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AM Frequency of the week: 1030

cyberdad

cyberdad

Far northwestern suburbs of Chicago....

DAYS: 1030 is a local. WNVR, 10KW directional toward Chicago. And about three miles from my house. Suffice to say it's a monster at my location, bleeding all over the adjacent frequencies. They used to have a CP for 27KW, which apparently was never built.

NIGHTS: WNVR turns into a pumpkin with 120 watts in a north-south kidney-shaped pattern. Main null towards Boston (of course). Signal is still strong, but "nullable", which typically produces WBZ. At my oldest son's house, 12 miles east-east northeast of me, WBZ easily blows out what's left of WNVR. WNVR is an ethnic station broadcasting exclusively in Polish. Format is pop music. Their nighttime operation has been notoriously sporadic. They have a history of being off at night more often than on, but lately it's been mostly "on"

RETRO: Before WNVR came on, KCTA used to be an occasional sunrise visitor.
 
Gotta weigh in on this freq... When I was a little kid in Napa, CA, I had bought an old tube Magnavox radio at a garage sale, and when I was up past my bedtime, dialing around, I stumbled across KTWO, Casper Wyoming. This was freaking magic! How was this even possible? The DX bug bit me hard after that, and probably is what led to my career as a radio broadcast engineer.

Dave


cyberdad said:
Far northwestern suburbs of Chicago....

DAYS: 1030 is a local. WNVR, 10KW directional toward Chicago. And about three miles from my house. Suffice to say it's a monster at my location, bleeding all over the adjacent frequencies. They used to have a CP for 27KW, which apparently was never built.

NIGHTS: WNVR turns into a pumpkin with 120 watts in a north-south kidney-shaped pattern. Main null towards Boston (of course). Signal is still strong, but "nullable", which typically produces WBZ. At my oldest son's house, 12 miles east-east northeast of me, WBZ easily blows out what's left of WNVR. WNVR is an ethnic station broadcasting exclusively in Polish. Format is pop music. Their nighttime operation has been notoriously sporadic. They have a history of being off at night more often than on, but lately it's been mostly "on"

RETRO: Before WNVR came on, KCTA used to be an occasional sunrise visitor.
Click to expand...
 
In the near north Chicago suburbs during the day it's all WNVR with a very good signal. At night all WBZ which still has a very good night signal at my location.

Retro/other: In the 60s WBZ was a regular night time listen for me. Great signal and Top 40 with "Juicy Brucie Bradley" playing the hits. On a few trips to the west coast in the 60s to visit relatives, WBZ could be heard sometimes very late at night.
I also heard KCTA before local sunrise in the winter.
 
radioman148 said:
Retro/other: In the 60s WBZ was a regular night time listen for me. Great signal and Top 40 with "Juicy Brucie Bradley" playing the hits.
Click to expand...

Same here!

W-(snap)-BZ. Radio-(snap)-103

And @jammerdave, Listening to Bruce Bradley followed by Dick Summer on the 1030 freq, also had a lot to do with me getting into DXing. WBZ also provided me with my first QSL card, which pretty much "sealed the deal" for me.
 
Midday here, 1030 holds nothing. The frequency is there -- you can hear the difference in the 'swoosh' when you tune -- but nothing comes in.

One sunset, though, still with the sun out, I got WNTL. They're from near Washington DC. They're now 'Spanish Christian', according to Radio-Locator. I guess 'Spanish Christian' is different from me -- 'French Christian' and 'Irish Christian', hi.
https://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WWGB&service=AM&status=L&hours=D

Nighttimes it's WBZ, of course. I once heard WBZ one near-sunset on the car radio, louder than KYW 1060. It was screwy, because I was driving north on 'The Boulevard' -- Route 1, in Northeast Philadelphia at the time.
 
East Tennessee: Daytime: Nothing
Toward sunset, WNVR has been known to dominate
Night WBZ, occasional KCTA.
Retro: I've recieved WBZ at high noon on an occasional winter day in Dayton, Ohio

 
gr8oldies said:

Retro: I've recieved WBZ at high noon on an occasional winter day in Dayton, Ohio

Click to expand...

I've had a whole bunch of catches like that one over the years -- probably most often in winter, it would figure. I don't remember many of them because I haven't written them down, probably because I was surprised (i.e. doing something else like driving around, not "DX-ing"). Anyway, I am pretty sure that WBZ was one of those mid-day catches. KYW also. I wish I could remember others.

Anyway, 1030 is blank for me during the daytime. WHO on 1040 is a near-local for me anyway.

Nighttime, WBZ is usually there. Not as consistently as years ago, however. I have heard KCTA on occasion. Never once heard KTWO that I know of. In fact, I've not often heard KTWO, including travel all over the western US in places I would have expected it to come in strong.
 
1030 AM daytime in Charleston is WONQ Spanish from Oviedo, FL (just outside of Orlando). It is hugely directional during the day, 45kw, protecting 1040 in Tampa. I can hear it though almost every day. Right before sunset I’ve heard WWGB from the DC area.

At night, it is WBZ. WBZ is usually weaker than the other New York clears. A couple hundred miles makes a difference.
 
Houston daytime - KCTA Corpus Christi. Monster signal that extends to Midland, TX in the West and Baton Rouge, LA in the East. I never could get it daytime in Dallas, though. Nighttime used to be dominated by WBZ, which was a much easier catch than any NYC station. Then KTWO signed on, but you could still null KTWO for fantastic reception of WBZ. Not a trace of WBZ, however, after they implemented HD. Makes me think nobody can hear them in buildings in Boston.
 
When I was in Costa Rica in March, WBZ was in strongly every evening after my local sunset. It was one of the strongest US signals.
 
1030 KCTA is one of my early remembered catches as an 8 year old in Iowa. WHO on 1040 was almost like a local 65 miles away, but not strong enough to block KCTA one winter morning.

Today, daytime is 15 kW of massive monkey chatter from hip-hop 1040 KCBR in Colorado Springs, just 3 miles away. Nights, generally KTWO, with KBUF Holcomb KS sometimes mixing underneath.
 
From my Ohio and Indiana days, I forgot about the short-lived WBNN, Union City, Indiana/Ohio (the town straddles the two states). It had something like 180 watts but could be heard in Dayton and I remember getting it in Lafayette IN. WBNN went by the wayside after the WNVR people paid them to go off so WNVR could expand power and pattern.
 
Does the directional cardiod pattern of WBZ away from the ocean really make their signal go any further west via skywave?

Or was this done more for the groundwave?
 
The WBZ signal was always stronger in the Midwest via sky wave than any other east coast station. These days with all the added noise I’m not sure if that’s still true. Back in the 60s I heard WBZ on the west coast fairly well. Their sky wave really got out to the west from Boston.
 
Can't speak for much further into the Midwest, but WBZ is always the strongest East Coast skywave here in central Ohio, and generally the first to come in considering that it's dark considerably earlier in Boston than here.
 
schmave said:
Can't speak for much further into the Midwest, but WBZ is always the strongest East Coast skywave here in central Ohio, and generally the first to come in considering that it's dark considerably earlier in Boston than here.
Click to expand...

All things considered, WBZ's nighttime signal is still in pretty good shape by the time it reaches the Chicago area. It's far from the best skywave here, but even with WNVR as a pest on the channel, it's still one of the strongest, if not THE strongest from the east coast. "Back in the day" before WNVR came on, WBZ was very listenable in these parts, and more than held its own with KDKA and WHO on either side of it.
 
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