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AM Frequency of the week: 700

cyberdad

cyberdad

As most of you are aware, we finished our look at the former "1-B" clears a few months ago. So let's move up the dial this week to 700.....

Here 40 miles northwest of Chicago, aka "paradise" (sort of). Daytime with a really good radio in a noise free area, you can usually snag a barely audible WLW. ("My personal "litmus test" for a car radio is whether it can pick up WLW.)

Nights: WLW. Very reliable and almost always with a very good signal. Off the top of my head, I can't recall hearing anything else on the channel.

Other Locations: Aside from WLW having a good nighttime signal just about anywhere east of the Rockies, the only thing that comes to mind is KALL typically being an easy nighttime catch in most of the west.

I drove cross country on I-80 earlier this year, including an overnight stop in Salt Lake City. The ground conductivity west of Salt Lake city in the desert salt flats is really good, but for some reason, I thought KALL may have been underperforming versus what might be expected in comparison to some of the other signals. Not sure. Maybe it was just me. Or maybe KALL is more directional favoring north-south than I had thought.
 
In My home city. It's 700 WLW Always a local channel to Cincinnati. Same as 1530 WCKY.
My current location is Custer, South Dakota and Last night I was listening to dial 700 to see if WLW is there. The signal was really weak at this location, and I heard it's call letters pretty ok. 1530 WCKY was mixed and above 1530.
 
South of the Minnesota River (suburbs of Minneapolis)

Daytime-nothing (or bleedover of KFXN Hmong Radio 690)
Nightime-WLW
 
In the near north Chicago suburbs during the day it's a weak, but steady WLW. At night WLW is strong. Usually on a decent to good car radio WLW is there during the day.

Retro: Waaay back in the day WLW was the first DX station I ever heard on a bedside clock radio. Back then my dad told me that WLW was the first DX station he heard.
In my travels, except for the far west where KALL is dominant, WLW does very well. About 6 years ago when I was in Puerto Rico, WLW was in with a decent signal everynight. It (WLW) had the best signal of any station north of Florida.
 
700 here is hash from WOKV daytime, and WLW usually at night, with signal strength depending on the weather. Sometimes it is very weak, other times it is like a local.

Their day signal is very good. I've heard it as far as Knoxville on a hot summer day. During the winter you can hear it into NC and almost down to Atlanta on a good radio.

I remember when WLW was on XM for a few years starting in 2006 because of that Clear Channel deal they signed. Basically the whole signal was simulcasted except for Reds games. I remember Scott Sloan in the evenings, Mike McConnell, and Jim Scott mornings. They actually had a decent following on there.
 
Daytime - nothing

Nighttime - nothing much of the time but I've heard WLW many times, though very weak.

Once, there was another station along with it and I'd guess it was KALL.
 
Here in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, it's all WLW from about 90 miles down the interstate. Signal strength varies across the Columbus metro, but it's pretty solid throughout. Because of our local stations' nighttime directional patterns, I'd dare say WLW is the strongest AM signal at night in the southwest part of the area.
Like cyberdad, I use WLW as a litmus test for my radio as well.
 
East Tennessee: Daytime, the last breath of WLW. Nighttime, usually but not always, a strong WLW. Auroral conditions can knock The Big One off it's perch, even in East Tennessee. I've heard 1500 watt (supposedly 900 night) KHSE, Wylie TX over and under WLW. With full aurora (we had an event that lasted over a week a couple of years ago), and in the early morning I had no trace of WLW and Asian lsnguage programming from KHSE dominant on the channel. Ofter, WCKY has a stronger night signal due to skip zone issues. When there's winter daytim skip, WCKY pops up, WLW does not.

Other locations: I just logged WLW on the Hollywood, FL remote web SDR with heavy splatter from WAQI.
When I lived in Quincy, IL, it was rare to get WLW by day but it was always there at night.
I still had a weak daytime signal several years ago outside Madison, WI.

When I lived n Dayton, Ohio it was all WLW all the time, but during scheduled maintenance the Dothan, AL station fired up and I got that,
Strong signal in Mississippi and Alabama at night too.
 
