Over the years, I've heard and also considered what Ohio AM stations can be heard statewide during the daylight hours. Three that I can think of are in the Columbus area: WTVN (610), WOSU (820) and WRFD (880). Would these be stations that who can be heard in all parts of Ohio during the day? Are there any others?
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AM Stations Heard Statewide
- Thread starter Cincinnati Kid
- Start date
Neither WTVN nor WOSU are at all listenable in northeast Ohio during the day. WSOM 600 in Salem (and to a lesser extent CKTB in St. Catharines ON) beat up on 610, while WKTX 830 in Cortland takes out WOSU. WRFD doesn't have any serious co- or adjacent-channel issues, but its groundwave signal doesn't really make it all the way up to, say, Ashtabula by day, at least not in my experience.
I live in NE Ohio and can pick up WTVN during the daytime, but I think you are talking about extreme NE Ohio almost to the PA border. Can also pick up WRFD but would rather listen at night when I can get WCBS. Other AMs are the usual flamethrowers, WLW, WTAM. I've never heard WOSU during daytime but I'll have to try now.
Thank you for the information. I thought WLW might be heard in far northeastern Ohio during the day; however, WTAM does not usually get into the Cincinnati area during daylight hours because of WKFI at 1090 k.c. in Wilmington, Ohio.
There's even more co channel interference to 1100 WTAM in southwest Ohio from the low budget religious station licensed to Fairborn (E suburb of Dayton) on 1110, which actually puts out a fairly big signal itself.
Maybe the only station with statewide coverage day and night, if you can't get WLW east of Cleveland, would actually be WJR Detroit. Except there's a daytimer in Athens County now, I think, on 770 to wipe out their signal on 760.
Otherwise I think daytime-only 880 WRFD gets the prize. Maybe 640 WHLO (are those still the call letters?) in Akron, due to its low dial position and improved facilities in recent years, might make it very weakly on a car radio in most corners of the state. But the poor-soil conductivity in SE Ohio really chews up signals, too.
Maybe the only station with statewide coverage day and night, if you can't get WLW east of Cleveland, would actually be WJR Detroit. Except there's a daytimer in Athens County now, I think, on 770 to wipe out their signal on 760.
Otherwise I think daytime-only 880 WRFD gets the prize. Maybe 640 WHLO (are those still the call letters?) in Akron, due to its low dial position and improved facilities in recent years, might make it very weakly on a car radio in most corners of the state. But the poor-soil conductivity in SE Ohio really chews up signals, too.
Cincinnati Kid said:
Another reason WTAM doesn't get to Cincinnati is because it's up at 1100. It's not heard nearly as well in Columbus as WLW; the comparison between the two signals is not even close.
WTVN has a terrible signal east and west of Columbus at night (though here at my home about 25 miles east of the tower, I can hear it fine with some crosstalk underneath. Driving around out here is a different story.). It's decent for a while due south but, as gr8 said, is superb to the north. I've heard it as far north as Mount Pleasant, Michigan at night. The times I drove back to college in Toledo from Columbus at night (or vice-versa), 610's groundwave is impressive until right at Perrysburg, when cancellation issues start to wreak havoc.
I thought of WJR too. It's like a city-grade daytime signal in Cleveland, however, I remember when I lived in Pittsburgh (not far from the Ohio border), being unable to pull it in at all during the daytime, which makes me think that far eastern and southeastern Ohio might be unable to pick it up.
D
del_griffith
Guest
It's hard to tell with am receivers being so sucky these days.
Back in the 70's I used to listen to 610 and WRFD up along the lake and to the far eastern Cleveland burbs. They carried futher to the due north and northwest.
Now I get beyond Mansfield or midway between Upper and Findlay and the reception sucks. Can't tell if it's the stations, the receiver or both.
Back in the 70's I used to listen to 610 and WRFD up along the lake and to the far eastern Cleveland burbs. They carried futher to the due north and northwest.
Now I get beyond Mansfield or midway between Upper and Findlay and the reception sucks. Can't tell if it's the stations, the receiver or both.
icybluelake said:
I personally heard WJR in Portsmouth back in December 1997. But I agree with you that the southeastern fringes of the state might not get it. Someone noted the ground conductivity in that part of the state, which is substantially worse than everywhere else. Even WTVN and WLW are notably tough to hear in Athens, where they should be solid daytime.
