I can confirm. I used to drive to Columbus on business all the time, and they start booming
in a few miles after you pass Wheeling.
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AM Frequency of the week: 850
- Thread starter cyberdad
- Start date
I can confirm. I used to drive to Columbus on business all the time, and they start booming
in a few miles after you pass Wheeling.
Not sure how this relates to 850, but I suspect some kind of third order intermodulation situation with 850 getting into a transmitter on a frequency about halfway in between those frequencies.
When WHGR 1290 was still operating, from a tower next to the WUPS 98.5 tower after they took down the array, 1290 was getting into the FM transmitter and was putting sidebands 1.29 MHz on each side (about 97.2 MHz and 99.8 MHz). People trying to listen to WUGN on 99.7 were having problems near the WHGR and WUPS transmitter sites.
Funny how WHGR 1290 figures into so many discussions.
When WHGR 1290 was still operating, from a tower next to the WUPS 98.5 tower after they took down the array, 1290 was getting into the FM transmitter and was putting sidebands 1.29 MHz on each side (about 97.2 MHz and 99.8 MHz). People trying to listen to WUGN on 99.7 were having problems near the WHGR and WUPS transmitter sites.
Funny how WHGR 1290 figures into so many discussions.
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Somebody said that they did some much needed (for years) repairs on the WGVS facility. The major lobe is the 282 mV/m for 1 kW at 1 km equilvalent efficiency of about 7 kW when everything is up to snuff.
Daytime in S.A. is splatter from local 860 KONO. If I'm in a very RFI-free environment (e.g., outside my house), I can hear a faint KEYH.
At night there's still some splatter, and KOA dominates. In its null I can usually hear a weak XEMIA in Tlaquepaque. A couple of years ago one spring night I logged a weak WFTL.
I've never heard KEYH at night, but I do hear it around sunrise. Also, KJON in Carrolton, TX, comes up when it signs on.
At night there's still some splatter, and KOA dominates. In its null I can usually hear a weak XEMIA in Tlaquepaque. A couple of years ago one spring night I logged a weak WFTL.
I've never heard KEYH at night, but I do hear it around sunrise. Also, KJON in Carrolton, TX, comes up when it signs on.
850 is messy here. I'm ~seven miles from the current site of KTRB-860. Their moved-in signal never materialized the way they thought it would, but still I'm just close enough to them that they ruin 850 for anyone except KOA. And KOA is only detectable, not listenable, due to the splatter from KTRB. When KTRB was still in Modesto, I could occasionally neuter the dominant KOA enough to hear Tacoma, WA way underneath. 850 is one of a handful of frequencies on which there are presently no California stations.
Pretty good frequency here for me out here in my grumpy second DX 'home'.
When WEEU Reading PA was on 850 they were semi-local strength in the day. (They're now on 830 and are QUITE loud.) On 850 they had four sticks along this super-highway called, at the time, The Road To Nowhere.
The 850 French station from near-Montreal used to souffle' WEEU's nighttime signal. To this day (and night), even on their new frequency of 830, WEEU sends barely any signal north at us.
Sunrise here have brought in WREF Connecticut, WEEI Boston (formerly WHDH), and WTAR Norfolk (formerly WRAP).
Sunsets I've heard WYLF from Syracuse NY and WRBZ from NC (I think WRBZ was for the former WKIX).
(One night on an anologue car radio in a borrowed Dodge Caravan, I heard Romamia on 855, if that counts; must've been some opening!)
Have not heard KOA Denver here in NE PA. During the DX days near JFK Airport in Queens NYC they were often the only readable station late at night on 850.
'This .... is the Voice Of The West. K .... O ....A ....'
(@ Freddy E): Regional lore had it that 850 in Johnstown -- WJAC at the time -- indeed had a nighttime signal that was a thousand miles long and fifteen feet wide.)
When WEEU Reading PA was on 850 they were semi-local strength in the day. (They're now on 830 and are QUITE loud.) On 850 they had four sticks along this super-highway called, at the time, The Road To Nowhere.
