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AM Frequency of the week: 1500

cyberdad

cyberdad

Big leap up the dial this week. All the way up to 1500. So, what are you hearing when you land there?

Here northwest of Chicago, not much of anything, actually. Days, it's a weak WPJX from Zion, IL on Lake Michigan just south of the Wisconsin border. 250 watts with a pattern that somewhat favors me. This, of course, assumes that WPJX is even broadcasting on any given day. Let's just say that they've been known for silent periods and frequent format format changes. That said, they seem to have stabilized recently with a Spanish format.

At night, WPJX goes down to 2 watts and disappears entirely at my location. Usually, if anything, 1500 is a weak KSTP. Sunset sometimes brings WFED.
 
At my location in the near north Chicago burbs I've heard the Zion station during the day, but quite weak. At night I'm in the null for both KSTP & WFED, but KSTP comes in most often although weak.
 
In Ottawa, it's blank but WFED is a regular nightime catch which sometimes can be heard with daytime skywave around the winter solstice. Sometime KSTP comes in too.
 
Warminster PA(Philly 'burbs):

Daytime: WGHT from North Jersey(faint and weak)
Night: WFED Washington DC(strong, formerly WTOP)
 
Daytime is the Dallas WDPC with a Christian format. At night, nothing stands out, some nights its WFED, but most nights its weak mix of others and some slop from WLAC on 1510.
 
If anything here in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, it's a weak WFED, but usually 1500 is nothing but jumble next to a usually strong WLAC.
Didn't realize how much of the Maryland suburbs WFED's nighttime null covers. I'll have to see how it sounds from Gaithersburg when I visit this summer.
 
1500 here is usually a strong WTOP (WFED) at night. Sometimes during critical hours as well during the winter. I miss when 1500 was all news for Washington. They also used to have Orioles games for many years before the Nationals came.
 
Nothing new to see here, folks.

High noon here (and evenings) it's a weak WFED. They don't send much signal this way. As WTOP they used to have a bit better signal. They'd be readable here even with the local (now-dark) WMBT 1530 a few hills away.

One sunset WGHT Pompton Lakes NJ came in here when it was still prretty much daylight. Great station.
When they were WKER, they seemed to have a quite-early sign off time. WKER had two towers back then, and as such had one of those borderline, casual nulls away from DC, not a real tight one. Perhaps 'critical hours' was the issue.
With three sticks now, WGHT still has that null away from DC
 
Of course, WJBK...WLQV is normally heard on 1500. After you got past their better than expected groundwave, you could hear WTOP...WFED and KSTP as Sunset passed from Washington to St. Paul. During Daytime Skywave in the Winter, you can hear WLQV over most of the Lower Peninsula with quite a strong signal most of the Day. Rarely does Daytime Skywave have an effect below WJR on 760, but all the new 50000 watt stations come in now. WCAR...WDFN is weaker due to only two towers and a cardioid pattern, and WISN interferes with it. The E layer is low enough Daytime so that WFED and KSTP don't interfere with WLQV much. WLQV has less fading because it has the three tower endfire pattern component. It simulates taller towers by limiting high angle skywave. All the rest are either broadside arrays or the pattern doesn't have a sharp null in the East and West Directions. These seem to fade more.
 
WFED is pretty strong here most nights. For daytime, I typically get nothing but I have logged WFIF out of Milford CT, a daytime only 5KW station about 100 miles away.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I thought you also received WAKE from "Valpo", radioman148.
Click to expand...

I've tried for WAKE a few times. Without success. Although the pattern doesn't favor me, I suspect WAKE probably sneaks into my home area (about 25 miles west of Radioman) once in a while. WPJX is easy to null and the first adjacents to 1500 don't present any significant issues.
 
Perhaps this is 90° off Cyberdad's OP theme -- he asked 'nowadays' -- hence; you can skip over utter nostalgia if you choose.

Found an old National Radio Club domestic logbook with some 1500 kHz DX catches from near JFK Airport in the 60's and 70's.

Ahem. Pipe, slippers, reading glasses and soup all prepared.

Going by the NRC's 'state' method of sequence, these are the dotted-off loggings. 1500 was pretty well placed for we DXers of NYC, being separated nicely from locals WHOM 1480 and WNJR 1430.

* WFIF Milford CT, 5000 W D-3. It took a null of WKER Pompton Lakes NJ to hear WFIF, which came on after WKER did.
* WTOP Washington DC. The nighttime regular
* WSEM Donaldsville GA. That was via a special test broadcast
* WDEN Macon GA. No other info available. I have no idea what time of day. Most likely a DX test.
* WPMB Vandalia IL. Unk time of day.
* WDEE Detroit. One night, WTOP was off and WDEE was still on.
* KSTP Minneapolis. They were weak, but they were there, many times when WTOP was off.
* WKER Pompton Lakes NJ. They were the daytime regular, even after WFIF from CT signed on some time later.
* WGMF Watkins Glen NY. This must've been a sunset catch.
* WGIC Xenia OH. Doubtless another SSS catch that showed up in between indifferent homework assignments.
* Poland on 1502. The logbook says 12-15-76. Poland would have been off a Lafayette HA-600a.

Now all you kids get off my lawn and leave my longwire antenna alone. You can get electrocuted.
 
Blush. Make that '1500 was separated nicely from WHOM 1480 and WFYI Long Island on 1520.

It's a good thing they have digital readouts on radios nowadays.
 
Inpressive stuff, Steve. If it's 90 degrees off, it's 90 degrees off of what 1500 is like where I live!
 
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