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AM Frequency of the Week: 1090

As I have shared before, KAAY had a top of the hour ID they played at midnight back in the late 60s and 70s. Here is the copy, as I recall:

"From the tundra of the arctic circle to the jungles of central America, this is KAAY, Little Rock, Arkansas."

At the time, I thought this was very cool. I went to college in Macomb, Illinois from 1969-1974 and KAAY boomed in there at night, rarely with any fading.

Bob
 
In central Ohio, a very weak WKFI from Wilmington by day and an ever weaker WBAL at night. I don't think I've ever heard KAAY here, but I certainly did when I lived in and around Houston.
(As an aside, double-checking the call letters for WKFI I saw they have a pretty steep null to the north. Are they protecting the 1110 in Xenia?)
WBAL has an excellent daytime signal where one of my best friends lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and it's still there at night but very weak.
 
schmave said:
In central Ohio, a very weak WKFI from Wilmington by day and an ever weaker WBAL at night. I don't think I've ever heard KAAY here, but I certainly did when I lived in and around Houston.
(As an aside, double-checking the call letters for WKFI I saw they have a pretty steep null to the north. Are they protecting the 1110 in Xenia?)
WBAL has an excellent daytime signal where one of my best friends lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and it's still there at night but very weak.
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Both of those stations have been around for decades, I suppose the Wilmington null takes WGNZ into account. The directionals on both sides of 1100 would have to protect Cleveland as well
 
From NW San Antonio:

Day: Heavy splatter from 11 kW local 1100 KDRY.

Sunset: XEAU in Monterrey comes up amongst the splatter.

Night: KDRY drops to 1 kW directional, so the splatter is reduced, especially to the NE/SW. In that direction KAAY is dominant. To the NW/SE it's news/sports station KVOP in Plainview, TX. XEAU mixes with both at times. When propagation is really good, I'll occasionally hear XEHR in Puebla mixing with KVOP or taking over; less frequently I'll hear XEPRS.

Sunrise: XEAU dominates when it goes to day power, and it's the last to fade.

DX/Retro: I've only managed to hear XEWL in Nuevo Laredo once despite it being closer to me than all of these other stations. It was on a December evening in 2016 back when the station was branded as "Romantica."

Note: Last night 1080 KRLD started broadcasting in HD again for the first time in a while. The resulting IBOC hash messes with 1090 pretty badly here, making listening and DXing especially difficult.
 
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From Huntsville, AL, 1090 is KAAY in the evenings, usually with southern gospel music. Usually in the winter months there is a loud 1000 hz hetrodyne, from what I gather due to TalksSport on 1089 in the UK. mwlist.org lists one station over there with 400kw of power.
 
DXBob said:
As I have shared before, KAAY had a top of the hour ID they played at midnight back in the late 60s and 70s. Here is the copy, as I recall:

"From the tundra of the arctic circle to the jungles of central America, this is KAAY, Little Rock, Arkansas."

At the time, I thought this was very cool. I went to college in Macomb, Illinois from 1969-1974 and KAAY boomed in there at night, rarely with any fading.

Bob
Click to expand...
I remember that ID, Impressive.

BTW sidebar point, "Macomb Illinois" in 1969, my wife(to be) was there attending WIU. As were several of my friends. Made the 65-mile run there from where I was in Iowa numerous times.
 
Ke4kls said:
From Huntsville, AL, 1090 is KAAY in the evenings, usually with southern gospel music. Usually in the winter months there is a loud 1000 hz hetrodyne, from what I gather due to TalksSport on 1089 in the UK. mwlist.org lists one station over there with 400kw of power.
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You wanna hear something cool?

This past winter TalkSport 1089 was in like a local for 15 minutes.. getting stronger during that 15 minute period.. thats what transpolar reception will do for you in alaska

Here's the audio:
 
SomeRadioGuy said:
You wanna hear something cool?

This past winter TalkSport 1089 was in like a local for 15 minutes.. getting stronger during that 15 minute period.. thats what transpolar reception will do for you in alaska

Here's the audio:
Click to expand...
Talksport 1089 has a very impressive signal. I hear them on the European SDRs all the time. They're sometimes the only thing there when propagation is poor.
 
radioman148 said:
In the near north Chicago suburbs: daytime a weak WKBZ, night KAAY with a pretty good signal most of the time, but not nearly as good as it use to be. Critical hours WBAL is often there when they are on their day pattern.

Retro: I used to try for XERB when KAAY was off on Monday mornings. Wolfman was there. After hearing him on XERF and then visiting the west coast I loved his nightly show on XERB with a mix of R&B and Top 40. Unfortunately I was never able to hear it in the midwest.
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According to legend, people regularly listened to the Wolfman's nightly show on XERB as far east as Minnesota, back in the day.
 
1969 it was. August. The same week that the World Series Mets got clobbered three straight games in the Houston Astrodome.
My first-ever paid vacation. I stayed at my buddy's place in Clearwater while seeing another person from Long Island, a girl I'd dated for a while. She lived in Largo.
Across the avenue from Roger's place was a 24-7-52 laundromat. And there he and I took root for a few cycles, practically in our underwear, with the temperature 90 and the humidity double that.
* KAAY* was playing on the house speakers. It was about 2AM. They were playing jazz.

Back in Queens, I caught their Monday Morning sign off once. 1 AM. Faint but steady. They signed off with 'Take Five' by the Brubeck Quartet.

