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Best Graveyard Channel Coverage

cyberdad

cyberdad

With the recent threads on best and worst signals, stations with signals whose signals provide good coverage outside their primary markets, etc., etc,. I was thinking. What about graveyard channel stations that really get out. I can think of two off the top that are easily audible for more than 100 miles over a land path. I said land path, because I'd prefer to leave out salt water paths that can turn a peanut whistle into a fog horn. But, "no rules"....I'll leave the decision to future posters.

Three from my travels, (and maybe I'll think of a few others)

KTRF, Thief River Falls, MN. 1230. Minneosta is a funny state when it comes to ground conductivity. It ranges from awful to fantastic. Northwest Minnesota falls into the "fantastic" category. Clearly audible in Winnipeg....even given the numerous big city noise sources....115 miles away.

KAYS: Hays, KS, 1400. Kansas prairie with nothing to stop it. Still trips the scan button in a good car radio on I-70 over 100 miles away.

KFIZ, Fon Du Lac, WI, 1450. Actually this one was here at home northwest of Chicago. WFMT (FM) was simulcasting on 1450 for a few years in the late 70s (IIRC). During the weeks when they vacated and before the next occupant of the channel came on, KFIZ, about 110 miles northwest of here was easily audible on a daily basis. And yes...ground conductivity where they are between Milwaukee and Green Bay is really good.
 
What used to be KLBK 1340 Lubbock was clearly heard in Midland, TX. A really good top-40 station in its day.
 
What about best night coverage for a graveyarder?

Right now I'm at Tulare County Fairgrounds in central CA, and while it's still daylight now, I did some checking last night so I can report on a couple frequencies...

1450 KTIP Porterville is almost 18 miles away, and dominates the channel when facing their transmitter. (The jumble can be heard when nulling KTIP, or during quiet / no-modulation periods.

1240 KJOP Lemoore is 23 miles distant, and is still on top, but not as strong as KTIP.

Does anyone know of examples where one graveyarder's night signal "is still heard loudly on devices not intended to receive radio stations" at a greater distance than another graveyarder's daytime carrier can't even be detected using a communications receiver / SDR and full-wave beverage or loop? (Penalty points for including saltwater paths.)
 
Physicists love to make intuitive arguments based on symmetry, in vacuums, radiation into half spheres, and such. In this case, the intuitive argument is that if you are near the ocean or the northern tier of states west of Toronto and east of the Pacific areas, there are few stations in the half circle toward the ocean or toward Canada. Hence there are only about half or slightly more than half the stations contributing to the NIF, hence it is lower in those places. So the lowest NIF would be near the ocean or Canada. In the mountains, there is also less density of stations, so the stations are further away and contribute less to the NIF. In some areas, you might just have a low density area at a particular frequency. But you have to do a case by case study as they are all different. It's hard to say. Between well protected former III-A and III-B regionals or between former Class I-Bs, you may have a low NIF area also.

I have read and heard that a typical Class IV/Class C has an NIF of about 25 mV/m. In those less density areas, NIFs probably run about 17.5 mV/m, intuitively speaking. Maybe in California, you have the ocean on one side and the desert low station density on the other, and perhaps the NIF falls to 15 mV/m in some cases. But without actual calculations, rough annular method or otherwise, you really can't say.
 
Posted by: pianoplayer88key
1450 KTIP Porterville is almost 18 miles away, and dominates the channel when facing their transmitter. (The jumble can be heard when nulling KTIP, or during quiet / no-modulation periods.
1240 KJOP Lemoore is 23 miles distant, and is still on top, but not as strong as KTIP.""

KJOP is only 250 watts during day and goes to 1000 w at sundown.
Also, just noticed, KJUG, Tulare, 1270 is off the air and KBZZ, Sparks NV, (13000w directed this way) is coming in an hour before sunset here in Fresno-
 
Speaking of 1270 in Tulare, early this afternoon there was a signal there reading, I think, in the low 20s dBu on my PL-398mp. There was no modulation, even though it would have been strong enough to be easy copy. Yesterday when KJUG was on, they were around 72-75 dBu.
 
cyberdad said:
KFIZ, Fon Du Lac, WI, 1450. Actually this one was here at home northwest of Chicago. WFMT (FM) was simulcasting on 1450 for a few years in the late 70s (IIRC). During the weeks when they vacated and before the next occupant of the channel came on, KFIZ, about 110 miles northwest of here was easily audible on a daily basis. And yes...ground conductivity where they are between Milwaukee and Green Bay is really good.
Click to expand...
They're probably the station that tries to knock out WKLA during the day in Manistee.
 
One summer back when I was a boy, our family was on a camping trip out west. I remember seeing a sign for KLTZ AM 1240 Glasgow, MT at 75 miles out of town. Thinking that a Class IV local would never come in that far out, I made a dive for the radio and was I surprised-- they had a very decent signal! Don't know how it does today.
 
The one that impressed me most was KBIZ 1240, Ottumwa Iowa. It can be heard very clearly in Macomb Illinois, despite 1240 WTAX Springfield being closer. It dominates the frequency there without a trace of WTAX. I believe I've also heard them just outside of Omaha as well. At night, they're still listenable for 30-40 miles.
 
WSAM 1400 comes to mind if you take the cochannel station off the air. When WDTK 1400 goes off during a power failure, it comes in quite clearly 70-80 miles away. Their 0.5 mV/m signals nearly overlap, partly because of blanket daytime power increases from 250 to 1000 watts in the early 1960s.
 
I'll second what has been said about KAYS. In 1991 (my first big road trip, ever), I was eastbound on I-70, not far east of Goodland, when I saw an old sign for KAYS. I thought "they must be kidding", but turned on the radio, and, it was in there loud and clear. I enjoyed their oldies for hours, almost all the way to Detroit (KS, that is, population 12).

An interesting pair for the "short-spaced" thread would be 1480 in Lincoln with 1490 in Omaha. In 90% of the country, this would not be a problem, but those two were tearing each other up in May 2011.

FWIW, WDTK's daytime coverage is good for a Class C during the daytime. WLEC 1450, Sandusky, is marginally listenable in Temperance (was listening to it this very afternoon, in fact, one of the last MYL-type stations left). It suffers critical hours interference well before sunset, and if drive just another three miles west, away from the lake, it weakens drastically during the day.
 
On KAYS, their signal is a bit restricted to the east because of co-channel KVOE in Emporia but otherwise it puts out a very solid signal. Another graveyard station in Western Kansas that has in the past had an exceptional signal is KIUL 1240 in Garden City. Not sure what coverage it has now given current ownership.
 
mimo said:
The one that impressed me most was KBIZ 1240, Ottumwa Iowa. It can be heard very clearly in Macomb Illinois, despite 1240 WTAX Springfield being closer. It dominates the frequency there without a trace of WTAX. I believe I've also heard them just outside of Omaha as well. At night, they're still listenable for 30-40 miles.
Click to expand...

I actually thought of KBIZ after my OP. And I also thought of a pair of 1230s in the area, WQUA (now WFXN), Moline, IL and KFJB, in Marshalltown IA. Where I was in college, I was about 52 miles east of KBIZ, which had a good daytime signal. But WQUA had an equally good one, and was even farther away (about 70 miles). The difference was that KBIZ was alone on 1240, while on 1230, WQUA always had KFJB underneath (from over 100 miles away).

WTAX? They do get out pretty well in their own right. Driving I-55 from Springfield to St. Louis, I'd typically have a solid signal until just before the I-70 junction....about 75 miles. (Haven't checked this out recently, however. Last time I made the trip a few weeks back, I was busy checking out the 50kw upgrade to KZQZ).
 
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