AM DXers : What was your last frequency to give an ID ?

[Steve Green NEPA]

Just for the fun of it, I'll try to cadge a bit of Cyberdad's 'retro' tolerances here.

See, in every neophyte DXer's life there was one stubborn, final frequency to cough up a station -- any station .... one final gap to complete the 107-piece jigsaw puzzle.
Back in southeast Queens NYC, the big void was 1060. We figured that the longer that this slow leak continued to torment us, the more our entire hobby, a socially questionable one on the first place, would deflate and prove valueless. As days and weeks went on, 1060 was becoming a wider gap than what was later to be the front teeth of Michael Strahan and David Letterman.

One night at our buddy's place, though, off his Folks' huge Pilot Hi-Fi console, we found some form of bandspread knob and managed to push aside our loud/local WHN 1050. And we got an ID from what was then WRCV Philadelphia. WRCV was a subdued middle-of-the-road station at the time.
If we drank at that age, we'd've popped open champagne.

What was your vindictive cork-popping frequency?

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Probably 540 before CBEF signed on. Back when there were few 540s that were on at Night in the US, I tried Night after Night to hear CBK. I kept imagining I was hearing songs being played in the static but there were none. Then until CBEF signed on, I did hear CBK quite regularly for a while.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Thought of some others I tried for a long time. 640. I got a better radio, and devised a makeshift tuned radio frequency antenna with the Caravelle, and finally tuned KFI Nights, and WHLO Days. 1200 was difficult too before I heard WOAI. 1340 was difficult because WTRX 1330 was three miles away, finally heard WEXL when they worked on the WTRX directional antenna in 1970. Right before everting was fixed, WILS, WTRX, and WEXL were all coming in at about the same signal level and I heard WEXL. WTRX might have been doing impedance bridge measurements on the DA with just an oscillator and modulation.

 

[gr8oldies]

I don't have a ready answer because I never kept track that way. If I modify the question slightly, I might be able to give you an answer of the last frequency I got something on that wasn't a dominating station

So....before I left my hometown, the last frequency I hadn't logged anything...besides Cuba....was 640, when I got KFI in the middle of the night.

Thought of some others I tried for a long time. 640. I got a better radio, and devised a makeshift tuned radio frequency antenna with the Caravelle, and finally tuned KFI Nights, and WHLO Days. 1200 was difficult too before I heard WOAI. 1340 was difficult because WTRX 1330 was three miles away, finally heard WEXL when they worked on the WTRX directional antenna in 1970. Right before everting was fixed, WILS, WTRX, and WEXL were all coming in at about the same signal level and I heard WEXL. WTRX might have been doing impedance bridge measurements on the DA with just an oscillator and modulation.

 

[Ai4i]

It would have to be an X-band station excluding 530 and above the "Lighthouse of the Caribbean" on 1610,
because these "new" frequencies were filled slowly at first.

 

[cyberdad]

Just for the fun of it, I'll try to cadge a bit of Cyberdad's 'retro' tolerances here.

No worries, Steve, good stuff. I love it!

Probably, for me the first frequency where it took a while to find "cough up" an identifiable signal was 640. Noise was an issue at my location on the lower end of the dial where I was in junior high school in the early 1960s, but finally one night a Dodgers baseball game broke through and I had KFI. WHLO came through one evening not long afterward. The radio was the same model as you see with my profile.

Also, similar to what others have posted here, 530 was next with CIAO, then later R. Enciclopedia. Finally, and most recently, was CHHA. I never heard the Caribbean beacon here, so when CHHA came on. So that was the first thing I ever heard on 1610.

 

[cyberdad]

Just for the fun of it, I'll try to cadge a bit of Cyberdad's 'retro' tolerances here.

No worries, Steve, good stuff. I love it!

Probably, for me the first frequency where it took a while to "cough up" an identifiable signal was 640. Noise was an issue at my location on the lower end of the dial where I was in junior high school in the early 1960s, but finally one night a Dodgers baseball game broke through and I had KFI. WHLO came through one evening not long afterward. The radio was the same model as you see with my profile.

Also, similar to what others have posted here, 530 was next with CIAO, then later R. Enciclopedia. Finally, and most recently, was CHHA. I never heard the Caribbean beacon here, so when CHHA came on. So that was the first thing I ever heard on 1610.

 

[gar hi]

With me, it was KFI too.

After spending most of the summer of 1977 in northern California and returning home to New Jersey, I would try night after night for some of the 50 kw California stations.

Little did I know back then from using the Radio and TV Station Guide book that certain stations like KCBS and KGO would be impossible because I didn't know their directional patterns.

