Do you know any non DXers who listen to out of market stations?

[cyberdad]

Hmmm.... I don't remember WOR being a regular at all. There was a station on 710 that was weak but regular, but definitely not from New York. I can't remember what it was, though. Maybe WHB Kansas City.

Keith, I didn't know you once lived in Wauconda. That's where I grew up, and started DXing during junior high school. Anyway, during those days in Wauconda, I never heard WHB, although I certainly tried for it. What you might have been hearing on 710 if not WOR, could have been CHIR/CHYR on day pattern before they moved to 730 at night. I did hear that one a few times (on day pattern).

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Keith, I didn't know you once lived in Wauconda. That's where I grew up, and started DXing during junior high school. Anyway, during those days in Wauconda, I never heard WHB, although I certainly tried for it. What you might have been hearing on 710 if not WOR, could have been CHIR/CHYR on day pattern before they moved to 730 at night. I did hear that one a few times (on day pattern).

In later years, CHYR on AM was licensed on 710 at Night, at 1000 watts equivalent efficiency with 6 towers, with a reduced input of 700 watts, trying to make sense of the records. Occasionally, for some reason, they still occasionally switched to 730 at Night. There is also a 710 in Blacksburg, VA that frequently was heard, and still is, around Sunset.

CHYR had a very wide major lobe design for that many towers.

 

[KeithE4]

Keith, I didn't know you once lived in Wauconda. That's where I grew up, and started DXing during junior high school.

I bought my first house there, in 1983, and moved to Streamwood in 1986 when the commute to Elk Grove got to be too much. I was on the north side of Bangs Lake.

Anyway, during those days in Wauconda, I never heard WHB, although I certainly tried for it. What you might have been hearing on 710 if not WOR, could have been CHIR/CHYR on day pattern before they moved to 730 at night. I did hear that one a few times (on day pattern).

You might be right about CHIR/CHYR. I remember hearing them on 730, and now that you mention it, I do recall an announcement from them shutting down 710 for the night. But if I ever heard WOR, it was rarely, even with WGN nulled.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

The Blacksburg, VA 710 is WFNR. It is 10000 watts with a 3 tower in line endfire array and has a maximum at 300 degrees at a maximum IDF of 1976.09 mV/m @ 1 km. Of course, it's too close to WOR to be fulltime, or even PSSA. But it's headed pretty much that way, Keith and cyberdad. I still hear it close to Sunset frequently. It had a Top 40 format back in the 1970s as I recall, as WQBX.

http://fccdata.org/?facid=&call=wfnr&ccode=1&city=&state=&country=US&arn=&party=&party_type=LICEN

History Card shows a 500 watt PSA, but that is from the 1970s.

 

[Radio-X]

Growing up in VA, a lot of folks in old trucks with AM only radios (old pre-87 Chevy full-size come to mind) would tune in 650 WSM which to this day puts a decent night signal into the Central and Northern parts of the state.

That being said, the kings of non-DXers who listen to out-of-market stations has to be the NPR crowd...yes, the former beige Volvo wagon (most recently upgraded to gold Lexus SUV) crowd.

These folks will invest hundreds of bucks in a decent tuner/antenna just to lock it in and rip off the knob on a public station from the next market over...because they have better news coverage/more in-depth classical pieces/etc.

Can't hate 'em for it...they're usually the same folks who contribute to above-mentioned station year-in, year-out.

Radio-X

 

[Ai4i]

A "what if" thought to ponder:
What if our government had encouraged,
not prohibited domestic shortwave from the get-go.

 

[boombox4]

A "what if" thought to ponder:
What if our government had encouraged,
not prohibited domestic shortwave from the get-go.

My guess is that it would be in a somewhat similar state to MW today -- diminishing, but more alive than it is now.

 

[Ai4i]

My guess is...diminishing, but more alive than it is now.

I guess like the tropical bands in the tropics and longwave in EurAfricAsia.

 

[cyberdad]

My guess is that it would be in a somewhat similar state to MW today -- diminishing, but more alive than it is now.

+1... and as well as for ai4i.

 

[CTListener]

My guess is that it would be in a somewhat similar state to MW today -- diminishing, but more alive than it is now.

Same state it's in now, just with more salvation merchants and snake oil sellers than there are now. All the original license holders with their big dreams of national audiences for great news, music and entertainment programming would have sold out to the scammers by the start of this millennium, unable to deliver numbers of use to any advertiser. FM and the internet would have done in American shortwave just as they have done everywhere else.

For the hobbyists, the magic of shortwave was hearing voices from other lands, some on the other side of the globe, not hearing Utah from Maine or Pennsylvania from California. Who'd want to hear the same pop and country hits played on the local FMs on a signal subject to fading at the best of times and obliteration by either manmade noise or propagation disruptions (aurora, solar flares) at the worst?

