Love to get DX emails but wow!!!

[FatPunkBastard]

???

Got this email today! Not bad for a 750 watt BE on a beat old stick that was kind of overgrown at the time!

Chris Bratcher WCDS Glasgow, KY



Hello Chris - and very warm greetings from Finland !

Would you ever have imagined that one day WCDS 1230 AM might be heard as far away
as in Finland - some 4000 miles away ? Let me take a moment of your time to
explain a bit more..


I am an enthusiast for distant AM radio reception, every now and then spending
cold and dark winter days 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle here in Finland -
with a hope for distant signals with my communications receiver and 3000-foot
longwire antenna.




From last winter I have lots of recordings to examine, where in my log book I have
marked "something interesting - may open up". Today I came across one of my my
recordings from November 3, 2012 on 1230 AM at around 1 am Central Daylight Savings
Time. No single stations was well audible, but from time to time a signal"pushed
through" with ESPN programming (interesting sports, as always !) for a short while.

However, I had not been able to identify the station at the time. But now, upon
listening to that recording again at exactly 1 am your time, it all of a sudden
opened up to me. A male voice identifies:

"This is WCDS Glasgow, ESPN Radio 1230 - your total sports station". Then the ESPN
Sports Center, but I unfortunately soon lost the signal again.

So it was not an awful lot I heard, but hopefully identified the station correctly.
I am enclosing an mp3 audio file of this identification and hope that you would
have the opportunity to listen to it with good speakers or headphones, since it is
very weak indeed. I have repeated this material 3 times on the audio file.


Shoul you be able to confirm this being WCDS it would definitely be one of my best
catches in this hobby.

I hope this message reaches you all in good spirits and would be delighted to
hear back from you.

With very warm regards and all success !

Hannu Niileksela
Uussillantie 27
00950 Helsinki
Finland

 

[ftballfan]

Very impressive that a 750W graveyarder from Kentucky can be heard in Finland! I can't even get a 1kW graveyarder 20 miles away where I am!

 

[Buckeyes2001]

Another DXer in Finland bagged a Mexican 1490 once:

http://radiodiscussions.com/smf/index.php?topic=213014.20

Second to the last post on the page mentions it - a distance of over 5,300 miles!

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

They have Beverage antennas oriented every few degrees in the national forests in Finland. They have very narrow beamwidths and they have logged a huge percentage of the US Class IVs/Class Cs. The thing that amazes me is that they don't seem to log anything that is below 1000 watts, regardless of if it is an old license where the actual input is less than 1000 watts, they seem to log it. But Class B and Class D regional stations with 500 watts with directional antennas directed that way should be receivable at times.

 

[ftballfan]

They have Beverage antennas oriented every few degrees in the national forests in Finland. They have very narrow beamwidths and they have logged a huge percentage of the US Class IVs/Class Cs. The thing that amazes me is that they don't seem to log anything that is below 1000 watts, regardless of if it is an old license where the actual input is less than 1000 watts, they seem to log it. But Class B and Class D regional stations with 500 watts with directional antennas directed that way should be receivable at times.

I bet WTCM (580) and WOOD (1300) are heard often there as most of their juice is aimed that way.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

WXYT and WOOD are heard much of the time over there. WTCM hadn't been logged a few years ago, but I think they were logged more recently when on day power and pattern. The ones that are heard most have maxima somewhat east of north. WOOD used to have a maximum west of north and was hardly ever heard then in Finland.

 

[crainbebo]

Back when the old Atlantic DX receiver was on (formerly oldtimer's) Global Tuners, I received WILS 1320 Lansing, MI with 1.9kw, as well as WWL. Farthest west I got was WHO. KOMO was heard a couple of times by other DXers however, but I never heard it.

-crainbebo

 

[gar hi]

Would you ever have imagined that one day WCDS 1230 AM might be heard as far away
as in Finland - some 4000 miles away ?

That is one great catch.

And it now gives me hope that I may one day hear the 890 w WMID Atlantic City from Tampa at 912 miles on a regular portable radio if it happened to rise above the mess of other stations when there's a station ID.

If all other stations on 1340 in between happened to be off the air at the same time, I bet it could be heard at night.

 

[ftballfan]

WXYT and WOOD are heard much of the time over there. WTCM hadn't been logged a few years ago, but I think they were logged more recently when on day power and pattern. The ones that are heard most have maxima somewhat east of north. WOOD used to have a maximum west of north and was hardly ever heard then in Finland.

With 50kW aimed slightly east of north during the day, I bet TCM makes the Arctic during winter, especially now that CKPR has moved to FM

 

[kenglish]

I think that some of those same guys in Finland logged our old AM820 several years ago.
If it's who I think it is, you've gotta check out their blog.....
Although DX'ing is their number one priority, their cooking (reindeer steaks, freshly caught salmon, etc) and their wine list are a very close second and third. They make it a real party.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

I printed out a skywave field intensity graph that went out to about 5000 miles but now I have misplaced it. I asked a DXer from Finland if he had any idea what the field strength of the received signals were. He said that the d'Arsonval signal strength meters on their receivers rarely moved off the bottom.