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AM Frequency of the Week: 1060
- Thread starter cyberdad
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The higher the freq (the shorter the wavelength) will dictate how short skywave can be. Here in the L.A. market, skywave can be detected from local stations on 1540, and 1580 as close in as 15 to 20 miles from the xmitters if you're away from the main beam. Listeners to KNX 1070 (xmitter in Torrance) frequently hear selective fading distortion at night in places such as Corona and Riverside, whereas the daytime signal of course is strong and rock stable.
Agreed. By the way, It's about 45 miles from Torrance to Riverside, right? Wow that is fairly close.
Now that I have an FCC Surplus Potomac FIM-41, I have noticed something about Daytime Skywave, during times not usually used in Proof of Performance on DAs, or FCC enforcement, in that there is significant skywave way down the AM BC Band during CH. For instance, during mid CH, I noted WJR 760 at 35 miles varying from 21 mV/m to 25 mV/m on fades. That was 2 mV/m skywave reinforcing and cancelling a 23 mV/m ground wave signal. That surprised me, and may be attributable to the strange skywave conditions in the last several years.
No, the university station is the AM on 860 from the UNAM. 1060 is the Secretary of Culture station.
Yes, and I confirm that... I would get skywave cancellation on KNX in Redlands, the eastern part of San Berdoo and Moreno Valley, depending on which freeway I was on. It became pure skywave by the time I got to Beaumont and Banning.
When KFI was on the temporary site after the plane incident, I got cancellation on them around Morongo and it did not go away until I got to Palm Desert along the 10.
A few of us have witnessed mid-day skywave in Spring and Autumn. Because, for the last 60 years or so most channels are locally blocked, there are not many reports of this in the last half-century.
But in around 1961, at just after noon, EST, in an eastern suburb of Cleveland, I got 4VEH from Cap Haitien, Haiti on 1035 with full readability. Because 1035 is a split frequency, and both KDKA and WBZ were quite a ways away, there was no sideband interference on my HQ-180.
I still wonder why I was even looking for DX in that part of the band at noon. I think it was a teacher's day at school and I was just looking for overlooked stations. I tried from the Bermuda station on 1235, but it was not there, even though it had a much greater salt water path.
The most bizarre was what I witnessed many times in Puerto Rico... at perhaps 3 PM, three hours from sunset, I'd get a variety of stations from places like Libya and Morocco and several of the western sub-Saharan nations on my car radio in San Juan. The path included at least three hours of daylight, making the reception and its extreme clarity quite interesting.
A similar thing happened to me in the 60s. One day around noon in December I heard WBZ in the Chicago area. Then I noticed that all the NYC adjacents to the Chicago clears were coming in. The band was open to the entire east coast like it was evening.
I didn't know why this was happening then, but later learned about winter daytime skywave. I've never heard it to that degree in fall or spring.
I have also heard WBZ close to Solar High Noon in various areas of Michigan, back in the 1970s as I recall. However, there are so many 1030s now, including one 5 miles from one of my main receiver locations. I called WBZ and talked to one of their engineers back then who attributed it to "Iron deposits" in Michigan. I wasn't really convinced by that explanation. I occasionally hear the NYC 50 kW stations during early CH. But we have WMIC 660 in Michigan, WTOR 770 in New York, WRFD 880 with 23 kW Daytime in Ohio, and a 710 still in Virginia and CHYR 710 in SW Ontario before they moved to FM, in addition to WNEW/WBBR 1130, WADO 1280, WWRL 1600, and others, with more nearby cochannel stations. I once heard WADO in East Central Michigan at least 3 hours before Sunset with Spanish Baseball PBP, and a very quick "WADO New York". Very strong for a couple hours, while driving down I-75.
As another example, in Spring and Fall and sometimes through the Winter here in the far-west SFV. You can tune to 1170 and hear KCBQ and KLOK fighting it out during much of the daytime with better than .1mv a couple of times a month. During these times you can sometimes hear KGO literally all day, and if you listen real closely during pauses in 740 KBRT's programming you can sometimes just make out KCBS in the middle of the day. Most astounding to me was during one day in the Fall a few years back I heard 770 KOB clear as a bell at High Noon!
This daytime skywave is fascinating. This should be its own subject, I think!
Nor am I. If you were in SE Michigan, you were farther from the ore deposits of the UP than from NYC, I think. NYC to Detroit is 480 air miles and Detroit to Houghton is over 500 miles.
There may be some rusty politicians in Lansing, but no iron deposits.
You might be interested to know, David, that for a couple of years back in the late 1960's or early seventy's KNX got permission to co-phase their aux tower as a parasitic element with their main antenna to create gain to the East and thereby provide a stronger signal to the Inland Empire. They discovered it indeed worked...however they abandoned it because the only result was louder selective fading. (Funny, If all of us had been around at that time I think anyone on this forum would have been able to tell them this ahead of time and saved them a lot of money!)
That is really neat. I usually don't achieve daytime skip, although I recall that last year around this time WBBM was in as early as 3pm and was easily listenable for over an hour. Other than that, the sun is up just above the trees in my area right now, and I am receiving KSTP, KXEL, and KQWB intermittently.
In the Dayton, Ohio area I had WBZ at high noon a couple of times (once w/ a commercial for the Vagina Monologues.) in the winter. When WDJO was still on 1160, and I was listening from Springfield, OH. sometimes WYLL would be droning along underneath it all day. One particular day trip from Knoxville to Nashville the band stayed open all day. Even in Davidson County, there was chatter under WLAC. I had both WHIO and WING at 2pm CST/3pm EST from Nashville. Here in East Tennessee, I seem to have a pipeline into NE Ohio.
Other than that one particular noon time capture of WBZ and other east coast stations in Northern Illinois I rarely heard WBZ before 3PM CST. However now as you say there's alot of daytime stations on 1030 including one in my area.
Funny. We did that at Emmis' Radio 10 in Buenos Aires, 100 kw on 710. A quarter wave parasitic tower was put in the NW corner of the land, pushing the signal slightly more towards downtown. That was what it took to have a noise-free building penetrating signal everywhere in the metro. We lost some coverage in the direction of the null effect, but we wanted Bs. As. and not Paraguay.
In that market, the 50 kw stations just were not strong enough to avoid urban noise... 20 years ago!
I'll never forget the time I went to Clearwater Beach on a very cold winter day to do some AM daytime DXing of stations across the Gulf and there was 700 WLW with a very good steady signal broadcasting the Bengals game.
It was just after 1 pm.
As I drove back home, WLW was still good in Pinellas County but was completely gone once I crossed the bay and was on the Tampa side.
After that, I kept my radio at home tuned to 700 and would listen for it many a day but never even heard a trace.
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