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Why Can I Hear KYW 1060 in New Hampshire?

G

Gregg.

I've mentioned before that I sometimes hear 1060 KYW Philadelphia at night when I'm in New Hampshire. I was hearing it again this past Sunday around 3:45am on a standard car radio while parked in East Wakefield, on the NH-Maine border, about 100 miles north of Boston.

If you look at KYW's pattern on Radio-Locator.com, it's obviously nulled away from the Northeast to protect 1050 WEPN New York, also a 50,000 watt full time station. And it's nulled away from Mexico City, home of XEEP. Both KYW and XEEP were originally Class I-B stations, sharing equal protection on 1060.

While in New Jersey, whether day or night, it's hard to hear KYW in Trenton, about 35 miles north-northeast of Philadelphia, and almost impossible to hear it in Princeton, another 15 miles on the way to New York. Interestingly, KYW comes in pretty well in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton PA market, about 50 miles directly north of Philadelphia. Back when we could see out-of-market stations, KYW would often make the ratings for Allentown. The station regularly gives weather forecasts for the Poconos, the mountain vacation region north of Allentown.

The KYW transmitter does a great job of keeping interference to WEPN non-existent. Yet somehow at night, KYW's directional signal seems to bounce over NYC and hits New Hampshire. The signal in NH isn't great, but many nights it's clearly listenable. Early Sunday, I listened to the All-News format several times between 3:45 and 4am.
 
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Even the deepest null in the KYW 1060 pattern is roughly equivalent to 1 kW nondirectional, and with little cochannel interference, that could be heard. Compare it to an expanded band station with 1 kW nondirectional at night, or CFOR 1570 when it was 1 kW nondirectional. That always got out pretty good. Also, the array is a broadside arrangement, and at high elevation angles, its more like the pattern closer to perpendicular to the line of towers. The WHN/WEPN 1050 protection is for groundwave, so the elevation angle doesn't come in to play.
 
KYW Skywave in Wakefield, NH

The elevation angle from KYW for single-hop skip into Wakefield, NH is about 20 degrees. KYW radiates about 400 watts at that elevation angle and azimuth bearing.

Their 50% skywave field in Wakefield is about 90 µV/m, so that would take a fairly good receive setup and low interference levels to be of much practical use.

KYW_Study.gif
 
Thanks, Rich, for all your examples.

There is only supposed to be 25 uV/m 10% skywave interfering signal on 1060, so 90 uV/m may well at least some nights come in well.

When my father used to perform with his musical group on WREO Lansing, MI back in the 1920s, with just 500 watts, they got reception reports from Montana.

The 1680 station in Ada, MI is just 680 watts at night, and can be frequently heard in most of the Continental US. That is probably the closest current model for KYW in New Hampshire at night.
 
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I'm surprised then that KYW comes in as well as it does, not every night but maybe about half the nights. I was using a car this past trip that really doesn't have that great a radio. For instance, I couldn't hear non-directional 810 WGY from Schenectady, which is only about 150 miles away. Or 690 CKGM from Montreal, about 200 miles away, which is also non-directional. 730 from Montreal was audible that night. (By the way, since changing hands a few times since the CBC owned it, it really is hard to pick up 690 these days. I remember when it was slightly audible in the middle of the day in NH and available most nights. I assume CKGM is still 50,000 watts non-directional. Maybe they haven't kept up the field around the tower or other aspects have fallen into disrepair?)

I wasn't getting anything from too far away, no Detroit or Chicago. Obviously WBZ Boston and many NYC stations come in every night in NH. WBAL Baltimore, WFED Washington and WPHT Philadelphia were there, as they are nearly every night. And KYW was quite clear, not great but certainly listenable.

Speaking of being able to pick up a low-power signal if the channel has minimal interferance, I sometimes get 250 watt 530 CIAO (Italian) from Brampton-Toronto at the NH cottage. And on the other end of the dial, I've also picked up 1700 KBGG Des Moines (CBS Sports) which is only 1000 watts at night. Both stations are on channels with almost no competition in the East. I didn't listen to 1700 this trip but I will have to see if the new 1700 in Ramapo NY (north of NYC) comes in now that it's on the air, blocking out Des Moines.
 
