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FM station with largest coverage map?

I would nominate 97.1 in Gainsville, GA. I have heard it reliably in Lake City, FL on a car radio - close to 300 miles. They also have great coverage up into North Carolina, and into Alabama. 98.3 from Savannah, GA came into central Florida reliably. 101.9 Orlando is solid to almost Tallahassee. Whether any of these get omnidirectional coverage is not clear.

KRBE in Houston used to have a fantastic signal - going well into Louisiana until it got covered by a station in Houma (about 250 miles). It also was listenable in Dallas / Ft. Worth (250 miles), and came in like a local in parts of Austin (170 miles). That is a lot of different directions so they were fairly omnidirectional.

Some of the Dallas / Ft. Worth stations were reliable in West Texas, but there is a substantial elevation change out there to make reception easier. They were not generally receivable in the car, but required large directional arrays.
 
rbrucecarter5 said:
I would nominate 97.1 in Gainsville, GA. I have heard it reliably in Lake City, FL on a car radio - close to 300 miles. They also have great coverage up into North Carolina, and into Alabama. 98.3 from Savannah, GA came into central Florida reliably. 101.9 Orlando is solid to almost Tallahassee. Whether any of these get omnidirectional coverage is not clear.
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Yes! I agree with 97.1 in Gainesville, GA which is WSRV "The River." I spent a month in Greensville, SC and was able to listen to this station every day! It also carried well heading north on I-40 near Ashville, NC. I was truly amazed by that signal. It even showed up in the most recent Greenville Arbitrons.

As for 98.3 Savannah, GA, which is Jack-FM, their tower is quite a bit south of Savannah, so hitting Florida isn't that big of a stretch. 101.9 in Daytona Beach, FL is WJHM and only something like 28,000 watts (going by memory). So they do get that signal out pretty far for not being a 100KW'er.
 
Lawppy said:
it's called curvature of the earth. the earth is round, FM waves aren't necessarly bound by the ionosphere like AM, so it just keeps going on a straight line into space

physics, man
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I understand that.. I wasn't saying that they should be able to cover 38 states and parts of Canada and Mexico like say, WLW. I was just saying that for a 320kw station, WBCT does not carry as far as one would expect. I get a more reliable long-distance signal from WOMC (180kw) and WKQI (100kw) from Detroit.
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WBCT puts out a lot farther than WOMC & WQKI, but not because of power; WBCT is on an 824ft. stick while WOMC and WKQI's towers are 368ft. and 433ft. respectively. WKQI has 90,000 ERP less than WOMC, but their coverage maps are almost identical because of the difference in tower height.

Look at Albuquerque, NM. Almost all of their FM's are 20,000 watts or less, but they are on a mountain that gives them the same effect as being on a 4,000 ft. stick!

I'll take height over power anytime.
 
Trusty says: I'll take height over power anytime....

I don't know, trusty. In Texas we often get an inversion layer that can cause the signal to skip right over the intended target. I know 93.3 had that problem when it moved from Killeen to Austin. Quite often they wouldn't be audible in Austin, but would be coming in loud and clear in San Antonio. A friend of mine had a station in Beaumont, and it happened so often, he installed a second antenna just a couple hundred feet off the ground, and a sensor that would switch from the 'High Tower' to the 'Low Tower' automatically.
But I'll never forget driving across Wyoming and being able to pick up practically every station in Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, and even some from Kansas! (that was my altitude. I was quite high.)
Likewise, Albuquerque stations come blasting in to the west, til you reach the continental divide, and they disappear. You can see the Sandia Crest from a hundred miles away.
 
Elevation is everything on FM. I drove through the Rocky Mountain National Park (12,000 feet) and did a bit of quick DX'ing. I easily had some 400 mile DX - every frequency was jammed. Next vacation to Colorado, I'll drive to the top of Pike's Peak (14,000 feet) and see what happens. Given that you can see 50 miles into Kansas, I am sure there will be some astonding DX. I have heard unconfirmed reports of DALLAS FM stations received on Pike's Peak. I am sure, though, that Wichita, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, and Lubbock are more realistic DX targets for that location, as well as Albuquerque. Perhaps some of the Arizona cities like Flagstaff and Phoenix as well.
 
honestly i'm not sure there is "a" *BEST SIGNAL*

there are a ton of great ones, AM and FM

but too many variables to whittle it down to even a small group. terrain, interference, condition of xmtr/exciter, etc.
 
rbrucecarter5 said:
Elevation is everything on FM. I drove through the Rocky Mountain National Park (12,000 feet) and did a bit of quick DX'ing. I easily had some 400 mile DX - every frequency was jammed. Next vacation to Colorado, I'll drive to the top of Pike's Peak (14,000 feet) and see what happens. Given that you can see 50 miles into Kansas, I am sure there will be some astonding DX. I have heard unconfirmed reports of DALLAS FM stations received on Pike's Peak. I am sure, though, that Wichita, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, and Lubbock are more realistic DX targets for that location, as well as Albuquerque. Perhaps some of the Arizona cities like Flagstaff and Phoenix as well.
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I had the same experience years ago when I drove into Yellowstone via the Northeast Entrance/US-212. At Bear Tooth Pass, the entire receiver lit up with stations from Butte (160mi), Billings (70mi), Hardin (100mi), Bozeman (90mi), Helena (165mi), Idaho Falls (165mi) and even Pocatello (200mi). There was no DX occurring, either. Nearly ever frequency had something on it, which is something that doesn't happen within ANY radio market in those neighboring states. Even in Billings there is a lot of open real estate on the dial.
 
