboy craze came and they went country. Their call letters were an acronym for "Where AMerica Sings" and their slogan "The Natural Sound". By mid '87 they became oldies 1380 WAMS. IN 1990 they became a Kool Gold affiliate and were know locally as KOOL 1380. In April 1991 they went dark for 6 years. Today they are WTMC with Del-Dot traffic reports.
 
Let me take 'em one at a time.....

gr8oldies: WBEL in East Tennessee is really impressive. I'm wondering if they're occasionally "forgetting" to go to their night pattern.....which sends just about all the signal north. I wouldn't be surpised if they're "forgetting" to go to the DA, since the night pattern cuts off a big chunk of their market.

Shoedinger's Cat: I thought you might be correct about KWK being a downgraded facility. I checked at R-L, and sure enough, they're now running 5kw days/1kw nights. I knew also that they've gone through several call letter changes, and now they're operating as KFXN...sports. And, indeed, there was major river flooding in 1993, so that may have something to do with the downgrade. Both the day and night sites are very close to the river. As things stand now, the night pattern is aimed right at me...but I still never hear it. And as for WBEL, if they are staying on day pattern after sunset, it wouldn't be enough to raise it above the slop here where I am.

crainbebo: Is it me....or does KRKO indeed have a lousy (day) signal for 50KW ND? I notice their building driving through Everett on I-5, so I tune in. And in little more than a half hour, the signal becomes pretty lousy. True whether going north or south.
 
Many years ago, 1976 to be exact, I flew to Guayaquil, Ecuador to install a 50kw AM transmitter.
While in my hotel room one night, I scanned the AM dial and was amazed to hear 1380, WLCY, St. Petersburg, Florida (my hometown at the time).
I called their request line and told the Jock that I was listening to the station in Ecuador.
The Jock didn't believe me. I told him to return my call. He did and was equally amazed that I was able to listen to the station ... nearly noise-free.
I listened to them every night while I was in Ecuador. Their nighttime coverage was amazing for a 5kw station.
 
frankberry said:
Many years ago, 1976 to be exact, I flew to Guayaquil, Ecuador to install a 50kw AM transmitter.
While in my hotel room one night, I scanned the AM dial and was amazed to hear 1380, WLCY, St. Petersburg, Florida (my hometown at the time).
I called their request line and told the Jock that I was listening to the station in Ecuador.
The Jock didn't believe me. I told him to return my call. He did and was equally amazed that I was able to listen to the station ... nearly noise-free.
I listened to them every night while I was in Ecuador. Their nighttime coverage was amazing for a 5kw station.
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Not nearly as impressive, but the 1380 signal from St. Pete still makes the daytime hop across the gulf to the beaches around Pensacola on a daily basis. At the place where we stay on the beach at the Florida-Alabama state line, the signal is weak, but very listenable. And semi-local 5kw WCOA (1370) is a non-factor in impeding the signal.
 
AN overwhelming *two* here in NE PA -- WMLP Milton PA in the day (from around 25 miles off) and a logging from WKDM NYC at night.
When we move into the new digs in a few weeks, 1380 definitely will be one of the 110 or so frequencies I have to pay more attention to. At night the town where we'll be has no real industrial-strength local AM signals.

I and some others can attest to that WLCY signal.
But from darned near the opposite direction.

See, NYC once had two stations clocking in on 1380, from two different transmitting sites. With far more broadcast-day hours, WBNX also was the bigger signal, a smearing, noisy, ethnic DX catastrophe which sent its signal seemingly right through our navels and destroyed adjacent frequencies, perhaps out of wrath or spite. The darned thing also was very prompt with their sign-ons and sign-offs.
Shared-time WAWZ, a religious station licensed to a town in New Jersey that didn't exist (Zarephath), had a lesser signal toward us, ran something like 132% less modulation than WBNX, and wasn't exactly as, uh, devout about their schedule as WBNX was. During WAWZ's absence -- and sometimes despite their presence -- all sorts of swell things would come in. WNRI Rhode Island, WHWB Vermont, even WAMS* from Delaware.
Quite punctually on Sunday mornings nearing sunrise, when, presumably WAWZ's staff was in church instead of on the air, WLCY would just amble up the coast our way.
(O/T somewhat, but WSUN 620 from St. Pete also would behave the same way; more often than not the only thing on 620 either on the air or readable. The two stations also had their towers pretty close to each other iIrc)

Another WLCY note: One night when I was sort of tomcatting around in a big Buick a little south of Clearwater, near the Gulf, there was a hill or two and WLCY took a big fade. I must have been right in that northwest null of theirs, because out of the car radio came an ID from KWK St. Louis.

* Poor WAMS in Delaware, a 5000-watter who had to send it all south to protect NYC anyway, had to change their own directional pattern several times a day depending on which of the NYC 1380 stations were on!
 
purpledevil said:
KRCM Shenandoah is at 1380, both in Houston and Bellville. Spanish religious "Radio Aleluya".

This is a fairly recent move-in from Beaumont.
Click to expand...

KRCM is running less power now than it was licensed for in Beaumont....for those not familiar with Houston, the Shenandoah area is a VERY small town between Conroe and The Woodlands in Montgomery County north of Houston (about 40m north of downtown)...KRCM is 800w day and 80w night iirc (in Beaumont, it was 1KW day and 127 at night into a 5/8w antenna...that was ready to fall down)...there are much more powerful regional stations on 1380 than KRCM...plus a station out of Mexico blows KRCM away in Houston proper at night.
 
Here in W. Washington I hear KRKO Everett (Fox Sports), with sometimes KRSV Ontario, Oregon (oldies), poking through in a weak null at night.
 
I don;t have the logbook here, Boombox, but I recall 1380 treating us four DXers near JFK airport very nicely for a regional frequency with two loud locals occupying it.

