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AM Frequency of the week: 1300

cyberdad

cyberdad

Far northwest suburban chicago....

Days: WRDZ with a fair signal. 4.5KW from a 5-tower site mostly aimed north from a site about 45 miles south-southeast of me. This station has a long history of mostly ethnic and specialty programming. The current call letters used to stand for "Radio Disney", but current programming is Polish Language. At one point in the early 70s, 1300 (as WTAQ), was home to the Chicago White Sox. I'm sure Radioman must have had loads of fun trying to snag a reliable signal from that rimshot in order to hear Harry Caray and his favorite baseball team.

Nights: WRDZ powers down slightly, tightens its pattern, and mostly disappears. It still occasionally makes it to the top, but WOOD is a little more common. WOOD is stronger around sunrise, and frequently trashes WRDZ for about an hour or so.
 
The daytime semi-local here is Hazleton PA's 1300. They signed on as WTHT, then had two other call changes, and are now WODS 'West' Hazleton.

https://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WODS&service=AM&h=D

R-Locator has their status somewhat in error. That daytime signal is not 'omni'. I'm thinking that they use two of their three towers in the day. That directional map signal from R-L is no omni pattern.
Then the station switches at SSS to all three towers, to pull it away from Baltimore at night, and to protect others as well. Hazleton indeed has three sticks, though, in an 'L' array.

Oddly, the most frequently heard 1300 station here at night has been that 1300 from Baltimore.

One fine SRS morning, WQBK from across the river from Albany NY came in very nicely.

* * * * * * *
Retro: A brand-new AM daytimer opened up in Rockland County NY -- WRRC Nanuet -- around 1966 or 1967. As a kid I heard them, faintly but steady in Queens NYC, via a wonderful 90° null of WAVZ New Haven. WRRC had the Pepper-Tanner jingle package 'Where It's Happening' (or was it 'The Happening Sound' ?). Wow -- you couldn't hear them on a car radio IN ROCKLAND COUNTY unless you were in their signal. WRRC's coverage was mostly NW, in the shape of one of those 'Go Fish' cards, protecting everything to the East, South, Southwest, Southeast, some to the North .... protecting everything but people on the Witness Protection Program.
WRRC is now WRCR, 1700.
 
In west Houston, daytime (at least in winter) I get a fair signal from KVET "The Zone" sports in Austin. At sunset, it's mostly KVET mixing with KAKC "The Buzz" sports in Tulsa. Later on, XEP in Ciudad Juarez is often on top.

KLLS over in the Beaumont TX area was an interesting oldies station for a few years (an homage to WLS, they ID'd as "double-L S"), but went dark at some point. Wikipedia says they're back on the air as KHTW with a Tejano format, but haven't heard them recently.

I remember QSLing WOOD at their sign-on one Monday morning back in the early 70s (DXing from Tulsa).
 
In the near north Chicago suburbs WRDZ with a fair/decent signal during the days. At night the signal is noisier and I can sometimes hear something underneath probably WOOD.

Retro: As Cyberdad pointed out in 1971-72 then WTAQ carried the White Sox games. At the very beginning it was a problem as several low powered AMs around the Chicago metro carried the Sox games and at that time you had to tune to a different station depending on where you were in the area. However, this problem was quickly solved in about a month as WEAW-FM transmitting from the Hancock building joined the Sox network. WEAW-FM covered the entire Chicago metro with a very good signal.
 
I remember when WTAQ had the White Sox. My relatives listened to it up near ORD, and complained that although it came in OK Days, it was really bad at Night. In fact, it was 5 kW Day and 0.5 kW Night from a four tower slight dogleg array a couple miles North of where it is now, next to the Tri State Tollway. In fact, you could see it from I-294, but it looked like they were in a line. It was the late Charles Gustafson, who was their engineer early on, who told me that it wasn't quite in a line. I see on the WOOD APP for 20 kW DA-1, that the 5 kW Night pattern limited WTAQ to 27 mV/m NIF.
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
I remember when WTAQ had the White Sox. My relatives listened to it up near ORD, and complained that although it came in OK Days, it was really bad at Night. In fact, it was 5 kW Day and 0.5 kW Night from a four tower slight dogleg array a couple miles North of where it is now, next to the Tri State Tollway. In fact, you could see it from I-294, but it looked like they were in a line. It was the late Charles Gustafson, who was their engineer early on, who told me that it wasn't quite in a line. I see on the WOOD APP for 20 kW DA-1, that the 5 kW Night pattern limited WTAQ to 27 mV/m NIF.
Click to expand...

WTAQ's signal at night was challenging. Even though WTAQ was the first station carrying the White Sox in 1971, many others did quickly. WJOL in Joliet, WVFV Dundee and I believe WJOB in NW Indiana. As previously stated the radio reception for Sox fans was quickly solved by WEAW-FM a city grade FM signal. Fortunately for me I had just put an FM in my car about a year before.
 
Chicago by the lakefront:

Where I am, WRDZ dominates day and night. One time I was able to ID WOOD near sunset at a location where there are buildings blocking the signal from WRDZ, but normally it's all WRDZ.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I'm surprised that WOOD comes in with the type of array it has now. It's a four tower endfire array with 20 kW DA-1 now. Perhaps they were on 5 kW nondirectional STA. The old Night array had very large minor lobes, and the old facility was 5 kW nondirectional Daytime.
Click to expand...

I'm rather surprised myself. It's a fairly recent development. I probably should've mentioned it in my OP. Historically, WOOD has been a moderately tough catch around here.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
This interference study is a total joke, as it is based on M-3. None of the interference overlap even existed in my estimation. Paging HGR1290 for his assessment. WLBY (I don't even remember it being WCAS.) Saline had a better signal with 500 watts than WHGR had with 5000 watts.
Click to expand...

