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AM Frequency of the week: 580

cyberdad

cyberdad

I think I'm running out of these, but here goes anyway... What are you guys hearing these days on 580?

Here in the far northwest suburban Chicago suburbs, days it's WILL from Champaign, IL and the University of Illinois. 5kw from about 150 miles away, but still a fair signal.

At night, WILL goes to flea power and disappears. The result is a battle of weak signals, with no regular occupier of the top spot. Back in the day CKY and CKPR were most likely to rise to the top. Now, on rare occasions it's sometimes WKTY or WIBW. Maybe WTCM aroud sunrise/sunset, but not often.

During my cross-country drives a couple of weeks ago along I-10 and the old U.S. 66, I was hearing quite a bit of WIBW in Texas and Oklahoma at night.
 
Warminster PA(Philly 'burbs):

Daytime: WHP Harrisburg PA(very weak).
Night: same WHP, but a bit stronger, plus a few others mixed in.
 
In the near north Chicago suburbs WILL has a pretty good signal during the day. At night I used to hear CKY most often.
Now it's a mess of stations with no particular one standing out.
 
Daytime - nothing

Nighttime - KMJ Fresno

Strong and steady most all of the time. Maybe the best reception of all the distant nighttime stations too.
 
In the Charleston area, usually WDBO Orlando and WGAC Augusta are the two main signals on the frequency. The closer you get to the coast, the stronger WDBO gets; farther inland, WGAC is stronger. WGAC has a really good signal at 580, probably one of the best for 5kw daytime. It comes in well through most of the Columbia area (especially west of I-26) even with WVOC at 560.

At night, it is a weird mix of stations. Usually WGAC or WCHS from WV.
 
Daytime in S.A. is a fairly strong XEMU, "La Rancherita del Aire," in Piedras Negras. The station occasionally runs ads that mention events in San Antonio.

At night WIBW can be heard in XEMU's null. XEFI, "Radio Mexicana," in Chihuahua can often be heard behind XEMU, and it sometimes bubbles to the top briefly. Once back in October, I caught a weak XEAV in Tlaquepaque (Guadalajara), which plays classic and current English-language pop.

I'd like to log KRFE in Lubbock, but my chances aren't too great given its pattern, low power at night, and XEMU's dominance.
 
Southern CO daytime is a whisper from KUBC Montrose, about 150 miles and several mountain ranges to the west. Given the poor conductivity, it's a wonder I can eveen get a whisper from KUBC. Some credit has to be given to the engineering staff at iHeart's 590 KCSJ Pueblo for maintaining such a clean signal. No IBOC sidebands, and very little monkey chatter. It's possible to get a readable signal from 600 KCOL Wellington CO (Fort Collins) in Pueblo during daytime critical hours

I don't do much nighttime listening these days. But on the subject of 580, there's that long legacy of time sharing between WIBW Topeka and KKSU Manhattan KS, the Kansas State University station. More here: http://www.route56.com/radio/mid/timeshare.html#kansas including audio clips of the handoffs between KKSU and WIBW.
 
XEMU is also the daytime station in Houston, but very weak. KRFE Lubbock is very low power, even in Midland it was weak. Given that Lubbock has excellent ground conductivity, they must be doing a lot of things wrong, especially considering that KPET Lamesa - even lower power on 690, gets out like a regional and I have even gotten them in Weatherford.
 
Never much of anything around Columbus, Ohio. If anything it'd be WCHS, but ground conductivity is pretty bad down in West Virginia and that signal barely makes it here if at all.
 
cyberdad said:
I think I'm running out of these, but here goes anyway... What are you guys hearing these days on 580?

Here in the far northwest suburban Chicago suburbs, days it's WILL from Champaign, IL and the University of Illinois. 5kw from about 150 miles away, but still a fair signal.

At night, WILL goes to flea power and disappears. .
Click to expand...

580 is not a clear channel, who is WILL protecting by such a drastic reduction in power. I dont see any station that is nearby
 
billmich said:
580 is not a clear channel, who is WILL protecting by such a drastic reduction in power. I dont see any station that is nearby
Click to expand...

I suspect there is a lot of ancient radio history here. And a case not unlike WHA in Madison, another regional station that is essentially a daytimer on a regional channel.

When the regional channels were created, the power at night was limited to a round 1kw at night non-directional. Other stations on the channels had to protect the original assignments. In the case of 580 that included ones like WIBW in KS WHP in PA and WDBO in Orlando. So, at the time it probably meant a complicated directional or, given the fairly early designs of directionals, daytime status.

Remember that for both WTMJ and WSUN to operate on 620 from Milwaukee and Tampa at higher night power levels, both had to directionalize in the early 30's... a rather significant step in antenna design at the time but using just two towers. For WILL to protect three stations, it is likely that the technology did not exist when the station was forced to become a daytimer.
 
thank you David,

in what year were the "original assignments" set up that newer stations would have to protect - on 'regional channels'
 
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billmich said:
580 is not a clear channel, who is WILL protecting by such a drastic reduction in power. I dont see any station that is nearby
Click to expand...

Interesting question. WILL uses the same pattern day and night. The pattern, no doubt, was originally designed when WILL was a daytimer to protect WIBW. WIBW's day signal extends eastward all the way to the Mississippi River and a little sliver of Illinois bordering Missouri. Where I was in college, about 25 miles west of the river in southeast Iowa, WIBW was clearly audible on a good radio, but WILL was totally invisible. Even though my location was more than 100 miles closer to Champaign than to Topeka. And both stations operate with the same 5kw daytime power.

So I think keeping the same pattern at night was simply the cheap and easy way to add 24 hour service.

As for the drastic power reduction.... My guess is that it had something to do with protecting CKY and two other Canadian stations in Western Ontario. CKPR in Thunder Bay and CKAP in Kapuskasing. Those three are all gone, but the WILL day/night pattern would favor all three to one degree or another. WKTY, WTCM, and CKWW would also be favored to some extent by the WILL pattern, but I suspect these latter three may not be entitled to protection.

Just my guess. As always, I stand to be corrected.
 
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OK. while we are on the 580 subject why is WDBO not coming in much easier here in Brandon/Tampa?????? 540 wFLF is booming in like a local over here. I know having 50 KW on the lower part of the am band helps. It's even drivable with a car radio here in Brandon. 580 is not. I have tried multiple car radio. I guess it does not help that we have wtbn on 570 in the area as well. Is 580 WDBO nulled toward the west?
 
billmich said:
thank you David,

in what year were the "original assignments" set up that newer stations would have to protect - on 'regional channels'
Click to expand...

The clear channels date to the FRC in the late 20's, but most of the cleared channel stations did not move to 50 kw until well into the 30's.
 
austingrace said:
OK. while we are on the 580 subject why is WDBO not coming in much easier here in Brandon/Tampa?????? 540 wFLF is booming in like a local over here. I know having 50 KW on the lower part of the am band helps. It's even drivable with a car radio here in Brandon. 580 is not. I have tried multiple car radio. I guess it does not help that we have wtbn on 570 in the area as well. Is 580 WDBO nulled toward the west?
Click to expand...

I checked their pattern, WDBO is not nulled toward the West. Actually - I had assumed it is a regional powerhouse, because it is one of the few Florida stations I have logged at sunset in Houston. WFLF is another matter. I may have daytime reception - but at the time I wasn't near a computer to confirm that what I was hearing was WFLF. I have to null KDFT which is dominant in Houston during the day, leaving extremely weak news mixed with extremely weak Spanish language from somewhere.
 
billmich said:
I knew that with the "clear channels" , what about these "regional channel" stations?
Click to expand...

Others here undoubtedly can explain this better than me, but I'll take a stab at it.

The "clear channels were class I and II. Class I-A were the stations that (originally) were the ones that operated alone on their channels at night. Typically 50kw ND. Exceptions included WBZ and WWL which were (and still are) directional for purposes of improving their signals in desired coverage areas. There were also class I-B stations that typically operated with 50kw directional at night. Generally two to a channel, protecting each other at night. Examples would include WOR and KOMO. In a few cases, the I-B station would be 50kw ND fulltime (KNX).

Other stations operating on clear channel statons were class II. These ran the full gamut from 250-watt daytimers to a some that were able to run 50KW fulltime.

Class IV stations were the "local" statons on graveyard channels.

That brings us to the "regional channels". These were class III. Power limit was 5kw. III-A stations were at the top of the pecking order, and usually the ones that got to their channel first. Power limit was 5,000 watts, which is what most of the III-A stations used. Although a few were 1kw ND at night. III-B was the second tier. A lot of them were 5kw day, 1kw night, or 1kw fulltime and entitled to less nighttime protection. Everything else on a regional channel was simply class III...including daytimers.

This is how it worked in the U.S., as well as to some extent in neighboring countries.
 
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