WJR has always come in here in Greater Cincinnati very well during the day. For years I listened to "The Great Voice of the Great Lakes" for the Tigers games and their other programming. At night, reception was more difficult although you could pick it up. Interesting how it's a station in another state that covers a large portion of Ohio in the day.
Ground conductivity at mediumwave frequencies is a tough taskmaster. Unless you're in the rich soil of the upper midwest, the physical realities are that even a low-dial, high-powered signal like WLW just doesn't have the "oomph" to carry nearly 300 miles from one end of Ohio to the other. And just adding more power to the equation doesn't help as much as one might think; a few years ago, I had a friend run the numbers to see how WLW's old 500 kW superpower signal would map on today's software. It wasn't as good as I expected.
If you put WLW in Columbus, then you'd probably have a daytime signal statewide. Nighttime would still be a different scenario; the challenge of groundwave-skywave cancellation means you're always going to have a ring 100 miles or so out where your station goes unlistenable before the all-skywave reception kicks in.
Where you do get statewide daytime AM coverage is in places like North Dakota and South Dakota, where that phenomenal ground conductivity allows even a 5 kW station like KFYR 550 in Bismarck or WNAX 570 in Yankton to be heard for hundreds and hundreds of miles all day long. Those stations are far from statewide at night, though...again thanks to skywave-groundwave cancellation and directional nulls.
If you put WLW in Columbus, then you'd probably have a daytime signal statewide. Nighttime would still be a different scenario; the challenge of groundwave-skywave cancellation means you're always going to have a ring 100 miles or so out where your station goes unlistenable before the all-skywave reception kicks in.
Where you do get statewide daytime AM coverage is in places like North Dakota and South Dakota, where that phenomenal ground conductivity allows even a 5 kW station like KFYR 550 in Bismarck or WNAX 570 in Yankton to be heard for hundreds and hundreds of miles all day long. Those stations are far from statewide at night, though...again thanks to skywave-groundwave cancellation and directional nulls.
There's a fault line that runs near Mansfield that tends to limit ground conductivity on a NW/SE axis, that's why stations like WLW and WTVN who have a non-directional antenna still push a better signal to north, south, and west than they do to the east and especially the northeast. As far as the best statewide coverage (using the 0.5 contour) it's pretty much a tie between WTVN and WRFD with a hole to the northeast of Cleveland and along the Ohio River to the east. WLW and WKNR also come close, but no AM station covers the entire state with a listenable signal.
J
Josh_Cols
Guest
Funny how WLW is hard pressed to be heard state wide during the day when on a road trip to Phoenix a couple weeks ago (long drive BTW) I could clearly receive 700 WLW well into Missouri during the day; however going into St. Louis around Troy, Illinois WLW did fade in and out a bit, but not as bad as I would have expected. My favorite place to be at night to catch allot of the 50kw's is Kansas City. In KC I could clearly pick up most of the 3 letter call stations like WLW, WSB, WSM, KOA, WWL, and KSL. When I was in Denver this past winter on a cold ass -23 wind chill night, could pick up and listen to the mere 5kw KFYI from Phoenix and 640 KFI LA sounded like a local station on that night.
One interesting thing that I found out with 850 KOA in Denver is that they regularly get callers from California, Texas, Oregon, Illinois, Canada, etc; yet their signal cannot be heard across the state in Grand Junction. For a lack of better reason, I heard that since GJ is in a valley that the signal cannot "drop" down into the Grand Junction area.
One interesting thing that I found out with 850 KOA in Denver is that they regularly get callers from California, Texas, Oregon, Illinois, Canada, etc; yet their signal cannot be heard across the state in Grand Junction. For a lack of better reason, I heard that since GJ is in a valley that the signal cannot "drop" down into the Grand Junction area.
Josh_Cols said:
That might be another way to say Grand Junction is in KOA's cancellation area. Never having visited or lived in Colorado, I don't know that for sure.
Remember with WLW, there's much better ground conductivity from Columbus and Cincinnati west than to the east, so getting WLW into Missouri is impressive but not too surprising. The example of WKNR disappearing around McConnelsville is a textbook example of southeast Ohio's ground conductivity eating up otherwise excellent AM signals. WKNR has an only slightly weaker signal in central Ohio than WLW daytime, and it seems the only place they tuck in their signal is to the east (dramatically) to protect a co-channel in Pennsylvania.
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