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Rather strange pre dawn morning for me..... It began with me doing what I typically do. Which is check out the coming week's Frequency of the week. So I started off on 920 and heard a weak WOKY. Alone. Obviously on groundwave. The usual occupant these days on 920 is CFRY. More on that next week, but my first thought was that auroral conditions might be present....even though it's now June,. But also to my surprise was that there was also no trace of WBAA. Hmmm.

Then I went to my usual indicators for paths to the north, CJOB and CBW, Both were stronger than usual. Double Hmmm.

So I just moved up to 1330 to continue my quest to ID what seemed to be oldies on 1330. Once again, I heard snippets of what definitely sounded like classic rock fading in and out until they vanished completely and KPTY took over. Mostly. No ID, so the mystery continues. I did hear Spanish for a couple of minutes, and have no idea what that could have been....so now I've got a new "who done it" to check out.

While I was in the neighborhood, I checked out 1320 and 1340 and was rewarded with a couple of new Wisconsin catches, 1320 was oldies which turned out to be WFHR from Wisconsin Rapids in the Central part of the state. 5kw days 500 watts night with a pattern favorable to me. Could have been either one. Distance 153 miles.

1340 was WLDY, a country station from Ladysmith, WI, 247 miles to my north. On top for about five minutes. Long enough for a positive ID.

Some years after I moved on from radio into publishing, I had a customer in Saint Louis, who was from Ladysmith and had once worked part time at WLDY. He told me a story about one Holiday season when the station had completely sold out. So they solved the problem the Friday before Christmas by just running an hour of wall to wall commercials, One cart after another!

Something tells me that wasn't the first time something like this happened,
 
Yesterday morning, i.e. Thursday morning around 3 a.m. local and a bit earlier, KTNN was booming in on 660 khz, covering up the usually dominant CFFR's Calgary & Canadian newscasts. This was on my Realistic DX-390, which I don't usually use for MW because it's not usually a super hot MW receiver (the loopstick isn't all that robust), but I was running it to make sure it still works.

It was cool to hear KTNN with their Native American music and classic country. After about an hour CFFR dominated again and then the channel simply died. Nothing but static after about 4:30 a.m. or so. Earlier in the evening MW was mediocre. I guess between 2:30 and 4:30 a.m. the ionosphere decided to kick in a bit before dying again.

As for the DX-390, I used to use it all the time for SW and monitoring the HF ham bands. It's very useful for that. MW is very good with an external loop -- something I should do more with it. It's good on FM, too, but I don't DX FM.
 
Update.... The Spanish language station was dominating 1330 when I checjked 1130 yesterday morning (6/2) around 3:30 am CDT. The music sounded to my ears like moderate tempo pop ballads. Solid forabout 20 minutes. No announcer or commetcials. I'm not sure what to make of it. But one thing I think I can rule out is Cuba.
 
CCM and AC CCM has a way of sounding stylistically just like secular tracks, and it would be especially hard to tell if it was Spanish Language also. I believe WWRV changed TL and/or diplexed fairly recently. They might be on nondirectional STA. It's 10 kW Day and 3.8 kW Night. The 3.8 kW Night power is typical of ones that were previously licensed with 5 kW with a Series Limiting Resistor common back in the day. The new license requires the actual power be used and not the nominal power. With a 3 tower in line, the symmetry might limit the power because the protected directions aren't quite symmetrical. If they started from scratch, they might be able to get more power with a dogleg 3 or 4 tower asymmetric pattern design. But economy and the FCC favoring diplexing where possible dictates the design which allows less power.
 
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Holy hell, today was lacking in ES. A few openings for the entire afternoon and yet barely a few to decode RDS. The rest were barely audible. I have a crap-ton of IQs to look over but it was all over the place today. From as north as Canada to as south as Mexico.

And yes, I did see Randy still getting stuff even up to 10 PM PT, but honestly after 5 PM there really wasnt anything interesting so I just stopped caring. Maybe tomorrow or later we will see a better opening.

Stay frosty guys.
 

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I have quite a bit of IQs to look at myself. I had E-skip going until 10:15pm.
 
