550 AM reception

[IM42A]

WAYR Jacksonville FL reaches Myrtle Beach. It is 5000 watts. That's just outside the blue circle for WAME.

Those contours kind of remind me of WOKV-690, formerly WAPE. I always got an excellent signal on them in Myrtle Beach.

Wonder why these stations want to send their signal so far up the coast, and most of all, so far out to sea? Who's listening out there?

 

[fybush]

Those contours kind of remind me of WOKV-690, formerly WAPE. I always got an excellent signal on them in Myrtle Beach.

Wonder why these stations want to send their signal so far up the coast, and most of all, so far out to sea? Who's listening out there?

Common misconception.

It's not that coastal stations "want" to send their signals up the coast or out to sea. It's simply what happens when a MW signal hits the phenomenal surface conductivity of saltwater. WOKV sends out a non-directional signal by day. It just goes much, much farther at the coast than over the sandy, non-conductive soil of North Florida.

Go even a couple of miles inland from Myrtle Beach and WOKV fades away very quickly.

Same thing with "out to sea " The only piece that matters is how much population is on land between the transmitter site and where the conductivity of saltwater grabs the signal and gives it that extra (but useless) reach. Focus on the land and ignore the saltwater.

 

[schmave]

Back in the late 70s/early 80s when WKRC was an adult contemporary station with a lot of oldies with some talk, I regularly listened in the Celina/St. Marys area, even to the 1kW night signal.

Oh yeah. I know I've mentioned to you before that I've heard WKRC very loud in St. Marys at night. That's been 30 years ago now and I haven't spent the night in that area in almost 10 years, but I can't imagine it's changed all that much.

 

[Gregg.]

We should note that WGR is the older station, 1922 vs. 1924 for WKRC. And WGR is 5,000 watts day and night. WKRC is 5,000 watts days and 1,000 watts nights.

Both use a four-tower array at night. WGR is non-directional by day.

 

[Gregg.]

Common misconception.

It's not that coastal stations "want" to send their signals up the coast or out to sea. It's simply what happens when a MW signal hits the phenomenal surface conductivity of saltwater. WOKV sends out a non-directional signal by day. It just goes much, much farther at the coast than over the sandy, non-conductive soil of North Florida.

Go even a couple of miles inland from Myrtle Beach and WOKV fades away very quickly.

Same thing with "out to sea " The only piece that matters is how much population is on land between the transmitter site and where the conductivity of saltwater grabs the signal and gives it that extra (but useless) reach. Focus on the land and ignore the saltwater.

When I was on vacation in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a few years ago, it was amazing how well AM stations from Boston traveled there. Halifax is about 350 miles from Boston, almost all of it across salt water. The AM dial is nearly empty now in the Maritime Provinces and totally silent in Halifax, so there was no local station stopping anything from the U.S. from getting through.

1030 WBZ was easy to hear, almost all day every day. Even unremarkable stations in the Boston area would pop up. I remember 1600 WUNR was fairly regular. That's 20,000 watts but up at the top of the dial. For a few hours at dawn and dusk, Portland Maine stations came in, along with 570, 660, 770, 880 and 1130 from NYC.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

@Gregg.
Slightly O/T here (560)
A DXing buddy of mine from 4th grade in Queens now lives in Boston and has a 'summer' place on Cape he and his wife stay a lot. A while back a blackout greeted their arrival on the Cape. Naturally, he had brought along his RX-whatever, and was shocked almost back to the womb by how quiet the dial was.
Well, maybe back to 1963.
One way the Radio Shack-job portable got WGAN 560 from Maine. 90 degrees swerve and there was WHYN Springfield Mass. With something underneath it (possibly WFIL).

Back in the mid-70s another pal and his constant companion portable -- he even brought his wife, too -- was on Cape Hatteras, with both WBZ and the Big Ape 690 Jacksonville coming in at noon.

Nearest I ever got to a day of any trenchant water-path DX was on a beach in Atlantic City. Via a free gambling-bus trip, I was given a roll of quarters, walked straight through some casino out to the beach, bought a sloppy sub, napped and DXed. Three Long Island stations I'd worked were as clear as day.
Long Island's South Shore, as you might expect, was excellent. A loud daytime visitor was WBOF 1550 Virginia Beach. And a regular until others came on the air was WOBR 1530 from the Outer Banx NC.
Closest things to water-path here in Coal Country now are millions of melted ice cubes, a reservoir, and the snowpack.

 

[fybush]

We should note that WGR is the older station, 1922 vs. 1924 for WKRC. And WGR is 5,000 watts day and night. WKRC is 5,000 watts days and 1,000 watts nights.

Both use a four-tower array at night. WGR is non-directional by day.

True - however, there were some dial shuffles over the years in Buffalo that shifted stations around. The 550 frequency originally belonged to a station called WMAK, which evolved into today's WBEN. WGR had been on 900 before swapping spots with WMAK, and the 900 frequency shifted to 930 in 1941 with NARBA.

 

[icybluelake]

Please.... these are not coverage maps. They are intended to show things like protection requirements and directional "proportions".

In my experience, they're remarkably good guides for what to expect from nighttime coverage. I'm frequently surprised at how predictive they versus what I receive at night.

 

[IM42A]

Go even a couple of miles inland from Myrtle Beach and WOKV fades away very quickly.

Very true. You have to be right along the coast to get it clearly. Drive inland on US 501 or the SC 22, and it vanishes. As a youngster I always wondered "why are we getting a Jacksonville station?".

I have also gotten WCBS-880 reliably when right along the coastline there.

On the island of St Martin (French/Dutch West Indies) at night, the AM band is so crowded that you can't make heads or tails of what is coming in. I was able to get WKAQ-580 from San Juan PR clearly during the day.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

In my 60-year thrash through the QRN, barking dogs and sirens from the Queens days until now I've found use for any and all forms of intelligently crafted coverage map sources.
The first source was the National Radio Club's wide 970's (?) nighttime AM pattern book.**
A friend soon ran off several dozen CRTC (Canadian) nighttime pages for me. They were almost identical to the NRC hand-drawn patterns and even had many daytime coverages depicted, in dotted lines.
Copies of a few regional engineering-firm maps from stations' documentation of their lone signal got added, and those of stations seeking a power increase ..... existing signal overlap with the X-shading of proposed interference to adjacents.
Lo and behold came the internet, first with the entertaining Radio-Locator maps. They were the first ones I saw with any thought given to water-path.
nf8m's fine site soon followed. Bill Scott's craft has separate night and day, of course.
For exactitude, I seem to find the FCCInfo Search to be the most explicit. There's no geography on them ... no cities or markets or harbours .... but the directional ones are vivid. There aren't any omni patterns depicted because they'd just be circles on a blank compass.

Heck -- I use ALL of them. They're all the same, basically. To me, anyway.

** If you want a good boff, open that old NRC book to the 1480 page and try to calculate which stations DXers hear in Bermuda at night.