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AM Frequency of the Week: 1050

cyberdad

cyberdad

Up the dial four spaces this week, and we land at the beginning of an area with a high concentration of "class B" channels. First up in this group is 1050. What are you guys hearing these days on that channel?

Here during the day, 40-odd miles northwest of downtown Chicago, it's mostly splatter from local WNVR 1030. 27kw aimed right at me from only a couple of miles away. Even so, with a good radio, 250-watt WLIP, the 1050 from Kenosha, WI (about 40 miles to my east-northeast), is still strong enough to break through.

At night, WNVR drops to 230 watts and I'm in the null that's there to protect WBZ, so 1050 is splatter-free. WLIP stays at 250 watts, but usually that's not enough to break on top of the mess. And for the most part, nothing else enough is strong enough to break through, either. "Back in the day" before WLIP and WNVR, CHUM would surface from time to time. New York less often so. But the most frequent visitor was XEG. I haven't heard any of these three....or at least positively ID them...for at least 10-15 years. Fast forward to the last decade, and the station I heard on top most often was CKSB (Winnipeg area). Usually before sunrise. But they have long sinced move to FM.
 
In the near north Chicago suburbs WLIP is the station I hear during the day. At night New York & CHUM fought it out, but neither of them strong. When my radio was oriented towards the south XEG was most often heard here and usually stronger than either CHUM or NYC.
 
When WHFB was off you could hear WLIP quite well across Lake Michigan. You can also hear it in Northwest Indiana. I heard it a few years ago when they were doing Standards at Night in SE Michigan. Normally you hear WTKA Days and CHUM and WEPN Nights. Used to hear CJIC also long ago.
 
Lol -- Cyberdad's into to this sounded like Casey Kasem, or WNEW's Martin Bloch and the Make Believe Ballroom moving a song into 'the magic Three' circle. (And more often than not, the new #3 song in the magic circle became # 1 the next week. My Folks really enjoyed his show -- and so did I:- )

Daytime here it's WLYC Williamsport PA. The calls stand for LYComing County. I've got them logged as Oldies, but now they're Sports. I imagine they do quite well in billing during the Little League World Series's.
(Back in the JFK Airport DX days in Queens NYC, our loud and local WHN was off the air one mid-afternoon. WLYC, by default, came in faintly).

Sunrise 1050 DX here in Coal Country presented a logging of WSEN (Syracuse NY?), playing Standards.

One sunset gave me WADC from WV.

Nighttimes it's CHUM or WEPN. The louder one is WEPN.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
When WHFB was off you could hear WLIP quite well across Lake Michigan. You can also hear it in Northwest Indiana. I heard it a few years ago when they were doing Standards at Night in SE Michigan. Normally you hear WTKA Days and CHUM and WEPN Nights. Used to hear CJIC also long ago.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing that the ground conductivity around WLIP's site is quite good. Even when compared with the rest of the Illinois and Wisconsin Lake Michigan shoreline, which is already known to have good conductivity. WLIP's physical plant is about four miles or so from the lake in an area that's fairly open on three sides. There's a residential area across the road from the station, but it's just about entirely single family frame houses and small apartment buildings, extending most of the way to the lake. Before WNVR showed up in my back yard, WLIP had a signal here that I'd rate as fair-good. Maybe a 6 on an old school 0-9 S-Meter. I'm a little surprised that it doesn't break through for me more often at night, but apparently I'm just out of range.

As for WHFB, I can hear it here (if/when they're on the air...LOL), but not very well. More about that when we go to 1060 next week.

Radioman: Didn't Dex Card (WLS jock) own WLIP....or a piece of it...back in the late 60s and/or early 70s? I know he was involved with the Wild Goose nightclub outside of Waukegan, but it also seemed to me that he was running WLIP at the same time or shortly after he had the nightclub.
 
>>Radioman: Didn't Dex Card (WLS jock) own WLIP....or a piece of it...back in the late 60s and/or early 70s? I know he was involved with the Wild Goose nightclub outside of Waukegan, but it also seemed to me that he was running WLIP at the same time or shortly after he had the nightclub>>

Yes he did Cyberdad. He also owned the FM on 95.1 which at the time had the calls WJZQ (I think). I do remember hearing Dex do the station ID's on the FM in the 70s. Not sure exactly what year he got involved in ownership.
 
North of Atlanta, WFAM Augusta GA at night. CHUM at night as well.

Nothing to speak of during the day/
 
Nothing during the day (1060 is a local), but at night it's dominated by nominal daytimer XEBCS La Paz, Baja California Sur, "La Radio de Sudcalifornia".

Its actual hours are 6am to midnight, and it gets away with that because that's kind of typical for Mexican public stations, it is part of a unique-in-Mexico FM single-frequency network (99.1 MHz), and because the nearest 1050 in Mexicali is also a daytimer.

Also, Baja California Sur is geographically large and having a big AM radio signal is not a bad idea. It's one of just two public radio services in BCS and in many areas listeners have one or two commercial choices, all controlled by the same company.
 
