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Good places to live to pull in a ton of stations

RockTheRadio

RockTheRadio

When I lived in Kalamazoo MI in the early 90’s I thought I died and went to radio heaven - corny as it sounds, I got everything from Kzoo, Grand Rapids, and everything in between.

Never pulled in Detroit but often got Chicago (94.7 and 100.3) which were Hot 94-7 (CHR) and 100.3 The Point (AC) every day. Although not in the car but in a third story apartment. I know that many of those frequencies are now filled with translator stations now.

Does anyone live in a medium-sized city sandwiched between two big cities? I am in Princeton NJ area now and my radio reception is terrible at home and in the car. Philly is fuzzy and New York almost non-existent. In short, I have resorted to iHeart streaming and Sirius XM.

But back in the day, or even now, did you or do you pull in a boatload of (FM) stations? Where would be some good place to live - for radio?
 
RockTheRadio said:
When I lived in Kalamazoo MI in the early 90’s I thought I died and went to radio heaven - corny as it sounds, I got everything from Kzoo, Grand Rapids, and everything in between.

Never pulled in Detroit but often got Chicago (94.7 and 100.3) which were Hot 94-7 (CHR) and 100.3 The Point (AC) every day. Although not in the car but in a third story apartment. I know that many of those frequencies are now filled with translator stations now.

Does anyone live in a medium-sized city sandwiched between two big cities? I am in Princeton NJ area now and my radio reception is terrible at home and in the car. Philly is fuzzy and New York almost non-existent. In short, I have resorted to iHeart streaming and Sirius XM.

But back in the day, or even now, did you or do you pull in a boatload of (FM) stations? Where would be some good place to live - for radio?
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Fairfield and Vallejo in Northern California are in between Sacramento and San Francisco---most of the full-market signals for both cities can be heard there.

The southern Orange County coastal cities like Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and Dana Point are able to get most L.A. and San Diego FMs clearly.
 
Eastern Arkansas was a lot of fun for this radio nerd when I lived there in the late '70s. AM from Little Rock, Pine Bluff, Memphis and Jackson by day along with small-town stations, stretching out to St. Louis, Nashville and Dallas at night. Only problem was the thunderstorm static from May through October. FM was good, too, with frequent tropo, E-skip and generally enhanced reception.
 
When I lived in Riverside, CA in the 60's we got KMEN & KFXM out of San Bernardino, two exceptionally good stations for a small market. We also received KHJ, KRLA, and KEZY from the LA/OC area and KCBQ and XERB from the south. Other AM stations were DXed at night from elsewhere.
 
michael hagerty said:
Fairfield and Vallejo in Northern California are in between Sacramento and San Francisco---most of the full-market signals for both cities can be heard there.

The southern Orange County coastal cities like Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and Dana Point are able to get most L.A. and San Diego FMs clearly.
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Interesting. I once stayed at a hotel in Newport Beach for a weekend in the early 2000s and didn't find the FM to be quite as full as suggested. It was early spring, troposphere hadn't hit yet, and I wasn't hearing on FM anything from San Diego, just Los Angeles, Orange County, and some San Bernardino and Riverside and not all of that was clear.

I think the best place I've ever been to for clear FM signals was Ontario, California, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Bernardino. While the San Diego stations didn't come in there (unless Troposphere was happening), all of the Los Angeles 100kW and most of the San Bernardino/Riverside radio stations were coming in clear as a bell. (I believe, and plese correct me if I'm wrong, this situation exists in Ontario primarily because the distance requirements that the FCC made for adjacent frequency stations were made *after* these stations came on-air.)
 
ted chittenden said:
Interesting. I once stayed at a hotel in Newport Beach for a weekend in the early 2000s and didn't find the FM to be quite as full as suggested. It was early spring, troposphere hadn't hit yet, and I wasn't hearing on FM anything from San Diego, just Los Angeles, Orange County, and some San Bernardino and Riverside and not all of that was clear.
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Might have been because you were indoors. In a car, I never had a problem.
 
ted chittenden said:
I think the best place I've ever been to for clear FM signals was Ontario, California, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Bernardino. While the San Diego stations didn't come in there (unless Troposphere was happening), all of the Los Angeles 100kW and most of the San Bernardino/Riverside radio stations were coming in clear as a bell. (I believe, and plese correct me if I'm wrong, this situation exists in Ontario primarily because the distance requirements that the FCC made for adjacent frequency stations were made *after* these stations came on-air.)
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Ontario is in Riverside County and is part of the Riverside-San Bernardino metro survey area.

If you look at the LA market and the Riverside-San Bernardino ones you will see that the Mt Wilson LA stations cover the Inland Empire in most places better than they cover southern Orange County or far northern or northeastern LA counties.

Remember that, back in the 50's before FM was "organized" as to allocations and powers, those places like Ontario, Riverside and San Berdoo were very separate markets, in some cases separated by farming and empty land.
 
