in Northern NJ, cruising at night Bloomfield Av. and noting 1600 WWRL's small back lobes in the 60's

[alok]

Growing up in Northern NJ in the 50’s / 60’s was fun. When my friends & I got our drivers licenses it was more fun.

Around 1967 the thing to do with my group of friends and other groups was to “cruise” Bloomfield Av. from Newark, NJ west to Verona, NJ then turn around and head east on Bloomfield Av. Over & over!!!
This went on from around 8 / 9 to 11PM! With occasional stops at a Pizza place in Newark.

Eventually around 11PM or 12 Mid we’d all end up at the White Castle hamburger place at the end of Bloomfield Av, in Verona (no longer there)

Most friends had used cars, some had new cars fully loaded. With AM/FM radio and a built-in 8 track tape player.

Like many of my friends my car was a used car. I had a 61 Chevy Impala . . . as clean as can be . . . it had the GM factory AM only push-button radio, that was very selective & sensitive and sounded good too . . . In the NYC area WOR-FM 98.7 made its RnR debut in 1966 (THE SOUND IS 98.7 WOR-FM NEW YORK - IN STEREO!!!), so I purchased an FM converter, it worked well, considering it took the FM signal and converted it to AM to be heard on my GM in-dash radio.

I also purchased a used 8 track Lear Jet tape player, the FM converter & tape player were “under dash” mounts. Plus, I had a "reverb" unit!!!

The Lear Jet had its issues, I was told they had a service center in Irvington, NJ and one day went there, the guy gave me (FREE) a refurbished unit, in exchange for my used unit - exact same type, it worked better, it looked new . . . but it too had some minor issues. Lear's were problematic!

Most of my friends left their car radios on 77 WABC , not me. I was constantly pushing the buttons, not just for “more music” but to listen to “THE DJ’S” --- 570 WMCA, 770 WABC, 1430 WNJR (R&B), and 1600 WWRL (R&B). The last button was set to the FM converters output on the AM dial.

Being a “radio nerd” I did something that my friends did not realize I was doing, except afew.

When you cruised Bloomfield Av and had 1600 WWRL on, if you were going west out of Newark, near Branch Brook Park (SUPER 16) would suddenly take a dive (signal strength) and the further west you went you’d start to hear other stations on 1600 behind them.

In the other direction “east” they had signals behind them then like suddenly got loud, right near Branch Brook Park and even louder into Newark.

I loved it, you were going in and out of the small lobes that went west and also over Newark at night, and these back lobes were not potent like the main lobe over most of NYC at night.

Some of my friend's kind of knew I was “messing around", like I said - I loved it!!!

 

[ted chittenden]

I never lived in New York or New Jersey but here is a little story of mine about playing with the radio.

In 1971, my dad moved to Phoenix and rented a house. In 1972, the rest of the family moved there (here now) to join him and that fall I began attending the state's boarding school for the deaf (which I was not) and blind (which I was/am) in Tucson, some 120 miles southeast. I would stay at the school for the next four years, and my parents, with the exception of one weekend, would dutifully drive down to pick me up Friday and drive me back every Sunday.

At 9 years of age, I was definitely a radio nut, then. I had a Realistic AM/SW/FM/Air/Police band radio that my father had purchased for me as a birthday present in 1972, and I always was tuning around the dial on the trips to Tucson, irritating my parents (because I was never settling on one station) but trying to figure out what I could hear from the DX.

One time, we stopped and had dinner on the way back to Tucson and then I became sick (vomiting, etc.). My folks debated whether or not to return me home but finally decided on continuing the trip. We left the restaurant late enough (I think it was after 8pm in January of 1973) and proceeded towards Tucson from Picacho Peak. Despite my illness, I was still playing with the radio.

One of Tucson's three top-40 outlets at that time was KTKT at 990 kHz. During the day, its signal could be heard in many parts of Phoenix, including my residence, with a fairly good receiver, which the Realistic was. At night, however, the power was lowered, and (I learned this later), the AM antenna became directional away from Phoenix. During the evening hours in Phoenix, on 990 kHz I heard competing stations, both in Mexico; one was Mexicali's XECL but I never learned the callsign of the other station.

Anyway, on that trip from the restaurant to Tucson, I began hearing KTKT right around Marana. However, the Mexican stations, particularly XECL, were heavily interfeerring with the signal, and this interference continued until we had entered Tucson city proper when KTKT became dominant over everything else.

While we made a whole lot more trips down to Tucson on Sunday evenings (usually we arrived between 7 and 8pm), I never was to hear again the wild interference that XECL caused to KTKT on those trips as I did when I was sick with the flu.

 

[Gregg.]

Growing up in Northern NJ in the 50’s / 60’s was fun. When my friends & I got our drivers licenses it was more fun.

Around 1967 the thing to do with my group of friends and other groups was to “cruise” Bloomfield Av. from Newark, NJ west to Verona, NJ then turn around and head east on Bloomfield Av. Over & over!!!
This went on from around 8 / 9 to 11PM! With occasional stops at a Pizza place in Newark.

Eventually around 11PM or 12 Mid we’d all end up at the White Castle hamburger place at the end of Bloomfield Av, in Verona (no longer there)

I went to Montclair State, a mile or two off your Bloomfield Avenue route. If I or one of my friends were doing the late shift on the college FM radio station, at 1 a.m. it signed off. Most times, we'd all cruise over to White Castle on Bloomfield Avenue in Verona, one of the few 24 hour affordable places to grab a bite. (The store and its parking lot were small so the company closed it around 1990. There are other White Castles in NJ but no longer in Verona.)

And if you were lucky, at that time of night, you might be able to tune in a distant Top 40 station, such as WKBW 1510 Buffalo or 800 CKLW Windsor-Detroit, while driving in your car. Or if conditions weren't quite right, there was always New York stations WABC 770 and WXLO 98.7 for Top 40 or WPLJ 95.5 and WNEW-FM 102.7 for rock.

 

[alok]

OK to both Ted and Gregg, on your comments.

Talking about 1520 WKBW (today WWKB), I had mentioned this over the years here . . . many kids in my area of Northern NJ going back to I think it was 1958, when - THE BIG KB - started to play RnR, had the last button set on their car radio to WKBW 1520 in Buffalo, they came in great at night in NJ with an occasional fade, but most of the time solid.

And yes on 800 CKLW, they did great too in NNJ, until Trans World Radio (TWR) 800 in Bonaire, went on the air, CKLW was still in there solid but the new "island" station kind of was behind them once they came on the air.

Again, Thanks to you both for the comments.

 

[kevtronics]

While WWRL upgraded their daytime signal from 5 kW to 25 kW in the late 1990s, I believe their 5 kW nighttime signal is unchanged, and is still nulls-a-plenty:

 

[Huff]