Wow, this FotW really generated some interesting discussion
!
Here on the gulf coast of Alabama, 1070 is pretty active. During the day it's WNVY Cantonment, Floriduh and at night it's a mix of WAPI and WDIA, with them usually taking turns at dominance for a few minutes at a time. WAPI is the second nighttime B'ham signal and WDIA the second "Delta" signal available here at night: 960 brings in WERC from B'ham and WABG from Greenwood on the regular.
I don't have total confirmation of it, but I am fairly sure I've heard KNTH once here, too.
One reason may be their two antenna towers.They were
originally on 1140 or some such and had to move to 1070
in the great 1941 band reset.They had to add a cage-like
structure to the top of each tower to get the tx to load at
the new frequency.
I bet part of the efficiency issue with WAPI is their tower site is up on a ridge overlooking the city, and the ground conductivity there may be worse than the more fertile valleys where 850 is located (near Tarrant City) and 690 (Midfield). I have some family up near the WAPI site and it always seemed like a poor place for an AM site, with lots of rocky outcroppings and sandy soil.
Both 850 and 690 got out much better...a distant cuz
said in the 60's he talked to 690 about an engineer's
job and after noticing their tx's voltage/ammerter he did
the math mentally and came out with something like
70kw!
The guy admitted it,said "we turn it back when 'they're'
in town"...of course 690 was a daytimer then.
I believe it. I had (other) family in Midfield in the 80's and one of my memories of staying with my granny (that's southern for "grandmother", lol) was being able to pick up the telephone anytime during the day and hear country music from WVOK. It's a wonder her metal fence didn't resonate, too. She was close enough that the top beacon of the tower was visible through the trees in winter.
Dunno how things are now under current ownership, but 690 was always THE big signal in my experience when I lived in the area. A decent car radio could hold it well south of Montgomery on I-65, until the New Orleans station started to take over closer to Mobile. It was also good for getting most of the way into Atlanta, despite 50 kW WCNN (or whatever it is now) on 680.
I always knew 690 was the biggest daytime signal in town, but I wasn't aware that they sometimes used a littler "hamburger helper"...LOL. Explains why when I'd hear them here in Northern Illinois before signoff during their run as a daytimer, the signal would usually be quite good!
I used to travel up I-65 to Nashville or Louisville on a semi-regular basis back in the early 2000's and one thing I noticed is that 690-850-1070 and Huntsville's 1550 were ALWAYS rock solid right around sunset, from north of Nashville all the way up into Indiana. I never did understand why, exactly, but it was neat being able to hear "home" so reliably from so far away, even if it didn't last.
As for the B-ham 850, I used to listen occasionally during their run as an oldies station (WYDE..."wide 85"). Around the mid or late 90s, IIRC....and usually on runs to-from Atlanta. I didn't think their signal was particularly impressive in those days, and even wondered if they were actually running 50kw. Of course, ground conductivity was bad, and I was unclear whether there might be a null in the direction of I-20. R-L shows them making just about all the way to Atlanta, but I remember 850 being nearly spent by around Anniston.
That was my experience as well. 850 was not even that great of a signal west of downtown Birmingham. It must have been the combination of a peculiar pattern and the location northeast of town, but I remember it being a big, robust signal far into northeast Alabama, like up around Guntersville, and along Sand Mountain.
I know RTC has been critical of Crawford (and rightly so) for their cult-like embrace of IBOC on AM, but I will say that prior to that misstep, the engineer for the B'ham stations really did take good care of them. I think it ran C-QUAM stereo for a while before HD came along and I KNOW that 1260 did, and sounded pretty good with its oldies/nostalgia format. The station had been 9 kW days for a while and they got 850 back up to 50 kW days which really cleaned up the signal a lot. It's still "compromised" but they seem to be doing the best they can with it. IBOC excepted.
We can't send our signal toward San Antonio due to KOPY 1070 in Alice, Texas. Therefore, we have to send our signal out to the Gulf Of Mexico. You can get us as far as Rosenberg in the day (although scratchy). At night, forget it. We go from 10KW to 5KW with a tighter pattern. We broadcast from just north of Houston with eleven towers.
I'm curious if you've ever had any DXers reporting reception from out in the gulf on cruise ships, or on oil rigs… even with all the noise in those places it seems like some of the stations (like WROA Gulfport) should put MASSIVE signals across the Gulf. Seems like WROA or someone similar had reports from Roatán, Honduras occasionally.
