HEY has anybody noticed that ...

[SuperRadioFan]

Radio-Locator now has Mexican stations listed with their daytime and nightime power and other info including coordinates of transmitter location as well as "coverage area". Check out the "maps" of the latter two items for a good laugh.

If you do the advanced search on any particular frequency you'll find the Mexican stations.

On a side note, I like what this site has done listing streaming stations by genre of programming. Good improvements. Kudos to the gang at Radio-Locator!! 8)

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/home

 

[vibe]

Thanks for the info-I'm curious to see how accurate they are in South Fla with that salt water parth.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

It looks like a work in progress - there is no way Mexico only has 80 stations (most listed are FM) - with all the interference and grief their radio pollution causes in the Southern United States.

 

[davideduardo]

It looks like a work in progress - there is no way Mexico only has 80 stations (most listed are FM) - with all the interference and grief their radio pollution causes in the Southern United States.

Mexico has about 1200 stations.

And the licensed and notified Mexican stations cause no more interefence than co-channel stations do anywhere else.

 

[SuperRadioFan]

Mexico has about 1200 stations.

And the licensed and notified Mexican stations cause no more interefence than co-channel stations do anywhere else.

EXCEPT they don't follow the same rules powering down at night, now do they, David??

Example, listen to the station on 1160 that interferes with KSL until around 7 pm or the station(s) on 760 that interfere with KFMB. It looks like many of the stations from Mexico are non-directional as well.

 

[mimo]

With these stations you have to type in the call letters to see the maps, unfortunately they don't help unless the station does cover some U.S. ground....I typed in XEROK 800 and got a lo0k at what they did in the states, I decided to type in XEWA 540 and could just make out the very southern tip of texas in the top corner. XEW 900 is only their repeater, so it isn't accurate at all for them. Mexico does respect the agreements they have with the U.S. stations, atmospheric conditions sometimes make stations behave in strange ways. I also wouldn't call their stations "polution" as I've always enjoyed Mexican AM stations, they helped me with my spanish (first thing I ever underst0od on the radio in spanish was a time and temperature check from XEG 1050 Monterrey) and the music is pretty go0d, plus it gives Mexicans away from home a way to keep in touch with their homeland if their isn't a local spanish station at night.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I also wouldn't call their stations "polution" as I've always enjoyed Mexican AM stations, they helped me with my spanish (first thing I ever underst0od on the radio in spanish was a time and temperature check from XEG 1050 Monterrey) and the music is pretty go0d, plus it gives Mexicans away from home a way to keep in touch with their homeland if their isn't a local spanish station at night.

I would call them pollution when they knowing violate their country's law by remaining on full daytime power at night. That is uncalled for - and I wish the Mexican authorities would crack down on the practice. It makes some frequencies unlistenable for both English and Spanish speaking listeners. I am sure an allocation plan could be mutually arrived at proportional to the populations of both countries.

As far as Mexicans keeping in touch with their homeland - that is the function of the shortwave band. There is a glut of Spanish language stations in this country, there is probably no place in the country where significant populations of Hispanics are not served by local radio (it seems to be the fashion these days to take underperforming stations Spanish).

 

[romer979fm]

I would call them pollution when they knowing violate their country's law by remaining on full daytime power at night. That is uncalled for - and I wish the Mexican authorities would crack down on the practice. It
As far as Mexicans keeping in touch with their homeland - that is the function of the shortwave band.
[/quote]

How are they violating Mexican law? IIRC...Mexico allows daytime-only stations to remain on until 7pm local time.
Doing that causes problems here...but they are absolutely following the rules they are licensed under.

And is it written somewhere that "the function of the shortwave band" is for "Mexicans to keep in touch with
their homeland"? Where in the wide wide world of sports did THAT come from?

 

[davideduardo]

I would call them pollution when they knowing violate their country's law by remaining on full daytime power at night. That is uncalled for - and I wish the Mexican authorities would crack down on the practice. It makes some frequencies unlistenable for both English and Spanish speaking listeners. I am sure an allocation plan could be mutually arrived at proportional to the populations of both countries.

The use of the spectrum on AM is regulated internationally, starting with NARBA and now with the "Comision Mixta" and takes into account generally accepted engineering practice, skywave propagation, etc.

Mexico has a lower number of AM's for the population than the US does, and has different engineering standards for its internal allocations. The use of directionals is much less, for example. What happened is that the US built out the band faster than Mexico did... in 1930 Mexico had a handfull of stations vs. hundreds and hundreds in the US, so many channels became unavailable for Mexican use.

Mexico considers "daytime" to be 6 AM to 7 PM, local time, every day. THis is in part because most of Mexico is closer to the equator, and the length of days does not vary as much as it might in Yakima or Bangor.

But, back to your statement: there is a procedure for usage of the AM dial in place and it has been working pretty well for two-thirds of a century. Like in the US, some stations will not comply with night power of sign-off times. But in the US we jokingly refer to the SFA, or "Special Football Autority" where daytimers don't sign off till after the Friday HS game or don't drop power.

Not all Mexican AMs heard in the US are operating illegally... having a Mexican station "owning" a frequency in Texas comes in part from the fact that Mexico is so close.

Oh, there is an FM system for stations within a certain distance of the mutual border, too.

As far as Mexicans keeping in touch with their homeland - that is the function of the shortwave band. There is a glut of Spanish language stations in this country, there is probably no place in the country where significant populations of Hispanics are not served by local radio (it seems to be the fashion these days to take underperforming stations Spanish).

In general, Mexicans resident in the US do not DX stations in Mexico. In years of diary reviews, I have never seen one mentioned even once.

 

[davideduardo]

EXCEPT they don't follow the same rules powering down at night, now do they, David??

No, as a soverign nation, they can make any rules they want. Fortunately, in most they coordinate with the US.

Daytime is 6 AM to 7 PM, year round for Mexican AMs. It's their rule, and has never been changed either by NARBA or the Comisión Mixta.

 

[mimo]

When I mentioned about Mexican's dx-ing Stations from Mexico, it was when I lived in southeast Iowa, which didn't have local spanish radio at night, and we had a very weak WIND out of Chicago, which David Eduardo is very familiar with, and we had 1200 out of Chicago for a couple of hours a day, in small towns of 10 thousand or less, you're not going to encounter much in the way of spanish radio in Iowa, and several of my freinds, both workers and University students would listen to the Mexican stations at night to hear the latest grupos, banda and norteña songs, and buying the music wasn't easy either, as it required hours of travelling to do so. In a large city that DOES have local spanish language radio, you're definitely NOT going to have people listening to stations thousands of miles away when there's a local product serving their needs. Even today in Iowa, when you get far away enough from Des Moines, KBGG 1700 doesn't come in well enough to make it worth people's effort to tune in. Thanks again, David, for mentioning NARBA, that was what I was refering to when I mentioned the agreements with north american stations, I just couldn't remember what it was called. Mexico (just like the U.S. and Canada) also has some stations that are recognised as clear channels for their use.

 

[gr8oldies]

I looked up XERF which still had a 250,000 watt power listed, I thought I had read they they were only 50,000. During the old powerhouse days, my understanding was they only operated 6pm-6am. Is that still true?

 

[davideduardo]

I looked up XERF which still had a 250,000 watt power listed, I thought I had read they they were only 50,000. During the old powerhouse days, my understanding was they only operated 6pm-6am. Is that still true?

XERF is now 100 kw and operated by an institution of the Mexican government, the IMER. It had run about a decade at 17 kw, and finally the raised it to 100 kw abot a year or so ago.