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Interesting Catches at Noon Today

C

cjunkielover

I was killing time as my wife shopped at Chico's on Rae Road in South Charlotte today and started surfing the AM dial while I waited. The first thing I noticed was a really strong signal on 750 from WSB in Atlanta (promo for Herman Cain's new show replacing Neal Boortz along with station ID). Then I checked 700 and heard the Cincinnati Bengals pregame show on WLW.

My next catch was gospel music from WSM in Nashville.

And finally, I caught WQEW 1560 (Radio Disney) from New York City mixed in with daytime only WAGL from Lancaster, SC (24 miles away).

I realize that these are all 50KW stations but it is highly unusual to catch them here in the middle of the day. I can usually get all of them clearly at night.
 
Gotta love that winter daytime skywave. It's also a good time of year to check FM for winter e-skip. I was getting signals all across the X-Band which is usually blank during the day here in northern Ohio.
 
Interesting catch of WLW in the early afternoon. I don't know if the weather here helped that signal get up and out, but it was in the low 40's in the Cincinnati area about that time. Both WLW and the other 50,000-watt station in town, WCKY - 1530-AM - carry the Bengals' games along with one of the local FM stations - WEBN.
 
Cincinnati Kid, you'd be interested to know that WLW is the only midday distant AM station I've ever heard here in Florida via skywave. (Saltwater path distant daytime stations are another story. ;D )


It was two years ago this time and I went to Clearwater Beach to do some daytime DXIng of stations across the Gulf but when I got there, it was too cold and windy to even be outside.

The short time I had my equipment set up, I was real surprised to hear WLW.

When I packed up and got back in my car to warm up, I had the car radio on and WLW had a steady slowly fading in and out very listenable signal the whole time I was there. It was a Bengals game.

I checked all the other frequencies with 50 kw stations up north like 660, 770, 880, and others including 1530 and not a trace of WCKY either.

WLW was the only station from up north I could hear.

As I drove back to Tampa, WLW slowly got weaker and was conpletely gone in Tampa.
 
Gar -

WLW normally has a very good day-time signal over what is probably a 200-300 mile range. At night, depending on where you are, that signal can be better or not as good depending on a multitude of things. on the other hand, WCKY has a fairly-nice signal during the day over what is probably 150 or so miles. Of course, at night, its signal is legendary.

Cincinnati Kid
 
But in a skywave type of signal, I would have expected the much higher frequency to be the one heard.

But I guess the right conditions for skip can favor select frequencies at one time and others at other times.
 
You actually have good ground conductivity where you are compared to a lot of the country but if you heard KNX midday it would be via skywave anyway.

You wouldn't have to travel too far south in the central valley from your location to be able to hear KFI daytime all day every day because it's the groundwave.
 
I used to drive the 5 from Bakersfield up to the Bay Area fairly often and could easily hear KFI all the way day or night. KNX was never as strong as KFI, even in Bakersfield.
 
Since I discovered it at 12:20 PM today, I've been hearing a weak but barely audible signal from the 1 kw 800 WSHO New Orleans here in Tampa.

The signal is steady when I can hear it when WFLA isn't splashing over and I matched it up to the station's online stream. It was the same guy preaching that I heard on the radio.

That's a 1 kw station midday at 480 miles!

I'm wondering if it's the groundwave signal because WSHO has a weak but very audible signal out at the Gulf daytime even in the summer.

Either way, that's a pretty good catch.
 
I’ve reported about the 50 kW signals I’ve been hearing at solar noon but one day last week it was crazy. It sounded like it does at sunset. I think every station within maybe 300 miles was coming in all at the same time. Some examples are 1440 and 1570 sounded like the graveyard channels. On 630 WMAL, WMFD and at least two others were all in, 640 had WFNC and WWJZ and something else. On the X band, I heard 1660 WBCN, 1680 WTTM and 1690 WPTX. WCAO 600 Baltimore was briefly heard in HD. On 1530, daytime regular WOBX was buried by WCKY. This is the first time I’ve noticed this amount of activity, seemingly from all directions, at noon. It was not there the previous day or the next day. This was heard on a car radio in a parking lot in Elizabeth City, NC.
 
Not exactly at noon but around 2:30pm EST here in Vermilion, OH I was getting a fair signal of WYSL/Avon, NY on 1040. No sign of the local WJTB
 
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