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AM Frequency of the Week: 560

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cyberdad

cyberdad

Far northwestern suburbs of Chicago.....

Days: All WIND (Chicago) with a very good signal. The transmitter site is 65 miles southeast of me in Gary Indiana. But the pattern favors me and the result at my location is a signal that's competitive with the 50kw sticks.

Nights: Still 5kw. Still a favorable pattern. And the result where I am is a night groundwave signal roughly equal to the day signal. If I null it, I can hear stuff underneath, but I can't ID it. When WIND has been off at night (very rare), KWTO (springfield, MO) is what generally breaks through. On at least one Monday morning in the 70s with WIND and KWTO both off, I heard KLZ from Denver.

Retro: During my college days in southeast Iowa, a weak KWTO was in 24/7. During the day, KWTO was all alone. At night it was usually KWTO and KLZ in a battle, with KWTO getting the better of it. WIND was closer, but with a null aimed in my direction. I did hear it on a few occasions at night, but definitely not very well or very often.

Other Location. As posted in another thread.... At our beach location near Pensacola in the car one morning, I heard the 560, from Kingston, Jamaica via daytime skywave. Usually when we're on the beach at our usual spot, 560 daytime, if anything, is either WOOF from Dothan, Alabama or KLVI from Beaumont, TX. Both 5kw. Both very weak.
 
In the near north Chicago suburbs it's all WIND day and night. sometimes at night if I try to null WIND I've been able to ID KLZ underneath. When WIND has been off the air at night I've heard KWTO.
 
In west Houston, it's KLVI in Beaumont 24/7. Nighttime, in their null, it's a jumble and I've never officially ID'd anything. Not surprising I suppose with KWTO, WHBQ, KLZ, etc all nulling in my (KLVI's) direction. I've sometimes heard Spanish, maybe Cuba or one of the Mexicans.

Retro, in Tulsa early 70's, similar situation with KWTO being my relatively-close station. When they went off for maintenance, I recall hearing WHBQ and KLZ.
 
In the Daytime, WIND sends a lot of power into WINDiana, and into shallow nulls. The "ERP" at Night to the NNW is roughly 50% higher than in the Daytime.

To the SE during the Daytime, WIND can easily be heard in Indianapolis and Muncie, and with slight difficulty to the Lansing, MI area with 500 watt WRDT 560 Monroe, MI interference. With WRDT off the air, and or with an extra TRF stage radio with good image rejection rejecting WFNT 1470, and by nulling out WRDT, all the way to Flint.

Before WIND replaced their top loaded towers, and moved slightly to taller monopoles, and perhaps made slight changes in the pattern(s), it was more difficult to hear in SE Michigan away from WRDT.

In SE MI, WRDT is usually heard Days, and even close to Royal Oak Township, where it has 13.9 watts PSSA into a 203.4 degree skirted antenna on a 1000 foot tower loaded with FM stations, FM Auxiliaries, and STLs.

In Northeast Michigan, CFOS 560 Owen Sound, ON comes in Days and many Nights, WIND often at Night and during CH. CFOS can also be heard in Western NY. WFIL 560 Philadelphia can sometimes be heard during CH, especially on Day Pattern. Seems like WJLS 560 Beckley, WV is occasionally heard, and CJKL 560 Kirkland Lake, ON, often before it moved to FM.
 
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East Tennessee: Daytime-WMIK, Middlesboro, KY. Night--WMIK if it stays on day power late, otherwise a hodge-podge.
Retro-other: WIND of course has a massive signal, which's last breath still makes it to Dayton, Ohio.
 
The previous TL for WIND before the two sites in Griffith, IN were further East and further North, close to the Lake, near North Lake St. and Hemlock Avenue, from what can be deduced from the History Project. This shows from around 1930, but was at the first Griffith site by the late 1930s. The first DA was two towers, with a third added before the rectangular parallelogram. They don't show the coordinates when they rebuilt the array as different. Someone told me it was about 1/4 mile away.
 
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From DFW, Texas

Daytime: Adjacent channel spill-over from local 570-KLIF.
Nighttime: KWTO Springfield, MO is dominant. Aiming away from KWTO, I regularly hear KLZ Denver, CO with a good signal. Rarely hear KLVI Beaumont, TX and R. Rebelde.
 
In Pickerington, Ohio, very little if anything day or night.
Get an hour or so east and the first signs of WFRB from Frostburg, Maryland start to filter in. That station, under its old talk format, helped me pass a lot of miles driving between here and one of my best friends' places in suburban D.C. when they had Rush and even Orioles games.
I did hear a very weak WIND last week when I was in suburban Dayton.
When I lived in League City, Texas, it was all KLVI all the time with an excellent signal. Great situation for an AM frequency with that low dial position plus the excellent ground conductivity and adjacent salt water.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
In the Daytime, WIND sends a lot of power into WINDiana, and into shallow nulls. The "ERP" at Night to the NNW is roughly 50% higher than in the Daytime.

