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AM frequency of the week 1550 KHZ

I

Icangelp

An interesting frequency in that there are lots of possibilities for sunrise & sunset DX thanks to a large number of high power daytime signals.

SW Ohio

Day
Nothing

Night
WCVL Crawfordsville IN
WIRV Irvine KY - I'm assuming they were on day power. It was 9:28 PM in August, so could have been sunset skip.

Sunrise/SunsetWDLR Delaware OH Sunset
WBFJ Winston-Salem NC Sunset
WLOR Huntsville AL Sunrise
WIGN Bristol TN Sunset - The most reliable sunset visitor
WDLR Delaware OH Sunset - At one point back in Aug of '09, was there all night
KESJ St. Joseph MO Sunset - I remember them as KKJO
WKBA Vinton VA Sunset - Presumed, not confirmed by I.D.
 
40 miles NW of Chicago (Crystal Lake, IL area)

Day
WZRK Lake Geneva, WI
WCSJ Morris, IL
WHIT (formerly WTUX) Madison. WI

Night
CBE Windsor, ON (but not for long, going to FM-only)
WDLR Delaware, OH
KAPE Cape Girardeau, MO
KESJ (formerly KKJO) St. Joseph, MO

Sunrise/Sunset
WLOR (formerly WAAY) Huntsville, AL Sunset
WKBA Vinton, VA Sunset
WJIL Jacksonville, IL Sunset
WSHN Fremont, MI Sunset

 
Durham, NC

Daytime is a very weak WCLY in Raleigh (only 23 miles away eith 1,000-watt days and 7-watt nights), though there's interference from other 1550s both day and night.

I can't recall any of my nighttime catches on that channel.
 
Daytime here in suburban Rochester NY is semi-local WCGR Canandaigua NY (250 watt daytimer 20 miles out) when it's not a mixing product between locals WHIC 1460/WXXI 1370. At night, it's CBE...at least for now, but not much longer.
 
Daytime, I have local XEBG about 17.5 miles south of me. They run 1 kW, so aren't exactly a blowtorch-level signal - 50kW 1070 KNX, 111 miles distant, usually has a stronger signal.

Sunrise/Sunset - I get a fairly good signal from 50kW ND-D KUAZ Tuscon, AZ, often overpowering XEBG.

Nighttime, I'm sure there are other stations on 1550 that I would hear, I just haven't ID'd them.
 
Manassas, VA

Daytime, I get a fairly weak WMRE sports talker from Charles Town, WV.
At sunset, I have logged in WKBA from Vinton, Va about 200 miles away.
At night it's a jumbled mess. I once heard WIGN from Bristol on the TN/VA border about 270 miles away at only 6 watts.
 
stormy01 said:
40 miles NW of Chicago (Crystal Lake, IL area)

Day
WZRK Lake Geneva, WI
WCSJ Morris, IL
WHIT (formerly WTUX) Madison. WI

Night
CBE Windsor, ON (but not for long, going to FM-only)
WDLR Delaware, OH
KAPE Cape Girardeau, MO
KESJ (formerly KKJO) St. Joseph, MO

Sunrise/Sunset
WLOR (formerly WAAY) Huntsville, AL Sunset
WKBA Vinton, VA Sunset
WJIL Jacksonville, IL Sunset
WSHN Fremont, MI Sunset
Click to expand...

I'm only a few miles away from Stormy, so my experience on 1550 is pretty similar. I'd only add that for me, WZRK is typically on top during the day....with WCSJ and WTUX well in the background (if audible at all). At night it's usually a mess, but more often than not CBE has been on top. They're not exactly dominant, so when they go, it's not as if any other station is likely to start owning the channel.
 
From Lexington, KY:

Daytime:

WIRV - Irvine, KY

Nighttime:

CBE - Windsor, ON
KQJD - Fargo, ND
WDLR - Delaware, OH (I suspect on day power....)
WBSC - Bennettsville, SC
WIRV - Irvine, KY (presume on day power....)
WHIT - Madison, WI

Sunrise/Sunset

WLOR - Huntsville, AL
WAXZ - Smyna, GA
WKBA - Vinton, VA
WIGN - Bristol, TN
 
Boise Idaho

Daytime: Nada

Sunrise/Sunset
KUAZ TUCSON AZ
KFRC SAN FRANCISCO CA
KXTO RENO NV
KMRI WEST VALLEY CITY UT
KRPI FERNDALE WA
KKOV VANCOUVER WA
KWRN APPLE VALLEY CA
KXEX FRESNO CA
KIVA ALBUQUERQUE NM

Nighttime:
KFRC SAN FRANCISCO CA
KXEX FRESNO CA
KWRN APPLE VALLEY CA
KKOV VAN VANCOUVER WA
Lately it sounds like a graveyard channel.
Lots of stations running day power/pattern?
 
Day/night: KKAD, the local Music of Your Li...........

-------- Beginning of rant --------

What? They're not running that any more? Oh that's right, as of a week ago it's mutated into KKOV, the so-called "Voice of Vancouver". Yet another political talker run by the same genius/prat (take your pick) who runs more of the same neo-conservative garbage on 860, and in the same transmitter yard yet.

