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I don't like this time of year

I've heard many of your catches from Bermuda, including the 50 kw ones from New York, and I have no doubt they are like that all day every day.


Someone had mentioned about DXing for lower power stations with the saltwater path and I want through the AM logbook finding for stations to look for the next time I go out to the beach at the Gulf. I also found some regular and high power stations too that I overlooked the last time.

Of course, 870 WWL and 1060 WLNO from new Orleans come in there almost like locals.

Ones I'm almost certain I was hearing in the mix but couldn't ID are 740 KTRH and 790 KBME from Houston.

And though I didn't get an ID even after listening so long, I got what I'm sure was KCTA 1030 from Corpus Christi,Tx. It's a religious station and what I heard on 1030 was a preacher in the background of a closer Spanish station. According to the AM logbook, KCTA is the only possible station that could have been. I have that one on video too. That would be a 900 mile daytime catch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsW21MVXM8Q

So, I'll have to wait until the weather gets a little cooler so it may be weeks until I go back to the Gulf but here's a list of potential catches for the next time.


Freq / Call Letters / Location / Power (w) / Format

600 WVOG New Orleans 1000 Religion

640 KTIB Thibodaux , La 5000 Gospel

690 WIST New Orleans 10,000 Talk/standards

710 WNTM Mobile, Al 1000 Newstalk

750 KKNO Gretna, La 250 Gospel

800 WSHO New Orleans 1000 Religion

840 WBHY Mobile, Al 10,000 Religion

850 KEYH Houston, Tx 10,000 Mexican

1070 KNTH Houston, Tx 10,000 Talk

1180 KGOL Humble, Tx 50,000 Ethnic Indian

1210 WSKR Denham Springs, La 10,000 Sports

1280 WODT New Orleans, La 5000 Black Gospel

1320 KXYZ Houston, Tx 5000 Ethnic

1350 WWWL New Orleans, La 5000 Sports

1400 WZFN Ft. Walton Beach, Fl 1000 Sports

1430 KCOH Houston, Tx 5000 Urban Contemporary

1450 WBSR Pensacola, Fl 1000 Oldies

1450 WBYU New Orleans, La 1000 Teen
 
Gar,

My wife and I were either at Levy Park (near Yankeetown FL) or some other place along that Citrus coast (maybe Cedar Key....but I am almost positive it was Levy Park), and WVOG was battling WBWL at 600. WSHO 800 is a lot easier, the farther from the TB area.

The higher up the dial ya go, the less likely of the stations you will hear.

I know it's hot, but late June is of course the best time for least skywave. I believe that Honeymoon Island has a shady area w/ picnic tables!

Try also for WFTW 1260 Ft Walton (or maybe you caught it already). I heard it possibly around Sarasota.

cd
 
gar fla said:
As far as DXing goes. It's kind of depressing.

E Skip season is done.

FM tropo season is long past.
:(
Click to expand...

Disappointed how soon the E-Skip season ended, but June was great for E-Skip. And here in SE New York State, August is shaping up as great for Tropo. North Carolina and SE Virginia in several times on DTV this week on tropo (close to 400 miles), and Saturday Night - Sunday morning was a Super Tropo event, with 9 DTV stations received for the first time, including 2 for North Carolina (WITN-7, and WNCT-9 - both 481 miles), 4 from Virginia (WPXV-49, WGNT-27, WTKR-3, and WVBT-43), and 3 from Maine (WMTW-8, WGME-13, and WCSH-6). This was my first Maine DTV reception since starting in April 2009. Sorry that tropo is so dead in Florida. We have more than enough up here!
 
cd637299 said:
Gar,

My wife and I were either at Levy Park (near Yankeetown FL) or some other place along that Citrus coast (maybe Cedar Key....but I am almost positive it was Levy Park), and WVOG was battling WBWL at 600. WSHO 800 is a lot easier, the farther from the TB area.

The higher up the dial ya go, the less likely of the stations you will hear.

I know it's hot, but late June is of course the best time for least skywave. I believe that Honeymoon Island has a shady area w/ picnic tables!

