I've vacationed down there before and NY AMs make it down there during the daytime. I was able to get 660, 770 and 880 during the daytime there.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
If there were a 50000 watt AM station in Montauk, Long Island...
- Thread starter nd2023
- Start date
I've vacationed down there before and NY AMs make it down there during the daytime. I was able to get 660, 770 and 880 during the daytime there.
What's even more impressive is that the signal leaving WBZ's array has to travel over some land in MA and RI - and not very good (conductivity) land - before it can go out to sea.
I remember WBZ having a good signal daytime in summer on Long Beach Island at the Jersey shore.
Not long after we went back across the causeway and on the mainland, it was gone.
Back in those days, I was not aware of how powerful the effect of saltwater is on AM signals as I am now. Yeah, I knew it made a big difference because of WBZ and how stations like WNBC and WCBS were like locals in Beach Haven 80 miles away but I didn't know at the time that a signal could be heard 1,000 miles away via saltwater path.
Had I known, I would have attempted to hear WQAM Miami down at the shore in the daytime because I remember the signal of WFIL was probably weak enough to be nulled enough to be able to hear other stations that may be on the same frequency.
At night when I was at my parent's shore house, I tried to hear WQAM because it was impossible to listen for back home near Philadelphia but I never heard them at all. Then again, they are only 1 kw at night.
Not long after we went back across the causeway and on the mainland, it was gone.
Back in those days, I was not aware of how powerful the effect of saltwater is on AM signals as I am now. Yeah, I knew it made a big difference because of WBZ and how stations like WNBC and WCBS were like locals in Beach Haven 80 miles away but I didn't know at the time that a signal could be heard 1,000 miles away via saltwater path.
Had I known, I would have attempted to hear WQAM Miami down at the shore in the daytime because I remember the signal of WFIL was probably weak enough to be nulled enough to be able to hear other stations that may be on the same frequency.
At night when I was at my parent's shore house, I tried to hear WQAM because it was impossible to listen for back home near Philadelphia but I never heard them at all. Then again, they are only 1 kw at night.
So far one of my favorite saltwater path groundwave stories is this one. 
http://www.hard-core-dx.com/archive/irca/msg46025.html
So if 5 kW into a standard 1/4-wave antenna on 560 with an ICF- 6500W would do that, I wonder what multiple dedicated 2 MW transmitters into each element of an array of anti-fading multi-segmented (like typical FM bays) Franklin antennas on 153 kHz would do with a good communications receiver and a quad-gang-air-core-capacitor-pretuned beverage antenna? Also what would be the radiation efficiency of such setup be for 1kW at 1km? could 1000, or even 2000, 3200, 4000 or 5000+ mV/m @ 1 km for 1 kW be achieved?
BTW I'm assuming that "clearly copy" means there was *NO* static detectable - if you cranked up the volume till your ears hurt when listening to a program, then switched off the radio during a period of non-modulation, there'd be no discernable difference in noise level. (This assumes you're listening on custom-made in-ear monitor headphones in an anechoic chamber.)
As for how loud I mean ... I was just now remembering an incident on my bike with a flat tire. I stopped at a gas station to pump up a leaky tube so I could either get home or get to a bike shop to repair it, I don't remember which. (BTW I was listening to my radio with (I thought) fairly decent (for the sub-$20-$40 price) sound-isolating headphones.) Apparently I either put too much air in too fast, the tube was weak already, or both, cause I heard a loud bang THROUGH the isolating headphones! For the next day or two my ear on that side was ringing like crazy, and I had temporarily lost, I'm guessing, a few decades of dB of hearing around the 1-6 kHz range or so. It was something like at least a few weeks to a couple months later before my hearing had fully recovered, IIRC.
Also I'm assuming that the type of communications receiver I have in mind is sensitive enough so that with *NO* antenna at all, it gets that quality signal on a station that the GE Superradio, CCRadio2, Sangean PR-D5, etc, couldn't even detect carriers if they had QRSS CW or SSB capability. Also the beverage antenna should have high enough broadband gain to raise a signal from undetectable to overloading as severely as this video demonstrates. (That is, if it was just your typical Sony, Sangean, GE, Rat Shack, Tecsun portables, although the high-end comm RX should handle it perfectly fine.) Tuning the antenna should further increase the on-frequency gain by the same number of dB or more. (I'd like to go so far as to say the comm RX should have good enough selectivity to bring in a threshold-of-detectability-WITH-antenna split-channel station just a couple kHz from an IBOC pest that overloads with NO antenna like the video, with NO splatter, but I'm starting to be dreaming just a bit much, at least for under $200 or so.)
Being maybe a little more realistic, though, how much of a difference in sensitivity can you have on radio circuts without factoring in antenna gain?
http://www.hard-core-dx.com/archive/irca/msg46025.html
(There is an error in the distances and km vs mi, but I went ahead and pasted the quote exactly.)
So if 5 kW into a standard 1/4-wave antenna on 560 with an ICF- 6500W would do that, I wonder what multiple dedicated 2 MW transmitters into each element of an array of anti-fading multi-segmented (like typical FM bays) Franklin antennas on 153 kHz would do with a good communications receiver and a quad-gang-air-core-capacitor-pretuned beverage antenna? Also what would be the radiation efficiency of such setup be for 1kW at 1km? could 1000, or even 2000, 3200, 4000 or 5000+ mV/m @ 1 km for 1 kW be achieved?
BTW I'm assuming that "clearly copy" means there was *NO* static detectable - if you cranked up the volume till your ears hurt when listening to a program, then switched off the radio during a period of non-modulation, there'd be no discernable difference in noise level. (This assumes you're listening on custom-made in-ear monitor headphones in an anechoic chamber.)
As for how loud I mean ... I was just now remembering an incident on my bike with a flat tire. I stopped at a gas station to pump up a leaky tube so I could either get home or get to a bike shop to repair it, I don't remember which. (BTW I was listening to my radio with (I thought) fairly decent (for the sub-$20-$40 price) sound-isolating headphones.) Apparently I either put too much air in too fast, the tube was weak already, or both, cause I heard a loud bang THROUGH the isolating headphones! For the next day or two my ear on that side was ringing like crazy, and I had temporarily lost, I'm guessing, a few decades of dB of hearing around the 1-6 kHz range or so. It was something like at least a few weeks to a couple months later before my hearing had fully recovered, IIRC.
Also I'm assuming that the type of communications receiver I have in mind is sensitive enough so that with *NO* antenna at all, it gets that quality signal on a station that the GE Superradio, CCRadio2, Sangean PR-D5, etc, couldn't even detect carriers if they had QRSS CW or SSB capability.
Also the beverage antenna should have high enough broadband gain to raise a signal from undetectable to overloading as severely as this video demonstrates. (That is, if it was just your typical Sony, Sangean, GE, Rat Shack, Tecsun portables, although the high-end comm RX should handle it perfectly fine.) Tuning the antenna should further increase the on-frequency gain by the same number of dB or more. (I'd like to go so far as to say the comm RX should have good enough selectivity to bring in a threshold-of-detectability-WITH-antenna split-channel station just a couple kHz from an IBOC pest that overloads with NO antenna like the video, with NO splatter, but I'm starting to be dreaming just a bit much, at least for under $200 or so.)Being maybe a little more realistic, though, how much of a difference in sensitivity can you have on radio circuts without factoring in antenna gain?
Last edited:
- Status