Quickie update for anyone keeping score....

No Spanish on 1330 here before sunrise this morning. All WTRX with CBS Sports and a fair-good signal.
 
cyberdad said:
Quickie update for anyone keeping score....

No Spanish on 1330 here before sunrise this morning. All WTRX with CBS Sports and a fair-good signal.
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Wow. No matter how many times I tried, I was never able to hear WTRX in the NWC Area. Usually it was KWWL. WEAW/WKTA was a strict Daytimer, and I was in the null areas to the South. Of course, back in the 1960s and 1970s, when WTRX was running nondierectional STA, I was probably not there. I lived in a deep null in the WTRX Night Pattern, in fact, the Licensed Monitor Point (it's right there online in their LIC on the FCC website) was in front of a Ham acquaintance of mine's house, 8 blocks down the street. I don't know if that was a coincidence or not. WEAW would absolutely BOOM in there in between the Sunset times, generally 15 minutes. Null out WTRX just 3 miles away, and WEAW was crystal clear for the sign off cart.
 
Sporadic-E was rocking in the midwest and east yesterday afternoon. Big top-of-band opening started from Northeast US to deep South and east Texas, then Great Lakes to TX, then went north towards NM/CO/NE.
By the time it made it out west, it was running on empty. Very weak signals from KOMA-92.5 OKC and KAHE-95.5 Dodge City around 9:30-9:45PM...nothing else IDed. A few Christian stations on low-band that faded before IDs.
 
crainbebo said:
Sporadic-E was rocking in the midwest and east yesterday afternoon. Big top-of-band opening started from Northeast US to deep South and east Texas, then Great Lakes to TX, then went north towards NM/CO/NE.
By the time it made it out west, it was running on empty. Very weak signals from KOMA-92.5 OKC and KAHE-95.5 Dodge City around 9:30-9:45PM...nothing else IDed. A few Christian stations on low-band that faded before IDs.
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Yesterday in San Antonio there was a big Sporadic-E opening from shortly before 9 a.m. to about 12:45 CT. It started with a path to the midwest with a few stragglers from KY and NC, went further west (CO, UT) for a bit, and then moved back to the midwest. I've got a lot of recordings to go through, but so far the most notable catches were on some brand new Es frequencies for me: 98.3 KUQL in Ethan, SD (100 kW, 980 miles), and 98.7 WFMT in Chicago, IL (6 kW, 1,047 miles).
 
crainbebo said:
Sporadic-E was rocking in the midwest and east yesterday afternoon. Big top-of-band opening started from Northeast US to deep South and east Texas, then Great Lakes to TX, then went north towards NM/CO/NE.
By the time it made it out west, it was running on empty. Very weak signals from KOMA-92.5 OKC and KAHE-95.5 Dodge City around 9:30-9:45PM...nothing else IDed. A few Christian stations on low-band that faded before IDs.
Click to expand...
Sorry I missed it.
 
Had some Es about an hour ago to Las Vegas and Yuma! Logged mobile on State Route 10 near Thorp:
- 92.3 KOMP (RDS)
- 93.1 KYMT (most likely, no ID)
- 94.1 KMXB (RDS) Mix 94.1
- 95.1 KTTI (RDS)
- 95.5 KWNR IDed + RDS 'The Bull'
- 96.3 KKLZ IDed
- 98.5 KLUC IDed
- 100.5 KXQQ w/ local ads
- 90.5 KSOS (RDS)
Several UNID CCM stations and an SS on 90.9 that was likely from Mexico, had advertisements or support messages.

Nothing new, but it was nice to hear Vegas again.
 
pclover said:
A small opening on the 4th here in Nor Cal.

Calgary and Medicine Hat Canada among with MT and WA popping in there.
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Apologies for the veer, but I'm going to guess that I'm the only dude here, who's actually spent a night in Medicine Hat. The locals refer to it simply as "Hat". Pretty nice small city, actually. I did the ALS ice bucket challenge there. August 2012. I don't have any specific memory of what the Medicine Hat radio dial was like from my room at the local Holiday Inn.
 


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