 

[KeithE4]

I guess like the tropical bands in the tropics and longwave in EurAfricAsia.

You mean disappearing faster than an ice cube on a July day in Arizona?

 

[Ai4i]

Who'd want to hear the same pop and country hits played on the local FMs on a signal subject to fading at the best of times and obliteration by either manmade noise or propagation disruptions...at the worst?

Miami must be the perfect distance from Cincinnati for nineteen meters because when AFRTS beamed news and sports to ships and bases in the Caribbean all day with VOA transmitters on 15,330,
they sounded as strong as and nearly as stable as the local stations in Miami. Their night signal on (I believe it was) 6,030 was much more subject to atmospherics.
RCI, Sackville, the BBC and the Deutch Welle from Antigua, Radio Netherlands from Bonaire, and HCJB from Quito sounded almost as good at times.

 

[CTListener]

Miami must be the perfect distance from Cincinnati for nineteen meters because when AFRTS beamed news and sports to ships and bases in the Caribbean all day with VOA transmitters on 15,330,
they sounded as strong as and nearly as stable as the local stations in Miami. Their night signal on (I believe it was) 6,030 was much more subject to atmospherics.
RCI, Sackville, the BBC and the Deutch Welle from Antigua, Radio Netherlands from Bonaire, and HCJB from Quito sounded almost as good at times.

They used the Marathon, Fla., facility for that? I thought they used Greenville, NC. Wouldn't the 19m signal from Marathon skip right over Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola?

 

[joebtsflk1]

I was just thinking that most people here in Cañon City CO are non-DXers that DX anytime they listen to a Colorado Springs or Pueblo FM station. In the case of the Springs, we're only 30 miles away from the big C's on Cheyenne Mountain, and within their 60 dBu FCC contours, but the terrain blockage makes it seem like 75 miles.

 

[Ai4i]

They used the Marathon, Fla., facility for that?
I thought they used Greenville, NC. Wouldn't the 19m signal from Marathon skip right over Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola?

15,330 was from Bethany (Cincinnati).
I do not remember where 6,030 and 15,430 were from, Bethany or G-ville.
Marathon has never had SW, only 1180 medium wave.
15,330 from Ohio could not have hit Miami better if it were in Fort Lauderdale.

 

[CTListener]

15,330 was from Bethany (Cincinnati).
I do not remember where 6,030 and 15,430 were from, Bethany or G-ville.
Marathon has never had SW, only 1180 medium wave.
15,330 from Ohio could not have hit Miami better if it were in Fort Lauderdale.

D'oh! I forgot about Bethany completely, and I confused Marathon with Family Radio's Okeechobee site. Greenville and Okeechobee both pounded into New England. Bethany was spotty. Getting Dixon (Calif.) was a thrill because its transmissions were usually being beamed the opposite direction.

 

[boombox4]

Same state it's in now, just with more salvation merchants and snake oil sellers than there are now. All the original license holders with their big dreams of national audiences for great news, music and entertainment programming would have sold out to the scammers by the start of this millennium, unable to deliver numbers of use to any advertiser. FM and the internet would have done in American shortwave just as they have done everywhere else.

For the hobbyists, the magic of shortwave was hearing voices from other lands, some on the other side of the globe, not hearing Utah from Maine or Pennsylvania from California. Who'd want to hear the same pop and country hits played on the local FMs on a signal subject to fading at the best of times and obliteration by either manmade noise or propagation disruptions (aurora, solar flares) at the worst?

My comment was based under the presumption that SW had been promoted more in the past through government policy, as Ai4i offered... hence my thought that there would have been more daily users even as late as the 1960's or 70's, just because of greater number of people accustomed to it as an additional radio band.

I agree with you that if SW been more popular in earlier decades it still would probably be primarily religious today, because of the money, and because of FM and internet. I think there would be more stations, though. The death would have been slower, just as MW's death here in the US has been slower than it is in other countries.

 

[Ai4i]

Same state it's in now, just with more salvation merchants and snake oil sellers than there are now.

In many markets, the third most applied format on big signal, bottom of the dial AM's after news-talk and sports is likely Salem's "Teaching and Preaching".

 

[charlestondxman]

Back 15-20 years ago when not every game was televised, WBMQ in Savannah (630 AM) carried the University of Georgia football games on the radio with Larry Munson. They had a decent listenership in the Charleston area because of those games.

South Carolina has no radio station in Charlotte, but a lot of people try to tune in to WRHM 107.1 from Rock Hill to get the games.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

I don't know if anyone posted this, but out of town Baseball PBP was a major reason non traditional DXers tuned in. A lot of Rock and Roll Artists have cited John R at WLAC as a source of R & B influence.