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AM Frequency of the Week: 1600

M

MarioMania

Carmichael, CA

Daytime: KUBA Yuba Cty/Marysville with a Weak Signal
Nighttime: KGST Fresno/KUBA Yuba Cty/Marysville in a mess

Vallejo, CA

Daytime: KUBA Yuba Cty/Marysville
Nighttime: KGST Fresno
 
Melbourne FL

1600 - WAOS - Austell (Atlanta) GA - La Favorita - Spanish -Mexican - 2017

1600 - WOKB - - Winter Garden FL - AM1600 - Black gospel 2009

1600 - KLEB - Golden Meadow LA - 1600 AM - The Ragin’ Cajun - 1999
 
Hartland, VT:

Nothing days, WWRL New York City (Black Information Network) nights. Right now (9 a.m.) on a Web SDR in Rutland, 30 miles to my west, I'm hearing WWRL mixing with active rock WLZX Longmeadow, MA (simulcast of 99.3 WLZX-FM Northampton).

Meriden, CT:

WWRL day and night.
 
East Tennessee: Days: Nada
Critical hours: A hodgepodge of WTZQ, Hendersonville, NC, WUCT, Algood TN, WAOS, Austell GA and WZNZ, Atlantic Beach FL.
Nights: WAOS, Austell, GA, running day facilities at night for decades.
Auroral conditions would bring KLEB, Golden Meadow, LA but with the tower damage, that hasn't happened in awhile

Retro/other: I worked at a 1600 as WULM, Springfield, Ohio, with about as much of a signal as you'd expect for 1000 watts. It was historically WBLY. Distant reception could happen late in the morning and early in the evening in the Dayton area, particularly KATZ in St. Louis. WULM's 34 watt night power often meant that WAOS overcame us. I've heard an aircheck of WULM's translator, relaying 1600, carrying WAOS with the Spanish language programming with WULM droning on in the background.
 
Denver, CO -

1600 Local KEPN 5 kw DA-N Formerly KLAK (Lakewood), started out on 1580 as daytimer, moved to 1600 in 1957, adding night service.

Limited Time Special! Sonoma, CA this weekend - KUBA Yuba City-Marysville, CA. Weak, but there. Reception was similar in the Oakland hills when I lived there.
 
Aside from the usually-atop WWRL NYC at night, 1600 has been a SSS frequency here; 4 or 5 such catches. An odd nighttime one was WNEV from Wheeling one eve, playing the standards, perhaps still on day power.
* * * * * * *
Some notes on WWRL NYC for anyone not from the area but DX-curious:
For the longest while, The Big 'RL was 5000 watts, U-4, directional day and night with only a slight variance in the two patterns. Their 4 sticks directed a bullhorn laser, apocryphally 4999 watts worth, straight down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. There were huge, imploded nulls pulled in from the SW and NE, as seafood in parts of the North Atlantic was getting pre-heated for the Fulton Fish Market.
Perhaps the best non-techie AM DXer of his age -- Ernie Cooper ; some here will remember him -- lived a block off Flatbush, perhaps at zero coordinates of whatever WWRL's effective radiated signal was directed. 1600was a day and night blur of white noise in his den.
In the meantime, elsewhere, daylighter 1590 WERA Plainfield NJ to the southwest was on the air, ITS signal covering a good half of Staten Island -- one of the 5 actual NYC boroughs. In the opposite northeast direction, WLNG 1600, a 500-watt daytimer, came sailing 100 miles down Long Island Sound to put a daily, listenable signal into the coast of the north Bronx -- another of the 5 NYC boroughs.
Cooper, with his HQ-180 and a loop our crew helped him build, spent many hours trying to log that WERA from Plainfield, to no avail. Even their monthly frequency check wouldn't make it the 25 or so miles to his place. Too much WWRL.
We four DXer kids near JFK Airport, meanwhile, on the other side of and out of range of WWRL's white noise air horn, could easily hear WERA Plainfield, using worse radios (I distinctly remember hearing WERA run a spot for a restaurant called Wally's On The Hill). Dunno if 'ERC', as he was called, ever heard WERA before he retired and moved to Cape Cod.
Footnote: Some optimist in Port Chester NY, just on the NY side of the NY-CT border along the Sound, got a construction permit (1970-ish?) for a 1590 station called 'WNJZ'. At the time, that would have been in the mutual null between 1590 Waterbury CT and WWRL. Nothing ever came of the CP, though. The best it did was further illuminate the thorough absence of WWRL's daytime signal.
The Big' RL bought out Plainfield 1590 and Sag Harbor 1600 (and iIrc Waterbury 1590) to get some daytime room, and went to 25,000 watts. But from what I see from even the Canadian CRTC maps, the 5000 watt nighttime pattern looks the same as it did back in the 60's and 70's
It is sort of odd that WWRL (and 1010 WINS) frequently get heard a lot further away to the west than their charted nighttime signals say they should go.
 
