• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

1470 WWNN Pompano Beach FL Heard at JFK Airport

G

Gregg.

I was waiting to pick up a friend at JFK last night and had time to kill, so I parked near the airport, engine off, and hit the scan button on my car radio. I was surprised to hear 1470 WWNN Pompano Beach (near Fort Lauderdale) loud and clear. I heard their 11pm legal I.D. And remember, there's 5000 watt 1480 WZRC in New York.

This morning, I checked to find WWNN runs 50,000 watts by day but only 3000 watts by night. Hmmm. Did someone forget to power down at sunset? WWNN is probably automated, running motivational and financial infomercials, a terrific format. I suppose listening to WWNN makes you a Winner. Perhaps Charlie Sheen is a fan.

A couple of other surprises. 830 WCCO Minneapolis was also loud and clear, 1000+ miles away, despite 820 WNYC right next door. And Cuba's 790 Radio Reloj was fuzzy but audible as well. Kennedy Airport is about 25 miles from where most New York AM transmitters are located in the Jersey Meadowlands, making it easier to hear stations adjacent to New Your outlets. And JFK is on the south shore of Queens, so there isn't much land between where I was parked and the Atlantic Ocean.
 
Good catch - FL is not all so common anymore on the East Coast. Too much interference from other stations in the Northeast. However, WINZ 940 seemed to be common on the Global Tuners node in Nova Scotia. Now, AM is almost unusable, due to S-9+ noise from electronics. Anything above 49 meter band seems to be fine however.

-crainbebo
 
Very neat stuff, Gregg !
The SCAN BUTTON sensed this ?!?
Whereabouts were you loitering 'near the airport' for this DX? That airport is a big place in square mileage.

The general area around JFK was a great place to grow up and to be a DXer, too. Our family lived on both sides of it at one time or another in the Sixties.
For those not familiar with the area, JFK (formerly known as Idlewild) Airport is perched right at the lone spot of the Five Boroughs which sticks out east
just .... far .... enough
to provide water-path to the south.

If you go farther east out onto Long Island, of course, water-path conditions improve dramatically. But the swampy digs around JFK indeed are the boundary.

It took an Auroral-ish sunset -- a wild one -- to hear Pompano Beach 1470 near that spot, Gregg. At the time it was WRBD, an R&B station billing itself as 'Rockin' Big Daddy' radio. They were a 5000-watt daytimer then. I suspect you heard them on their, uh, 50,000 watt night signal, hi.

I mean, Holy Smoke -- your scan button stopped for it ?!?!?

Make/model/year of that car, Gregg ?
 
I was parked on Lefferts Blvd. near the Belt Parkway, waiting for the call that my friend was getting out of the terminal. 2005 Hyundai Elantra. The scan button is quite sensitive, stopping for local and distant stations coming through. Unfortunately, IBOC also stops it. So we go 700, stop, 710 WOR, stop, 720, stop. And it isn't because WLW or WGN are making it stop. It's spillover from WOR.
 
Nice catch Gregg! And the timing is so right because I'm heading to New Jersey tomorrow and I was wondering what other Florida AM stations I can get that I have never heard.

The old 690 WAPE Jacksonville was a good regular for a short time after sunset until they switched to their nighttime pattern.

Down near the shore riding in the car with my parents going up the Garden State Parkway around sunset in early 1975, I heard a brief but very listenable signal from the then 790 WFUN Miami. I still remember the song leading up to the station ID was 'Don't Call Us We'll Call You' by Sugarloaf.

Never heard it again back home near Philadelphia in spite of countless hours trying too.

Then in the late 80s on one of my visits, I heard WRBQ 1380 from St. Pete/Tampa in stereo on my Sony AM Stereo Walkman after sunset when they had not switched to their nighttime pattern. A nice signal too.

Oddly enough, that was a better signal 930 miles away than the usual nighttime signal I heard from them in NE Tampa near USF!
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom