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AM Frequency of the Week: 1270

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cyberdad

cyberdad

40 Miles Northwest of downtown Chicago....

Days: 1270 is nearly empty. Sometimes a whiff of WWCA in Gary. Indiana. Relevant Radio with a figure eight pattern more favorable to the fish in Lake Michigan than to my location.

Nights: 1270 becomes another "battle of weak signals". WXYT, WMKT and WDLR are most likely to rise to the top. But each of those is still rare.

Retro: WHBF from Rock Island, IL was at least a semi-regular. Audible, if not comfortably listenable. I worked at WHBF for nearly four years in the mid-70s. Then it was the 5kw fulltime AM component of a CBS affiliated AM/FM/TV combo (120/98.9/Ch 4). The family that owned it sold it in pieces, and after multiple subsequent ownership and format changes, the AM eventually went bankrupt....and silent. A far cry from the vibrant, profitable place it had been when I was there.

Just plain sad. A lot of good people came through there.
 
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Carmichael, CA

Daytime: Nothing
Nighttime: KVMI Tulare-Vislia or KBZZ Reno fighting it out

Vallejo, CA

Daytime: Nothing
Nighttime: : KVMI Tulare-Vislia, KBZZ Reno
 
East Tennessee: Days-semi-local WLIK, Newport (probably more of a "local" in Sevierville.
Night: WLIK with a hodge-podge of other signals. Last night I pulled WQKR, Portland, TN with Cool Bobby B's Doo Wop Stop, obviously on 1kW daytime power.

Retro/other: Dayton, OH. Days were weak (now WDLR), WUCO, Marysville OH. WUCO is or was a 6 tower directional, built in the late 70s (the company could have built several FMs in different places for what they sunk into this ex-urban rimshot. Otherwise, Detroit's WXYT would make it in.
 
During the day nothing. Sometimes in mid-winter I can hear KFLC in Ft Worth (strong enough to trigger the RDS light on the car radio on occasion). At sunset, with the radio E-W, WIJD, religious talk from the Mobile area, is often heard. At night, KFLC dominates (although weaker than they used to be), and I also hear KSCB in Liberal KS on occasion. WIJD is also in there, sometimes strong, maybe still on day power. Around sunrise I've heard SS music but have never heard an ID.

I never heard KEPS in Eagle Pass Texas, and I understand they're now silent.
 
From Pickerington, Ohio, it's WDLR with a solid signal daytime (6 out of 10 or so) and at night, maybe it pops out of the mud. In northwest parts of the Columbus metro, it has an excellent signal at all hours.
I've also heard WXYT very rarely here at night.
Very impressed to see WDLR's signal heard in or around Chicago, especially with the null they throw in that direction.
Speaking of patterns, it's been a dozen years or more since they used the licensed daytime pattern that looks like a fish and essentially points away from Columbus. I heard it as far west as Celina and St. Marys on that day pattern in the early 90s, but now both the AM and FM are noticeably weak even as close as Bellefontaine.
 
schmave said:
Very impressed to see WDLR's signal heard in or around Chicago, especially with the null they throw in that direction.
Click to expand...
If it's present at all, at my location, usually it just pops in for a couple of minutes, then vanishes. My guess is that it's running on day pattern when it comes in, but who knows. Easy enough to ID with classic rock.
 
KBZZ 1270 Sparks/Reno is my most common on 1270.. even mroe common then KNDI Honolulu... i probably hear KBZZ a few times a week, and somewhat well sometimes too.

I've heard KVMI Tulare, CA once or twice kinda weakly up here.
 
cyberdad said:
Good stuff Paul. As usual. Always interesting to hear what makes the hop up to where you are.....and, for that matter, what doesn't.
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The farthest away catch ever for me from "north America", going south is 1220 and 900 Mexico City.... and going east.. its a shocking.. CFAJ 1220!
 
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: weak WWCA
Nightime: WXYT or WLIK most likely stations

DX/RETRO: others heard in the past include WKZT (Fulton, KY), WNLS (Talahassee, FL), WMKT (Charlevoix, MI), WDLR (Marysville, OH), the now defunct WHBF (Rock Island, IL), XERPL (Leon, Mexico), Radio Reloj, (Camaguey, Cuba). Most recent new log on this frequency is WQKR Portland, TN heard in March 2021.
 
cyberdad said:
If it's present at all, at my location, usually it just pops in for a couple of minutes, then vanishes. My guess is that it's running on day pattern when it comes in, but who knows. Easy enough to ID with classic rock.
Click to expand...

That's the thing with them ... their night pattern is what they run 24/7. Their licensed day pattern would favor your direction for sure, and virtually shut out all of the Columbus metro.
 
From the southwest suburbs of Chicago:

The usual suspect on 1270 here is WWCA Gary, 1 kW, better days than nights.

Over the years, others heard have been WXYZ Detroit (not yet heard as WXYT), KFJZ Fort Worth, WHBF Rock Island (RIP), WHEO Stuart, Va., on a 12/7/1981 night test, and WQIT Marysville, Ohio in the middle of the night on 6/3/2020.
 
schmave said:
'That's the thing with them ... their night pattern is what they run 24/7. Their licensed day pattern would favor your direction for sure, and virtually shut out all of the Columbus metro.
Click to expand...
Definitely a head scratcher, but I'm guessing from looking at the coverage maps on RL, that the idea is to cover as much of the Columbus metro as possible for as long as they can get away with it. The day pattern obviously wouldn't do that. You said earlie the pattern looks like a fish. To me it looks more like a dagger....or maybe some sort of long sword!. Very weird....along with the expense and upkeep of building six towers for a pea shooter that misses the metro. When I was getting a steady signal for a week or so several months back, they were probably running the day pattern. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me back in the late winter or spring, the company that owns WDLR was shuffling formats and call letters around the various signals that they own. Perhaps that was part of it.
 
Daytime here is a long-running and fairly loud WLBR from downstate Lebanon (PA), about 28 miles SW of the radios.
(I say 'long running' because they were a SRS sign-on regular 60 years ago back in Queens NYC -- same calls, too : WLBR.)
Indifferent night vigils here have provided, for a nice taped ID, too, a CJTN from somewhere (I believe from Canada).
Ha -- one day while painting some house in St. Clair, south of me by 4 miles, I was getting WLBR being hammered by some heavy rock station. The signal turned out be an image / mix / progression of WPAM 1450 and WPPA 1360. Oddly, there was nothing from WPPA ; just grunge from 'Phoenix 1450'.
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Mid-retro: Back when I lived and worked in Springfield Mass, the only split-frequency catch I ever heard was from Radio Paradise on 1265. On a wild guess, I'm thinking that WSPR had signed off. That's chiefly because I could see their two towers (1270) out my window blinking across the Connecticut River.
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Retro: Never heard the big-signalled WHBF even once back in Queens, CADXer and Cyberdad. 21 loggings on 1270, and even one of WEIC Illinois. But never a WHBF.
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
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Retro: Never heard the big-signalled WHBF even once back in Queens, CADXer and Cyberdad. 21 loggings on 1270, and even one of WEIC Illinois. But never a WHBF.
Click to expand...
Re: WHBF....
You'd have been in the null protecting WXYZ. Our night signal didn't go due east well at all. But you could hear us just fine in Atlanta, LOL I speak from personal experience. We had shallower nulls to the southwest (KFJZ) snd northwest (KGIR) respectively. Day signal was non directional, and audible for about 100 miles. Good ground conductivity in all directions until you hit the bluffs of extreme southwest Wisconsin and extreme northeast Iowa.
 
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