To the SE during the Daytime, WIND can easily be heard in Indianapolis and Muncie, and with slight difficulty to the Lansing, MI area with 500 watt WRDT 560 Monroe, MI interference. With WRDT off the air, and or with an extra TRF stage radio with good image rejection rejecting WFNT 1470, and by nulling out WRDT, all the way to Flint.
Click to expand...
I used to enjoy listening to what is now WRDT when they were WHND "Honey Radio" when I was within their signal range. A nice oldies format. I don't remember the year--70s or 80s
 
radioman148 said:
I used to enjoy listening to what is now WRDT when they were WHND "Honey Radio" when I was within their signal range. A nice oldies format. I don't remember the year--70s or 80s
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I remember it as WHND in the early 90s (if I'm not mistaken). In those days, I was calling on an ad agency in the Renaisance Center in Detroit. I'd usually see them in the mid-late afternoon as my last call of the day, then spend the night in Windsor (Ontario) before heading to Toronto and points east. Even on low power, WHND easily penetrated the steel and concrete of the Windsor Holiday Inn with a good signal. Always a good listen.....despite being automated.

The next morning on day power/pattern, however, I'd lose WHND fairly quickly after hitting the eastbound 401 freeway. Eventually, a weak CFOS sometimes made a brief appearance.
 
The transmitter and tower have moved inland but back in the old days 560 WQAM Miami could be heard in a place called Indiana, Pennsylvania. I worked at WQAM in 1978 for a while and we used to hear from a guy who lived there. The station transmitter was behind the Miami Herald building with a single large tower in Biscayne Bay. The ground system was copper straps attached to big oil drums dumped in the water! 5,000 watts day but only 1,000 night....Storz Tiger Radio!
 
Mike Sheridan said:
The transmitter and tower have moved inland but back in the old days 560 WQAM Miami could be heard in a place called Indiana, Pennsylvania. I worked at WQAM in 1978 for a while and we used to hear from a guy who lived there. The station transmitter was behind the Miami Herald building with a single large tower in Biscayne Bay. The ground system was copper straps attached to big oil drums dumped in the water! 5,000 watts day but only 1,000 night....Storz Tiger Radio!
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I remember seeing that tower when crossing the bay. Great location.
 
Canyon Lake, Texas is KLVI on the fringe of their signal. In the Spring of 1982, my dad and I were driving to Florida for Spring Break. In Rockcastle County Kentucky, 560 produced WQAM at 4:30 in the morning (playing Country Music).

Scanning up the dial, 630 AM was WMAL (no sign of WLAP). A narrow scan resulted in the songs “Do You Believe In Love” from Huey Lewis followed by “Angel of the Morning” by Juice Newton. The overnight DJ was taking requests at (213) 520-1KFI and in Orange County (714) 9530-KFI.
 
From the southwest suburbs of Chicago ...

It's WIND 24/7. Rarely a silent period these days, and I'm too close to the transmitter in Gary to null with success, but in the Westinghouse era, they went off after 2 a.m. news (and the Whiffenpoof song) Sunday night/Monday morning. Then I was able to pick up, on various nights, WFIL Philadelphia, KLVI Beaumont, Tex., KLZ Denver and KWTO Springfield, Mo.
 
From Cheyenne, Wyoming:

It is all KLZ Denver 24/7, with a near local signal, although with very slight skywave cancellation at night. When in the right spot, the HD sidebands can be fully locked on.

In a car, the KLZ HD signal is very consistent around Cheyenne.

Travel: The north/south directional signal of KLZ at 5kw is particularly powerful at night while in Sheridan, Rapid City, and Riverton. During the day, it's decent in Scottsbluff, and weak in Casper. I took a trip to Fort Collins today, and KLZ was 100% static free.

Definitely one of the best, not to mention oldest signals around.

T
 
From Mountain View, Hawaii ...

Daytime - nothing

Nighttime - usually KSFO but there's sometimes another station there too which I haven't been able to ID.
 
Mike Sheridan said:
The transmitter and tower have moved inland but back in the old days 560 WQAM Miami could be heard in a place called Indiana, Pennsylvania. I worked at WQAM in 1978 for a while and we used to hear from a guy who lived there. The station transmitter was behind the Miami Herald building with a single large tower in Biscayne Bay. The ground system was copper straps attached to big oil drums dumped in the water! 5,000 watts day but only 1,000 night....Storz Tiger Radio!
Click to expand...

When we went on Easter vacation to Miami in 1973, WQAM instantly became my favorite radio station because of their great music.

The Song Little Willy by The Sweet always reminds me of WQAM.

I could tell they reduced power at night just by the change in signal I got on my little radio.

When I got back home to New Jersey, I had wished I could hear WQAM somehow at night but of course the local WFIL occupied that frequency.

But when we had our rental bungalow down at the shore that summer, I would listen every night for WQAM with WFIL far enough away to null out but never heard anything I was able to officially identify.

But I've heard reports from others over the years that it has been heard at night there and other places even farther north on the coast.
 
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