On my trip to Pentwater, Mi, (80 miles northwest of Grand Rapids) I recall on my little clock radio being able to hear WMVP (Espn Radio 1000) fairly clearly. On a Bose Radio I observed pucking up WJR Detroit, KYW Philly and a shocker in my opinion WCCO 830 out of the twin cities which I thought was odd cause it wasnt near a lake to skip. WBBM 780, WGN 720 And WSCR 670 were all pretty poor on the BOSE Radio and the clock radio with WMVP Beating all the siginals in terms of listernability...Thoughts?
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"AM"azing AM signals
- Thread starter amfmsw
- Start date
Back in 1975, I was driving near Denver, CO, and listening to a station on 1060 in Longmont, CO. It was I think, KLMO at the time. Anyway, it was a daytimer, and after the sign-off, KYW from Philly boomed in loud and clear(relatively speaking)..just north of Denver, CO. Being from Philadelphia, it was kind of a shock to hear that!
I will be heading to my condo in Faifield Glade, Tn (100 miles east of Nashville) and while there regularly listen to WSCR, WMVP, WGN, & WBBM in the evenings. Many nights I head to the car to listen to a few innings of a Sox game. I also do have XM in the car, but if the Sox are on the road I'd rather listen to the AM WSCR feed the the road team's feed on XM. Am there often in football season & have to listen to Bears games a few times as well.
WCAZ....
Indeed an impressive 1kw signal. In my Iowa college days in the late '60s, it was the pest that splattered over WCFL. Even though the 'CAZ stick was over 60 miles from where I was. Of course, in the afternoons you could just tune over to WCAZ's top 40 show. One such afternoon, the deejay introduced one of the tunes as "here's one from Mister Jefferson Airplane".
Indeed an impressive 1kw signal. In my Iowa college days in the late '60s, it was the pest that splattered over WCFL. Even though the 'CAZ stick was over 60 miles from where I was. Of course, in the afternoons you could just tune over to WCAZ's top 40 show. One such afternoon, the deejay introduced one of the tunes as "here's one from Mister Jefferson Airplane".
Hi. I'm from L.A. and was able to pick up 89 WLS on a Friday night in the summer of 1979 (In Westchester, near LAX is where I grew up) and I will never forget hearing "Tom Sawyer" from Rush on WLS with all that light crackling noise coming from my GE Super Radio. The signal was coming in good, other than the light crackling noise. I stayed away from KFI that night as in '79 they had a frickin' great top 40 presentation (and KHJ too) 
Joe
JoeI think the remarkable groundwave capacity of that fine Illinois soil is the real star of this thread.
Effingham, IL, surrounded by such soil, may take the cake as the spot for daytime AM listening.
Daytime catches (strong enough to survive a summer thunderstorm) include WSM, WSCR, WLW, WGN, WBBM, WLS, ESPN 1000, WHAS and KMOX. You could probably tug in a weak signal from WHO if you tried. Where else in the country (not located next to an ocean) could you hear so many clears when the sun is high?
Effingham, IL, surrounded by such soil, may take the cake as the spot for daytime AM listening.
Daytime catches (strong enough to survive a summer thunderstorm) include WSM, WSCR, WLW, WGN, WBBM, WLS, ESPN 1000, WHAS and KMOX. You could probably tug in a weak signal from WHO if you tried. Where else in the country (not located next to an ocean) could you hear so many clears when the sun is high?
Just amazing that folks a re-discovering AM skip. I was fortunate to work for KOMA in the late 60's. In those days, KOMA protected the night-time signal of WKBW in Buffalo. KOMA's directional signal to the west and north gave it tremendous strength in town and cities where no rocker existed. We would get requests from all over the place. Given that KOMA was in a medium sized market (Oklahoma City), ads were hard to come by late at night and so we ran PI's (Per inquiry) and shared the revenue. It made up significant portion of the stations cash flow at the time.
Ah yes, those amazing AM's.
Bruce
Ah yes, those amazing AM's.
Bruce
Despite KOMA's null to the NE, it was a regular catch and was often strong in Chicago back in the 80's. I seldom hear it now.b344077 said:
Another daytime big signal is WKZO Kalamazoo, Michaigan on 590. It's almost as strong as 600 WMT in Chicago.
There's good conductivity in the whole midwest, not just illinois.
Effingham! One of the places where you can hear Chicago AMs in daytime, but at night it's in the cancellation zone....almost cancelled out many nights.
Actually, the protection pattern was almost due east. It was so tight that the east side of OKC would have difficulty at night.
Tood Storz Broadcasting was fined the max for going non-directional at midnight rather than sunrise back in the late sixties. The license read: directional from sunset until morning and so....
Tood Storz Broadcasting was fined the max for going non-directional at midnight rather than sunrise back in the late sixties. The license read: directional from sunset until morning and so....
WCAZ is quite an amazing signal - I can pretty routinely pick it up in the suburbs of St. Louis...A couple of stations around me that really throw out a signal are KWRE 1kW ND at 730 KHz in Warrenton, MO, which I have heard clearly well into Iowa and Arkansas during the day; even at night when the station throttles down to 120 watts, it is still pretty well audible a good 50 miles away most nights. And Cardinals Flagship 550 KTRS 5kW Non Directional Days (directional at night) has an amazing daytime signal, and comes in clearly to just outside Chicago before WIND starts to interfere with it, and it can be heard into Iowa, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Indiana, and Tennessee as well throughout the day...
cyberdad said:
mbatchelor said:
KWRE is another good signal--during the day very reliable and clear in the Quincy area. By the time you reach areas as Macomb, IL or Springfield, on a good car radio you could still get a very listenable AM 730 signal, but starts getting splattered by WGN, but can still be barely perceptible up to about the Peoria or Galesburg areas.
For the poster who talked about the excellent AM reception around Effingham--how did the signals for WCAZ and KWRE fare in the "Crossroads of America?"
F
foreverchanges1975
Guest
cyberdad said:
I've heard an interview somewhere where Jackson Armstrong recalls the story of his engineer getting calls that they were being picked up in Cleveland. Someone in Cleveland called played the signal from WKBW over the phone. Jackson listened to it, and realized that what was being recieved in Cleveland was a second and a half behind what Jackson was playing in the studio. So the signal was going all around the world! Maybe that happened with KOMA sometimes as well.
M
MsMusicRadio
Guest
Getting WPOP and WING underneath KQV. WBAP from Ft.Worth just once. WJJD in early evening. WVOK from Alabama. I was in Pittsburgh
L
ListeningUP
Guest
I believe it did with KOMA!
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