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Cyberdad's Most Unusual AM Bandscan

cyberdad

cyberdad

I spent a few days in Michigan this week, including a stop across the border in Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario....

So what do you do when your car is in a line waiting to clear customs? If you're like me and can't think of anything worthwile or constructive, you start DX-ing. This was Wednesday afternoon, April 8 at about 3pm EDT. I had about ten minutes before it was my turn with the Canada Customs officer. Enough time to get through about half of the band. It helped that this is an area where during the daytime, there are more blank spots than occupied channels. So here's what I found....

560: I was curious what, if anything, would turn up here. Turned out to be CFOS with a fair signal.
580: WTCM. Fair-weak.
620: WTMJ. Weak
670: WSCR. Very weak, but clearly audible
680: WDBC. Weak. 10kw enough to make the hop along the north shore of Lake Michigan and then over land with so-so conductivity. Escanaba. MI. I'll guess 130 miles.
720: WGN. Very weak, but slightly better than WSCR
760: I heard a carrier here with audio that I couldn't make out. Assume WJR
780: WBBM. Barely Audible, but I was able to positively ID. Weaker than WGN and WSCR.
940: WIDG. Weak (5kw ND from St. Ingnace, MI. About 50 miles away)
960: WHAK. Very Weak (5kw ND from Rogers City, MI. About 75 miles away)

This is as far as I got. There's only one local here on AM. That's WSOO (1230, 880wND) on the Michigan side. The Canadians are all on FM including the CBC/SRC stations and a couple of private broadcasters.

I didn't get to do much DX-ing in the hotel room, save for a brief session about an hour before sunrise. No big surprises there, other than WMT blasting in all alone on 600. I wouldn't expect that if they're on 1.25 kw ND with their STA, but who knows. Aside from that, no other surprises during my "limited sample size". The Chicago blowtorches were all present with mostly good signals....including WYLL. WIND was also good with what was probably CFOS underneath. I'll be glad to post more or answer specific questions if any of you guys want me to (assuming I can from my brief experience).
 
WIND and WGRB will blast into the Central to West UP at night. One thing you might not have tried at night in SSM are WWJ and WFDF. When they are at full power (both have been making major repairs on STA), they come in like Clears, though stronger and with more cochannel interference. At 50 kW (WFDF before sunset), they sound like international shortwave stations except they fade a lot slower due to the wavelength. By the time you get to the Central to West UP, WNTD may be a lot stronger, assuming they are on Night Pattern, and you may hear it somewhat alone occasionally or WWJ with a lot of interference. WNWI 1080 might surprise you with an appearance. Jerry Tertzakian used to make a lot of the announcements, I knew who it was, but I couldn't understand a word he was saying.
 
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Oh, there is also WKNW 1400 in SSM. CJIC..CFYN 1050 and CKCY 920 made a mutual agreement to sign off on AM decades ago. I think their FMs are coowned now. CanCon makes it difficult to complete with the US SSM area FMs.

CFCO 630 might be heard, although IBOC sideband interference might be present from WTMJ 620.

Did you try for WOKY? I think that CKNX may be on day pattern and power though. You can hear WOKY in the daytime with a loop or preamp with a vertical wire. You'd be surprised at the groundwaves you can hear near the Straits if there is no electrical interference. My simple preamp worked well until you turned on a light switch and it started oscillating.
 
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Forgot about WKNW. I did hear WWJ at night in SSM with just a fair signal, but pretty much alone. I also heard CFCO...a little weaker than WWJ. WTMJ's noisemaker was not an issue. They were "so-so" at night with CKRM also present. WGRB was also in there on 1390, but not particularly impressive. Not the blaster that they are in northeast and north central Wisconsin. WFDF? What format do they run? I didn't hear anything notable on 910, but then again, I wasn't listening very long. The night before I left home, I did hear religion coming through on 910, but it was all canned stuff and I didn't get an ID.

Finally WOKY. I tried for it. 920 was a jumble. The only thing I could make out was some country music, which could've been CFRY or CKNX, I suppose. Or maybe even KDHL.

After Sault Ste. Marie, I spent Thursday night in Watervliet (southwest corner of Michigan). A couple of unexpected catches there, so I'll probably post a thread about that at some point over the next day or two.
 
Nice catches of the Chicago stations during the day.

Audible signals at 360 miles away!

That could never happen with the same land/fresh water ratio of a signal path on the east coast.
 
gar fla said:
Nice catches of the Chicago stations during the day.

Audible signals at 360 miles away!

That could never happen with the same land/fresh water ratio of a signal path on the east coast.
Click to expand...

