FREQUENCY CHECKS

[pqgeorge]

I recall back in the late 70's hearing "frequency checks" every Sunday night/Monday morning (after midnight). A normally "daytime only" station would fire up after midnight for approximately 15 minutes and shut down right afterwards. One station in particular would be WJDY/1470 Salisbury, Maryland. Back in 1979, I would hear WJDY on the air for a frequency check while living in Westfield, Massachusetts. 'JDY had a killer signal on skywave.

"This is WJDY, Salisbury, Maryland, on the air at this time for the purpose of a frequency check. WJDY, Salisbury, Maryland".

It was obviously pre-recorded. The announcement would be repeated in between 400 Hz tones every 30 seconds.

Has anyone had experiences with frequency checks and getting QSL'ed? Unfortunately, 'JDY never replied on my QSL request. Oh well.

 

[KR4BD]

I remember this well. These Frequency Checks were very common back in the 1960's. Sunday nights, after midnight was a great time to find "daytimers" on the air with these checks.

 

[fangio28]

Back in the 50s the NRC (National Radio Club) even published lists of
scheduled frequency checks (f/c) and yes, stations did verify reports
if you could supply info such as exactly WHEN they IDed and what as said.
Stations were much more agreeable to verifications back then and it's gotten woefully more difficult as the ensuing years past.
Fangio 28 in Coeur d'Alene

 

[FreddyE1977]

The only one I ever remember hearing was for Pittsburgh's WEEP-AM 1080 back in the late 70's.
They had an application pending to go from 50kW daytime only to 5kW, day and night. It would
have required a highly directional array which was too expensive and never got built. But I heard
them doing some testing late one evening.

Here's a good question. Back in the days of CONELRAD, did stations have to test
on 640 or 1240 to make sure they were actually hitting the right mark if the system
were to be activated?

 

[KR4BD]

In the early 60's, I remember CONELRAD doing periodic tests (maybe quarterly?) where ALL AM stations shut down at midnight for a 30-60 minute period and tested their 640 and 1240 facilities. I lived in Riverside, CA in those days and I believe KFXM (now KTIE) on 590 was responsible for doing some of the testing in that area. These 640 and 1240 transmissions were rather low power (250 watts ??) and were intended to cover a specific local area. In the case of a nuclear attack, listeners were advised to tune to 640 or 1240 for information. Both of these frequencies sounded pretty jammed up when they did these tests. Virtually all of the rest of the AM band was CLEAR of signals, except for some Mexican and Canadian signals that might still be on.

I am sure there must be some OLDtimers who can fill in more information that this. I was about 13 or 14 years old back then.

 

[Darth_vader]

Are there even any recordings of such a test?

Re: frequency checks--

The former KKEY (1150) in Vancouver, before they moved down to Portland and flipped to satellite-fed Mexican music, would sign off every night about 9 or so, and would do this occasionally. I would only hear it on Saturdays several hours after "When Radio Was" ended. (That was their last programme of the evening before signing off.)

I believe I might still have a cassette somewhere that I recorded of them doing that once.

 

[radioman148]

Are there even any recordings of such a test?

Re: frequency checks--

The former KKEY (1150) in Vancouver, before they moved down to Portland and flipped to satellite-fed Mexican music, would sign off every night about 9 or so, and would do this occasionally. I would only hear it on Saturdays several hours after "When Radio Was" ended. (That was their last programme of the evening before signing off.)

I believe I might still have a cassette somewhere that I recorded of them doing that once.

I don't have any recordings of frequency checks, but I do have recordings I made of various stations doing their Sunday night signoffs from the early 60s.
Among the recordings I have are WABC, WCBS, KDKA, WBZ, & WLS.

 

[davideduardo]

In the early 60's, I remember CONELRAD doing periodic tests (maybe quarterly?) where ALL AM stations shut down at midnight for a 30-60 minute period and tested their 640 and 1240 facilities.

The full CONELRAD tests were, IIRC, at 11 AM or Noon, EST. I know of none done at night. There were, I believe, three of these on a once a year basis and lasted a half-hour. During the test, each station was either on 640 or 1240 and each was on the air a portion of the half hour. The CONELRAD system depended on no single station being on the air more than a few minutes at a time, so weapons could not target by homing in on a constant signal as they did with KGU in 1941.

These 640 and 1240 transmissions were rather low power (250 watts ??)

They usedd even less, and varied the power. Most stations could not get their transmitter to even go on the air far removed from the tuned frequncy with anything approaching full power.

Both of these frequencies sounded pretty jammed up when they did these tests. Virtually all of the rest of the AM band was CLEAR of signals, except for some Mexican and Canadian signals that might still be on.

All Canadian and Mexican stations stayed on; it wasn't their system. I DXed several of the tests from NE Ohio, and in the middle of the day logged Canadians from as far away as Manitoba.

 

[davideduardo]

It was obviously pre-recorded. The announcement would be repeated in between 400 Hz tones every 30 seconds.

Has anyone had experiences with frequency checks and getting QSL'ed? Unfortunately, 'JDY never replied on my QSL request. Oh well.

The tone was usually 1000 Hz, which of course cut through the static. There were only a few monitoring services, so the signals had to travel 500 to over a thousand miles in many cases. I visited a monitor outside Detroit, and he did measurement of stations as far away as northern Wisconsin.

I probably got two to three hundred verifications (or "veries" to BCB DXers) for frequency checks. Transcribing the exact wording of the ID generally worked.

 

[KR4BD]

David

I am certain I heard CONALRAD tests after midnight in Southern Californina where EVERYONE went off the air after midnight for an hour. This would have been around 1960-61. Our local KFXM (now KTIE) on 590 was one of the stations involved as their announcers were heard during these tests. And yes, I agree the power levels were low and were of very short duration during these tests. These were not done monthly, but perhaps quarterly or semi-annually.

Any "seasoned" AM engineers from Southern California that can confirm this?

 

[MarioMania]

Is there any Frequency Checks now??

 

[Darth_vader]

I'm sorry, I was vague in my last post. I meant to ask if anybody had ever uploaded recordings of the CONELRAD tests to the network.

[size=8pt]@MarioMania--
I couldn't tell you if there is any frequency checks these days. I'm not really sure if there are any frequency checks, either. (Please, frequently check your grammar!)

 

[davideduardo]

David

I am certain I heard CONALRAD tests after midnight in Southern Californina where EVERYONE went off the air after midnight for an hour. This would have been around 1960-61.

There certainly could have been CONELAD tests for a local area, but the national tests were daytime and not restricted geographically. As I recall, the FM I was working for simply went off the air and I seem to recall all FMs did that as transmitters were not frequency agile at the time... and I don't recall our AM ever doing post-Midnight tests... that kind of test would have been widely reported in the AM DX publications and I never recall any reports of that, but a test in the more sparsely populated San Bernardino area might have been totally missed.