Thanks for the memories! I hear tell that nighttimes in Minneapolis KAAY was as loud as the local WDGY 1130.
 
There are a lot of factors as to how KAAY and other 50 kW and other high power directional stations can be stronger than local signals. Directional Antennas are a key factor in the highest skywave returns in the US, where 50 kW is the limit. Close in to the nondirectional Class As, the skywave can be on the order of 3 mV/m. Directional Class As can be as high as 10 mV/m maximum. So you have to compare that with the actual IDFs in nulls and minor lobes of local stations, along with their NIFs. Even with fairly well protected NIF contours, and especially in nulls, the signal is less and has more interference than the Class As did, and should still.

A college acquaintance of mine used to hang out with the Milner family (who later owned WSRF/WSHE Ft. Lauderdale, and who now own a cluster of stations in Kankakee, and did own the 99.9 which "moved in" to the Chicago Market in Park Forest, IL). The older Gene Milner owned WTAC 600 at the time, which had their towers North of Grand Blanc. The Milners lived in Grand Blanc, MI, in a subdivision about a mile Southeast of the towers in a deep null, with a lot of phase distortion. My college acquaintance would ride around with the Milners at Night, and would tune in to WCFL instead of Gene Milner's station, because it came in so much better! So that may be where the family first became interested in Chicago Area radio. A station engineer once told me that station owners and managers somehow all end up living right in the deepest part of a null, and are always complaining about not being able to hear their signal well!

It never sits well when the engineer tells the owner that if he wants to hear his station better, he'll have to move! I have known of station owners who would literally try to adjust the phasor themselves to try to get a better signal at their house! Not the Milners to my knowledge, though they did have to redesign the DA at WSRF according to another engineer.
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
There are a lot of factors as to how KAAY and other 50 kW and other high power directional stations can be stronger than local signals. Directional Antennas are a key factor in the highest skywave returns in the US, where 50 kW is the limit. Close in to the nondirectional Class As, the skywave can be on the order of 3 mV/m. Directional Class As can be as high as 10 mV/m maximum. So you have to compare that with the actual IDFs in nulls and minor lobes of local stations, along with their NIFs. Even with fairly well protected NIF contours, and especially in nulls, the signal is less and has more interference than the Class As did, and should still.

A college acquaintance of mine used to hang out with the Milner family (who later owned WSRF/WSHE Ft. Lauderdale, and who now own a cluster of stations in Kankakee, and did own the 99.9 which "moved in" to the Chicago Market in Park Forest, IL). The older Gene Milner owned WTAC 600 at the time, which had their towers North of Grand Blanc. The Milners lived in Grand Blanc, MI, in a subdivision about a mile Southeast of the towers in a deep null, with a lot of phase distortion. My college acquaintance would ride around with the Milners at Night, and would tune in to WCFL instead of Gene Milner's station, because it came in so much better! So that may be where the family first became interested in Chicago Area radio. A station engineer once told me that station owners and managers somehow all end up living right in the deepest part of a null, and are always complaining about not being able to hear their signal well!

It never sits well when the engineer tells the owner that if he wants to hear his station better, he'll have to move! I have known of station owners who would literally try to adjust the phasor themselves to try to get a better signal at their house! Not the Milners to my knowledge, though they did have to redesign the DA at WSRF according to another engineer.
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Remember 10 times the power is 3.16 times the voltage. (square root of the increase or decrease in power) If a 50 kw station puts 3 mV/m at a given location, to achieve 9 mV/m. The directional array must have an ERP of 500 kw in that direction.
 
TomasEstefan said:
Remember 10 times the power is 3.16 times the voltage. (square root of the increase or decrease in power) If a 50 kw station puts 3 mV/m at a given location, to achieve 9 mV/m. The directional array must have an ERP of 500 kw in that direction.
Click to expand...
The Class I-As, like WLS and WJR, usually have antennas in the 190-195 degree range, and those close in distances get a little less Vertical Radiation Characteristic at the angle relevant to reflection. The I-Bs, like WCFL, are more in the 180 degree range, and have more closer in skywave. I'm actually talking more like the 10% or 6% skywave, and free space inverse field at the slant distance. 50% is something like 6 to 8 dB less.

WWJ 950 and WFDF 910 on 50 kW Day Pattern at the Straits of Mackinac Area are in the 500 kW ERP range, based on legacy Class B minimum efficiency, 282 mV/m @ 1 km @ 1 kW, to perhaps the 300 mV/m defined in the International agreements, have been measured by me at about 10 mV/m at maximum. WFDF falls to around 7 mV/m maximum after reduction to 25 kW Night power. In Southeast Michigan, I measured 10 mV/m for WCFL 1000, WOWO 1190 on 50 kW Night DA, and WCKY 1530 on Night DA, back in the Day.
 
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Thanks for the Trophy! I'll put it on my mantel (just found out that this is how you spell this sense of the word). :)

The WWJ 950 Night Pattern has the most intense major lobe of all the stations in the US, 7980 mV/m @ 1 km Inverse Directional Field. Based on legacy Class B minimum efficiency, this is the equivalent 800 kW!
 
DXBob said:
As I have shared before, KAAY had a top of the hour ID they played at midnight back in the late 60s and 70s. Here is the copy, as I recall:

"From the tundra of the arctic circle to the jungles of central America, this is KAAY, Little Rock, Arkansas."
Click to expand...
That's interesting. I wondered how many of the U.S. non-Alaskan stations made it to the arctic.
 
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