The 850 French station from near-Montreal used to souffle' WEEU's nighttime signal. To this day (and night), even on their new frequency of 830, WEEU sends barely any signal north at us.
Sunrise here have brought in WREF Connecticut, WEEI Boston (formerly WHDH), and WTAR Norfolk (formerly WRAP).
Sunsets I've heard WYLF from Syracuse NY and WRBZ from NC (I think WRBZ was for the former WKIX).
(One night on an anologue car radio in a borrowed Dodge Caravan, I heard Romamia on 855, if that counts; must've been some opening!)
Have not heard KOA Denver here in NE PA. During the DX days near JFK Airport in Queens NYC they were often the only readable station late at night on 850.
'This .... is the Voice Of The West. K .... O ....A ....'
(@ Freddy E): Regional lore had it that 850 in Johnstown -- WJAC at the time -- indeed had a nighttime signal that was a thousand miles long and fifteen feet wide.)
Speaking of WGVS and WKNR, I remember a story about when WRMR was going to upgrade to 50 kW Daytime, Ted Alexander went to measure a WKBZ radial somewhere East of Grand Rapids to see how wide of a lobe WRMR could get to the Northwest, and found no measurable signal there (generally less than 10 uV/m). He was surprised. Knowing how bad the conductivity is around there compared to M-3, that story didn't surprise me.
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WKBZ. I was told that WKBZ (which I believe is now WMUS) has or had the only DA designed by the FCC. Is/was that true? The guy who told me that was the CE of the local 850...now WAIT....where I worked back in the late '70s. He also liked to jokingly claimed that 850 was a channel where the FCC was trying to see if it would be possible for there to be a listenable signal present inside every square inch of the United States!
It was an early postwar DA. They moved from another frequency (Class IV). I don't know the extent to which the government was involved. It seems like there was a competing application in Grand Rapids. Maybe it's in the History Card. Maybe it was to settle the competing application. The authorized prewar DAs in MI were for WWJ, WXYZ...WXYT, WFDF, WOOD, and WKZO. WTCB...WSNL was the first postwar DA authorized. That appears to have been designed by Carl Smith, as it was an additive pattern design, not a classic 2 X 2 multiplicative parallelogram pattern design. WKBZ was soon after. Was that Charlie Gustafson who told you that at 850 in Crystal Lake, IL? I miss talking to Charlie greatly.
That name rings a bell, but it wasn't him. It was a guy named Art. I can picture him, but I can't remember his last name. I'm going to guess that he was in his early 30s at the time (circa 1977). He was also doing the engineering for then co-owned (by Mal Bellairs) 105.5FM. WXRD (now WZSR). As for the Crystal Lake 850....at the time it was 500 watts, with basically the same pattern as now. Lobes aimed NW-SE (the SE one towards Chicago). Meanwhile, the nulls were to protect Milwaukee (WNOV) and St. Louis (KFUO). I'll say this about Art, the engineer, the audio on 850 sounded fabulous when he was there.
As for Charlie Gustafson, was he the guy who originally put the station on the air in or around 1965 as WCLR?
Charlie Gustafson worked at WIND, WCFL, and WTAQ that I know of in Illinois. He started to tell me about WEAW but never finished the story. I really don't know where else in IL. In Michigan, he worked at 500 kW WJFM, WWTV-FM, and WKMI, that I remember him telling me. He passed away several years ago. He could have done contract jobs elsewhere. WCLR...WAIT just seems like his "wheelhouse", as everybody is saying recently.
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I really don't know much about the early days of the Crystal Lake 850. I'm not sure, but I believe Mal Bellairs bought the station from the original owners at some point not long after WBBM's flip to all-news in 1968. Which obliged him to leave that station. He changed the call letters to WIVS and hosted mid-days. He also remained close to his former colleagues and managers at WBBM, and did quite a bit of voiceover work for ad agencies as well as his former bosses at CBS. Nice guy, good man to work for, although I was only with him for a little over a year.
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