KRKO indeed was one such treat. The exact date is long-lost to delinquent recordkeeping, but it was 4AM, a Monday morning, when I caught a sounder and a 'K R K O ... Jetline News' .... ID. I still have the tape of it. I'm thinking it was 1964 or 1965.

KUDL Kansas City was another catch, real weak. But every time I hear 'Rockin' Robin' by Bobby Day (which is an endangered radio species nowadays), I hear the jingle, ♫Thirteen eighty, Kuddle ..... Kansas City♫' with an ADDED 'Kansas City', as if they felt obliged to mention both Kansas City's, lol.

David Eduardo is on file here as being treated well by this frequency. KPOI is one swell postcard souvenir to get from Ohio, eh ?
 
A couple of you have mentioned KUDL....and indeed I do recall hearing it here a few times around sunset when they were still on day pattern. When it was in, the signal was pretty good, IIRC. This would've been late '60Gs/early 70s, IIRC. Fast forward a dozen or so years, and I'd get into Kansas City 2-3 times on business trips. What I remember about that is that there were all manner of holes in the signal as you drove around time at night. The day signal as sort of hit and miss also.
 
If you want to see the pages of the patterns for the station on 1380, probably what used to be the KUDL array, go to page 2-177 and 2-178 of this link from David's site.

http://americanradiohistory.com/Arc...Section-2-NAB-Engineering-Fifth-Edition-3.pdf

Other pages have details of the directional antenna system. It may not be KUDL, but it looks like a good possibility, as it is 5/0.5 U4 (DA-2). I like the conciseness of the WRTH notation, but I realize it is not official.

I hesitate to mention this, but I just saw an article that said that Big Ron O'Brien and Jeff Christie (AKA Rush Limbaugh) used to work at KUDL. I don't know how KUDL could have been a factor at night in Kansas City based on the description of the array location, but maybe this isn't KUDL's array either.

http://reelradio.com/gifts/robkudl70.html

The COL is Fairway, KS, and I believe the current call letters are KCNW. KUDL-FM still exists.
 
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Interesting stuff, Schroedinger's. Thanks for posting the links and the related info. The technical info is a little beyond my pay grade, but I think I do get some of the basic points. The Reel Radio article was a little more revealing for me and dovetails with my own memory and experience. If the antenna site for KUDL was where the article says it was, it's actually about 10 miles southwest of downtown Kansas City....not 20 miles as the article states.

I started visiting Kansas City on a regular basis for business beginning in 1982. The hotel I typically used was two or three exits southwest of the antenna site on I-35...three miles away or less. The Broadcasting Yearbook for 1983 shows the KCNW calls and the 5kw/500w night DA-2 pattern. I do remember that 1380 was one of the stronger signals in the hotel....day and night. But what I also remember was that at night when I went out for dinner etc., the signal faded rather quickly if I ventured too far from the immediate area.

Were those diagrams in the NAB publication archived on David's site actually KUDL's pattern? I'm not sure if I'm understanding them correctly. One of them shows nulls that certainly would protect KWK (St. Louis), KOTA (Rapid City), and for that matter, even WBEL (which I'm not sure would even be entitled to protection). But OTOH, locating the tower where it was would be a a pretty bad choice for a station attempting to cover the entire metro. The night pattern would miss probably at least 50% of it....although it would pick up a chunk of prime real estate in the south and southwest suburbs.

By the mid-80s, I was calling on several large Kansas City ad agencies. The ones which were buying local radio (which was most of them) were very bullish on KUDL.....FM, by then.

Sidebar OT point....the Reel Radio article mentioned that the high-energy presentation of the original KUDL/1380 being interrupted daily by running Garner Ted Armstrong at 5:40am. I can totally relate to what that must have been like on a substandard signal! On my first on-air gig out of college, I was at a 5kw daytimer with a 500-watt PSA...in an area with lousy ground conductivity. I had to run a Garner Ted tape at 6:15am. Whatever month it was when local sunrise came after 6:00am and we had to sign on with reduced power, I can guarantee that I took more calls from people who couldn't get their "Garner Ted fix" than the station got from listeners during the entire remainder of the broadcast day!
 
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Steve Green NEPA said:
I don;t have the logbook here, Boombox, but I recall 1380 treating us four DXers near JFK airport very nicely for a regional frequency with two loud locals occupying it.

KRKO indeed was one such treat. The exact date is long-lost to delinquent recordkeeping, but it was 4AM, a Monday morning, when I caught a sounder and a 'K R K O ... Jetline News' .... ID. I still have the tape of it. I'm thinking it was 1964 or 1965.

KUDL Kansas City was another catch, real weak. But every time I hear 'Rockin' Robin' by Bobby Day (which is an endangered radio species nowadays), I hear the jingle, ♫Thirteen eighty, Kuddle ..... Kansas City♫' with an ADDED 'Kansas City', as if they felt obliged to mention both Kansas City's, lol.

David Eduardo is on file here as being treated well by this frequency. KPOI is one swell postcard souvenir to get from Ohio, eh ?
Click to expand...

KRKO from NYC, that would be an awesome catch, even for back then.

Once I heard a WINS ID at the TOH on a barefoot TRF. Out of the blue. Then gone. That one blew me away. But they were 50KW.

To hear a 5KW regional like KRKO from across the continent is very impressive.
 
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boombox4 said:
KRKO from NYC, that would be an awesome catch, even for back then.

Once I heard a WINS ID at the TOH on a barefoot TRF. Out of the blue. Then gone. That one blew me away. But they were 50KW.

To hear a 5KW regional like KRKO from across the continent is very impressive.
Click to expand...

Hearing WINS in the Pacific Northwest is impressive since their DA is totally in the other direction.
 
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