• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

An AM Station with Transmitters in Different States

Schroedingers Cat said:
It looks like WVAL may have been relicensed as a new station. It shares it's two towers now with three other stations, which I'm sure Scott is aware of. The only scenario I can think of is that previously, it had electrically taller towers, perhaps one or both of which was on the order of 500 feet, and it already radiated the equivalent with 850 watts with what it was previously 500 watts night. From a standpoint of where it is located, it is about the same distance from the Mexican border as CKLW, and from that standpoint, without the Treaty restrictions, it would be allowed much more power than 850 watts Night. There is no History Card under the WVAL call letters. Perhaps is hidden under a deleted callsign previously used on 800.
Click to expand...
The WVAL situation is complex and interesting. You'll find the history cards for the original WVAL from 1962 if you look at what's now WBHR 660. It was 1986 when the original WVAL moved from 800 to 660, 1996 when Hoppe applied for a new facility on 800, and 1999 (I think) when the new 800 signed on and retook the WVAL calls. Here's the history cards for what's now WBHR:


The original 800 facility was at what's now the WHMH 101.7 tower behind the "big red house" studios for all five of the Hoppe family's stations in Sauk Rapids.

From the history cards, it appears the original WVAL 800 was 250 watts daytime-only from that tall tower, and in 1981 it went to 2500 watts daytime from what eventually became that "quadplex" facility, now home to WBHR, WVAL, WMIN 1010 and WXYG 540.

The new WVAL was applied for and licensed from the start with 850 watts at night. The 1996 application was on paper and isn't available through CDBS, but I'd guess that it showed skywave protection at both borders to XEROK and CKLW, per the latest versions of the treaty.

These pictures are a few years old now but I don't think a lot has changed:

www.fybush.com

Site of the Week 12/19/2014: St. Cloud MN (Big Trip 2013 Part 9)

Text and photos by SCOTT FYBUSH If we’d known how interesting the radio scene in St. Cloud, Minnesota is, we
www.fybush.com
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
It looks like WVAL may have been relicensed as a new station. It shares it's two towers now with three other stations, which I'm sure Scott is aware of.
Click to expand...
I freely admit I don't know the gory details of this, but it appears that WVAL and WBHR (660) have similar nighttime patterns. Nulled to the east. For a time earlier last year, I was hearing WVAL just about every night that I landed on 800. Routinely mixing with, or sometimes even blowing out CKLW. But I haven't heard it at all for probably about six months.

Update; fybush's post came in while I was typing this, so my thanks to him for explaining those "gory details". I agree with the comment in his linked article...."a thing of beauty". I had no idea.
 
Last edited:
Back around 1980, the Treaty between The United States and Mexico allowed US stations on Mexican Class I-A frequencies to go fulltime with up to 500 watts Nighttime provided it protected the Mexican border and Mexican I-A stations as much as possible. 540, 730, 800, 900, 1050, 1220, and 1570 were those frequencies. There were already NARBA exceptions for one station with 50000 watts on 1050 and 1220, but no others. They were supposed to increase that to 1000 watts Night, but there was some unrelated border dispute that caused Mexico to not agree to it. I think it may have been NAFTA. So it was never generally allowed above 500 watts Night on those frequencies. There may be case by case situations, like stations allowed 5 kW Daytime only on Canadian and Mexican I-A Clear Channels within several hundred miles of the border in the past. This involved Daytime Skywave as I recall. Critical Hours in the Canada Agreement are 1.5 hours after Sunrise and before Sunset.
 
Last edited:
In the case of CKLW, it was never a Class I/Class A clear channel. It had a de facto usable skywave when XEROK and PJB weren't operating near their Treaty allowed power. The two huge CKLW lobes to the North and East were the places that got de facto usable skywave service, like on the East Coast. That is one reason why the record companies liked it for promotion, that records would get airplay that could be heard in New York and New England at Night. When no other stations operated on 800 at Night in the US, the 5 kW nondirectional equivalent directions could be heard in many other areas.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
In the case of CKLW, it was never a Class I/Class C clear channel. It had a de facto usable skywave when XEROK and PJB weren't operating near their Treaty allowed power. The two huge CKLW lobes to the North and East were the places that got de facto skywave, like on the East Coast. That is one reason why the record companies liked it for promotion, that records would get airplay that could be heard in New York and New England at Night.
Click to expand...
I don't believe that TWR was covered by any treaty.

