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AM Frequency of the week: 690khz

cyberdad

cyberdad

Far northwest suburb of Chicago......

Days: On a good radio, usually you can hear a very faint WVCY from Oshkosh, WI. 250 watts from a "marble shooter" pattern aimed in my direction. Distance is 128 miles.

Nights: 690 is usually relatively open. WQNO, New Orleans, was an occasional visitor at times last month. Then they were absent for a week or two, but turned up again last week. My guess is 9kw day pattern, but I'm really not sure what might be going on.

Retro: Usually 690 was 50kw non-directional CBF from Montreal before they migrated to FM. Then there was a sports talk station. That one also left....or at least left 690. The current occuupant of 690 is also sport, using the calls CIGM, For some reason, CIGM has opted to go directional at night, sending most of their signal east. In so doing, they're now directing their English language blowtorch signal directly into an almost French-speaking area. Reminds me of the old CFCF on 600 which used to do exactly the same thing! (As for CIGM, those calls used to reside on 990,,,,with an oldies format. (You really need a scorecard!)

The other 690 that used to turn up here from time to time was legendary Storz New Orleans top 40 rocker WTIX. Around sunset, I'd also hear WVOK from Birmingham, AL before signoff as a 50kw daytimer or 10kw KGGF from Coffeyville, KS. R. Progreso from Cuba would also be occasionally in the mix.

Other Location: At our beach vacation location near Pensacola, WTIX used to have a good signal 24/7. WQNO still does just about as well durimg the day, but WQNO, at 2100 watts night power does markedly worse than WTIX at 5kw....despite a favorable east-west pattern. R. Progreso is/was usually weak but audible underneath the New Orleans 690 day or night.
 
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In the near north Chicago suburbs during the day I hear nothing on 690. At night I sometimes hear Montreal weakly and a few times I've heard WQNO.

Retro: As cyberdad said the old CBF dominated this frequency and used to be an easy catch. I also used to hear WVOK right before signoff especially in the fall and early winter. I've heard KGGF a few times.
 
Central Louisiana

Middle of day nothing. Late in the afternoon just before sunset, WJOX out of Birmingham appears. It disappears when they switch from 50,000 watts to 500 for nighttime.

WQNO out of New Orleans is the only signal I have received at night.

Growing up in New Orleans fifty years ago, my dial was set at 690 WTIX. That relationship ended when I discovered WRNO FM!
 
From west Houston, daytime I get slop from local KSEV 700 and a bit from KKYX 680. At sunset, it's a jumble of WQNO, KGGF, and XEN, El Fonografo from Mexico City. At night, the same 3 with XEN usually dominant. XERG is sometimes audible, but never very strong.
 
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: usually empty, but have heard KSTL (St. Louis, MO) and WVCY (Oshkosh, WI) in the past during daytime
Nightime: lately it has been WQNO (New Orleans, LA), CKGM (Montreal, PQ) with TSN sports, and XEN (Mexico City)

DX/RETRO: as others noted CBF Montreal used to rule the frequency at night. Another frequent visitor used to be the Mighty 690 XETRA (Tijuana, Mexico). Others heard on this frequency include KGGF (Coffeyville, KS), KRMX (Pueblo, Colorado), WVOK (Birmingham, AL), WZAP (Bristol, VA), WOKV (Jacksonville, FL) as well as HJCZ (Bogota, Colombia) and couple Cubans (Radio Progreso and Radio Liberacion).
 
In North Alabama, I hear WJOX in Birmingham, daytime. Before they power up after sunrise, and at critical hours, WOKV Jacksonville, WQNO New Orleans, and KGGF in Kansas a few times.
 
Hal9000 said:
Growing up in New Orleans fifty years ago, my dial was set at 690 WTIX. That relationship ended when I discovered WRNO FM!
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My trips to New Orleans go back to the early '70s. WTIX was as good as it gets, with a potent signal coming from their 10kw transmitter site out in the swamp by Chalmette. On our first visits to the beach near Pensacola in the mid-70s, you could walk up and down the white sands and hear WTIX coming out of the vast majority of portable radios. The day signal there....from 150-ish miles away, was absolutely that good. And we had it on in the condo or beach house all the time.
 
East Tennessee: Daytime is WZAP, Bristol TN. Mornings after Jacksonvile sunrise and evenings before their sunset, WOKV makes it in. After WOKV is gone, WJOX can make it before it powers down and sometimes after. Another night regular (as of a couple of years ago) was WELD, Fisher WV, likely using either full day or critical hours power. Otherwise nights has been dominated by WQNO, New Orleans with Sports in the background (likely Montreal).