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KYW used to be an easy nighttime regular in Florida long ago but not so anymore because of the Cuban station on 1060.

It still could be heard once in a while but most of the time the other station pushed it way into the background or it can't be heard at all.
 
Gregg, your description sounds like Auroral conditions where you can't hear the stations you mentioned. Like I said in another thread, in Michigan, I get WCKY 1530 first after an Auroral event, and then usually WWL 870. But I also hear WKBW/WWKB 1520 off the back of their pattern, so I wonder if you hearing KYW on some high angle or other strange propagation condition, perhaps reradiating off an Auroral ion cloud.
 
Gregg. said:
Speaking of being able to pick up a low-power signal if the channel has minimal interferance, I sometimes get 250 watt 530 CIAO (Italian) from Brampton-Toronto at the NH cottage. And on the other end of the dial, I've also picked up 1700 KBGG Des Moines (CBS Sports) which is only 1000 watts at night. Both stations are on channels with almost no competition in the East. I didn't listen to 1700 this trip but I will have to see if the new 1700 in Ramapo NY (north of NYC) comes in now that it's on the air, blocking out Des Moines.
Click to expand...

With a clear channel and a quiet night, low power can do amazing things on AM.

From Cleveland OH in the early 60's:

KIKI 830 Honolulu with 250 watts multiple times after XELA and WCCO went off on Sunday night.
AFRTS 780 Ramey AFB Puerto Rico heard once with 50 watts with WBBM off.
Rotorua New Zealand on 1000 (pre-9 kHz) 10 kw in the hour after Seattle went off and Brazil signed on, also Monday Morning.
660 KFAR Fairbanks, AK, Sunday night after WNBC went off.

In 1965, I put my HCRM1 in Quito on 565 on 5 occasions at 3 AM on Monday morning. Got a total of nearly 100 reception reports from the US and Canada at 1250 watts.
 
hawaiigar said:
... Back in 1979 when I was visiting Harrisonburg, Virginia, I could hear KYW during the daytime. That was a an unexpected surprise, as they have a noticeably weaker signal even down at the shore.
Click to expand...

Here are some details of KYW's nighttime groundwave and 50% skywave fields at three locations on the Jersey shore:

Perth Amboy: Skip Angle = 64º, GW = 30 µV/m, SW = 274 µV/m

Lakewood: Skip Angle = 61º, GW = 61 µV/m, SW = 381 µV/m

Cape May: Skip Angle = 55º, GW = 24 mV/m, SW = 0.8 mV/m
 
Looks like you might have some observable fading at night at Cape May.

This does indeed illustrate the null filling at high angles. Essentially, it's like the towers are closer together. At 60 degrees, they would be at the equivalent of half the spacing in the horizontal.

I suspect if we looked at WFDF and WWJ near Flint and Saginaw at night, we would see skywave intensities closer to groundwave intensities.
 
At 60 Degrees elevation, the towers are effectively 81.5 degrees apart, which is why you have the pattern resembling a somewhat cardioid shape rather than the Figure 8. As you can also see, there are no deep nulls, as there can't be complete cancellation with that spacing and phase.
 
Below is a 3-D NEC4.2 plot of the KYW radiation envelope using the DA array data shown in the FCC database.

The view is looking back down the bearing of ~ minimum radiation.

KYW_DA_Rad_Envelope.gif
 
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It's a cool graphic. Maybe they can make a plastic model with a 3D Printer. I once studied in a research division that studied X Ray Crystallography and used it to create 3D molecular models. X Ray-Reflections off crystals have patterns that are like those from huge multiple element directional antennas, actually more like astronomical interferometers, but it's all vector addition among friends. One of the graphics used a circle with two probability curves drawn on the circumference to determine the possible phase of a reflection. It looked like a cat's head with ears. The late great Professor J.L. Oncley suggested that it was-(drum roll) Schroedinger's Cat!
 
It is good. I think a solid model would be better. I assume that you can rotate it and look from above to simulate a solid model. But I like the cross sections at elevation angles with the labels. Inverse field labels tell us more. But useful to explain DX events.
 
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