rbrucecarter5 said:
Elevation is everything on FM. I drove through the Rocky Mountain National Park (12,000 feet) and did a bit of quick DX'ing. I easily had some 400 mile DX - every frequency was jammed. Next vacation to Colorado, I'll drive to the top of Pike's Peak (14,000 feet) and see what happens. Given that you can see 50 miles into Kansas, I am sure there will be some astonding DX. I have heard unconfirmed reports of DALLAS FM stations received on Pike's Peak. I am sure, though, that Wichita, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, and Lubbock are more realistic DX targets for that location, as well as Albuquerque. Perhaps some of the Arizona cities like Flagstaff and Phoenix as well.
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Western Kansas, yes - look for stations from Goodland. Also, you can try for Scottsbluff and North Platte, NE. However, there is a lot of frequency duplication with local stations - more so than when I was up there.

It's pretty doubtful that you'd get stations from places like Dallas and Okla City on Pikes Peak - for one thing, you're getting a lot of RF from Denver/Colo Spgs/Pueblo stations up there that will fill much of the dial. Check out how many stations broadcast from Colo Spgs, Pueblo, Denver, Ft. Collins, Greeley, etc. Secondly, those places are hundreds of miles away - so you'd need some help from the troposphere for that to happen. Distant stations could, theoretically be received up to 250-300 miles away - mostly to the east, thanks to topography as well as line of sight.

As for FM stations from places like Albuquerque and Phoenix, forget it. Too far away and too much high terrain in the way. I tried for Grand Junction up there back in 1990 and didn't get anything further west than Aspen.
 
A questions for the more experienced hobbyists and professional on this board? Assuming a 12000 ft elevation and a say, 6000 ft height above the average terrain, what is the theoretical limit to capture 100kw 1000' HAAT FM stations from below? Straight shot.
There's a interesting TV commercial in golf where one guy climbs the mountain and sets up a YAGI style antenna that allows the rest of his friends in the tent to watch Tiger Woods playing golf. Appareantly this guy drew the short straw or had a very bad reaction to baked beans at dinner in the tent!
 
I'm surprised no one mentioned 106.9 The Point from Houston. They have a 2,000-foot tower well north of the city and at one time could easily be heard into the DFW metroplex, but that is no longer the case. There's actually a discussion on coverage of those stations going on on the Houston board now.
 
schmave said:
I'm surprised no one mentioned 106.9 The Point from Houston. They have a 2,000-foot tower well north of the city and at one time could easily be heard into the DFW metroplex
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**easily be heard**???? from 250 miles away?

n-o-t

if the moon & stars & clouds AND atmosphere AND u had a great high listening location.............MAYBE once in awhile

curvature of the earth makes "easily" nearly impossible at 250 miles distance w/o major skip
 
Sorry to contradict, but I have received the Point reliably in Plano, TX. And - when I was younger, I reliably received Dallas FM in both Midland and Lubbock, TX. All it took was a good antenna and a good tuner. That is 330 mile DX. 250 miles is much easier, given a good antenna and tuner - reasonably flat terrain, and a tall tower with good ERP at the transmitting site.
 
i buy that dx with good skip conditions.............not sure on the "reliably" part
 
Skip definitely helped, but DX was not a hobby at a time. It was my only way of hearing music that wasn't hillbilly, redneck country music or heavily censored top-40. It was entertainment, the DX was merely necessary to get the formats I wanted. 24/7 - the stations were there and listenable. The only time they were "gone" was if a plane happened to fly over.
 
Here's another powerful FM station with one of the tallest towers: KYRK-FM 104.1 in Houma, Louisiana. It is assigned to both the New Orleans and Baton Rouge markets. Check out their coverage area on Radio-Locator. The signal reaches all the way to the Gulfport-Biloxi-Pascagoula market in MS and to Lafayette. 92.3 WDVW is on the same tower with the same power and coverage area as well. 101.5 WYNK out of Baton Rouge I picked up all the way in Meridian, MS -- north of Hattiesburg and Laurel. Even though they don't have as much power or their tower isn't as tall as some others, they can still be picked up from more than 100 miles away.
 
I actually could get the Houma station to Lake Charles, where they started competing with KRBE Houston for supremacy over 104.1
 
107.9 KFMW in Waterloo, IA, should be high on this list. Even though their top-of-band location limits them (I recall hearing that an 88.1, power and height being equal, has a 60 dBu theoretically 8 miles further out than a 107.9), they have some incredible coverage... probably because they're on close to a 2000-foot tower in one of the flattest states in the country. (They used to ID as "KFMW-Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Cedar Falls, Iowa City, Dubuque, Des Moines, and the Quad Cities"!) A country station on 107.9 in Stuart, west of Des Moines, has since limited their range... but this thing's still a beast. :D
 
KFMW's signal is no joke...I once heard them in Burlington Iowa..on the car radio in a 95 corrolla, factory radio and antenna to0...they're a regular catch on highway 34 from mount pleasant to fairfield, Iowa, if they're not battling to0 hard with a station from Kirksville Missouri. Burlington is practically the other end of the state on the eastern side.
 
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