Bellingham WA

All day all night it is border blaster KVRI Blaine WA. 50kW/10kW from a six tower array a few miles S of the Canadian border. Radio Punjab- mostly talk and some music. Programmed for the sizable Punjabi language speaking folks in Richmond/Surrey/Greater Vancouver BC market. Also a translator right on the border that frankly covers more of BC than WA. :LOL: 🤪
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
Aside from the usually-atop WWRL NYC at night, 1600 has been a SSS frequency here; 4 or 5 such catches. An odd nighttime one was WNEV from Wheeling one eve, playing the standards, perhaps still on day power.
* * * * * * *
Some notes on WWRL NYC for anyone not from the area but DX-curious:
For the longest while, The Big 'RL was 5000 watts, U-4, directional day and night with only a slight variance in the two patterns. Their 4 sticks directed a bullhorn laser, apocryphally 4999 watts worth, straight down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. There were huge, imploded nulls pulled in from the SW and NE, as seafood in parts of the North Atlantic was getting pre-heated for the Fulton Fish Market.
Perhaps the best non-techie AM DXer of his age -- Ernie Cooper ; some here will remember him -- lived a block off Flatbush, perhaps at zero coordinates of whatever WWRL's effective radiated signal was directed. 1600was a day and night blur of white noise in his den.
In the meantime, elsewhere, daylighter 1590 WERA Plainfield NJ to the southwest was on the air, ITS signal covering a good half of Staten Island -- one of the 5 actual NYC boroughs. In the opposite northeast direction, WLNG 1600, a 500-watt daytimer, came sailing 100 miles down Long Island Sound to put a daily, listenable signal into the coast of the north Bronx -- another of the 5 NYC boroughs.
Cooper, with his HQ-180 and a loop our crew helped him build, spent many hours trying to log that WERA from Plainfield, to no avail. Even their monthly frequency check wouldn't make it the 25 or so miles to his place. Too much WWRL.
We four DXer kids near JFK Airport, meanwhile, on the other side of and out of range of WWRL's white noise air horn, could easily hear WERA Plainfield, using worse radios (I distinctly remember hearing WERA run a spot for a restaurant called Wally's On The Hill). Dunno if 'ERC', as he was called, ever heard WERA before he retired and moved to Cape Cod.
Footnote: Some optimist in Port Chester NY, just on the NY side of the NY-CT border along the Sound, got a construction permit (1970-ish?) for a 1590 station called 'WNJZ'. At the time, that would have been in the mutual null between 1590 Waterbury CT and WWRL. Nothing ever came of the CP, though. The best it did was further illuminate the thorough absence of WWRL's daytime signal.
The Big' RL bought out Plainfield 1590 and Sag Harbor 1600 (and iIrc Waterbury 1590) to get some daytime room, and went to 25,000 watts. But from what I see from even the Canadian CRTC maps, the 5000 watt nighttime pattern looks the same as it did back in the 60's and 70's
It is sort of odd that WWRL (and 1010 WINS) frequently get heard a lot further away to the west than their charted nighttime signals say they should go.
Click to expand...
I remember the Waterbury 1590. Its call was WQQW and it ran the Music of Your Life format back in its '40s/'50s standards era.
 
From the southwest suburbs of Chicago ...

Days back in the day meant WCGO Chicago Heights, a 1 kW daytimer headquartered in a strip mall in South Chicago Heights with equipment that dated from the 1950s. It went silent on 4/10/2009, bought out by Frank Kovas and the calls shifted to his 1590 outlet in Evanston.

Nights, 1600 meant WWRL New York often, never mind its north-south night pattern. It was a frequent visitor, but not alone. Also dropping by: WFRC Reidsville, N.C., KCRG Cedar Rapids, Iowa (also heard more recently as KGYM), 250-watter WLRC Whitehall, Mich., WDHB Harrimann, Tenn., KATZ St. Louis, WAOS Austell, Ga. (more likely with 20 kW day power than 667 watts despite the witching hour catch), WZZW Milton, W. Va., and WKKX Wheeling, W. Va., heard within 14 minutes of each other on 1/3/2021 at dawn.

