AM Frequency of the Week: 670

[TXPH97]

DFW, Texas

Daytime: Splatter from local 660-KSKY.
Nights: WSCR Chicago dominant and R. Rebelde in the null. KHGZ Caddo Country from Ark. is often heard at sunset.

 

[DavidEduardo]

And speaking of college, I doubt if our carrier current 570 campus station would have been much of a problem for your 560 or 580.

Ah, 570, HCRM1, was the first station I built and owned in 1964!

 

[jim-satx]

From NW San Antonio:

Day: It's heavy duty splatter from local 680 KKYX.

Sunset: I've heard both WSCR (aiming N/NE) and Radio Rebelde (aiming SE) amidst the splatter. Tuning down a bit and/or tight bandwidth filtering are needed, though.

Night: The KKYX splatter doesn't seem to be reduced at all in the last year or so when it goes to night power. (Maybe the night pattern has been tweaked?) WSCR is often there, and on rare occasions I've heard KHGZ in Glenwood, AR, mixing in or take over. Nulling out WSCR, I usually hear Radio Rebelde.

A few times I've heard Radio Progreso mixing in with Rebelde. There's no 670 listing for it on mwlist.org (or any other resource I can find), but a couple of years ago mwlist.org did show a 670 entry for a Cuban station with no station name that listed Cárdenas under Transmitter and "ex Radio Enciclopedia" under Remarks.

Sunrise: KLTT is heard with a weak but steady signal for a while. I've also heard KHGZ occasionally when aiming NE - but not lately.

DX/Retro: I've only heard WWFE in Miami twice. Both times were at night when it was presumably still on day power.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

@DavidEduardo
Only *ONE* 'graveyarder' ?!?!?
And that was your first ??!
One never forgets their first, lol. (I'm guessing WJMO Cleveland. Am I close?)
Same here -- 1490 being the first-and-only. That was WKNY Kingston NY, up the Hudson from NYC by some 80 miles. I figure that the pay, adjusted to 2023 standards, was equivelant to $140 a week.

 

[anwar]

Wilmington Delaware

Days - nothing. Nights WSCR and Radio Rebelde are at equal strength or Rebelde is in the lead. WSCR is the worst of the 50000W
Chicago signals here. WGN, WBBM, WLS, and WMVP all come in much better.

 

[CTListener]

Hartland, VT, and Meriden, CT:

Nothing days, WSCR nights, strong enough in Connecticut at night to overcome splatter from WFAN.

 

[DavidEduardo]

@DavidEduardo
Only *ONE* 'graveyarder' ?!?!?
And that was your first ??!

Yes. Even though those channels are not power restricted except in NARBA (past and modified present) countries, I never really wanted any high dial stations. I got a few when they were all that was available in Ecuador (1520, 1480, etc.) but always tried to exchange for lower on the dial.

Trying to compete in Puerto Rico with 5kw/1kw on 1320 against a similar format on 580 with 5 kw fulltime was a horrible experience (we did win) but having a high dial position station is a horrible disadvantage.

One never forgets their first, lol. (I'm guessing WJMO Cleveland. Am I close?)

Yep. Fortunately, Richard Eaton's crew got it moved to a transmitter site right in the Black area of Cleveland and that worked well for almost two decades for them. But I was only there for about 5 years of that.

Same here -- 1490 being the first-and-only. That was WKNY Kingston NY, up the Hudson from NYC by some 80 miles. I figure that the pay, adjusted to 2023 standards, was equivelant to $140 a week.

I was part time and thought that getting a $25 after deductions check for a week was great. Most of that was the 16 hour Sunday shift at $1.05 an hour.

 

[gar hi]

I used to go on weekends to the south coast of Puerto Rico to a place called Guánica right on the shore. I'd take my smaller Drake radio, an R4, and a loop. Everything to the north was blocked and so I had everything down to the 250 watt Brazilians signing on before the Venezuelans started popping up an hour later. Also had lots of lower power ones from Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay as well as everything from the Windward Islands.

The most fun, as soon as the sun came up, was going out the front door onto the beach and jumping into the Caribbean for an early swim!

Were you ever able to hear any Florida AM stations like WQAM or WIOD in the daytime anywhere in Puerto Rico?

 

[DavidEduardo]

Were you ever able to hear any Florida AM stations like WQAM or WIOD in the daytime anywhere in Puerto Rico?

900 to 1000 miles was just too far. Even when I was a few dozen feet from the high tide level in the Condado section of San Juan I never heard any Florida AMs in the daytime. In the winter, though, some Boston and New England / Maritime AMs could start coming in at 4 PM local time (3 PM Eastern time) as most of the path was darkness to the far north.

Of course, Puerto Rico had AMs on so many frequencies it was hard to find empty places on the dial; even in the early 70's between PR and the Virgin Islands there were about 80 AM channels with local or semi-local signals. And no daytimers!

 

[gar hi]

I was asking because I remember someone here did an AM daytime bandscan from Bermuda in the summer many years ago with a good portable radio and a store bought loop and on the list was WQAM but with a barely audible signal.

