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AM Frequency of the Week: 700

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cyberdad

cyberdad

Happy Father's day to all the "DXing Dads" who celebrate today! And aow, we return you to our scheduled topic. Don't touch that dial!

Location: Crystal Lake, Illinois

Days: On a good location in an open area, what's left of WLW from Cincinnati is usually audible with a very weak signal.

Nights: All WLW with a very good signal. One of the best skywave signals at my location. Which I guess is what happens when you pump 50kw omni into a Blaw-Knox tower.

Other Location: At the place where we stay near Pensacola, I'd sometimes hear the daytimer on 700 from Dothan, AL during its days as WEEL during the late 2000s. 1.6kw non-directional. Theoretically, I was supposed to be WAY beyond range. But there it was..in and out on a good car radio. WEEL was an excellent oldies station that had been an online go-to. Run by veteran guys who knew the music and knew how to have fun with it. I still miss WEEL.
 
cyberdad said:
Happy Father's day to all the "DXing Dads" who celebrate today! And aow, we return you to our scheduled topic. Don't touch that dial!

Location: Crystal Lake, Illinois

Days: On a good location in an open area, what's left of WLW from Cincinnati is usually audible with a very weak signal.

Nights: All WLW with a very good signal. One of the best skywave signals at my location. Which I guess is what happens when you pump 50kw omni into a Blaw-Knox tower.

Other Location: At the place where we stay near Pensacola, I'd sometimes hear the daytimer on 700 from Dothan, AL during its days as WEEL during the late 2000s. 1.6kw non-directional. Theoretically, I was supposed to be WAY beyond range. But there it was..in and out on a good car radio. WEEL was an excellent oldies station that had been an online go-to. Run by veteran guys who knew the music and knew how to have fun with it. I still miss WEEL.
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East Tennessee: Days--the last breath of WLW. Especially in winter, WLW will come up to a listenable signal 2 hours before sunset. It doesn't seem to work the other end of the day.
Night: Almost all WLW---except when KHSE in Texas stays on day power/pattern. During a week of auroral conditions, WLW was gone and KHSE was alone in the pre-dawn hours.
Retro/other: Dayton, OH. All WLW with a tower north of Cincinnati, except for an engineering silent period and a pre-arranged DX test from Dothan (WOOF at the time? ). I had the last exhale of WLW just West of Madison, WI on the 4th of July, I think 1989.
 
At home (Oakland): spillover from KFIA (710) Carmichael, CA (Sacramento). KFIA has a presence here day and night.

During a recent visit to Albuquerque: local KDAZ, which moved to 700 from 730 a couple of years ago. This move allowed the station to go nondirectional, with lower power. KDAZ seems to exist to feed its FM translator anyway. KDAZ had reported repeated copper thefts at one of its two towers at its site on the south side of Albuquerque. The station did not move, but tore down one of its towers.
 
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Pickerington, Ohio, all WLW all the time. On a 1-to-10 scale, it's a 6.5 or 7.
Even with the cancellation issues last September when work began on their tower, which I haven't heard since that period, WLW almost always has a rock-solid signal here, about 90 miles northeast of the tower. I have heard KHSE twice here, once about 10 years ago and another time a year ago February (2022), and the latter was strong enough right before sunset to make WLW unlistenable even here.
I've heard WLW daytime in suburban Chicago, as far northeast as Painesville, Ohio and as far east as the Maryland-West Virginia border on I-68. That was on a very, very good AM radio in a rental car about four years ago.
Nighttime, WLW was a regular catch when I lived in suburban Houston, albeit with local KSEV on night pattern *and* 270 degrees off the reading to Mason from my location. Perhaps oddly, I always heard it better in the summer than in winter.
 
Tyler TX:

Daytime is a very weak KHSE Wylie, Texas "Radio Caravan" with Indian and Pakistani programming. Coming from the DFW area, but its directional signal is aimed away from east Texas.

Nights yield a typically good signal from NewsRadio 700 WLW Cincinnati.
 
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: sometimes weak WLW
Nighttime: strong WLW

DX/RETRO: 700 along with 650 is the frequency with the least stations heard. Only four. Besides WLW, KSHE Wylie, TX makes an appearance once in a while during auroral conditions. The other station is Radio Mundial (TGHR), Guatemala City which was heard in 1982. They are no longer on the air. The most recent new catch on 700 kHz is HJCX Cali, Colombia which was heard in 2021.
 
In near north Chicago suburbs days:a weak WLW on a good radio. At night WLW is much stronger. When out west the station in Utah puts out a good signal at night into Southern California. I forgot their calls.
 
