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AM Frequency of the Week: 890

cyberdad

cyberdad

40 miles northwest of downtown Chicago.....

Day and night: Just three letters. WLS. 24/7. Signal at my location 52 miles is good, but not as good as the three other Chicago 50kw non-directional blowtorches., Nighttime can bring about some very occasional signal cancellation/distortion. I can also sometimes hear Spanish underneath WLS, but this is rare.. I'm guessing what I'm hearing is R. Progreso from Cuba, but, when it's in, it's too weak and too far in the backgroud to identify.

Other locations: WLS has turned up for me on both the Hawaii and Arctic SDRs. As well as....per previous posts...on my Mom's '62 Chevy Impala car radio at Kaena Point at the northwestern tip of Oahu, Hawaii (February 1965). At our beach location near Pensacola, it's WLS fighting it out with R. Progreso. Usually WLS gets the better of it, but sometimes Cuba is on top. The Cuban is audible (barely) during daytime.
 
From south Overland Park, Kansas:

Day: Local KMVG, 960 watts, 2-tower directional to the west that protects WLS. This station is licensed to Gladstone, Missouri although the transmitter is near Liberty, Missouri. They have a CP in move a tad further southwest and increase power to 1 kW with the same 2-tower directional array.

Night: All WLS, all the time. WLS is the most reliable of the Chicago area based 50 kW signals at my location.

Bob
 
East Tennessee: Daytime-Nada, some splatter from local WKXV-900
Night---WLS and/or Radio Progreso
Retro/other:
Sarasota FL, 1980. I remember WLS blasting in at the beach at sunset.
Lafayette IN: WLS, with its southeastern transmitter location, was the strongest Chicago signal, and only one to stop the scan on the car radio, especially in West Lafayette. Still, just after sunrise in Mississippi, I would get the present-day WHJA (I think it had different calls then) would sneak in in a WLS null, also with a News-Talk format. I would sometimes hear a call on WLS from Mississippi at night, I have to think it was a listener to the Mississippi 890 who had WLS after sunset. This happened in some areas with a local 890 even in the music era from what I'm told. Cuba still apprently had one of those high powered Czech transmitters laying around in the mid 90s, they put Radio Taino (doing English language tourism info) on 890 and it wreaked havoc on WLS.

Out in Quincy IL, WLS had a weak daytime signal on the Quincy side; but crossing the river sounded like your antenna was loose and reconnected itself.
 
In the near north Chicago suburbs it's WLS all day and all night. As in Cyberdad's case the signal is not as good as the other Chicago blowtorches. I also have heard WLS on the Hawaii, Arctic, and Northern Ireland SDRs.

Retro: Back in the day WLS had the best skywave signal of any of the Chicago clears. I heard it at night from California
to Mexico, Puerto Rico and even in Hawaii. Today it's different with all the stations that are on 890 at night.
 
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Day and night from the southwest suburbs of Chicago: the Big 89, WLS. And only WLS. The transmitter is in Tinley Park, some 10 miles away, at the northeast corner of Interstate 80 and U.S. 45. There's been urban buildup to the east (a mega-church, and I wonder how its PA system, presuming it has one, deals with 50 kW next door) and the west (a couple of hotels and restaurants), but the signal still gets out.

WLS trivia: The last time I checked, the 1930s-50s lightning-bold lettering was still on the transmitter building.

WLS' reach: One April morning I was lucky enough to be in Augusta, Ga., to attend The Masters. Even after Augusta sunrise, WLS was still booming in as I pulled into the parking lot.
 
tvnut said:
Day and night from the southwest suburbs of Chicago: the Big 89, WLS. And only WLS. The transmitter is in Tinley Park, some 10 miles away, at the northeast corner of Interstate 80 and U.S. 45. There's been urban buildup to the east (a mega-church, and I wonder how its PA system, presuming it has one, deals with 50 kW next door) and the west (a couple of hotels and restaurants), but the signal still gets out.

WLS trivia: The last time I checked, the 1930s-50s lightning-bold lettering was still on the transmitter building.

