While riding from Cambridge to Bath a Sunday afternoon, I noticed an abundance of distant stations overwhelming locals at 1-to-3 PM in the afternoon. (Even WJTO-730 was getting chopped up in Portland [never happens in daytime] by CKAC). I landed on 760, where i heard French talk, loud and clear for 50 miles. Strange to hear french on a station from Worm-Town, but then when the ID came, it was "WCHP-Champlain". Then they went into a religious program in English. While that is no major catch, I was surprised because I was unaware of that station's existence. Looked it up on radio-locator, and see that its one of those border-blasters, with the 34kw (or is it 25kw?)at daytime sends a good city-grade signal into Montreal.... good enough for home listeneing, but not good enoughto get through steel-beam buildings. Another boarder-blaster is that WTOR-770 just north of Buffalo, aiming right towards Toronto. And now there's a CP for a station in Malone NY to aim at Montreal too. What happened in Mexico in the 1950's-60's is now happening in New York State, albeit daytime only. What formats would work on such stations these days?.... probably just ethnic and religion. - Which brings another question.... What will AM radio in Boston be like in 10 years? --- all ethnic and/or religion? Maybe so.... (excepting 740 & 1030?).
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DX'ing 760
- Thread starter JIBGUY
- Start date
Oh yes WCHP, which I pick up while in NW Vermont & the NY side of the lake too, Champlain being a small town with that 1060.
Is snow good for recep? I remember picking up something from Texas during the blizzard of 78,
while in Nahant (WBAP I think)
Is snow good for recep? I remember picking up something from Texas during the blizzard of 78,
while in Nahant (WBAP I think)
Checking the FCC database, WCHP is indded 35 kW-D, 11 watts-N, with a 2-tower cardioid that looks easily aimed at Montreal. CKAC's pattern is another balloon-like cardioid going northeast with 2 nulls toward the US and Mexico, protecting XEX in Mexico City.Bob, it sounds like you ran into some good Critical Hours propagation that day. Here's the link to the FCC's AM database: http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/amq.html. I'm thinking locally programmed stations like WJIB and WJTO, which superserve their audience, will still have good luck despite the economy. I'm seeing this here in the Philly area, where WPAZ 1370 has been put back on the air to serve the Pottstown area with local news, locally produced music, and local sports. AM can be a viable thing if done this way rather than syndicated fare or brokered religious/foreign language.
oops meant to type 760
JIBGUY said:
It's a move of WICY 1490, a Class C currently licensed to Malone, to 1500 to be licensed to Mooers NY with 50 kW-D (slightly less CH) DA-D and CH to protect WFED (ex-WTOP) According to a recent (maybe the latest) NERW, WICY aims to get back its night service by adding an AM-on-FM translator licensed to Malone. I believe the application is for a 250W translator.
Anyhow, Mooers (is that a pun for cows?) gained fame in radio circles a few years back when an application was filed for an AM 650 to be licensed to Mooers with 50 kW-D and IIRC something like 9 kW-N from a nine-tower array to be located in Mooers just this side of the US-Canada border. The array would have produced a teardrop pattern aimed due north at Montreal. IIRC, the NIF contour would have covered a lot of greater Montreal and the daytime signal would, of course, have been even stronger. However, Canada has one of those never-to-be-built reservations for 650 near Montreal (Pointe Claire?--not sure), which nixed the idea. My assumption was that the programming was to be Protestant religious aimed at converting all of those Francophone Roman Catholics. Good luck!!! Anyhow, the US application was on the books for several years. I presume that it died after Canada formally objected.
DanStrassberg said:
What a coincidence! I was actually listening to WICY/1490 yesterday using one of those GlobalTuners located about 20 miles southeast of Montreal. WICY is already announcing itself as "102.7 FM", never mentioning 1490. They sound rather good with a nice oldies format. I was able to listen to it for a couple of hours until the skywave took over around 4:00 PM. It's too bad they don't stream OR have a website. I also was able to tune in WIRY from Plattsburgh as well. Tuning into 690 and 940, it sounded like a big hole is missing on those frequencies since they took CINF and CINW off the air a year ago. No skywave to speak of. Such a waste.
Common (but rarely so severe) occurrence during critical hours on the MW band. CH are the 2 hours after sunrise and the 2 hours before sunset. Often a time for super DX because so many stations are running day power on omni or day patterns. That's why the FCC requires us to use CH patterns!
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