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The only station I've heard on 700 that wasn't WLW was CKRD Red Deer, Alberta, when they were there in the late 80's and 90's. I was in Calgary at the time and the station had province wide coverage. Despite being an hour and a half north of the city, during the day they were as strong as the locals, but were weaker at night as they had to protect WLW. You could still hear them, even in stereo, but it was severely weakened.
 
Quite a boring one for me. BBC Five Live on 693, and it's so strong that 702 isn't used in the UK, or indeed Western Europe.
 
gr8oldies said:

When I lived n Dayton, Ohio it was all WLW all the time, but during scheduled maintenance the Dothan, AL station fired up and I got that,
Click to expand...

That was WEEL, I used to stream it all the time. Excellent execution of an oldies format, despite the fact that it struck me as wrong format in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyway, IIRC, they were known to once in a while "forget" that they were a daytimer and leave the transmitter on all night. Ooops! Maybe it's easy to forget stuff when the stream is going 24/7.

Anyway, personally, I never heard WEEL here at night. WLW probably would have blown them away. But I WAS able to pick them up on a reliable basis daytime on a good car radio at our usual beach getaway spot on the gulf at the Alabama-Florida border. Very weak signal. Couldn't hear them on the condo balcony or elsewhere around the building with any of my portables. (Which at the time consisted of a YB-400, DX-375, and an SRF-37 Walkman. If I had had my Superadio-2 back then, I'm guessing that I could have probably snagged it.)
 
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I was down that way briefly in 2013, and they were doing farm programming. Not sure how much that would have flown down there in Wiregrass country. Of course, by night WLW blasted in.
 
VERY retro report. I have letters from my grandfather documenting daytime reception of WLW in Lubbock, TX during its 500,000 watt broadcasts in the late 1930's. Receiver was a five stage tuned RF receiver (not superhet), with a two foot loop antenna inside the back panel of the console. I personally tested this receiver in the late 1960's and it was a hot DX'er, easily pulling in then WFAA 570 from Dallas daytime even in the presence of a local 580 - but the alignment on the top of the band was terrible, and I got the same local stations in five places. I independently verified daytime 50 W reception of WLW daytime in Lubbock in the early '00's with a 5 foot loop and GE Superadio III. If you check the ground conductivity map, you will see that the ground conductivity in Lubbock is very high.

In the early 1980's, WLW was a frequent daytime visitor in Houston during the winter. Prior to the sign-on of KSEV. A very ordinary car radio had no trouble at all.
 
Very interesting stuff, Bruce. I seem to remember your posting about WLW in its 500KW days before. I would have loved to have experienced firsthand what a "super blowtorch" like that could do. As it is, I've heard daytime skywave on WLW probably more often than any other station. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, just off the top of my head. Aren't they using a Blaw-Knox (or whatever it is) tower?

I'm nowhere near the level of knowledge of physics as you, SC, David, or some of the others here, but I'm wondering if that tower might have something to do with it. I know WSM has one of those, and I also get more daytime skywave from them than what might be expected. Especially for the low end of the dial.
 
Daytime, a carrier on the SDR, presumed to be WLW. At night, WLW most nights.

This is just North of Atlanta
 
cyberdad said:
Very interesting stuff, Bruce. I seem to remember your posting about WLW in its 500KW days before. I would have loved to have experienced firsthand what a "super blowtorch" like that could do. As it is, I've heard daytime skywave on WLW probably more often than any other station. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, just off the top of my head. Aren't they using a Blaw-Knox (or whatever it is) tower?

I'm nowhere near the level of knowledge of physics as you, SC, David, or some of the others here, but I'm wondering if that tower might have something to do with it. I know WSM has one of those, and I also get more daytime skywave from them than what might be expected. Especially for the low end of the dial.
Click to expand...

I thought they had to knock 80 feet off of it because of air traffic in the area. WSM is another station I could get in Lubbock in the daytime, using the 5 foot loop and GE SR3. I also was able to do it with a three foot loop in the winter, when it was too cold to go outside and deploy the five foot loop.
 
@cyberdad: The Blaw-Knox at WLW is still in full operation. Surrounded by a stately looking wrought iron fence.

I believe R. Bruce is correct that WLW reduced the height of their tower back in the late 30s, but I thought I heard the reason was to provide stronger skywave coverage to Indianapolis and Louisville, rather than aviation.
 
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