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Puerto Rico DX-ing AM Stations

E

e-dawg

I will be in San Juan in few weeks, how easy or how hard is dxing radio in San Juan? Can you hear US Mainland stations in Puerto Rico? What other radio stations can you pick up from San Juan PR? Also, is DX-ing hard like Honolulu HI?
 
Well, I DXed from nearby in 2004 (US Virgin Islands). It'll be a different world out there to be sure. Venezuelans/Colombians/Eastern Caribbean will be the order of the day, I'd say. IF you get any mainland US, likely it'll be limited to WLW 700 or WLS 890 or one of the killer class A's here.

Have an analog radio handy---ZIZ in St. Kitts still uses 555 kHz, although I heard it quite well on 560 in my rental car.

I read on another site, maybe www.amlogbook.com , that WIPR 940 San Juan went to oldies; I wonder what WKVM 810 is doing now. You will tell me :)

Keep me posted about the trip. Make notes!

cd
 
e-dawg said:
I will be in San Juan in few weeks, how easy or how hard is dxing radio in San Juan? Can you hear US Mainland stations in Puerto Rico? What other radio stations can you pick up from San Juan PR? Also, is DX-ing hard like Honolulu HI?
Click to expand...

Essentially all hotels in San Juan are on the beach in El Condado or Isla Verde, and if you are on the ocean side of the hotel, you face almost due north at most.

There are a couple of AMs in the Virgin Islands, and you have a better chance of hearing them daytime than at night. The Windwards have very few AMs left and the ones that remain are none too easy since there is an East-West mountain range south of San Juan that tends to block AMs, particularly those arriving at low angles to the horizon.

Similarly, in San Juan you will find that the Venezuelans are not as strong as you'd expect because of the mountains. But anything on the US coast from Miami up to Boston that is high power or directional out to the ocean can be very strong. Getting more inland stations is much harder, but many of the clears are quite possible.

There are locals on 580, 630, 680, 740, 810, 870, 940, 1030, 1140, 1190, 1320, 1520, 1560 and 1600 (silent last I heard) most of which are quite strong in the hotel area. And PR has 68 total commercial AMs, meaning that many frequencies will have local or semi local stations on them.

But there are certainly many Mainland stations that can be heard. Anytime after PR sunset is good... in fact, on a good night you can hear the more eastern stations before they go to directional operation and then some of the ones farther inland will come in.

I DXed from 1970 to around 1992 from various areas in the SJ metro, all 8 to 12 miles inland, and even heard a bunch of West Coast stations... one of my more unusual catches was KHEY (the calls then) 690 in El Paso on my car radio just before it cut back from its 10 kw day power.
 
My best catch on St John -to the east of PR was WBBM from Chicago which appeared after local ZBVI from Tortola went off the air for the night at 10 PM. You will pick up WCBS faintly almost nightly
 
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