I live about 1000 feet up on a hill between Vancouver BC and Seattle WA. Between Vancouver, Vancouver Island (Victoria) and Seattle, along with multiple community and college stations and the five local FMs in the Bellingham market, there is barely a space left on the FM dial where you won't hear programming. And the very few empty spots are filled in by the pirates and the LPFMs.

AM, OTOH, is fairly awful...basalt is a terrible conductor.
 
I'm taking the question to mean a lot of stations for regular listening as opposed to DXing. Beavercreek, Ohio (east of Dayton), particularly before 80-90 and the slew of translators, made it possible to get most of Cincinnati and Columbus, plus sometimes Toledo, Detroit or Lexington would make it in. In Knoxville, TN no such luck in the valley but head up to Newfound Gap and you can get everything in TN, NC, SC, GA and tons of others.
 
FM: The den here, ~ 1450 feet above the ocean, is almost equidistant to NYC and Balt-DC. That's both FM and UHF TV stations, both markets of which share most of the same frequencies. If you please, picture us being at the centre of a clock with the small hand pointing East at the '3' (NYC) and the large hand pointing South at the '6' for the Capitol District.
Being really clear out here, distance- and population-wise, we have our share of Class B stations on some of those same frequencies. 102.7, 105.1, 94.7 and 101.9 come to mind.
The terrain to the east (NYC) is filled, bumps, hills and mountains most of the way through New Jersey -- while to the SOUTH the land mass just slides down into Chesapeake Bay. The lack of obstructions makes for much better reception in that direction. I've heard just one NYC FMer here; that was WQHT 97.1. And going uphill here in most of the town, our local WMGH 105.5 can get blasted into some Poconos cave by downstate 105.7 WQXA in York.
I'm nowhere NEAR the FM DXer that so many of you are, but on a few nights, more than once during some tropo, I've caught all of Balt-DC's UHF stations (Letterman on channel 13 seemed so incongruous, lol).

AM: I realize that the thread is *FM*, of course, so this might be superfluous. But I find much the same -- if you will, 'favouritism' -- cx to the South on AM. WBAL Baltimore and WTOP 1500 Washington are daytime regulars, and there has been an assortment of that area's regional and daytime signals logged here .... Delaware, MD, Virginia, etc. Back when 1190 was Bay Country WANN in Annapolis, for example, they were atop that frequency. Those NYC stations with towers in the NJ Meadowlands are directional away from here, but those shoehorns outside of Balt-DC are directional as well.

I envy you folks who have been FM aficionados, by the way. That's where the music is. As someone once said of a defunct Oldies station on AM: 'Where all the good songs are gone'.
 
michael hagerty said:
Fairfield and Vallejo in Northern California are in between Sacramento and San Francisco---most of the full-market signals for both cities can be heard there.
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Yes and even Leslie Nielsen had a promo for KTXL Sacramento about their satellite truck in the 1980’s. That was a slogan that said “Beyond the Nut Tree” as a reference to Sacramento TV News vans at the time not picking up signals outside a certain range and that half of Solano County is designated in the San Francisco TV Market. I also remember another one whenever San Jose radio stations get advertised on Bay Area TV back in the 1990’s they used to have 98.5 KUFX-FM and 95.3 KRTY-FM both in San Jose get mentioned.

However in Solano County that gets blocked because 95.3 KUIC-FM Fairfield/Vacaville and 98.5 KRXQ-FM Sacramento because we are within the range of those two stations



Screenshot_20240827_083911_Drive~2_Original.jpeg
 
For AM, at night? Bar none, rural Alaska. My modest set up of a portable and a loop with tuner and amp have rivaled at times.. the bigger set ups guys on the east coast have
 
gr8oldies said:
I'm taking the question to mean a lot of stations for regular listening as opposed to DXing. Beavercreek, Ohio (east of Dayton), particularly before 80-90 and the slew of translators, made it possible to get most of Cincinnati and Columbus, plus sometimes Toledo, Detroit or Lexington would make it in. In Knoxville, TN no such luck in the valley but head up to Newfound Gap and you can get everything in TN, NC, SC, GA and tons of others.
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That triangle between Xenia, Washington Court House and Wilmington came to mind immediately. All the big Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati stations are easily listenable in all or some of that area, obviously the better the closer you are to any one of those cities.
@vw86, I bet the same applies to areas east of Cleveland where the Erie stations come in in addition to Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown.
 
SomeRadioGuy said:
For AM, at night? Bar none, rural Alaska. My modest set up of a portable and a loop with tuner and amp have rivaled at times.. the bigger set ups guys on the east coast have
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This is my best AM Catch from Alaska.

"..to the east and flood warning.." at 03 seconds
"high winds and wind warning for coastal waters" at 08 seconds
"..hobart......low of 15, top of 21..... abc radio hobart" at 20 seconds

7ZR 936khz Hobart, Tas, Aus Wed Mar 24, 2021 1406UTC 606AM AK Time.mp3

drive.google.com drive.google.com

10kw 2 tower DA at almost 8000 miles
 


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