Try also for WFTW 1260 Ft Walton (or maybe you caught it already). I heard it possibly around Sarasota.

cd
Click to expand...

Interesting you mention Honeymoon Island. That's where I've done all my Gulf DXing videos so far! 'Dunedin' is much easier to type and takes less space in the YouTube title box than 'Honeymoon Island'.

You know, I didn't know there was any shaded areas there. I always found a sopt in the parking lot not far from the main entrance.

I noticed the one on 1260 from Ft. Walton when making the list but didn't include it because of the local on 1250 WHNZ with a huge signal.

Yeah, I know the more you go up the dial, the less distance the surface wave travels but I considered the fact you heard something on 1410 all the way from Bermuda. Also, some here have reported hearing 1700 KVNS midday in the coastal Houston area too and you wouldn't expect a frequency like that to go so far.
 
Forgot about 1250!

If it is any help, in the day from Boca Chica near Key West, the Cuban on 980 was off, and WGNE Pensacola was in. I know, I know...970.....

Check out Levy Park if you have some time to kill. At least the TB stations are not as massive. Before you go, make a bigger list! BTW if the clouds are not a factor, Levy has awesome sunsets.

cd
 
Cd, as far as what the station was on 1410, I had to run real quick after doing my last post so I didn't get to address that.

If you look at the AM log listings for 1410, WDOV from Dover, Delaware is the only one that really sticks out big time.

They are near the coast and 5 kw and right in the direction of Bermuda according to the Radio Locator.

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WDOV&service=AM&status=L&hours=D


Now here's the FCC actual daytime pattern for WDOV. Notice the direction of that too.

http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/MB/Databases/AM_DA_patterns/145847-21164.pdf

I listened for an ID but no luck. What I do in a case like this is declare what station it is by the process of elimination. Looking at the logbook for that frequency and researching all the stations anywhere near the coast from Florida to Maine, none of them would have a chance of getting out that far.
 
Thanks, but the call letters in the clip do not sound like WDOV....although it would make sense. WPOP Hartford, another candidate, was a sports format at that time, I think.

I'll listen again, and write WDOV if I feel more confident. BTW when I returned, I googled "news talk 1410" and nothing seemed to match.

I'll be playing my tapes again, to make more sense.

To all: I did get WWRL 1600 NYC in the day from Bermuda as well! Of course, they throw 25 k into the Atlantic...but still....1600! No skywave fading as such, but it sure was faint.

cd
 
Anybody do any DX'ing around Gulf Breeze or Santa Rosa Island? I ought to do a "DX-pedition" down there, where some of my family is from.
 
kenglish said:
Anybody do any DX'ing around Gulf Breeze or Santa Rosa Island? I ought to do a "DX-pedition" down there, where some of my family is from.
Click to expand...

I have not, but I did do some daytime DXn from Cape San Blas, the cape south of Tallahassee. WKWF Key West with its amazing 500 watts made it there, battling KLEB Golden Meadow LA.

Also when Cancun, Mexico had AM 1050 with 35k daytime, I believe it made it there too. Hurricane Wilma destroyed it, as I recall.

I do have a tape of this, but I have to dig to find it.

cd
 
Cd, I think I solved the mystery of 1410!!

I listened to the very very end of one clip again and again and with the headphones on and I swear the man is saying "Newstalk 1400 WOND".

I looked on 1400 in the logbook and there sure enough is a newstalk station on 1400 called WOND.

It's only a 1 kw non directional station from Pleasantville New Jersey!!

That's an even better catch!!!

Looks like you were tuned to 1400, not 1410.


That's awesome. A 1 kw station during the day heard about 750 miles away!
 
Wow, I'd like to believe you....but really I went up 10kHz at a time, and I am sure I heard "News Talk 14-10" not "14-hundred".

On top of that, all 1400's are ND, so it would be a gaggle of stations on that freq. This station stood out.

I did e-mail WDOV because I listened again, and it did sound more like "WDOV" with heavy distortion. I await a reply....but Total Recorder has a slow-down feature, and that's how it sounded more like WDOV. The only problem is, they did not go by "Newstalk 1410", at least when I Googled at that time.