Three 700 loggings here in NEPA. That's more than the two (2!) I heard back in the really trenchant high school DX years.
WWTL from some place in MD west of DC is quite weak but audible later in the day. A daytimer, they send a lot of their 5000 watts thia way. There's a taped ID somewhere in the archives.
One SSS, in came the quirky WTUB from Athol Massachusetts. They later changed to WFAT, but I heard them just that once.
Nighttimes -- WLW. Most likely there's a Cuban on 700, but I haven't paid that much mind to 700 out here.
 
Rocklin, CA

Daytime: Splatter from KFIA Camichael
Nighttime: KALL Salt Lake City with a Weak Signal

Valljejo, CA

Daytime: Splatter from KFIA Carmichael
Nighttime; KALL with a Very Weak Signal
 
radioman148 said:
In near north Chicago suburbs days:a weak WLW on a good radio. At night WLW is much stronger. When out west the station in Utah puts out a good signal at night into Southern California. I forgot their calls.
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...KALL. I probably should have mentioned them IME, pretty much a good skywave signal up and down the west coast.
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
Most likely there's a Cuban on 700, but I haven't paid that much mind to 700 out here.
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I haven't noticed a Cuban on 700 on my numerous visits to the Gulf Coast. But WLW on skywave is still a monster down there. I'm going to be back at the Gulf next week, and I'll make it a point to see what might turn up. I plan to have the GE Supe-2 with me.
 
From the southwest suburbs of Chicago:

Days, WLW is a pretty easy catch with a good car radio, and it can be pulled in in the house as well with a little effort. Decades ago, before I had anything fancy in the way of receivers, I'd listen to Al Michaels call Cincinnati Reds games by putting the radio near the radiator to boost the signal.

Nights, WLW is rock solid. Until 1/30/2022, WLW was the only station I'd received on 700. That early morning, KHSF Tomball, Tex., decided to keep its 15 kW day transmitter on, and it was a real pest under WLW. With WLW nulled it was about even.

Now, my only single-station frequencies are 660 (WNBC/WFAN), 780 (WBBM, though two transmitter sites), 890 (WLS), 1390 (WNUS/WVON/WGCI/WGRB), 1490 (WOPA/WBMX/WPNA/WEUR) and 1680 (WPRR).
 
cyberdad said:
I haven't noticed a Cuban on 700 on my numerous visits to the Gulf Coast. But WLW on skywave is still a monster down there. I'm going to be back at the Gulf next week, and I'll make it a point to see what might turn up. I plan to have the GE Supe-2 with me.
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No Cuban listed on 700 on MWList, and didn't note one when the Key West SDR was active. There's a 30kW out of Colombia I've caught on the Bonaire SDR, simulcast on 690 that has "Disco Nights" on Friday and Saturday.
 
tvnut said:
From the southwest suburbs of Chicago:

That early morning, KHSF Tomball, Tex., decided to keep its 15 kW day transmitter on, and it was a real pest under WLW.
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I think you have 2 different stations mashed together here. KHSE, licensed to Wylie (DFW area) features a South Asian format, with a directional signal shooting out towards the west, northwest, and northeast, giving it a clear daytime signal in the Metroplex, Sherman/Denison, Paris, Texas/Hugo, Oklahoma, and most of the Red River/Texoma area. You can even catch this one, with a fairly healthy daytime signal, up to the outskirts of OKC. It has a deep null towards the southeast, which is why I struggle to pull it in, here in Tyler. Likely the one you logged near Chicago, as they once in awhile forget to switch off the 1.5kW at night.

KSEV Tomball (Houston), on the other hand, is owned and operated by our lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, and features a hard right conservative talk format. Much bigger daytime signal at 15kW, but sends a ton of that over the open waters of the Gulf. I've been on a cruise, with a portable receiver in years past, and heard it coming in clear down to the Yucatan. I've never heard it "forget to power down" and its night time signal barely covers even Houston. Not a whiff of it anywhere around this area of northeast Texas, day or night.
 
Hartland, VT and Meriden, CT

Days: Nothing, but drive about 20 miles south of Hartland or 20 miles north of Meriden and classic country WQVD Athol, MA, can be heard.
Nights: WLW Cincinnati.
 
Here in west Houston TX it's local conservative talk KSEV 24/7. I'm about 30 miles south of their towers and they're pretty strong even after dark with their 1kw night power, directional (I believe) toward me. I can usually hear WLW in their null, but have never ID'd anything else here.

DXing from Tulsa OK in the early 70's, after dark WLW was one of the strongest signals on the dial.
 
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