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AM Frequency of the Week: 1040

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cyberdad

cyberdad

40 miles northwest of downtown Chicago.....

Days: Splatter from local WNVR (10kw on 1030 from less than three miles away....with a favorable pattern)

Nights: All WHO with a good signal. (WNVR powers down to 120 watts...whenever they bother to stay on....and puts me directly in their null). With WNVR no longer an issue, I've heard weak Spanish underneath a few times, but haven't been able to ID it. Presume Cuba.

Other Location: At our beach location near Pensacola, WHBO with 3,600 watts is audible during daytime. At night, WHBO disappears and WHO is usually on top of a one or two Spanish language signals.

Retro: Before WNVR decided to move it's transmitter to the western outskirts of Crystal lake and increase power to 10kw (or maybe briefly higher), WHO used to be occasionally audible daytime. Mostly during winter. As it is now, WHO typically becomes audible around Rockford, IL....about 30 miles west of me.
 
East Tennessee: Days-local WJBE (namesake of the station James Brown used to own).
Night: WHO. When our local 1040 was off, sometimes WPBS in Conyers GA would make it in.

Retro/other: WJBE makes it to the Edinburgh IN SDR frequently. In Ohio and Indiana I used to log the late WJTB, North Ridgeville, OH.
 
Chicago by the lakeshore:

Daytime: Nothing.

Nighttime: WHO with a good but not incredibly strong signal. Some stations that are much farther away are more consistent, actually. On the other hand, in the 80s in Northern California I could sometimes hear it all the way there.

Critical Hours: Because WHO can be slow to arrive, I've gotten a couple of daytimers before they go off the air for the night. Namely WPBS in the Atlanta area and WLCR in the Louisville area.
 
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: nothing except for splatter from WNVR
Nightime: WHO with solid signal

DX/RETRO: DX catches include WBZW (Powell, TN), WHBO (Pinellas Park, FL), WJOR (St. Jospeh, TN), WJTB (N. Ridgeville, OH), WPBS (Conyers, GA), WYSL (Avon, NY), WSGH (Lewisville, NC), CIOF/CKST (Vancouver, BC), CHRS (Longuevil, PQ), HJAI Radio Tropical (Barranquilla, Colombia), HION Radio Centro (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic). Back in 1987 Cuba used this frequency for their tourist station Radio Taino and also as a relay for Radio Moscow World Service with high powered transmitters. Both heard easily in the Chicago area. I remember articles in newspapers from that era with complaints by WHO about the Cuban interference.
 
From Cheyenne, WY...
Daytime: A weak, but occasionally listenable 1040 KPPF from Colorado Springs
Nightime: All WHO all the time

On the road: WHO is even stronger here in Rapid at night, and it has appeared in every Wyoming/Colorado bandscan.

So, is WHO the most centrally located clear channel that is omnidirectional?
 
From south Overland Park, Kansas:

Day: Heavy splatter from semi-local, 5 kW KCWJ on 1030 Khz.

Night: WHO with highly variable signal strength from highly listenable to heavy fading. On occasion, they almost disappear. My distance of 190 miles from their transmitter site may be problematic. No other signals have been logged.

Bob
 
In the near north Chicago suburbs: daytime it's splatter from WNVR. At night it's WHO with a pretty good signal. Before WNVR signed on I could hear a weak WHO groundwave during the day on a good radio.
I also have heard Spanish underneath WHO at night.
 
I wonder how much of that fading of WHO at 190 miles could be related to their Franklin-type antenna, which doesn't radiate as much toward moderately high elevation angles as a 195 degree non-sectionalized tower.
 
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rfry said:
I wonder how much of that fading of WHO at 190 miles could be related to their Franklin-type antenna, which doesn't radiate as much toward moderately high elevation angles as a 195 degree non-sectionalized tower.
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Interesting! They are a consistent "underperformer" here, without question. I was surprised by this when I moved here in 2005. Nothing has changed since then. At times, the fading is severe.

Bob
 
South Mississippi:
Day: nothing inland, WHBO Pinellas Park, FL can be heard along the coast
Critical hours: WPBS Conyers, GA (Vietnamese talk/music)
Night: WHO usually is clear, sometimes WHBO interferes
 
From the southwest suburbs of Chicago:

Days: nothing, but it's ages since I tried for WHO during the day. I'd think I'd get a hint with my Tecsun loop, given how well WMT comes in (way down at 600).

Night: WHO Des Moines, steady almost every night, 288 miles distant. Fades on rare occasions. Once, way back, picked up HJAI Barranquilla, Colombia at 2,228 miles. WHO may have been off (I wasn't taking detailed notes on reception in my Radio Shack receiver era). More recently, CKST Vancouver has been noted under WHO a couple of times, the first being 9/16/2020. That's a mere 1,771 miles.
 
West Houston, daytime is slop from 1050 and nothing. WHO starts to come up an hour before sunset in the winter and dominates at night. I can also catch KGGR in Dallas with their gospel/religious programming before sunset. I've heard Spanish talk underneath sometimes, probably Mexico or Cuba, but have never heard it well enough to ID.

Back in Tulsa in the early '70's, WHO was one of the strongest clear channel stations on the dial.
 
West central Georgia, daytime is weak WPBS Conyers/Atlanta GA with Vietnamese programming. Critical hours sometimes catch WJBE urban contemporary from Powell/Knoxville TN. WHO is strong most nights but constantly interfered with by WHBO Tampa sports broadcasting/now conservative talk which seems to be on air all night with full daytime power despite license for 420 watts at night.
 
San Jose, California:

Days::::Nothing

Nights::: A very weak, but sometimes listenable WHO out of Des Moines, Iowa.

Mario, you should be able to hear WHO at night.
 
DXBob said:
Night: WHO with highly variable signal strength from highly listenable to heavy fading. On occasion, they almost disappear. My distance of 190 miles from their transmitter site may be problematic. No other signals have been logged.
Click to expand...

DXBob said:
Interesting! They are a consistent "underperformer" here, without question. I was surprised by this when I moved here in 2005. Nothing has changed since then. At times, the fading is severe.

Bob
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This all seems familiar as to what I get with 1530, KFBK out of Sacramento. Its one heck of a signal @50KW, but it fades so much, I would say the signal is very unstable to listen to, even though I'm less than 130 miles from the transmitter. Very strange, the way some of these strong signals act locally, yet can travel great distances.
 
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Sounds like you both are in a "skywave cancelation zone", where the groundwave signal is the same strength as the skywave, and so cancels each other out.
 
From North Alabama, in daytime receive a very faint but audible WPBS in Conyers GA, South Asian language and programming. At night WHO is usually pretty good.
 
ZantennaG1 said:
From Cheyenne, WY...
Daytime: A weak, but occasionally listenable 1040 KPPF from Colorado Springs
Nightime: All WHO all the time

On the road: WHO is even stronger here in Rapid at night, and it has appeared in every Wyoming/Colorado bandscan.

So, is WHO the most centrally located clear channel that is omnidirectional?
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I would say KMOX (1120) is. Certainly more "central as far as north/south goes
 
The geographic center of the continental U.S. is just north-northeast of Lebanon, Kansas (north central part of the state). And is closer to Des Moines than Saint Louis. Not by much, but based on that criteria, WHO would be the most centrally located of the 50kw non-directional "big sticks"
 
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