They plopped it down on 800 even when there was a real, licensed 800 station in Maracaibo, Venezuela and another in, IIRC, Bucaramanga, Colombia and a 10 kw in Guayaquil, Ecuador and a 5 kw in San Jose, Costa Rica. All were pretty much destroyed at night by TWR, and the one in Maracaibo, just 400 km away, was ruined day and night.

It took me a year to get my station in Quito on 805 reassigned to 810 to at least avoid the heterodyne; I wrote a letter to TWR and got a response saying, pretty much, that getting out "the word" was more important than my little radio station.

Because of the somewhat autonomous nature of the Netherlands Antilles, TWR was able to do such horrible harm to so many radio stations.
 
Last edited:
I seem to remember hearing that Ed Buterbaugh and an impressive entourage went down to Netherlands Antilles to design a Directional Antenna which could be switched to different patterns and oriented toward various countries, seems like it was 5 towers in the form of a plus sign, to send the signals in different directions at different times and programming. It also involved reducing the power from 500 kW to 100 kW. I'll see if I can find the link.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I seem to remember hearing that Ed Buterbaugh and an impressive entourage went down to Netherlands Antilles to design a Directional Antenna which could be switched to different patterns and oriented toward various countries, seems like it was 5 towers in the form of a plus sign, to send the signals in different directions at different times and programming. It also involved reducing the power from 500 kW to 100 kW. I'll see if I can find the link.
Click to expand...
After several decades at 500 kw, the station ran for at least a decade or more at reduced power.

The directional system was intended to be used between about 3 AM EST and 7 AM EST to put a signal over quite a bit of Brazil. It ran in Portuguese. The rest of the time, it tried to blanket the Caribbean Basin with Spanish language broadcasts.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
In the case of CKLW, it was never a Class I/Class A clear channel. It had a de facto usable skywave when XEROK and PJB weren't operating near their Treaty allowed power. The two huge CKLW lobes to the North and East were the places that got de facto usable skywave service, like on the East Coast. That is one reason why the record companies liked it for promotion, that records would get airplay that could be heard in New York and New England at Night. When no other stations operated on 800 at Night in the US, the 5 kW nondirectional equivalent directions could be heard in many other areas.
Click to expand...
I do remember CKLW getting into NY pretty well in the 60s and 70s.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
Looks like they are using 440000 watts again, this time directional!

I haven't heard it lately though.

www.radioworld.com

TWR’s Bonaire Facility Gets 440,000 Watt Makeover

Power boost makes station most powerful in Western Hemisphere
www.radioworld.com www.radioworld.com
Click to expand...
Its primary target today is Cuba, and the directional pattern is aimed there.

They appear to have reduced or eliminated the "other" pattern towards Brazil. This may be recognition of the fact that Brazil is trying to phase out the AM band, having (like Mexico) deemed it "obsolete".
 
radioman148 said:
I do remember CKLW getting into NY pretty well in the 60s and 70s.
Click to expand...

Based on the signal they put into far northeast Ohio, I totally believe that.
I was being a bit flip about CKLW and the CRTC's efforts to minimize its signal across the border, but it pretty much has to beam the way it does considering the protection of other stations on 800. I remember many years ago reading about CKLW, and that listeners basically right up 401, toward Toronto and Montreal, reported the signal being badly degraded at night because of that northeast null.
In Ohio, I've never heard PJB and I've only heard XEROK once or twice over the years, both back in the 90s. I barely could hear it in Houston at night when I lived down there in the late 2000s. I started my DXing a long time after the glory days of all three of the blowtorches on 800.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
Looks like they are using 440000 watts again, this time directional!

I haven't heard it lately though.

Click to expand...
schmave said:
Based on the signal they put into far northeast Ohio, I totally believe that.
I was being a bit flip about CKLW and the CRTC's efforts to minimize its signal across the border, but it pretty much has to beam the way it does considering the protection of other stations on 800. I remember many years ago reading about CKLW, and thath listeners basically right up 401, toward Toronto and Montreal, reported the signal being badly degraded at night because of that northeast null.
In Ohio, I've never heard PJB and I've only heard XEROK once or twice over the years, both back in the 90s. I barely could hear it in Houston at night when I lived down there in the late 2000s. I started my DXing a long time after the glory days of all three of the blowtorches on 800.
Click to expand...
I can remember getting XEROK now and then, fading up over the CKLW/PJB combo. I had it more often when I lived in Quincy IL.
 