But I'll put your idea in the hopper!

cd
 
I listened to the end of that one clip so many times and it never sounded like "WDOV".

It really sounds like Newstalk 1400 WOND.

I take it the radio you used didn't have a digital tuner. That's one thing I don't miss about the old days of DXing because a lot of it was guess work when it came to finding a specific frequency.

My Sangean PR-D5 not only has a didital tuner but the same size AM antenna as the GE Super Radio and many people aren't aware of that.

If you can get a 1kw station on a frequency as high as 1400 that far away, it really makes me take a whole better and more optimistic look at the potential for saltwater DXing.

I have to now look for more stations for when I go back to the Gulf.

Dollars to doughnuts says you were hearing the 1400 1 kw station from Pleasantville, NJ and that's an amazing catch to be proud of.
 
OK then, I am still on my job, but I'll listen intently again tonight when I get home, or tomorrow!!

Yes it was a Superadio II, analog, but I took car to go slowly up the dial. There are local Bermudans at that high end, so they coulda thrown me off frequency!

At the end of that clip is a "sounder" which would most certainly be a giveaway for whichever station it was.

True....at the time, no 1410 seemed to match what was heard.

cd
 
Listen to that very end of the clip many times and you will see they are saying Newstalk 1400 WOND.

Also, have others listen too for second opinions but you listening with headphones makes the difference.

Since a 1 kw station at 1400 can make it from the Jersey shore to Bermuda, it gives me even more confidence I was hearing a 10 kw station from Puerto Rico at the lower end of the dial at Daytona Beach. I needed the loop to actually hear what they were saying and without the loop, it was a barely audible signal.

I also bet that WIOD Miami could probably be heard daytime at the Jersey shore, even if very weak, if it weren't for WIP. The same goes for WQAM if weren't for WFIL.

When I lived in New Jersey, it's a shame I wasn't aware how far saltwater could make a signal go and I thought getting WBZ at the shore was such a great catch.
 
WIOD came in rather easily at Cape Hatteras, but 560 is home to WGAI Elizabeth City NC there. There was a Bob Carter, CE of WGAI who's an avid DXer. Not sure his whereabouts now.

cd
 
gar fla said:
I listened to the end of that one clip so many times and it never sounded like "WDOV".

It really sounds like Newstalk 1400 WOND.

Dollars to doughnuts says you were hearing the 1400 1 kw station from Pleasantville, NJ and that's an amazing catch to be proud of.
Click to expand...

This 1400 (1410) question has intrigued me, so I've listened to the clip and done some research. The closest 3 stations on 1400 to Hamilton, Bermuda are: WHTB Fall River, MA, WOND Pleasantville (Atlantic City), NJ, and WPCE Portsmouth, VA. WHTB is ethnic, and WPCE is Gospel, while WOND is News Talk. WPCE's signal has to cross several miles of land at Virginia Beach before hitting the ocean. WHTB is likewise several miles inland. WOND is right at the coast!! WOND has a very tall tower that gives it an effective power of almost 2kw, compared to a station using a standard tower.

The closest 5 stations to Bermuda on 1410 are all farther away than the 1400 stations mentioned above, including WDOV. None are located right on the coast, although WHTG Eatontown, NJ is only 4 miles inland, but they are only 500 watts with a pretty standard anternna, and have an oldies format I beleive.

The audio clip is too weak to be absolutely sure what it says. However, I believe the end of the clip says: " ...you can depend on, News Talk 1400, WOND" (end of clip). I believe this could very well be WOND. I calculated a field strength at Bermuda for WOND of approx 7 uv/m..... very weak, but enough above the noise to be detectable on a very good receiver. By way of comparison, the outer "fringe" contours on the Radio Locator AM maps is 150 uv/m. So we are really talking weak signals here. No one else on 1400 or 1410 would be stronger.
 
I agree completely it has to be WOND. I've listened to the clip many times and it is saying "1400 WOND".

WOND in Pleasantville, NJ is the only one right near the ocean too.

I think we have a verdict.

Cd, that's a fantastic catch.

A 1 kw station 730 miles away in the daytime!
 
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