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AM Frequency of the week: 850

cyberdad

cyberdad

First of all Happy Fathers' day to all the Dads on this board. That's me with (most of) my brood in there in my avatar......

Anyway, back OT.....This week's update from 40 miles northwest of downtown Chicago......

Days: Nothing. For more than 50 years beginning in 1965, 850 was a local daytimer with a three tower figure eight array aimed NW-SE located about three miles from me. I worked there for about a year myself in the mid-seventies when Mal Bellairs owned the place and the calls were WIVS. 500 watts then. Eventually increased to 2,500.

Nights: Usually all KOA. WKNR from Cleveland is the most likely to sneak in underneath, but not common.

Sunrise-Sunset: KFUO from Saint Louis occasionally blasts in. The 850 from Duluth, MN, WQRM, also sometimes turns up. (Great call letters!). The 850 from Muskegon, Michigan has also made it to here, despite an unfavorable pattern.

Other Location: At the beach last week near Pensacola. WKJC from Birmingham was a nightime regular alone with a good signal. Only 1kw at night, but aimed right at me....and in the nulls of some much bigger signals,
 
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: until August 2019 it was WAIT (WCLR, WIVS, WAIT, WCPT ...). Nothing since.
Nighttime: usually KOA, but not as dominant anymore

DX/Retro: others heard include KFUO (Clayton, MO), KEYH (Spring, TX), WQRN (Duluth, MN), WJC (Birmingham, AL), WKIX (Raleigh, NC), WPTB (Statesboro, GA), WKNR (Cleveland, OH), WRUF (Gainsville, FL) with daytime facilities during hurricane Irma, Radio Reloj, Cuba, and two extinct stations CKVL (Verdun, PQ), XETQ (Orizaba, Mexico. Also in recent months, WGVS (Muskegon, MI) has been a frequent visitor overpowering KOA with oldies format.
 
East Tennessee: 850 is the home of WKVL---at one time WIVK (AM)---and at one time 50,000 watts daytime with a southeast pattern. Even with the 50,000 watts, it was possible to hear WKNR, Cleveland and others underneath at sunrise or during critical hours. WKVL was off the air for a year after losing the land its towers were on (this also affected WMTY on 670 which never returned to air). During the time WKVL was off I had WKNR in the winter at 1pm. Also, the sun still out and KOA full blast one Sunday evening. I never received KFUO but that should be doable, even with the weakened WKVL on the air (now 1kW diplexed with WGAP-1400.

Night: Generally KOA.

Retro/other: Several loggings of KFUO in Ohio and Indiana at sunrise and sunset. It was a daytime regular in Quincy, IL. WGVS often makes it into the Edinburgh, IN SDR.
 
Chicago by the lakeshore:

Daytime: Nothing except an occasional weak WGVS Grand Rapids, now that WAIT is gone. WGVS can actually come in badly at any time really.

Critical hours: WKNR Cleveland before they power down, KFUO Clayton MO before they go off the air, and WQRM in Duluth before they too go off the air. I've heard WQRM quite a bit after sunset.. in fact until I read Cyberdad's post and then looked it up, I thought they were on 24 hrs.

Nights: KOA Denver is the most common, followed by WPTK in Raleigh, NC.
 
From south Overland Park, Kansas:

Day: Nothing, at times some splatter from 10 kW, KKOW in Pittsburg, Kansas on 860 kHz.

Critical Hours: Either KOA and on occasion, KFUO.

Night: KOA with a signal that can range from strong to weak.

Bob
 
Reynoldsburg, Ohio ...
All WKNR daytime, so strong that it's the second-best out-of-town AM signal behind WLW where I live. Not crystal clear where I live, but very listenable.
Once they hit the night pattern, see ya. Gone in a flash and, except sometimes in the winter when KOA drifts in, not much if anything to replace it.
 