WLS' reach: One April morning I was lucky enough to be in Augusta, Ga., to attend The Masters. Even after Augusta sunrise, WLS was still booming in as I pulled into the parking lot.
Click to expand...
When I first drove by the WLS transmitter about 50 years ago, there was nothing surrounding that tower but farm land. It was all alone and there was nothing visible to interfere with that signal.
 
Chicago by the lakeshore: WLS all day and night.

Growing up in N California in the 80's, I also heard it there a few times. WLS and WSM were the most distant stations I picked up there.
 
MichaelTheZ said:
Chicago by the lakeshore: WLS all day and night.

Growing up in N California in the 80's, I also heard it there a few times. WLS and WSM were the most distant stations I picked up there.
Click to expand...
WLS was still very doable in California until sometime in the mid 80s. When KDXU went 24 hours then it became much tougher.
 
Way back, I used to hear WLS from the San Francisco Bay Area. One night it was coming in like a local.

I haven't heard it in years. Now I'm in San Diego and get KDXU from St. George, Utah. I do check to see if I can hear WLS underneath it, but I haven't yet.
 
tvnut said:
WLS trivia: The last time I checked, the 1930s-50s lightning-bold lettering was still on the transmitter building.
Click to expand...
I remember that lightning bolt logo....and the metal signs that carried them. I walked by one on my way to school every day
 
It might have been mentioned elsewhere on the board that KJME 890 Fountain CO (Colorado Springs) is in process of moving to ND operation from Colorado Springs with only 11 watts at night, moving from their original 6 tower DA with 590 watts night. (Basically the same story for its diplex partner KCEG 780)

The thinning of the herd continues.
 
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: WLS
Nighttime: WLS

DX/Retro: WLS rules the frequency, but being the farthest of the Chicago 50 kW blow torches from me their signal is not as solid. In fact sometimes I can get a partial null, which weakens the signal enough for other stations to be audible under the WLS signal. So far the only stations I could hear with WLS on are CADZ Radio Progrreso from Cuba, KQLX (Lisbon, ND), WYAM (Hartselle, AL) and KBYE (Oklahoma City, OK) during a special DX test back in 1981. With WLS being off the air I managed to log KVOZ (laredo, TX), KDXU (St. George, UT), and HJPM Radio Galeon, Colombia.

The transmitter building no longer has WLS calls signs. Instead it just has ABC.

Here are two of my pics of the WLS site. One from 2001 and one from 2020:

890-WLS_2001.jpg890-WLS_2020.jpg
 
CADXER said:
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: WLS
Nighttime: WLS

DX/Retro: WLS rules the frequency, but being the farthest of the Chicago 50 kW blow torches from me their signal is not as solid. In fact sometimes I can get a partial null, which weakens the signal enough for other stations to be audible under the WLS signal. So far the only stations I could hear with WLS on are CADZ Radio Progrreso from Cuba, KQLX (Lisbon, ND), WYAM (Hartselle, AL) and KBYE (Oklahoma City, OK) during a special DX test back in 1981. With WLS being off the air I managed to log KVOZ (laredo, TX), KDXU (St. George, UT), and HJPM Radio Galeon, Colombia.

The transmitter building no longer has WLS calls signs. Instead it just has ABC.

Here are two of my pics of the WLS site. One from 2001 and one from 2020:

View attachment 2022View attachment 2023
Click to expand...
I forgot about my one-time reception of KVOZ under WLS when I was in Lafayette
 
In west Houston, days are slop from semi-locals on 880 and 900. Around sunset, WLS and sometimes Cuba start to come up, mixing with KVOZ and sometimes KTXV (Chinese from DFW area). At night, it's usually WLS on top of Cuba.
 
From Pickerington, Ohio, slop from local daytimer WRFD on 880 by day and all WLS at night. I haven't listened to WLS much in recent years, but it's always there. I know I've heard Cuban interference in the past, but it never clobbers WLS to the extent WSCR used to be affected.
Once you get an hour or so northwest of Columbus, WLS holds its own as well as the other Chicago 50Ks, which is to say it is quite listenable, especially west of I-75.
 
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