But KFI was a non directional blowtorch every night where I was that summer up in Vacaville, so between that and there not being many stations in between LA and Jersey, I figured that would be my best shot.

All those nights for months of listening and I couldn't hear KFI on 640, nothing I could come close to getting an ID from anyway.

So one winter night in late 1977/early 1978 while listening on 640, I heard a very listenable signal where they were playing the song 'I Go Crazy' by Paul Davis.

At the end of the song were those long awaited words .... "64 KFI".

The signal was listenable for less than a few minutes and that was the first and only time I ever heard KFI in New Jersey.

It would be impossible now because of the local on 640.

And oddly enough, I now live the same distance from KFI as I did in New Jersey but here it's loud and clear every night.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Back in the late 1970s, I heard KFI several times on a Sony portable, barefoot, in Michigan. On one tape I made, they introduced "Back In Love Again" by LTD with the "Sixty-Four K-F-I" positioner. I called and talked to the late great Big Ron O'Brien one Night when I was listening.

The radio on "Gilligan's Island" seemed to be tuned to KFI sometimes, and it was always in the mid 600s. So Art was imitating Life in some sense.

I the 1960s, a lot of radios still in use had the CONELRAD markings. But the dials were usually off by 10 kHz or so at the low end of the dial, and you would have had to tune around a bit to be sure you were on 640.

 

[radioman148]

For me in the Chicago area it was KFI, in the late fall of 1962. I thought at the time I had achieved nirvana as far as MWDX was concerned. Fast forward many years later in the 80s & 90s I used to listen to KFI on my car radio driving to work in the late fall in the Chicago area. Also, KNX & KNBR, but that's another story.
Now with the number of stations on 640 I haven't heard KFI in years. KNX still breaks through occasionally.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Good thing you heard KNX for those Traffic and Weather Together on the 7s reports! I heard KNX (Traffic and Weather reports, of course, as identifiable as the ticks on Radio Reloj) before I heard KFI also, during the Rose Bowl lead up when U of M was in it when I heard KNX in the late 1960s (barely). It would indeed probably have been December 31, 1969 that I heard KNX for the first time, if it was the January 1, 1970 Rose Bowl appearance. Of course, U of M lost. I think jet lag and not being used to warmer temperatures is a factor though, but I'm not a huge fan anyway.

I thought the reports were on the 7s, didn't it used to be? Now it's on the 5s? That's what I'm reading. I guess it's been a while since I heard KNX!

 

[cyberdad]

(Apologies for the unintended duplicate posts earlier)

The last couple of times I heard KNX here in Northern Illinois, it was thanks to the distinctive "traffic and weather together" sounder. But on my last couple of trips to So-Cal, I didn't hear it, so I'm assuming they've discontinued it. ....Much to the chagrin of DX-ers everywhere, I'm sure!

 

[radioman148]

Here in Northern Illinois KNX used to come in best in the fall mornings pre-sunrise just before we resumed CST. While driving to work I heard it often in late October mornings in the 80s, 90s & even early 00s just before we turned back the clocks. It sometimes used to come in very well at that time on my car radio while driving to work. I could hear it sometimes for 15-20 minutes just before our local sunrise.
I didn't get it often late at night, but that news sounder really helped. Last time at night was about 4-5 years ago.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

When I got the RF-2200 in the early 1980s, KFI was almost a regular in the Winter, until all the new and increased facility 640s came on the air soon after. My father, who grew up in the early days of radio in the 1920s and 1930s, was really impressed, as having a radio that was able to tune KFI East of the Mississippi River was almost a status symbol back then. DXing was a mainstream hobby back then. My father and my uncle, who lived right down the street from the OLD WJJD tower in Des Plaines in later years, the one they used until circa 1963 after moving from Mooseheart, were always laughing and saying WJJD was in Mooseheart. Other stations they mentioned hearing were WJZ (WABC) and WPG Atlantic City, NJ. My mother even mentioned listening to WIND Gary, Indiana in SE Michigan. Just about everyone used to DX!

 

[KenoGuy]

KFI used to be fairly regular here in SE Wisconsin in the winter all through the 80s. (KNBR also was often pretty easy.) When the Oklahoma 640 started showing up at night (WWLS Norman OK at the time) KFI began to get tough to hear. I still heard it regularly on the Sony SRF-A100 Walkman (the "platform motion" of AM Stereo really separates signals well; it's the best way to DX graveyard channels).

By the way, the 640 in Grand Rapids has been off the air. Might be a window to hear KFI here in the Midwest again. If WMFN builds out their CP to move to the Chicago area (Peotone) we will likely never get KFI here again.