The funny thing is that in the late 50's before WLS went Top 40 in 1960, my station for Top 40 in Omena (20 miles north by northeast of Traverse City) was WHGR. It was not a great signal, but it made do on days that did not have summer static; the other option was the now-gone WKNX 1210 in Saginaw.
 
East Tennessee: Knoxville/Sevierville.

Daytime: WMTN, Morristown, TN
Night: (fresh observations from the SDR between Knoxville and Oak Ridge
A mix of WLXG, ESPN from Lexington KY (dominating tonight) and WNQM, preaching that brokered fire 'n' brimstone out of Nashville.

Retro/other: Dayton, OH: Not a lot with WHIO next door. I have heard WNQM strong enough to splatter WHIO a county North just after sunrise. WOOD has made it occasionally. I've caught WNQM in the Lafayette IN area.
 
DavidEduardo said:
The funny thing is that in the late 50's before WLS went Top 40 in 1960, my station for Top 40 in Omena (20 miles north by northeast of Traverse City) was WHGR. It was not a great signal, but it made do on days that did not have summer static; the other option was the now-gone WKNX 1210 in Saginaw.
Click to expand...

The key to that is that the electronic noise level insde houses used to be much lower. And using a better antenna and a simple one transistor (modified Tom Kneitel one transistor tuned circuit preamp). In West Central Michigan in the late 1970s, I had such a setup. The antenna was coupled to the ferrite rod inside a Sony CF portable radio. Although they were close to 200 miles away, I regularly listened to WIND 560, WAIT 820, WLS 890, WCFL 1000. WOKY 920, and of course WTMJ 620 and all the Low frequency 50 kW stations for 250 or more miles around. I could even get WERK 990 Muncie, IN with 250 watts with 6 towers beamed North. They came in all day long. I listened to John Landecker's last few evening shifts, then his "Cool Change" shift to afternoons.

I could get scores of stations in the Daytime. I could get WTAC Big 600 on the edge of its major lobe. I could get WKNX 1210, best in the Winter, but still there in the Summer. I don't remember WHGR 1290, but I'm sure I could get it. I could get WOOD 1300, though WJBL 1260 came in better with it's favorable DA. Seems like I could get WJML 1110. The other West Michigan stations were barely there, especially those from Muskegon, even WTRU 1600 and WKJR 1520.

There was only one station with a signal above 0.5 mV/m, WBRN 1460. WMAQ 670 was the SECOND strongest ground wave in the area. Though probably on the order of 250 uV/m, as you drove West from my RL, it quickly increased to 1 mV/m range, and probably more, by the time you got to Lake Michigan.

I also could get the 690 and 1170 Wisconsin stations, though the call letters have switched around a few times. Oh, and of course WMAM 570 with 250 watts from Marinette, WI. I left the area about the time WTCM moved from 1400 to 580 with 2500 watts Daytime. WMAM has been all but forgotten since. I could also hear WCCW 1310 as I recall, and learned to "speak very fluent Spanish" from listening to David's show (just kidding, don't know much, but more all the time).
 
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Nice that you could hear WOKY in west central Michigan. I was located less than 70 miles from their towers and could rarely hear them. I sure tried, but it was mostly futile on any radio I used.
 
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: WRDZ with their Polish language programming from their 6-tower array in Alsip, IL visible from I-294.
Nightime: usually WRDZ

DX/RETRO: DX catches include KGLO (Mason City, IA), WERE (Cleveland, OH), WMVI (Mt. Vernon, OH), WPFR (Terre Haute, IN), WKXI Jackson (FL), and WOOD (Grand Rapids, MI).
 
radioman148 said:
Nice that you could hear WOKY in west central Michigan. I was located less than 70 miles from their towers and could rarely hear them. I sure tried, but it was mostly futile on any radio I used.
Click to expand...

There's a stretch around Grand Haven where WOKY is pretty much as listenable daytime as WLS on most radios. The WOKY pattern is favorable to the east, and the conductivity across Lake Michigan is much better than the adjacent terrain on the Michigan side.
 
cyberdad said:
There's a stretch around Grand Haven where WOKY is pretty much as listenable daytime as WLS on most radios. The WOKY pattern is favorable to the east, and the conductivity across Lake Michigan is much better than the adjacent terrain on the Michigan side.
Click to expand...

Yes, that east directional signal never helped me much. I really wanted to hear WOKY more often during the Top 40 era, but was only able to when I was north of the Illinois-Wisconsin border.
 
CADXER said:
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: WRDZ with their Polish language programming from their 6-tower array in Alsip, IL visible from I-294.
Nightime: usually WRDZ

DX/RETRO: DX catches include KGLO (Mason City, IA), WERE (Cleveland, OH), WMVI (Mt. Vernon, OH), WPFR (Terre Haute, IN), WKXI Jackson (FL), and WOOD (Grand Rapids, MI).
Click to expand...

I forgot about WERE which I heard a few times quite a few years ago.
 
CADXER said:
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: WRDZ with their Polish language programming from their 6-tower array in Alsip, IL visible from I-294.
Nightime: usually WRDZ

DX/RETRO: DX catches include KGLO (Mason City, IA), WERE (Cleveland, OH), WMVI (Mt. Vernon, OH), WPFR (Terre Haute, IN), WKXI Jackson (FL), and WOOD (Grand Rapids, MI).
Click to expand...

I think I've heard KGLO exactly once here at my location. On their non-directional 5kw day pattern before sunset. They're very directional at night. Still 5kw, and the result is that they're a monster in the Minnesota and Wisconsin north woods. I've tried for WERE from time to time, but never heard them here. But I did here them once in downstate Illinois....which really surprised me.
 
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