In the near north Chicago suburbs daytime is now empty with the local 850 off. At night it's mostly KOA with usually a pretty good signal. Others heard, WKNR usually in the fall or winter months pre sunset. KFUO gets in sometimes.
 
West Houston, until they went silent last New Year's Eve, it was local KEYH 24/7 with weak KOA underneath at night. Nowadays, daytime is clear. At sunset I've heard WXJC and KFUO. I should be able to hear KJON up in the DFW area, but haven't ID'd them. At night, KOA comes in well.
 
Baldwin County, Alabama. Daytime: Nothing. Night: WXJC from Birmingham, from fair to strong all night long. When I had access to an AM HD capable radio, I got a few flashes of the HD icon but never enough to decode. The sidebands can overwhelm WHAS and whatever Spanish is on 860.
 
From the southwest suburbs of Chicago:

Days, for years it was little WIVS, the 500-watt daytimer that sounded much bigger in the days Mal Bellairs, who came to fame at WBBM, owned it, ran it, and was the morning drive host. After that, through the WAIT-WCPT-WAIT era, eventually 2.5 kW, it wasn't much and certainly wasn't Crystal Lake-area centric. (The original WCLR call referred to Crystal Lake Radio.)

850 has been open since WAIT signed off on 8/27/2019, the land sold to the community college next door for expansion. I get nothing daytime

Nights, it's generally KOA Denver, the western blowtorch. Bellairs occasionally mentioned listening to KOA before firing up the WIVS transmitter in the morning. Other catches include KFUO Clayton, Mo., at least once, and WJW / WKNR on night power, but perhaps not night pattern, on rare occasions. Based on CADXER's log, I should hang out here more!
 
tvnut said:
From the southwest suburbs of Chicago:

Days, for years it was little WIVS, the 500-watt daytimer that sounded much bigger in the days Mal Bellairs, who came to fame at WBBM, owned it, ran it, and was the morning drive host. ...

..... Bellairs occasionally mentioned listening to KOA before firing up the WIVS transmitter in the morning.
Click to expand...
Mal had sort of a love-hate relationship with KOA. At least during the year or so that I worked for him. He held KOA in high regard, but he didn't like that KOA was effectively blocking hime from taking WIVS fulltime. Mal certainly looked into it, but under the technology and rules in place at the time (mid 1970s), it would't have been cost-effective. Nor would the resultant coverage area been anything beyond miniscule.
 
cyberdad said:
Mal had sort of a love-hate relationship with KOA. At least during the year or so that I worked for him. He held KOA in high regard, but he didn't like that KOA was effectively blocking hime from taking WIVS fulltime. Mal certainly looked into it, but under the technology and rules in place at the time (mid 1970s), it would't have been cost-effective. Nor would the resultant coverage area been anything beyond miniscule.
Click to expand...
I remember listening to WIVS during morning critical hours in winter when KOA would still hammer their signal for another hour or so.
 
radioman148 said:
I remember listening to WIVS during morning critical hours in winter when KOA would still hammer their signal for another hour or so.
Click to expand...
Sort of the way WCKY Cincinnati hammers WCKG Elmhurst on 1530 during critical hours and beyond. Right now, in fact (8 a.m., and sunrise was 5:17) if I turn the radio just so.
 
The main concern when I was working for Mal at WIVS was that the signal was ALWAYS garbage in and around McHenry....a prime tareget marketing area. I know....my main function there was sales. McHenry was squarely in the null protecting WNOV (Milwaukee 860). Aside from that, I don't think Mal and his son, Jerry (who ran the business side of things) cared much about the critical hours signal, so long as it was good in the Barrington-Arlington Heights-Long Grove area. Which it pretty much was.

The signal to the southwest wasn't very good, either, but I never heard any concerns raised about that,
 
South Mississippi:

Day- nothing
Critical hours- WXJC Birmingham, AL. In the winter, the signal can be strong enough for the HD to decode.
Night- WXJC is still strong due to the 1kw directional pattern, sometimes KOA is there with WXJC nulled.
 
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