Right now I’m vacationing in Los Angeles and staying around the Hollywood area. I’m surprised that I can easy picked up San Diego radio station. Must be a strong inversion this time of the year. It’s kind of weird clicking on the FM dial .2 MHz it seems that Los Angeles radio station is very crowded and full.
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Hearing San Diego radio stations in Los Angeles
- Thread starter e-dawg
- Start date
Always has been. As a kid in L.A. (birth in 1956 to age 9 in 1965), just dialing around AM, there wasn't much space, and a lot of that had to do with how well AM signals from San Diego got in (the noise floor was a lot lower in those days).
Later on, on frequent visits back to L.A., I found the same was true of FM.
Short version: San Diego is south of L.A.---but not due south. So those signals travel over water to get to L.A.
I've had the same experience with KGB-FM, and, back in the 80s, listened to 91X as far north as Santa Barbara---because the shoreline keeps curving and the beach at Santa Barbara faces south.
In Laguna Beach you can hear most of the SD while the LA signals are very poor if you can receive them at all.
The San Diego stations are also regulars on the beaches of Santa Barbara. They travel nicely over the water.
Say hello to the San Joaquin Hills to the west of Laguna Beach:
Laguna Beach is right at the base of the hills, which peak at 1,100 feet and run from just south of the 405 very nearly to the water. They're blocking the line of sight from Mt. Wilson and the other L.A. FM transmitter locations.
Between Laguna Beach and San Diego? No such obstructions---just a nice smooth patch of Pacific:
i can hear a few Sandy Eggo and Tee huh wanna AM's quite regularly up here in AK
And when I was in Alaska... San Diego FMs and some LA FMs were very common visitors in the summer (my skip path would be san diego and the lower parts of the LA FM band up to about 93, and then itd miss a chunk of the state and id hit stockton/fresno/bakersfield and environs on up to redding... seriously.. didnt hear much LA at all, oddly enough
And when I was in Alaska... San Diego FMs and some LA FMs were very common visitors in the summer (my skip path would be san diego and the lower parts of the LA FM band up to about 93, and then itd miss a chunk of the state and id hit stockton/fresno/bakersfield and environs on up to redding... seriously.. didnt hear much LA at all, oddly enough
Until a few years ago KFMB (760---now KGB) was 10,000 watts daytime and 50,000 watts directional night. I've never lived further north than Ukiah, California, but 760 San Diego came in like a local after the sun went down---and that's 625 miles.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I discovered 91X during its earliest post-Beautiful Music incarnation as a Rock 40 (when the primary imaging liner was "where 'X' marks the rock") and received it with no static in Ventura, because as you can see on the map, Ventura is NNW of Tijuana and most of that mileage is over the Pacific.
Alas, I was unable to continue into the "Rock Of The 80's" period when KCPB went on the air in late 1979; as they were also on 91.1 and had their transmitter on Sulphur Mountain several miles due north of Ventura, there was no chance of XETRA-FM reception after that.
However, there was still a happy ending: Because of that earlier listening, I made the acquaintance of San Diego radio legend Gene Knight, who is now my primary liner voice on The Eighties Channel™.
The only LA station I've ever gotten was KNX, it was solid during the daytime in North Dakota about 15 years ago. Never heard any SD stations but I did get in a station from Monterrey, Mexico last year here in Kansas.
I was able to hear LMSD's top 40/CHR XHITZ via a GlobalTuners Los Angeles server once.
Location of the transmitter site is key to what you'll be able hear. In San Diego, Mt. Soledad is the largest site for the major FM's. It is located between Interstate 5 and the Pacific coast and overlooks the ocean. The Mt. Wilson site is too far inland for signals to be able to travel over water.
There were times in SE WY I could heard KNX All day in the winter... now, mind you... at 1230, 1pm.. itd barely be a gurgle above the noise floor, but it was there.
Mt Soledad FM's
89.5 KPBS 26kw
94.1 KMYI 77kw (strongest signal)
94.9 KMZT 26.5kw
95.7 KSSX 30kw
96.5 KYXY 26.5kw
98.1 KXSN 26.5kw
100.7 KFBG 30kw
102.1 KLVJ 26.5kw
102.9 KLQV 30kw
103.7 KSON 26.5kw
105.3 KIOZ 26kw
KHTS, KGB, KWFN, and KLQV (all 50kw) are at the Emerald Hills site in SE San Diego.
Curious, as to how many of those make it to LA?
89.5 KPBS 26kw
94.1 KMYI 77kw (strongest signal)
94.9 KMZT 26.5kw
95.7 KSSX 30kw
96.5 KYXY 26.5kw
98.1 KXSN 26.5kw
100.7 KFBG 30kw
102.1 KLVJ 26.5kw
102.9 KLQV 30kw
103.7 KSON 26.5kw
105.3 KIOZ 26kw
KHTS, KGB, KWFN, and KLQV (all 50kw) are at the Emerald Hills site in SE San Diego.
Curious, as to how many of those make it to LA?
When I lived on L.A.'s Westside many decades ago, I could routinely receive ALL those stations when tropospheric ducting was strong. The easiest ones to hear were 100.7 and 101.5, because the L.A. stations were more than one channel away. Also, you didn't mention 90.3 and 91.1 in Tijuana (both at or near 100kw) -- they were super-easy to pick up because they had no L.A. adjacents either.
Actually KLQV and KWFN are at the Emerald Hills site, and the other two are on a separate tower about a mile northwest. But yes, same general area.
Do you happen to know how 94.1 got authorized at a much higher power than the other Soledad FM's?
My autotype went nuts...KLNV not KLQV is the one not on Mt Soledad. And it's KBZT not KMZT.
OK. So many of you hear AM [and FM] north to south and south to north it sounds like. How well do stations east of the Rockies come in. I think those big giant mountains would be in the way of a lot of them. There was only one time I heard two AM LA stations east of the Rockies back in the mid/late 70s[hear in NE Ohio] sitting in my 1962 Chevy Nova II hauled in a station from LA and another from San Francisco. Can't remember for the life of me what the call signs were but remember hearing the legal ID and city of license at the top of the hour. Dumbest thing I ever did was sell that car and leave the original radio in it. Part tube/part transistor but that thing was a super DXer.
As mentioned in an earlier thread, back between 1959 and 1963 when I lived in NE Ohio, I heard these LA area frequencies there:
570, 640, 710, 740, 790, 930, 980. 1020, 1070, 1110, 1150, 1190, 1280, 1330, 1390, 1480, 1540, 1580, 1600.
Mountains are really not in the way of AM skip, unless they are a nearby barrier. For example, when I lived in Quito at 9800 feet there were 13,000 to 14,000 foot mountains just a few miles to the west of where I lived. So I never heard Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and the like. But I did hear many countries from Europe and Africa, and a bunch of Class IV 250 watt US "graveyarders" from the Dakotas, Montana and surrounding states.
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