Oops I wasn't paying enough attention. CKBD shut down in 2008, it appears, but it is still fun to imagine it's still with us.
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Yes, and the most recent WSNL APP was in 2005, so it was before 600 was shut down in Vancouver. Stations in the US, Canada and Mexico, and other Region II countries, aren't protected from each other from Skywave on first adjacent frequencies, so they usually don't show up in Nighttime Skywave Studies.
Obviously, Cuba doesn't protect US stations, but we protect them out of common courtesy, and hoping Cuba will change.
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One would think with all the food shortages and outisde pressures, that Cuba would modernize (Castro apparently scratched the surface in the 90s) and open up to the US, but even in 2021 they are still stubborn.
Good to know
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It's not as simple as that. Cuba has a traditional mid-20th Century hard line Marxist government that views the United States, private property and capitalism as inherently evil... not necessarily in that order.
It's a government that started out by arresting and imprisoning or killing opponents to the new government in the 60's, and which soon began fomenting armed revolution across Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Currently, they depend to a great extent on the Chines. In radio, China recently rebuilt the radio structure across the country and is now working on the transition of television.
To some extent we protect them. A handful of FL stations have STAs to operate with higher power to overcome Cuban interference, and none of the stations on the air now match the facilities in use when Cuba abrogated the NARBA agreement.
We have been hoping they would change for over 60 years. It's not particularly likely now that China is taking a great interest in "all things Cuban".
Is Radio Martí still broadcasting to Cuba on 1180?
Yes, from Key Marathon.
From time to time, there has been a 150 kW Cuban station on 600, which interfered with WTAC/WSNL in Southeast Michigan. I assume it is no longer anywhere near 150 kW. I haven't heard it in years, and get interference at Night (nearly every Night) from CKAT, which is supposed to reduce power and change patterns. Back when WMT went to 5000 watts, they went directional with the equivalent of 1000 watts, originally toward WICC and other old stations on 600 kHz, and WTAC/WSNL fit in to in 1946 as a Class III-B. So that is frequently heard also.
I may not be right but I think at one time in the past Cuba was considering upgrading all of their AM stations to at least 50 kw on new freqs so that they would cover most of the island and at the same time deliberately interfere with quite a bit of US nighttime AM broadcasting
In my experience, the Canadian stations often interfere with the station I'm seeking out, despite their supposed directional patterns away from my location, such as on 660, 750, 770, 880 (as of late), and 960, but the prime example is on 750. CKJH Saskatoon, despite their 4 tower directional array facing NW, booms in most nights (actually I like that because they have good music), preventing WSB to be heard thus far, leaving KOAL as the only US station I receive often on 750, and KMMJ as a rarity.
I never heard that. They generally put high power on lower channels for regional coverage and local single or regional networks on higher ones. there are some higher channels with no Cuban stations.
CKJH didnt boom into Laramie. I heard WSB plenty there. KMMJ wasnt a rareity
I'm glad you did get WSB, that's just not my experience yet. If Auoural conditions persist the way they are this year, might also be able to claim them. I really should also consider upgrading my antenna set-up, that would help. Also yeah, I used to get KMMJ more often before they switched to MyBridge.
To my knowledge, nothings changed about KMMJ's facilities in awhile
WSB was heard fairly well in Laramie from time to time. Here's one instance of better times: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KAUkmi9mV60p3425kLEtXm2MAWv7R9Sy/view?usp=sharing
I know that some time back in the 80s they did in fact test a very high power xmitter and put it on 1160 to see what would happen. It did achieve the desired result, it damaged and made unlistenable about half of KSL's skywave coverage. It was rumoured that they were purchasing or were simply given old Soviet high powered MW xmitters.
That was a jammer for the station that started out as Radio Swan and then became Radio Americas. At first it was on 1165, and then moved to 1160 and broadcast from Swan Island, a joint US / Honduras island group very close to western Cuba. But that was in the 60's, although it lasted several decades.
This article is moderately accurate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Swan
The Gibraltar Steamship Company operated out of shared offices in Miami with the Interamerican Association of Broadcasters and its director was Ramón Bonachea who also ran the AIR (Asociación Interamericana de Radiodifusion) office. I worked with Bonachea to organize the 1967 convention of the AIR in Quito when the local broadcaster committee fell apart so I heard some interesting stories about Swan from him.
At one point, Cuba put the last of the big Czech transmitterrs on 1160 and then 1180 as a tourism station. That era ended as the transmitters constantly needed Svetlana tubes from Russia, no longer available following the fall of the Iron Curtan and the slow death of hollow-state transmitters.
The Czech transmitters were real POS devices. They used proprietary tubes and were rather ancient designs. I was offered several around 1968 in a visit of the sales manager along with an NKVD shadow in what was a prize-winning Russian bad suit. I think they both had rather nervous times, likely trying to figure out how they would report a sales call for a group of stations in Ecuador owned by a 19 year old gringo kid.
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Great info. Indeed, Russian suits back then were really something, kinda the diametric opposite of a "zoot suit".
More like a shopping bag with sleeves.
Perfect description. Just read the Wiki on Radio Swan. It said the operation was operated by the CIA, with a sponsorship from Herbert W. Armstrong and his World Tomorrow program and the Plain Truth magazine. The late H. W. Armstrong and his son the late Garner Ted Armstrong owned and ran the World Wide Church of God way back then, which I believe is still around today. The constitution is generally interpreted that government can't foster or establish religion, but the reverse is apparently ok ??
CKAT 600 still shows as CFCH in the US Database. It seems like there was some kind of database corruption and some of the Canadian station data was lost. It seems like they had it as CKAT, but afterwords it went back to CFCH in the database, as they had to restore it from an older database.
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