AM Frequency of the week: 770

[charlestondxman]

In Charleston WABC is always there, but not with the strength of WFAN or WCBS. But it’s better than WBBR or WOR ever is.

WABC also is weaker over the north Jersey coast because of how much further inland it is than WFAN or WCBS.

During the day here sometimes you can hear the oldies of WLWL Rockingham, NC weakly.

 

[Mark Roberts]

Because I'm in Denver this week, I had to try for KKOB there (at night). And I can receive it, with caveats - local KDFD w/ 1 kw nights at 760 (why did anyone put that on the air in 1988?) makes for lots of sideband chatter, but the Tecsun PL-320's 2.5 kHz bandwidth filter came to the rescue. That's not great for listening and there's still some slop from KDFD, but one can hear it. The KKOB signal varies in strength but can be fairly good at times.

Well, at least KDFD is not a Crawford station running AM HD (there are three of them here). Then getting anything on an adjacent channel would have been impossible.

 

[boiseengineer]

Old TVs would het 770.
Might have been a South or Central American that was on 775 KHz way back.

 

[davideduardo]

Old TVs would het 770.
Might have been a South or Central American that was on 775 KHz way back.

The only licensed 775 I know of was Costa Rica, which for several decades had an AM every 25 kHz on the AM dial, and nothing else.

Ecuador, which also did "split" frequency allocations using 5 kHz intervals had a very low power station on 775, and it did not even use a tower; I could not even get it in Quito, ever. Colombia had some drifters, but no 775 permanent one. Venezuela was straight 10 KHz. Neither Panamá nor Nicaragua had a 775, and neither did Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Nothing I remember in the Caribbean, either.

 

[CTListener]

A common thread in this discussion is the inferior received signal strength of WABC compared to other NYC 50kw stations, especially WCBS and WFAN, in both ground wave and sky wave locations. Is this due to the station's signal pattern or are there other factors at work?

 

[Kemosabe]

It seems like WABC is the underdog of the NYC big signals. WFAN and especially WCBS seem like they get out more.

That makes me wonder how well the the tower site is maintained. Long ago, Rick Sklar noticed that copper was being stolen from the ground system. Another possible reason for a diminished signal is the number of industrial buildings that have have sprung up around the site.

 

[Weiserguy]

A common thread in this discussion is the inferior received signal strength of WABC compared to other NYC 50kw stations, especially WCBS and WFAN, in both ground wave and sky wave locations. Is this due to the station's signal pattern or are there other factors at work?

For one thing, as mentioned above, WCBS and WFAN transmit from High Island, which is off the coast of the Bronx and surrounded by salt water, accessible only by boat or a single-lane bridge from City Island, access to which is gated. So stealing copper from their ground system would be quite difficult, and it's probably intact.

WABC is in Lodi, along an access road adjacent to Interstate 80. I-95 is also nearby, as is Route 17. And unlike back in the day, a lot of industrial and residential development has happened in their backyard in recent decades. In fact, the Lodi transmitter site is surrounded by warehouses and distribution centers on three sides, and by a housing development on the fourth. Not a great neighborhood for strong RF conductivity, even if the copper gophers haven't been by to do their damage.

 

[Weiserguy]

That makes me wonder how well the the tower site is maintained. Long ago, Rick Sklar noticed that copper was being stolen from the ground system. Another possible reason for a diminished signal is the number of industrial buildings that have have sprung up around the site.

See above. One of WABC's problems with that location is how quickly thieves can be in and out and back on the freeway. At the right time of night, they can be back on the GWB, headed into the Bronx, before the station even realizes they have a problem. It's not like the Musicradio days when Lodi was manned 24-7.

 

[gr8oldies]

Old TVs would het 770.
Might have been a South or Central American that was on 775 KHz way back.

Old TVs are a good possible explanation

 

[gar hi]

In Charleston WABC is always there, but not with the strength of WFAN or WCBS. But it’s better than WBBR or WOR ever is.

WABC also is weaker over the north Jersey coast because of how much further inland it is than WFAN or WCBS.

During the day here sometimes you can hear the oldies of WLWL Rockingham, NC weakly.

WABC has an almost local quality signal as far south as Long Beach Island but not as strong as WFAN and WCBS.

Then if you go farther south, WABC gets weak around Atlantic City and then real weak down in Cape May while WFAN and WCBS are still like locals.

But yet I remember the time when I was a kid when my parents put the car on the ferry that went from Cape May to Delaware and when we were driving around near the beaches there, WABC was quite listenable.

 

[boiseengineer]

Old TVs are a good possible explanation

KOB (then KKOB) had a TV het on it in Boise.