schmave said:
Based on the signal they put into far northeast Ohio, I totally believe that.
I was being a bit flip about CKLW and the CRTC's efforts to minimize its signal across the border, but it pretty much has to beam the way it does considering the protection of other stations on 800. I remember many years ago reading about CKLW, and that listeners basically right up 401, toward Toronto and Montreal, reported the signal being badly degraded at night because of that northeast null.
In Ohio, I've never heard PJB and I've only heard XEROK once or twice over the years, both back in the 90s. I barely could hear it in Houston at night when I lived down there in the late 2000s. I started my DXing a long time after the glory days of all three of the blowtorches on 800.
Click to expand...
I used to hear XEROK in the Chicago area especially during the winter in the late 70s and 80s. I haven't heard it in years.
 
I joined this board in 2004 and one of my first posts was about XEROK. Even then, 17 years ago, they already were down to the reduced power (500 watts?) they have today because of power grid issues around their transmitter. I really don't know if they run 50K at night but I never got the impression that they do nowadays or ever will again.
 
On more than a few Google searches over the years, I've been asked something to the effect "do you mean XEROX?" No, no I don't!
 
DavidEduardo said:
Its primary target today is Cuba, and the directional pattern is aimed there.

They appear to have reduced or eliminated the "other" pattern towards Brazil. This may be recognition of the fact that Brazil is trying to phase out the AM band, having (like Mexico) deemed it "obsolete".
Click to expand...
I personally don't believe the new build of PJB is designed with any intent of putting a significant signal into the United States. The old version of PJB used to be at least a semi-regular visitor here in the Chicago area, with some of the programming was in English. So perhaps getting "the word" into America was once part of the objective. But I haven't heard PJB here since they resumed operations. I have, however heard them in Pensacola, but the signal wasn't that great, so my guess is that it's "collateral" to their attempt to cover Cuba.

As for XEROK,, as radioman said, for a time they were a fairly easy catch in the Chicago area. Especially in their top 40 days. But I also have not heard them at my home location for a long time. I have heard them fairly frequently in my travels around the south and southwest. I actually have a road trip scheduled for late April-early May which includes a stop in the El Paso area. I'm curious to get a feel for what might be up with XEROK's signal. The trip is centered around a visit with my daughter who lives in Santa Monica. and teaches at USC. So....assuming that it's safe to travel....I'm looking forward to multiple DX opportunities as we make the rounds friends and family in So-Cal and adjaccent parts of the southwest. (And then, it's back to Pensacola in June).
 
cyberdad said:
I personally don't believe the new build of PJB is designed with any intent of putting a significant signal into the United States. The old version of PJB used to be at least a semi-regular visitor here in the Chicago area, with some of the programming was in English. So perhaps getting "the word" into America was once part of the objective. But I haven't heard PJB here since they resumed operations. I have, however heard them in Pensacola, but the signal wasn't that great, so my guess is that it's "collateral" to their attempt to cover Cuba.

As for XEROK,, as radioman said, for a time they were a fairly easy catch in the Chicago area. Especially in their top 40 days. But I also have not heard them at my home location for a long time. I have heard them fairly frequently in my travels around the south and southwest. I actually have a road trip scheduled for late April-early May which includes a stop in the El Paso area. I'm curious to get a feel for what might be up with XEROK's signal. The trip is centered around a visit with my daughter who lives in Santa Monica. and teaches at USC. So....assuming that it's safe to travel....I'm looking forward to multiple DX opportunities as we make the rounds friends and family in So-Cal and adjaccent parts of the southwest. (And then, it's back to Pensacola in June).
Click to expand...
TWR's current signal is aimed straight at Havana (get those commies into US evangelicalism) and according to one map I saw, the signal dumps out over Central Mexico. TWR presumably operates the Key West SDR so engineers can monitor themselves. I didn't realize until someone told me TWR tends to use non-native Spanish speakers. I don't know how much TWR was about "spreading the word" to the Godless heathen American masses, but having the big signal no doubt helped donations. I can remember Radio Nederland leasing an hour or so on the 525kW signal, and a special bilingual version of Happy Station on the signal (with Tom Meyer doing a "mellow" delivery compared to his shortwave shows)
 
I have heard TWR Bonaire several times in recent months, but their signal is definitively not as strong as it used to be. As for XEROK it's been a long time since I heard them.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom