LW - Does ANYBODY hear ANYTHING on Long Wave in North America....and WHERE?

[Bongwater]

I have a Grundig YB 235 Radio with Longwave and I can't hear anything at all on LW

I know you can broadcast between 160 - 190 kHz with no license with a power of about 1 watt and someone once told me Longwave was strictly via groundwave and not skywave (like conventional AM radio.)

So are there any LW part 15 broadcasters at least in the US?

 

[Mid West Clubber]

I have a grundig g8 2 and have never heard anything but static and AM imgages on LW.. its just too far away to get any listeners unless you have about an 80 foot longwire... portable radio on longwave,, forget it...

 

[ddsparxx]

I typically hear nothing on longwave, except that I once heard a Morse code signal on 529 from Tenn.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

I hear quite a few Morse code signals from airports (all within 100 miles during the day). Coverage at night is different than day so it's not strictly gound wave. At night I've heard one from the coast of the Carolinas. There are people who are hearing stuff from Europe on these frequencies, but I've never heard the first trace of any broadcast station below 530khz...nothing but Morse code (which I'm fluent in so IDing these is easy for me--wish everything was as easy to ID).

 

[Icangelp]

There are all kinds of things going on in the longwave spectrum.

The Longwave Club of America is a good place to start:
http://www.lwca.org/

This url should get you to a page of longwave Part 15 broadcasters:
http://www.lwca.org/sitepage/part15/index.htm

Here in Southwest Ohio I am able to hear several Euro and Middle East longwave broadcasters, and Last night I was listening to France Inter on 162KHZ. I can't hear the Euros on a stock receiver. You need a higher end receiver & an appropriate antenna mounted outside the house.

I can also hear numerous beacons from area airports (using Morse code to identify).

 

[bl40modulimiter2]

The only way you will hear any Euro or Russian broadcasters on LW on a portable is at the shore--when you get inland the attenuation is just too much. You may have luck trying longwire or "bog" antenna (google for info), but you will also likely get AM broadcast images that way. There are morse code airport beacons between 198 and about 400khz. They repeat the 2 or 3 letter airport ID over and over in slow Morse. You can look them up online. At night you can hear them from hundreds of miles away, and most are 10-20 watts.
Your best bets to hear any broadcasts on LW are 162 France with 2 million watts; 183 Germany, but it will be French language, also 2 million; and 216 France w/ 1.4 million watts. My 1st catch was 162 at Chincoteague VA on vacation on a Ratshak (Sangean) portable wthe whip.

 

[Mid West Clubber]

My only longwave catch was using an EX girlfriends rig with a long wire in South west Virginia.. The station was from Ireland or maybe UK,, it was called Atlantic 252,,,, It was playing dance music out of all things.. Either the station is no longer on air, or I just cant hear it here,, so signal for any LW here in Indiana.

 

[LibertyNT]

Only Thing I get on LW is a beacon on 420 khz. and AM BCB images.

 

[kilokat7]

Don't forget about the 600 meter amateur band:

http://www.500kc.com/

I've heard a few of these guys operating around 500 khz using CW beacons and SSB voice communications on the old DX-440 and internal antenna.

 

[cyberdad]

My only longwave catch was using an EX girlfriends rig with a long wire in South west Virginia.. The station was from Ireland or maybe UK,, it was called Atlantic 252,,,, It was playing dance music out of all things.. Either the station is no longer on air, or I just cant hear it here,, so signal for any LW here in Indiana.

252 was off the air for a while, but was back on the last time I was in London (November). The station is based in Ireland. The signal in central London is decent enough 24/7. Not exactly strong, but listenable enough if you can get away from the inevitable urban noise which creates havoc on those low frequencies. 162 from France has a somewhat better signal in London, but is similarly noise prone.

 

[stormy01]

Have heard a number of beacons on longwave, including one (rarely) on 524kHz Mount Carmel, IL. It's about 250 miles away and according to http://www.airnav.com/navaids/, it has an output power of 25 watts. A number of Voice NDB's have been taken off the air in the last couple of years, in my area these were 242 kHz Milwaukee and 350 kHz Chicago. So by now most of the NDB's are only transmitting a Morse Code identifier, the old Voice NDB's were broadcasting weather information and special announcements regarding nearby airports and airfields - almost all of that has gone to VHF, UHF, Satellite or the internet. I have picked up the NDB from Dixon, NC on 198 - DIW - and it has heterodyned with what I believe was the BBC on 198 kHz - no big deal, DIW has a power of 2kW - most NDB's are 100 watts or less! Read more here on DIW: http://www.cliftonlaboratories.com/ndb_beacon_diw.htm

I have heard faint LW signals with a Sony ICF-SW7600GR with its internal ferrite antenna when heterodynes were coming in on Medium Wave 603, 692, 747, 837, 873, 1134, 1269, etc., I would then switch to LW since the MW band was coming in so well, I thought that I would try LW since it's an adjacent frequency range. I could receive signals on LW that were not beacons, but I could not hear these clearly enough to identify them, never got above the atmospheric noise level. These signals were at the frequencies listed for Europe, such as 162, 189, 198, 207, 252, but the carrier never became strong enough to hear audio.

I also have an Icom IC-R75 with a long wire, however, I am not far enough away from the high powered MW stations in the Chicago area to avoid AM broadcast station images...I will need to get/build a preselector, possibly filters, a box loop and/or an amplified antenna in order to hear these LW stations. LW stations have been heard in the interior of the U.S. (i.e. the midwest), it's just that the propagation has to be very strong in order to overcome the signal path over land.

And be advised that more and more of these stations are being decommissioned (silenced) due to aging equipment and soaring electricity costs, and broadcasters in those countries perform listener surveys like they do here, and these surveys are showing that listeners prefer FM to MW or LW, so it's a matter of time before many of these stations (our catches!) will be no more. So, try to hear 'em in the next couple of years - particularly in the late fall, winter and early spring months.

 

[Tincap]

I've picked up Ireland's RTE on 252 and Iceland's Rás on 189, here in eastern Ontario, this past fall. Although I'm quite a ways inland, I'm wondering if my proximity to the St. Lawrence River may be beneficial. ;D

Other than that, there's the numerous beacons from the various airports, tapping out their call-signs in Morse code. Kinda neat to track them down.

~BG

 

[Icangelp]

My only longwave catch was using an EX girlfriends rig with a long wire in South west Virginia.. The station was from Ireland or maybe UK,, it was called Atlantic 252,,,, It was playing dance music out of all things.. Either the station is no longer on air, or I just cant hear it here,, so signal for any LW here in Indiana.

That was a good catch even in Virginia.

This past winter, 252 Khz was one of the more reliable frequencie here in Southwest Ohio. Even at their best, the Euro and Middle Eastern longwaves were barely audible in the 2009 winter months, during what will be our last low sunspot winter for a while.

Many of the Euro longwave stations are directional, and some of the directional antennas do not favor North America.

As someone posted, you do have to be wary of strong local medium wave signals mixing on the longwave split frequencies.

 

[kc0ltv]

Yes, I've logged 53 non-directional beacons on my ICF-2010 in a one-month period, back in December 2005 - January 2006 (the radio began to have problems towards the end). The most distant of these was from Baie-Combeau, Quebec, a good 1,120 miles away. All I used for these was the internal loop; I'm sure I'd have a lot more luck with a longwire! For those who don't know, all an NDB transmits is its morse code identification. They're used for navigational purposes. The trick is to have a radio that can demodulate single side-band transmissions, or even better, has a special narrow-bandwidth CW (morse code) mode. The more expensive ($100 and up) shortwave receivers can usually do so, and almost all feature coverage of the longwave band. For best results, you'll want an expensive communications receiver and beverage (basically a really long wire, up to 1 km+) or specialized loop antenna if space is an issue, but you by no way need that.

European longwave broadcasters are often heard on the Eastern Seaboard, especially in Newfoundland, but not much inland. Atlantic 252 is long off the air.

 

[Icangelp]

Atlantic 252 is long off the air.

It is true that Atlantic 252 is off the air, however Ireland is alive and well on 252KHZ (and playing popular music). I logged it and Algeria multiple times this past winter, from right here in Southwest Ohio.

I'm not one to sit at the receiver every night, but in the last 7 months I was able to hear:
162 KHZ France
171 Presumed Morroco
183 Europe 1
189 Iceland
198 UK
207 Several stations just below threshhold
216 Monaco
225 Poland
234 Luxembourg

Admittedly, last winter may have been the best opportunity for a midwesterner to hear Europe and Africa in my DXing lifetime.