Most likely a technical glitch: around midnight last night I couldn't sleep and tuned across 890 AM, usually a mix of mainly WLS Chicago and KVOZ Laredo. But this time it was "Radio Saigon-Dallas" (KTXV Mabank), and it sure wasn't their usual 250 watts that barely makes it into Kaufman County. No sir, it sounded just like the big daytime rig, all 20,000 watts of it; they were still going strong before sunrise. Anybody else notice this?
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Did somebody forget to power down?
- Thread starter jd
- Start date
A
Andyf101
Guest
Maybe e-skip or tropo? Pretty common in the spring.
Andy
Andy
Sure it's common. But it affects FM and TV, not AM.
I'm closer to the KTXV towers than I am to Dallas and it was definitely high power last night, almost certainly with the daytime pattern. With a signal so strong that it was slopping over onto first and second-adjacent channels above and below 890 they're sure to get complaints if it continues, maybe from Oklahoma City or more likely KDXU St. George, Utah. The latter is right in the path of KTXV's powerful west-northwestern lobe and skywave would definitely make it that far.
I'm closer to the KTXV towers than I am to Dallas and it was definitely high power last night, almost certainly with the daytime pattern. With a signal so strong that it was slopping over onto first and second-adjacent channels above and below 890 they're sure to get complaints if it continues, maybe from Oklahoma City or more likely KDXU St. George, Utah. The latter is right in the path of KTXV's powerful west-northwestern lobe and skywave would definitely make it that far.
I remember driving into Dallas from Denton for my 11p-2a shift at KVIL a few times and scanning across the AM dial and hearing KVIL AM 1150 operating at full power late at night. It was the night jocks duty to sign off at sunset and sometimes they'd get preoccupied and forget...that thing was a very directional almost straight east pattern at 1000 watts at the time and on that pattern deep in the night it was loud and clear in Dallas on the AM dial...and probably in downtown Shreveport too!
Normally I'd walk in and remind them the AM is still on and we'd do a quick power down.
I do recall one night being on and around 1am someone calling from east Texas saying they were listening on the AM. I looked at the mod monitor (seen on a monitor from a TV cam in the studio) and said "nope it doesn't show to be on"...he insisted, so I went back to engineering and sure enough the mod monitor was turned off but the transmitter was blazin'...
I also recall a time when someone called to say we were on 1040 am. I told them "no we're on 1150 but it's off (which it was that time)". He insisted again and so I went into the newsroom where they had a car radio built into the rack so they could monitor KRLD and WBAP in those days (to see if they had some news we didn't or whatever). Sure enough KVIL was blazin' through on 1040! I wrote a discrep and the next day learned that the FM STL was on a path close to the STL that 1040 used and when they signed off at night, our STL signal was so strong it locked on to their STL reciever which activated the transmitter back on and recieved our audio which is how our audio ended up on their air after they were supposed to be off the air (they were a daytimer too). It was pretty funny because only one channel of our stereo STL was being picked up by the 1040 STL and so you'd hear just one side of a song or whatever.
ahh the good ol' days, eh?!
Normally I'd walk in and remind them the AM is still on and we'd do a quick power down.
I do recall one night being on and around 1am someone calling from east Texas saying they were listening on the AM. I looked at the mod monitor (seen on a monitor from a TV cam in the studio) and said "nope it doesn't show to be on"...he insisted, so I went back to engineering and sure enough the mod monitor was turned off but the transmitter was blazin'...
I also recall a time when someone called to say we were on 1040 am. I told them "no we're on 1150 but it's off (which it was that time)". He insisted again and so I went into the newsroom where they had a car radio built into the rack so they could monitor KRLD and WBAP in those days (to see if they had some news we didn't or whatever). Sure enough KVIL was blazin' through on 1040! I wrote a discrep and the next day learned that the FM STL was on a path close to the STL that 1040 used and when they signed off at night, our STL signal was so strong it locked on to their STL reciever which activated the transmitter back on and recieved our audio which is how our audio ended up on their air after they were supposed to be off the air (they were a daytimer too). It was pretty funny because only one channel of our stereo STL was being picked up by the 1040 STL and so you'd hear just one side of a song or whatever.
ahh the good ol' days, eh?!
Well hey, I can tell my STL story too! Back in my limited radio career days, '70- '71, working as a DJ midnight to 6 at KFAD 94.9 in the old house studio in downtown Cleburne, yes I remember it well... about 3:45 AM all of a sudden KLIF 1190 starts blasting in over the air monitor. Me being the only one there and my FCC license hanging on the wall and a greenhorn at this stuff, I got rather panicked and called the engineer, woke him up in the middle of the night and had him tune in 94.9 to verify it. Sure enough he heard it too, I wasn't hallucinating the whole thing! The STL receiver at the transmitter site in Burleson between Cleburne and Arlington, for the studio in Arlington that was on S. Cooper St., which should have been quietly squelched off since no one was at Arlington at that time of the day (a Marti STL of course, since Jim Gordon the owner, and George Marti were partners back in the days) had locked onto KLIF's STL signal. Never found out the exact details but it had drifted off frequency enough because of a component failure and captured KLIF's STL signal. The day guys that normally worked in Arlington had to make a trip to the Cleburne studio that day to do their shows while the engineer fixed the STL. Yep those were the days!Fun times!
I miss those good ol' days sometimes!!! :'(
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