cHR top 40 on am 540 Determined, where is it

[Mid West Clubber]

Okay ive ask lots of times and cant find any info and no one here seems to know.... I get it off and on,, that didnt sound right.hehe anyway, what is it, and where is it, I have been trying to catch an id on this station since the early 90s.

 

[fybush]

Okay ive ask lots of times and cant find any info and no one here seems to know.... I get it off and on,, that didnt sound right.hehe anyway, what is it, and where is it, I have been trying to catch an id on this station since the early 90s.

Sure it's not Radio Disney? If so, you're hearing WWCS Canonsburg PA, near Pittsburgh.

 

[flytrap]

You're not picking up Radio Disney are you? They have a station around the Pittsburg area. They have a good daytime signal and they cut power at night but still not bad reception around Pittsburg.

 

[crainbebo]

CBK Watrous, SK. Public Radio but airs a lot of music programs (you might have gotten a CHR program one night from CBC).

-crainbebo

 

[ddsparxx]

The only 540 station that plays top 40 that I know is Radio Disney WWCS and according to Radio Locator, it has a construction permit to be daytime only.

 

[Mid West Clubber]

Well it certainly wasnt disney radio back in the 90s, but the cbc is possible, but that is an awfully long haul from saskatoon to Indiana with their signal. I usually here a mess of slop on 540 with chr in the background, thats why I cant id it.... It could be disney radio now days though,,,, I heard it real good,,, well better than here but still messy in hillsville virginia, does that sound right. I get about 4 disney stations on am at night here, one is on 680, 1560, and either 1680 or 1690, and i have a local fm on 98.3 fm with disney, so I can use it to verify.

 

[davideduardo]

Well it certainly wasnt disney radio back in the 90s, but the cbc is possible, but that is an awfully long haul from saskatoon to Indiana with their signal.

During several of the CONELRAD tests in the late 50's and earliest 60's, I heard Watrous at 11:30 AM in Cleveland... in fact, Regina on 1470 and CJOB on 680 were also heard when all US stations were off or cycling on 640 and 1240.

 

[BRNout]

Well it certainly wasnt disney radio back in the 90s, but the cbc is possible, but that is an awfully long haul from saskatoon to Indiana with their signal.

During several of the CONELRAD tests in the late 50's and earliest 60's, I heard Watrous at 11:30 AM in Cleveland... in fact, Regina on 1470 and CJOB on 680 were also heard when all US stations were off or cycling on 640 and 1240.

We could make a whole thread about CONELRAD (and I will try not to hijack the thread with this), but how fascinating it must have been to dx during those tests!!

 

[davideduardo]

We could make a whole thread about CONELRAD (and I will try not to hijack the thread with this), but how fascinating it must have been to dx during those tests!!

The short version: On a number of occasions (I DXed two of them) all US radio stations went off the air. The AM's who participated and remained on the air ran on either 640 or 1240 with very low power. In a particular area, many stations cycled on and off with the idea that "the enemy" could not lock in on a single transmitter to home in on a city.

With all other frequencies empty in the entire US, a fabulous opportunity for long range groundwave DX existed if one were anywhere near the Canadian border (not too many DXed Mexicans or Caribbean stations at that time). Of course, many nearer stations could be logged if they were on normally blocked channels. Between the two half-hour tests, I logged about 20 new Canadians by monitoring batches of channels at a time, getting back just in time for an ID and logging a song title or a commerical and then moving on.

Old radios from the era had a red triangle at 640 and 1240 indicating where to tune in the event of an emergency. Remember, this was the time when you probably had someone in your neighborhood who had or was thinking about building an underground bomb shelter...

 

[gr8oldies]

I don't remember exactly when the suburban Pittsburgh station switched to Radio Disney, but I do remember them being a foreign language format in the early 90s.

I usually get sports on 540.

 

[FreddyE1977]

WWCS is 5000 watts day and 500 night. It carries pretty well at that low frequency.
Daytime signal makes it down to Washington DC, and I have picked-up their night
signal as far out as Fremont, Ohio (near Toledo)

 

[BRNout]

Old radios from the era had a red triangle at 640 and 1240 indicating where to tune in the event of an emergency. Remember, this was the time when you probably had someone in your neighborhood who had or was thinking about building an underground bomb shelter...

It still fascinates me because that era ended just before I was born. I actually have a couple of old radios with the triangles at 640 and 1240; also recall an episode of The Twilight Zone that featured announcements from CONELRAD (one family had a bomb shelter, the others didn't - trouble ensues). Fantastic opportunity to dx, that's for sure! One can just imagine that, if you got CBK in Cleveland, it must have been audible well south into a place like Oklahoma too.

 

[schmave]

Old radios from the era had a red triangle at 640 and 1240 indicating where to tune in the event of an emergency. Remember, this was the time when you probably had someone in your neighborhood who had or was thinking about building an underground bomb shelter...

It still fascinates me because that era ended just before I was born. I actually have a couple of old radios with the triangles at 640 and 1240; also recall an episode of The Twilight Zone that featured announcements from CONELRAD (one family had a bomb shelter, the others didn't - trouble ensues). Fantastic opportunity to dx, that's for sure! One can just imagine that, if you got CBK in Cleveland, it must have been audible well south into a place like Oklahoma too.

I was thinking of that exact episode of that show when David mentioned families with bomb shelters. My mother, who grew up in western Ohio in the early 60s, said during Mass the priest sometimes said "pray for Russia."