Retro/other: Many of you no doubt remember Hurricane Hugo hitting Charleston SC and with all media there off the air, Jacksonville (at the time WPDQ with oldies) filled the bill with emergency coverage and drunks having hurricane parties. I heard it in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
 
cyberdad said:
My trips to New Orleans go back to the early '70s. WTIX was as good as it gets, with a potent signal coming from their 10kw transmitter site out in the swamp by Chalmette. On our first visits to the beach near Pensacola in the mid-70s, you could walk up and down the white sands and hear WTIX coming out of the vast majority of portable radios. The day signal there....from 150-ish miles away, was absolutely that good. And we had it on in the condo or beach house all the time.
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I had relatives in New Orleans and made many visits there in the 60s and 70s. WTIX was a great station. My cousin had 3 buttons set on his car radio, WTIX, WNOE, and WLS. The WLS signal there at night was like a local.
 
From the southwest suburbs of Chicago:

Daytime: I regularly get nothin'.

Nighttime: CBF was a regular with its 50kW omni signal with SRC programming. Listening to CKGM now, feeding ESPN Radio, and it gets beaten up a bit by others thanks to the directional signal.
Others I collected on 690 over the years: WAJO Oshkosh, Wis. (daytimer at sunset); WTIX / WQNO New Orleans, WAPE Jacksonville, Fla., CMBC Havana and the most recent newbie, WNZK Dearborn Heights, Mich., 2.5 kW at 7 a.m. on 1/4/2019.
 
From south Overland Park, Kansas:

Day: KGGF, Coffeyville, Kansas, 10 kW, 2-tower directional day. I am barely in their daytime coverage area. The signal is weak and can only be heard when I am in my car, away from any noise source. At night, they totally disappear.

Night: Nothing and I tried many times.

Bob
 
CKGM Montreal can be fairly good at times and completely unlistenable others. It's one of the most erratic 50k coming south from Canada into New England.
 
Just west of Phoenix overnight I usually receive a mix of XEWW (the Mandarin-language station in Tijuana) and a Mexican music station I haven’t positively identified. Last night it was playing up-beat accordion-containing music. KTSM should be receivable at 10kW nighttime, but it’s supposedly an iHeart talk radio station. _Might_ be XEMA. At 50kW nighttime(?), that’s not completely unreasonable. I have more work to do with this one.

Daytime I get a horrendous RFI flood on 690 at the office.
 
When Jesse Champion was in the process of leaving teaching in Flint, where I was his English student, to return to Birmingham, AL to do news at WBRC/WERC/WKXX, we talked about hearing WVOK often at Sunset and signing off with "Dixie". He liked life in the South, just not the racial problems. I brought in my copy of WRTH and we went over the Birmingham area AMs, and discussed the fact that while WSGN 610 reduced power to 1000 watts, WBRC 960 just went 5000 watts directional. I never heard WBRC/WERC, because WDBJ, now WFIR, and WSBT were much stronger. Otherwise, I might have heard them about the same time as WVOK, before they went to the DA which went South.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
When Jesse Champion was in the process of leaving teaching in Flint, where I was his English student, to return to Birmingham, AL to do news at WBRC/WERC/WKXX, we talked about hearing WVOK often at Sunset and signing off with "Dixie".
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When I first heard WVOK from Cleveland, I sent a DX report and mentioned how "entertained" I was by hearing them sign off with "Dixie".

A week or two later, I got a verification letter from Ike, the engineer, who sent it in a big envelope with a transcription service disk of "Dixie". He said that they bought them in boxes of 12, and they replaced them once a month; I go the previous month's used ET.

Of course, as you know, Jesse was the afternoon news person for WERC-960 when I was PD there.
 
Come to think about it, I could hear 250 watt WAGO 690 Oshkosh on my antenna/preamp setup in Mecosta County in the Daytime in the late 1970s. I had to buy White's Radio Log a couple of years previous, because WRTH didn't have stations less than 1 kW Daytime listed. So I found out what it was very soon with the Log. As I told a few of you, there was only one solid ground wave station there. WMAQ 670 was a very distant Second, around 250 uV/m. My antenna preamp setup brought in around 60 to 100 stations in the Daytime.The station is now WVCY.
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
Come to think about it, I could hear 250 watt WAGO 690 Oshkosh on my antenna/preamp setup in Mecosta County in the Daytime in the late 1970s.
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Now that we are on catches from another era... my best, or at least most unusual, 690 catch was driving my Buick with a stock radio in the San Juan, PR, market around 1978. I was scanning the dial around 7 PM AST and caught English. WAPE? No, it was country. Song ended, and I got the ID as KHEY in El Paso!
 
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DavidEduardo said:
Now that we are on catches from another era... my best, or at least most unusual, 690 catch was driving my Buick with a stock radio in the San Juan, PR, market around 1978. I was scanning the dial around 7 PM AST and caught English. WAPE? No, it was country. Song ended, and I got the ID as KHEY in El Paso!
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That's amazing, must have been at least an hour before El Paso sunset! Those were the days...

I do remember hearing KHEY from Tulsa back in the 70's at sunset, nulling the semi-local KGGF, but I haven't yet heard them from Houston.
 
Day and night its splatter from 680 WCNN Atlanta, the Fan, ESPN sports radio. They run 50kw day and 10kw night. Their transmitter is maybe 5 miles from my home.
 
I've heard a faint WELD in parts of central Ohio, always under WLW slop. Nighttime, I can't remember much of anything.
 
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