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Pre-Dawn Monday Mornings

cyberdad

cyberdad

In recent weeks, a couple of threads here have made mention of AM DXing experiences between midnight and 5am local time. "Back in the day", of course, numerous stations that operated 24/7 during the rest of the week shut down "for maintenance". Thus leaving the band far less crowded than usual. It was also optimal time for pre-arranged DX tests.

So here's my question... For those of you who were around and given to DXing during those early Monday mornings, what were your favorite experiences? A particular impressive DX catch? Listening to a favorite station that was otherwise impossible? Finally snagging a longtime target?

For me, personally, I've written before about targeting....and finally getting....a couple of Milwaukee stations in Iowa (WOKY/920 and WRIT/1340). At home in the Chicago area, it was also getting to listen to KOMA with a clear signal for a couple of hours (they signed off at 2am). Normally, KOMA would get squeezed from either side by WLAC and WCKY.

Does anything stand out in your minds?
 
cyberdad said:
Does anything stand out in your minds?
Click to expand...

Monday Morning after Midnight on Sunday was also a favorite time for "frequency checks" where the station would come on for a half hour once a month for measurement with a service company, often hundreds of miles away. Usual content was a frequent ID and 1000 Hz tone. Having an external frequency measurement was an FCC requirement. While larger cities had local independent measurement services, more rural stations depended on testing after midnight... particularly daytimers.

The biggest "surprise" logging I remember on Monday Morning was checking 1000 kHz after Seattle had signed off and finding a faint but entirely readable Rotorua, NZ, coming in to Cleveland, OH, with its 10 kw signal.
 
I used to wait for those Monday morning signoffs and tape them. I still have the recordings of many of those stations signing off for maintenance. My first big catch of that kind was one morning after WABC signed off I heard KOB (before KKOB). Then I remember another time waiting for local 670 then WMAQ to signoff so I'd have a clear shot at KNBR. I had heard KFI, but at that time never San Francisco. Once WMAQ signed off and some other 680s were off, KNBR came in amazingly well on an early Monday morning around 1965 or so.

Wish I had known about the NRC & box loops in the early 60s like David Eduardo did. If I had I would've taken aim at Hawaii.
Good topic Cyberdad.
 
For many years, Ed Cantelon did frequency measurements, from his Beverage antennas in Oakland County Michigan. Many also remember his brother John, a DJ at WTAC Big 600 for over 20 years.

I did use to hear WCAO 600 Baltimore, MD during those Monday mornings. Also, KGLC Miami, OK was a frequent post sunset DX visitor on 910. Usually, it was WFBC Greenville, SC on 1330, and WMBD Peoria, IL on 1470. KLIK 950 in Jefferson City, MO was a frequent Monday morning DX visitor. Night service came much later for KLIK. All the others protected WWJ so well that they were almost never heard, with the exception of WGRT 950 Chicago just before Sunset.
 
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For anyone who would like to hear a few of the stations that I recorded doing their Monday morning signoffs in 1963, follow the links below. You can listen and/or download the files.
All of these recordings were made in 1963 by me from the near north Chicago suburbs on a Zenith Transoceanic radio.


http://www.mediafire.com/listen/nwmc01563qd2e6a/wnbc.mp3

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/emr44rzgmvydyav/wbz.mp3

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/o8n4602k2kwybvm/kdka.mp3

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/7ys88i2o86dgrg8/wabc.mp3

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/00a0ddmetqy0x86/wls.mp3
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
For many years, Ed Cantelon did frequency measurements, from his Beverage antennas in Oakland County Michigan. Many also remember his brother John, a DJ at WTAC Big 600 for over 20 years.
Click to expand...

In the 50's and early 60's there was a chap in the Detroit area who had a measurement service in an urbanized area where he used converted WW II era loops to measure as far away as Iowa and Minnesota as well as the Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois area.

I visited his operation when I was about 13, and was not yet at all technically proficient. But from what I remember, he would beat the received carrier against his standard, and measure the deviation between the two on a 'scope. Does that sound right?

I am trying to remember his name... and the name of the service. I looked at those online Yearbooks, and he is not there. But José Julián Acosta, who did the measurements in PR for decades, is not there either so I guess they did not research that listing any too well.
 
Ed Cantelon's company was called Broadcast Meaurements, Inc. I'm not sure if he still does anything with it. It's so easy to get accurate frequency counters these days, I don't think there is any demand. His antennas were out North of Pontiac as I recall, but he used Beverages. He also had FM antennas, but not sure what kind. It could have moved out there later. When I drove up I-75, every once in a while, I thought I saw a reflection from the antennas, radially arranged, up on a hill. But I was never sure exactly where it was or if those were the antennas.
 
frankberry said:
I'm not going to create an account just so I can download or listen to the files.
Click to expand...

I think you can play them without creating an account. At least I was always able to when other people post sound files. However, if you're having trouble and you would like me to email you the files "PM" me.
 
WFIL, Philadelphia, after WQAM, Miami signed off. Both were, and still are, on 560.

Here is a station that really had me confused: WDAE, Tampa, signed off, and I thought I was hearing the same station, but with a very different sound: WTAE, Pittsburgh. Both were on 1250.