Thanks, gar. What surprised me a little was the difference between WGN and WBBM. As you may know, these two are within about a mile of each other. But this is just the latest example of WGN sounding better during the past few months. That was also the case in January when I was in your part of the world, as well as on both nights of my Michigan-Canada trip last week. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe WGN got a "tuneup" of some sort, or maybe something's up with 'BBM.

....And you're right, I don't think the hop from one end of the lake to the other would've been possible on the east side of Lake Michigan. As it is, I'm not sure WJR actually made it. At least on what was a good, but not great, car radio.
 
WJR can be heard near the Straits, and I would think it would be possible in SSM. From what I have heard, WJR can be heard on the North side of Lake Huron in the daytime. The question would come up again and again as to why you could heard them well there but not so well in the Northern part of the Lower Peninsula. J.P. McCarthy and John McMurray always talked about it, as they were in to boating and followed the boat races.
 
....And you're right, I don't think the hop from one end of the lake to the other would've been possible on the east side of Lake Michigan. As it is, I'm not sure WJR actually made it. At least on what was a good, but not great, car radio.
Click to expand...

Oh, I'm sorry, I meant the east coast of the US such as where the big cities are in the northeast and mid Atlantic where the ground conductivity is poor compared to the Midwest.

Speaking of WJR, I still remember the time I had a short stop to change planes in Cleveland in the early afternoon and inside the terminal on my Sony SRF-M37 Walkman. WJR had a strong signal. And I figure that was from around 100 miles or so.

That fascinated me considering airport terminals have horrible AM reception, even for the local stations
 
cyberdad said:
Thanks, gar. What surprised me a little was the difference between WGN and WBBM. As you may know, these two are within about a mile of each other. But this is just the latest example of WGN sounding better during the past few months. That was also the case in January when I was in your part of the world, as well as on both nights of my Michigan-Canada trip last week. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe WGN got a "tuneup" of some sort, or maybe something's up with 'BBM.

....And you're right, I don't think the hop from one end of the lake to the other would've been possible on the east side of Lake Michigan. As it is, I'm not sure WJR actually made it. At least on what was a good, but not great, car radio.
Click to expand...

I don't know if you are talking strictly about groundwave with WBBM, but I have been less than impressed with their skywave lately. I've been listening more because they have the Cubs deal now, but they don't come in nearly as well at night as WGN, at least on the occasions I've tried to hear them.
 
schmave said:
I don't know if you are talking strictly about groundwave with WBBM, but I have been less than impressed with their skywave lately. I've been listening more because they have the Cubs deal now, but they don't come in nearly as well at night as WGN, at least on the occasions I've tried to hear them.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I've noticed for myself. First with skywave at night when traveling and more recently with groundwave. WGN's signal seems to have gotten at least slightly better, while WBBM seems to have deteriorated.

As for WJR, I didn't check it when I drove through the straits and over the bridge, but the straits are 50 miles south of Sault Sainte Marie, so I'd guess that if I was getting a whiff of a signal at the US-Canada border, I'd be able to get something more listenable at the straits. Most of my drive down the lower peninsula was on US 131. WJR was listenable every time I checked while on 131, but at no time would I say it was impressive signal. The car radio was a Chevy Impala with a base model stock radio. As posted previously, good rig but not great.
 
gr8oldies said:
There's been a lot of auroral activity in the last month or so, that's likely a reason for a weaker skywave signal.
Click to expand...

Good point, but I didn't notice auroral activity the two nights I was on the road last week. And the difference between WGN and WBBM in signal strentgh has been detectable on multiple occasions with both skywave and groundwave. It doesn't exactly "jump out at you", but its definitely noticeable and hard to miss. Maybe iboc is what's affecting the WBBM signal. But for quite a while, WBBM had a better signal with iboc than WGN had without it.
 
I know this thread has been dormant for a few months, but I noticed the discrepancy between WGN and WBBM's groundwaves last week while driving out to Chicagoland and back. WGN was clearly the strongest Chicago AM signal in both Fort Wayne and Indianapolis (followed by WSCR, WLS, WBBM and WMVP in that order), and WBBM had considerably more static, especially in the Fort Wayne area. I was quite impressed with WLS' groundwave. I know it's farther south than the other transmitters, but it sounded very good when I was driving through Indiana.
 
Exactly what I've been observing with the Chicago groundwaves. I have a (crummy) AM radio in the car and am having a few issues with WBBM. Which has never happened before and still isn't happening with WSCR and WGN. Anyone know if WBBM is on STA or something?

I'm heading south to the beach (usual spot near Pensacola) this coming week. I'll report if I notice anything unusual.
 
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