 

[Weiserguy]

But yet I remember the time when I was a kid when my parents put the car on the ferry that went from Cape May to Delaware and when we were driving around near the beaches there, WABC was quite listenable.

In 1975 I took a business trip to Atlanta with my then-boss. We got into our rental car at ATL, the radio was tuned to 750 WSB. I tweaked the tuner knob and in a moment had 770 coming in like a local. But that was then and this is now. I used to catch WABC in a bunch of locales (Florida and Mississippi, for example) that are close-to-impossible these days.

 

[Greg Strickland]

Just south of Annapolis MD about 1/2 mile from the bay, listening on CCradio2e:
WABC can be "copied" daytime by radio people but not really listenable. At night WABC comes in well sometimes but fades in and out. A couple times a daytimer has stayed on, by accident because it was fixed by the next night.

Of the NYC stations- WCBS and WFAN are listenable (as a weak signal) all day.
At night WCBS, WFAN followed by WABC and WOR.

Right now, at sunset, listening in the house, WCBS, WABC and WFAN are coming in nicely with ground-skywave interaction.
This is all subject to interference from devices in the house, and we are having thunderstorms today.

Not as much water path to NYC from here as you might think. More water path to NYC exists from just south of Baltimore, east of Pasadena. I've noticed water path effect diminishes greatly moving away from the water.

 

[gar hi]

If you travel south on I-95, WFAN and WCBS are gone by the time you are around Washington but there's a little stretch on I-95 about 30 to 40 miles into Virginia when those two stations start to come in again for a short time and then are gone for good after that.

I couldn't get WABC, though.

If you look at a map, it's because of a branch of the Chesapeake Bay the signals pass over on that short stretch of the highway.

 

[CentralFL]

WCBS seems to be almost equal to WFAN despite being higher up on the dial. Their nighttime signal seems to be superior, though that doesn't matter for ratings nor revenue.

 

[CTListener]

WCBS seems to be almost equal to WFAN despite being higher up on the dial. Their nighttime signal seems to be superior, though that doesn't matter for ratings nor revenue.

The signal's strength in Florida or Maryland or even Atlantic City has never mattered. All the advertisers were and still are paying is was the NYC metro area.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

When WTOR 770 Youngstown, NY is operating at full power, and in the Winter mainly, you can hear it in Eastern Michigan by nulling WJR 760. WTOR 770 has a respectable signal around Toronto, but not much of New York.

WTOR_AM_LD.gif

 

[cyberdad]

When WTOR 770 Youngstown, NY is operating at full power, and in the Winter mainly, you can hear it in Eastern Michigan by nulling WJR 760. WTOR 770 has a respectable signal around Toronto, but not much of New York.

WTOR_AM_LD.gif

On my Ontario biz trips. if time and circumstances permitted it, I liked to take the scenic route for my runs between Toronto and Ottawa, and spend the night in "Cottage Country:" Specifically, Huntsville, Ontario, a resort town a little over 100 miles north of Toronto. WTOR had a decent daytime signal up there, which sort of suprised me. Not as strong as the 50kw signals, but still comfortably listenable. Of course, WTOR was basically a single lobe, by design aimed right at Toronto with brokered and ethnic programming. You didn't have to go very far east or west of Toronto before it started fading.

Of course, on my drives to Cottage Country, I usually spent most of my time cranking the oldies on CHUM, which was good 24/7 for the entire route!

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

@gar hi
Nice tape of that WABC reception!
I was intrigued by that 'het', too. Daytona Beach is right there smack on the Atlantic. Do you recall what time of the day that tape was made?
See, I'm without a WRTH (the old one I had is long gone) so I don't know of foreign 9 kHz spacing, but a 769 or a 771 signal from across the path of darkness seems logical. Especially since others in different spots also have heard it.

@Weiserguy
My very first soldering job on a project board was for a wee crystal radio, as a kid from Eastern Queens who, back then and like today, face uncertainty about which end of a hot soldering pen is the handle.
The radio, about the size of a Chunky Bar, worked. But the only station I could hear off it was WCBS. (I sent $10 to Allied magazine to arrange for hearing one lousy station?!?!???)
Yet another WCBS 880 oddity was its habit of putting a weak 850 signal on the best radios our crew had ..... Atwater Kents, American Bosch, HQ-180's .....
Then we did some math over many beers, a few slide rulers and many hyphenated oaths and crumpled papers. Turns out that 880 times 2 equals 1760. Subtract the traditional 910 intercourse frequency from 1760, and -- voila! 850!