The big 50,000 watt New York stations like WABC, WFAN, and WCBS were stronger, weak but easily listenable.

 

[DavidEduardo]

I was asking because I remember someone here did an AM daytime bandscan from Bermuda in the summer many years ago with a good portable radio and a store bought loop and on the list was WQAM but with a barely audible signal.

In around 1990 I sailed from Ft Lauderdale to San Juan on a boat I had bought. It required 24/7 sailing between two of us, and the only thing to do in most of the trip was to listen to the radio, with WBZ being the only reliable signal for much of the trip, day and night.

ZNS was good around Nassau, but by the time we got near Long Island it was not a good signal.

The big 50,000 watt New York stations like WABC, WFAN, and WCBS were stronger, weak but easily listenable.

The New York City stations did not as easy, and once we were close to Hispaniola, Haiti and the Domincan Republic came in well.

Pure Bermuda Triangle, of course.

 

[cc333]

That's quite a list. Hard for me to belive, but the only frequency I've "shared with you is 1270. Although i might be guilty of splattering on your 870 when I was at an 860 for a few months. Or perhaps stepping on your1280 or 1300 during my very first gig out of college at a 1290. And speaking of college, I doubt if our carrier current 570 campus station would have been much of a problem for your 560 or 580.

I've never worked at an AM or FM station (not yet, anyway), but I did volunteer at KMEC 105.1 (a 100 watt non-com LPFM in Ukiah, CA) for about 2 years back in 2008-2010, although it was run so poorly that it might as well have been a hobbyist effort. Despite this, I did learn two very important things about radio: 1: be properly licensed with ASCAP/BMI/SESAC if you are an FCC licensed radio station and want to play music, and 2: no dead air. The former point was, in fact, why I left in large part, because not only were they not ASCAP/BMI/SESAC licensed, they also misled new arrivals (such as myself) into believing they were, which was extremely ungood.

I don't know if the situation has improved any over the past 13 years or not, as I cut all ties then and there and never looked back. I doubt it though, as last I knew (this was maybe 5 or so years back), a friend tried (briefly) to volunteer, and got frustrated by how much they resisted any sort of change (even something as simple as fixing a broken mixer). As a result of their refusal to fix their equipment, I learned that they gained the reputation of being the worst sounding station in Ukiah. I guess they like it that way.

c

 

[cc333]

Back on topic: I haven't been DXing lately, so I don't know what's on 670. Usually not much more than splatter from KNBR, I think.

c

 

[CentralFL]

15 miles south of Orlando
Daytime - nothing
Nights - Usually something from Cuba, but nothing consistent or listenable. Every once in a while, WSCR will sneak in underneath.

 

[schmave]

Around Columbus, Ohio, it's a very weak WSCR daytime. 1 out of 10 in strength, but it improves rapidly heading northwest.
Nighttime ... I agree with an earlier poster that WSCR has the worst, or at the very least most inconsistent, skywave of the Chicago 50Ks. That's the tradeoff for the great groundwave, but a good deal of blame also falls to the Cuban station. I have cursed at them many times over the years.
Still, unlike with WGN, WBBM, WLS and WMVP, I can never count on catching The Score here at night.

 

[boombox4]

Daytime, zilch.
Nighttime: Mostly KBOI, Boise, sometimes at near local strength. In its very tight null, sometimes KMZQ Las Vegas peeks through.

And once or twice during the 2012-2013 sunspot peak, I heard WSCR.

 

[cyberdad]

Around Columbus, Ohio, it's a very weak WSCR daytime. 1 out of 10 in strength, but it improves rapidly heading northwest.
Nighttime ... I agree with an earlier poster that WSCR has the worst, or at the very least most inconsistent, skywave of the Chicago 50Ks. That's the tradeoff for the great groundwave, but a good deal of blame also falls to the Cuban station. I have cursed at them many times over the years.
Still, unlike with WGN, WBBM, WLS and WMVP, I can never count on catching The Score here at night.

Your experience with WSCR is 100% in line with mine from my years of traveling (49 states. 6 Canadian provinces. Haven't found a bad one yet!). I definitely also agree that Cuba is the biggest problem with WSCR's night skywave signal.

 

[schmave]

@cyberdad Their skywave definitely is better the farther north I go. I can remember a few times driving between Toledo and Columbus at night where WSCR/WMAQ was perfectly fine in northwest Ohio, but the Cuban station began asserting itself about an hour north of Columbus to make for an unpleasant listening experience.

 

[charlestondxman]

WSCR has that Cuban interference in SC. It‘s rarely listenable at all here anymore.

But it does have the best Chicago AM daytime signal. About 5-6 years ago I heard them in metro Cleveland (Independence) daytime with my loop and a good Sangean radio.

 

[boiseengineer]

From Mountain View, Hawaii it's a weak KPUA from Hilo day and night.

It's only 12 miles away with 10,000 watts and you'd think the signal would be of local quality.

Does lava rock have such a low conductivity?

KPUA has dropped power to 5 kw.
They don't even make it to the other side of the island.