Oh, about the subject of the thread- my last frequency to be filled was on FM. 101.7 was still strictly a Class A and there was just nothing close. Finally one evening with moderate skip I pulled in a weak WIXN Dixon IL.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Any more information on WMFN? I read about a year ago that the four towers between Manteno and Peotone were up. I thought I heard them doing nondirectional proofs on the DA when I was in WI in December. I was even at the Kohl's in Kenosha doing some returns as a favor. Didn't have time to do much DXing, and I just saw the towers along where my travels took me. I probably saw the WLIP tower as it is right near there, but didn't know whose tower it was when I passed near it. IDed towers using FCCdata.org later. I was a little confused because I was driving, but I was surprised that the WSSP 1250 towers were much taller than the WOKY 920 towers.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Probably not my last, but certainly the most fun - and unexpected. I was a passenger with my wife driving on Hwy 121 through the mid cities in the DFW area one night, literally able to see the KLIF towers off to the left. I had KLIF on, thinking I might get a phase reversal or something when the towers lined up. Instead, I heard a complete dropout and clearly heard "WNAX". Then KLIF came rapidly back. I was astounded - one of those moments when I wondered what the heck just happened? One of the best-timed DX catches - EVER!

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

Hoping not to take my own thread TOO far off my own topic, hi, but I have to chime in with a 640 story or two. 640 seems to've rung the alert buzzer in more earphones than any other stubborn AM frequency.

It was the early 90's and I was packing up my Long Island stuff (from Amityville; no remarks, please) to move here to PA. My fiance, at the time, handicapped/homebound, had moved here with her family.

Off the trusty Lafayette HA-600 in Amityville, the last thing I heard was this odd station on 640, playing the Adult Standards. They were playing real old ones, too, real deep songs, unlike the pablum offered on the MOYL stations or the AM-Only pacifiers.

They IDed as WWJZ Mt. Holly NJ. VERY impressive midday signal. It was sort of goofy, hearing a loud 640 station between Newark's 620 and WFAN. But I got in the car (at the time a 1974 Nova) and left town, headed west.

WWJZ was along for the ride all the way from Amityville to Pottsville PA. What a signal! The only spot they were not audible was around the Cross Island Parkway -- at the Queens-Nassau border. WFAN blew away WWJZ for a mile or so.

* * * * * * *

In the 60's, there had been a carrier-current station on 640 from a Farmingdale L/I. college. The calls were something like WALI. But maybe 20 miles west of them, we DXers never heard them.
A station from Springfield Massachusetts signed on 640 around that time. So nowadays, 640 is no longer your father's or grandfather's 'last unheard'. WWJZ might be the first and onliest AM catch from New Jersey available to modern DXers.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Good thing you heard KNX for those Traffic and Weather Together on the 7s reports! I heard KNX (Traffic and Weather reports, of course, as identifiable as the ticks on Radio Reloj) before I heard KFI also, during the Rose Bowl lead up when U of M was in it when I heard KNX in the late 1960s (barely). It would indeed probably have been December 31, 1969 that I heard KNX for the first time, if it was the January 1, 1970 Rose Bowl appearance. Of course, U of M lost. I think jet lag and not being used to warmer temperatures is a factor though, but I'm not a huge fan anyway.

I thought the reports were on the 7s, didn't it used to be? Now it's on the 5s? That's what I'm reading. I guess it's been a while since I heard KNX!

They were certainly useful for us - saved a job in the weirdest possible way. My daughter had to be on set for a TV show in the afternoon, and we were flying out of Dallas very early that morning. On a last visit to the bathroom, I snapped on the radio and DX'ed KNX by nulling KRLD. They were talking about a fatality wreck closing down a major freeway, one we would be using on our arrival. I finished up, we got in the car, went to the airport, and fly to Los Angeles. Upon arrival, we rented the car and began the drive to the set in the far North of the metro area. I remembered the KNX traffic report, and out of an abundance of caution went a different way. Once I had committed to the entrance ramp, KNX came on with its traffic report. Hours later - the other freeway was STILL shut down from the fatal accident! So a traffic report DX'ed in Dallas from KNX saved us from being tied up in LA traffic - and saved my daughter's part on the show! There is no late to a call time or audition. If you aren't there, you don't get the part.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

WWJ 950 (also CBS owned) Traffic and Weather more than once saved us from a long traffic jam and back up on I-75 between Bay City and West Branch. Their 50 kW directional signal, from 6 towers, beamed within 5 degrees or so from straight North, comes in clearly to West Branch and somewhat beyond in the Daytime, and is in their groundwave skywave interferernce zone at Night. As a result, I have also come up with alternate routes to use during those traffic jams. They seem to be widening I-75 beyond 2 lanes each way, but I don't know when that will be completed.