During all those years, I do not believe I ever caught KFI, because CMQ (Radio Progreso with one "S") never went off at the right moment.
 
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You heard WFIL in Florida? Nice!

I tried for a long time in Tampa because that puts WQAM in a null and never heard anything.

Never was able to hear the former 610 WIP there either even though many other stations could be heard way in the background when WIOD was in a period of weak fading.
 
ai4i said:
WFIL, Philadelphia, after WQAM, Miami signed off. Both were, and still are, on 560.


During all those years, I do not believe I ever caught KFI, because CMQ (Radio Progreso with one "S") never went off at the right moment.
Click to expand...

CMQ (which hasn't probably used those calls since 1959 if then) did sign off 640 late nights for awhile in the early 80s which got KFI into Ohio.
 
Great thread, CyberDad. With the AM DX season approaching, perhaps just even * listing * some memories will help get me off my biscuit at 3AM Mondays and stay up to catch the 5:00 signs-on.
After those 5:00 dragonnades, we DXers would then catch a two-hour 'nap' and get up for school.

There are so very many memories from those years. Since I wanted to be a radio DJ I spent more time listening for songs, jingles, positioners and regional charm than the other three DXers did, but I did get in my share of domestic DX. Over the years, of course, new catches were harder to come by. But I still continued DXing (especially on MM's) even when I had been in radio ten years.
SUNDAY mornings were no arid fishing spots, either. But MM's were indeed 'it'.

So those earlier DX years; those 'debutante' years if you will, remain as vivid now as all the swell non-DX activities from those teenaged times .... street sports .... girls .... first jobs .... first cars.....

I'll list just one memory here. It was nearing a MM sunrise, August 1963 (oh what a night, hi). We all did our trenchant DXing from near Kennedy Airport in Queens NYC.
Though still mostly dark out, WWHY and their pop music was on 1470 from West Virginia. I was amazed at how loud they were. For a half-hour straight solid they were louder than WKBW and were even as loud as some of the NYC locals!
In retrospect, I have to think that there was some sort of ducting along that direction ... following the Appalachians path as those things often bounced to us back in Queens. The chief reason I say that is because another 'new' logging that overnight had been WCOL Columbus OH on 1230. They were well atop the frequency that normally gave us WITH Baltimore and WNOR Norfolk.

I'd type more, but my acne is starting to come back. Thanks a lot, Cyberdad, hi !
 
gr8oldies said:


CMQ (which hasn't probably used those calls since 1959 if then) did sign off 640 late nights for awhile in the early 80s which got KFI into Ohio.
Click to expand...

Before the Castro regime nationalized Circuito CMQ a year or so after the Revolution, CMQ definitely used the call letters only. In the 30's to the 50's, major stations in places like Cuba (CMQ), Mexico (XEW), Argentina (LR3), Nicaragua (YNX), El Salvador (YSU), Honduras (HRN) and Puerto Rico (WKAQ) used call letters first, with any slogan like Radio Belgrano or La Voz de la América Latina desde México being secondary.

The CMQ call letters are famous throughout Latin America, as is the station owner Goar Mestre, The calls were the reason for WCMQ and WCMQ-FM in Miami taking that identity "in exiles".
 
"I'll list just one memory here. It was nearing a MM sunrise, August 1963 (oh what a night, hi). We all did our trenchant DXing from near Kennedy Airport in Queens NYC." Kennedy Airport in August '63? That's quite a trick! :)
 
hawaiigar said:
You heard WFIL in Florida? Nice!
Click to expand...
If you think that was nice, what about phasing out our local 710, before they went Spanish so there were no jammers on their frequency, and hearing the occasional WOR?

One of the hardest stations for me to ever receive was Radio Antilles from the island of Montserrat. They had a decent signal here, but they were on 930 and WINZ is on 940 and the two stations were exactly, precisely one hundred eighty degrees apart in opposite directions from where I lived, and WINZ, regardless of how selective a radio I used, would always splatter all over both adjacent channels. They produced about 20mv/m at night at my house. I was a child and could not yet drive.
 
Since the thread is pre-dawn DX, I will tell my story of how DX saved my daughter's career. Or at least her job for one day --- In the pre-IBOC days of KRLD, we were living in Plano. DX from the West is best pre-dawn, and I was listening to KNX Los Angeles. They do traffic and weather often. I heard about a horrible fatality wreck, closing down a major freeway. The reason why I was up early was to catch a plane to Los Angeles with my family. so my daughter could be on a TV show. They require parents to be there for kids under 18, and we were going to combine the trip with vacation - and she was going to do other shows through a couple of weeks. We drove to the airport, got on the plane, flew to LAX, got the rent car, and started our drive to the set in Santa Clarita some distance from LAX. There are a couple of ways to get up there, and I remembered the traffic report from 5 hours earlier. On the off chance that there would be residual backup - I went another way. KNX was still several minutes from their report when I had to decide. Listening to KNX after I made the decision, they finally did their traffic report. Sure enough - the other freeway was STILL blocked even after 5 hours! We made the right decision to take the other route, so a DX'ed traffic report is the reason why my daughter made her call time on the set that day! There is NO late to call times, you get replaced or fired if you miss them. So it saved her role.
 
KNX was a lifesaver that day it seems! Nice story..
 
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