They really missed the boat on this one. Vancouver's becoming an increasingly liberal city (though hopefully, not in my lifetime anyways, it won't become a big hippie commune like that gigantic hive to the south has become over the years) and another station of nationlly-syndicated conservative but is certainly *not* representative of the "voice of Vancouver".

The nostalgia format worked because it was a distraction from the polarisation and lunacy of the nation's current political climate. Taking it off and replacing it with more polarisation and lunacy will only (hopefully!) hurt Pamplin in the long run, and I really hope their current effort blows up in their faces.

Hopefully someone will pick up a nostalgia format here again. The several people I informed two weeks ago of the change ranged in attitude from mildly disappointed to shouting bloody murder over the phone. This is 10 kilohertz that once served a useful purpose but is now merely another waste of amplitude-modulated electrical noise. As if there wasn't enough of that already in the Greater Vancouver Area.

-------- End of rant --------
 
I don't disagree with you, but I respectfully submit that if what was on KKAD was working, they wouldn't have flipped!

I'm not aware of any MOYL or similar format that's actually doing "well". At best there may be a few that are "holding their own"....keeping the bills paid and not much more. I think what's more common is the format shows up on an AM station owned by a group broadcaster that doesn't know what else to do with a (usually inferior) signal until they can unload it to a religious or ethnic broadcaster.

The best and most successful execution of the genre that I can think of is CFZM in Toronto. Basically they exist because they were the successful applicant for a monster signal when the CBC abandoned it for FM. The CRTC determined that the format being proposed by the winning applicant would serve the 50+ demographic....deemed to be the largest under-served slice of the population.

In other words a government-mandated format. Ironically, the type of thing that makes wingnuts on the right apoplectic.

Like it or not, political extremism...whether on the right or left....breeds controversy. Controversy, outrageousness, etc. often begets ratings. Perhaps Pamplin figures they can use 1550 to be more shrill than other places on the dial and build a following. Personallly, I think they may be delusional and I may disagree, but if that's the case I understand what their reasoning is.

Or it may simply be that the syndicated talkers reflect the political feelings of management, and they've got a losing proposition they may as well advance their own point of view. Who knows.

Apologies for the veer off topic.
 
If what you mean by "shrill" in in regard to the station's processing, yeah. It sounds awful even in "wide" mode on my Super-Radio III!

But it certainly wasn't unpopular. You walk down the halls of just about any nursing home or retirement home in Vancouver and that's pretty much all you hear playing. Now there's nothing like that on the air in the GVA, the closest thing you'd come to it is a new "easy listening" format (if you can honestly call it that!) on KKRZ's secondary Ibiquity stream, but I don't know many senior citizens, around here at least, who have IBAC receivers. Well, those senior citizens who aren't radio junkies/HAM operators/DXers etc. anyways.

[size=8pt]Someone (not me) on the Portland Radio Board opined that now would be a good time for Entercom, or somebody else, to pick up the nostalgia format and put it back on 910. That they have the right call letters (KKSN, which they had used from the mid-80s until about the early 2000s) and that its current format (the simulcast of that "Northwest Bands" crap off of KNRK's secondary) is a lost cause.

Which, really, it is. There's not that much good material coming out of the Northwest these days, certainly not enough to build a half-way decent radio format from, but that's another topic entirely.
 
In my area, there are at least six FM stations delivering NPR/PRI type programming which is four, no, five more than needed.

Probably the same in Vancouver. Why not redirect your music for your life efforts to one of them? After all, they are public service stations, and the nursing home audience is being underserved.
 
Nothing, I mean nothing at all during the day here in East Texas. There was a time many years ago when 10kW KOKA in Shreveport was there, albeit with a weak signal. Now the closest possibility is KWBC Navasota, which is trying to move into nearby Bryan/College Station, but I can't detect any signal from them at all. Maybe if they get their upgrade (from 250 to 1,500 watts) they'll be audible here.

Nighttime on 1550 generally belongs to XENU Nuevo Laredo, positioned for a favorable skywave signal, but the other night when I checked I caught an unlikely suspect. WPFC from Baton Rouge was booming in but maybe shouldn't have been, since their nighttime power level is just 42 watts.
 
Near/fringe downtown St. Petersburg,FL1550 is Spanish language WAMA with antenna just east of Tampa;during the day (when WAMA is 10,000 watts) the signal is decent; but when they reduce power to 130 watts at night, they pretty well disappear in to what almost sounds like a graveyard signal, the only two of perhaps four or five stations I can i.d. at night is WAMA and the 1550 out of Miami.

drt,
st. petersburg,fl
 
In Watertown-Carthage, NY.

During the day I get a weak WUTQ signal from Utica, NY.
At night I get CBE from Windsor, ON and a bunch of IBOC noise from 1560 Radio Disney in NYC. (I wish they would give up on AM already. Do they really think kids that age listen to AM radio).
 
Houston yields little at 1550 with blowtorch KGOW next door at 1560. As jd stated above, if anything shows up on 1550 it is XENU from Nuevo Laredo. KWBC-Navasota is impossible for me to get even here in Houston, jd. When I go up to Bellville, I can get the daytime signal from KWBC but nothing at night.
 
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