1050 in Charleston, SC is WROS Jacksonville with a southern gospel format. They have a small night allocation, but they sign off at sunset instead of using it. At night it's a wide mix. Never anything dominant on the frequency.

Right now I am in Galloway, NJ, and it is a weak New York daytime.
 
KTCT, licensed to San Mateo, CA with transmitter across the bay in Hayward. Branded as "KNBR 1050." I live fairly close to their site and I must be right in a severe null in their pattern. The mess of interference makes them unlistenable after dark but they're still dominant enough that I haven't IDed anything else on the frequency. I see that they've applied to use 35kw at night to combat XED Mexicali (which their crack Cumulus legal team calls "KXED" in the application). They had been using 50 kw day facilities at night on STA; not sure if that's true today. Whatever the case, it's a sketchy night signal here, just 6 miles away from their towers.
 
NoMoreLurking said:
KTCT, licensed to San Mateo, CA with transmitter across the bay in Hayward. Branded as "KNBR 1050." I live fairly close to their site and I must be right in a severe null in their pattern. The mess of interference makes them unlistenable after dark but they're still dominant enough that I haven't IDed anything else on the frequency. I see that they've applied to use 35kw at night to combat XED Mexicali (which their crack Cumulus legal team calls "KXED" in the application). They had been using 50 kw day facilities at night on STA; not sure if that's true today. Whatever the case, it's a sketchy night signal here, just 6 miles away from their towers.
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XED's a daytimer too, and I think they actually operate as such. I think the problem they actually have is big old XEBCS which booms in here (and I'm closer to Mexicali than La Paz).
 
Raymie said:
XED's a daytimer too, and I think they actually operate as such. I think the problem they actually have is big old XEBCS which booms in here (and I'm closer to Mexicali than La Paz).
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I'm guessing that the station KTCT is obliged to protect is XEG. But, as always, I stand to be corrected.
 
1050 in Northwest Arkansas -

Daytime - Usually nothing

Nighttime - XEG, Guadalupe, Nuevo León, Mexico - (Heard here on November 10, at 8:00 PM CST)

Also, a possible mix of other stations' signals on 1050.
 
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1050 is blank during the day in S.A.

At night it's just XEG; however, during the last couple of years when aiming E/W, I would occasionally hear a regional Mexican music station bubbling up briefly. Last September I managed to hear a “95.9 FM, 1050 AM” ID, and Raymie helped me ID the station as XEVUC in Nava.

This past Tuesday morning I was checking out the frequency before dawn and heard another Spanish-language station mixing with XEG in the NE/SW direction. It turned out to be XEBCS. At 6:33 CST in the recording I made, I heard La Paz and Sudcalifornia references as well as a “La Radio de Sudcalifornia” ID. This is my first logging from Baja California Sur.

I’m a little surprised at the reception now since Raymie noted that the station's hours are 6 a.m. - midnight. 6:33 CST would be 5:33 La Paz time, correct?
 
jim-satx said:
1050 is blank during the day in S.A.

At night it's just XEG; however, during the last couple of years when aiming E/W, I would occasionally hear a regional Mexican music station bubbling up briefly. Last September I managed to hear a “95.9 FM, 1050 AM” ID, and Raymie helped me ID the station as XEVUC in Nava.

This past Tuesday morning I was checking out the frequency before dawn and heard another Spanish-language station mixing with XEG in the NE/SW direction. It turned out to be XEBCS. At 6:33 CST in the recording I made, I heard La Paz and Sudcalifornia references as well as a “La Radio de Sudcalifornia” ID. This is my first logging from Baja California Sur.

I’m a little surprised at the reception now since Raymie noted that the station's hours are 6 a.m. - midnight. 6:33 CST would be 5:33 La Paz time, correct?
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Their program schedule on the clunky IERT site (among the worst sites of the state networks) lists programs beginning at 6am but has holes in the schedule.
 
cyberdad said:
I'm guessing that the station KTCT is obliged to protect is XEG.
Click to expand...

You are probably right about the station they are obliged to protect. But KTCT claims hardship due to interference from the Mexicali station operating illegally with day power (10kw?) after dark. Apparently this has gone on for a long time - KTCT STA's for extra power at night go back to 1999 according to the application history here.
 
NoMoreLurking said:
You are probably right about the station they are obliged to protect. But KTCT claims hardship due to interference from the Mexicali station operating illegally with day power (10kw?) after dark. Apparently this has gone on for a long time - KTCT STA's for extra power at night go back to 1999 according to the application history here.
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It's not Mexicali operating at night, it's La Paz. That's 665 miles further south. They claim it's Mexicali, but I have a feeling someone there just heard Spanish and assumed Mexicali.
 
Raymie said:
I have a feeling someone there just heard Spanish and assumed Mexicali.
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Quite possibly. I've never logged either Mexicali or La Paz here. I'm just going by the STA applications, which cite "KXED" in Mexicali as the culprit...going back years to Susquehanna's ownership of KTCT. The present-day Cumulus lawyers apparently keep phoning in that erroneous data to the FCC. The subsequent STA applications mostly look like photocopies of the original 1999 one. Nice work if you can get it!
 
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