I remember reading Ernie Cooper's DX reports. He was a machine!
 
Clifton, New Jersey

Days/Nights: I get WWRL "New York's BIN 1600" with a strong signal. It broadcasts Black Information Network.

DX: From 03/24/24 until the next morning, WWRL was off the air. Therefore, I received WCPK Chesapeake, VA and WUNR Brookline, MA during the late night hours.
 
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: nothing these days.
Nighttime: WAAM most likely station to be heard at night.

DX/RETRO: over 20 different stations heard on this frequency in the past, but nothing new since 2005. Some of DX from the past includes WTRU (Muskegon, MI), WARU (Peru, IN), WSTL Eminence, KY), WNST (Milton, WV), WINX (Rockville, MD), WWRL (NY, NY) WAOS (Austell, GA), CHNR (Simcoe, ON), KCRG (Cedar Rapids, IA), KCGS (Marshall, AR), KATZ (St. Louis, MO)

WMCW (Harvard, IL) and WCGO (Chicago Heights, IL) used to be heard during daytime before they went off the air in 2008 and 2009 respectively in order to allow the current WCGO AM 1590 to increase power.
 
South Mississippi:

Day: weak signal from KLEB Golden Meadow, LA - The Rajun Cajun (oldies/classic hits), gets stronger along the coast. Can be heard east to the Florida coast and I once heard it on the Galveston WebSDR. Great coverage for only 720 watts.

Night: usually good signal from WAOS Austell, GA - LA Mejor (Regional Mexican) and occasionally WUCT Algood, TN - Newstalk 94.1
 
Tyler, TX:

By day, this is Vietnamese targeted "Radio Saigon" KRVA Cockrell Hills (DFW) with a steady, albeit, distant signal.

At sunset in NE Texas, KRVA fades off into the night and the usual suspect was "La Gran AW" XEAE Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila/Del Rio, TX simulcasting 1280 XEAW Monterey, Nuevo Leon, but now that I think about it, I don't recall hearing them lately.

KOGT is obviously in my log, too, @wildthangjim. 1600 was a big surprise to me to see it being surrendered. Only second, in my mind, to 1310 in Lake Charles ending up on the scrap heap right before 1600 Orange did.
 
Day: A weak to moderate KOKE "Tejano 1600" in Pflugerville, near Austin. During winter daytime skywave, KRVA in Cockrell Hill will mix in with Vietnamese-language programming.

Sunset: It's KOKE and KRVA, with the latter often dominating. Later KUSH in Cushing, OK, starts to come up with Americana/country (and occasionally Native American) music. Aiming NW, I sometimes hear KIVA in Albuquerque, MN, with news talk.

Night: KRVA drops from 25 kW to 930 watts and out of sight. It's basically KOKE to the NE and KUSH to the north. To the NW, KIVA sometimes pops up weakly as does KXEW (another "Tejano 1600") in South Tucson, AZ.

Sunrise: KRVA returns at day power and again often overtakes KOKE. KIVA returns with a fair but usually steady signal for a while when it goes to day power.

DX/Retro: I've heard KATZ "Hallelujah 1600" in St. Louis just twice. One-time loggings include WMQM (Christian talk) in Lakeland, TN; KEPN (ESPN Radio) in Lakewood, CO; KLEB (Cajun/classic hits) in Golden Meadow, LA; KNWA (classic country) in Bellefonte, AR; KMDO ("Red Dirt Country") in Fort Scott, KS; and KGYM (ESPN Radio) in Cedar Rapids, IA. My most notable one-time catch was WPOM in Riviera Beach, FL, with Christian talk in Haitian Creole.

Retired stations I used to hear regularly were XEAE in Ciudad Acuña and KOGT in Orange, TX.
 
Last edited:
rosecitymedia said:
So XEAE is permanently silent, too? That explains why I've not heard them recently. I swear, I'm starting to feel the necessity to begin a whole new logbook. There's just too many no longer in existence facilities jotted down in the old one.
Click to expand...
There sure are a lot of Mexico AM stations that have been retired in recent years. I’ve started noting station retirements in my logbook to help with IDing.
 
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