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Quick Night AM Bandscan - Wisconsin Dells, WI

cyberdad

cyberdad

The SRF-37 and I spent a night in Wisconsin Dells over the weekend. Wisconsin Dells is a tourist area, roughly midway between Chicago and the Twin Cities on I-90/I-94. Here's some of what turned up in my relatively noise free hotel room.

540: CBK comfortably on top, WAUK underneath
550: All KTRS despite being less than 90 miles away from WSAU's 20kw nighttime stick(s)
560: WIND.... good - actually stronger than the Chicago 50kw ND blowtorches
580: Before my morning checkout, WILL was in before sunrise. Obviously day pattern. Farthest north I've ever heard it.
600: WMT good and alone,
620: WTMJ with CKRM mixing
630: CFCO fair-good
640: WOI fair
650: WSM fair
670: WSCR weak. I was about 160 miles from their stick, so I'm assuming convergence
700: WLW fair
720: WGN weak - ditto WSCR
740: WRPQ flea powered local from about ten miles away. Fair, but on top of CFZM
760: WJR good.
780: WBBM weak - ditto WSCR and WGN
830: WCCO good. No convergence due to worse ground conductivity to the northwest than to the southeast
840: WHAS fair-good
860: CJBC fair-good. Better than CFZM
880: WCBS weak
890: WLS fair. Better than the other Chicago ND blowtorches. Under 220-watt local on 900
940: WFAW fair. 550 watts with a narrow lobe aimed right at me from about 65 miles away
1000: WMVP fair. Convergence less of an issue here
1020: KDKA fair
1030: WBZ fair-weak
1040: WHO weak...for whatever reason
1060: KYW weak
1070: WTSO fair. Madison is about 44 miles south of where I was. WTSO's stick is another 10 miles south. 5kw aimed in my direction.
1120: KMOX fair. KTRS was every bit as strong, if not stronger.
1130: WISN fair. Also pretty much alone. I was a little surprised by this
1160: WYLL good. Best Chicago signal by far.
1200: WOAI weak
1290: WIRL and WHIO both fair-good taking turns on top. WHIO getting the better of it. Barely, which was a little surprising
1310: WIBA fair. From Madison. On top and still listenable
1340: WJRW Grand Rapids, MI. On top for about 20 minutes. Not in league with Crain's fabulous GY catches, but not too shabby! I'll take it!
1380: WBEL good. About 40 miles from my house, and I never hear it at night. Here, 90 miles away and 5kw aimed right at the place, it was blasting.
1500: KSTP good. Not normally a powerhouse at night anywhere in Wisconsin
1540: KXEL good. Maybe the strongest thing on the dial.
 
Cyberdad, I was in the Dells several years ago, soon after WYLL built their new night time sticks. I was shocked to discover how strong their signal was at night. Before they built that plant I couldn't even hear them at night up there. Didn't you mention awhile back that you heard WYLL in Winnipeg?
 
Thanks cyberdad. You always manage to get a lot from that SRF-M37.

And good catch on WRPQ. It's only 6 watts at night.

I didn't notice 990/CBW on the list. I'm assuming time was a factor.
 
I'll take 'em one at a time.

WHIO: I was surprised at how good it was (although perhaps I shouldn't be). I hear it from time to time at my home QTH, but it's not all that strong. WIRL usually rules.

WYLL: Yup...I heard WYLL in Winnipeg this past August....as well as WIND.

WRPQ: This little coffeepot is usually audible for about 5-10 miles of I-90/94 around the Dells at night before CFZM takes over in any, and have wondered if maybe they're running a little more wattage than they're supposed to. But they're certainly not nearly as strong at night in the Dells as they are when they're on day power (250 watts).

CBW: My bad. I meant to include it. Signal at the Dells was good. Pretty much the same as it is at my home, where first adjacent WMVP is usually no particular problem.
 
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joebtsflk1 said:
Cyberdad...was KXEL running late-night preachers or have they gotten away from that now that they're under new ownership?
Click to expand...

I finished the last part of the bandscan in the morning, about an hour and a half before sunrise. KXEL, IIRC, was a little before 6am....and running news/talk.
 
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You've gotta come back west one of these days, park on 1240 or 1340, and watch at least 3 states appear on those frequencies. Maybe 4 if you are lucky. At 530 miles, KACH 1340 Preston, ID is common as dirt here with their AC format. KART 1400 Jerome ID at 375 is also common as dirt with classic country.

-crainbebo
 
KXEL runs Red Eye Radio. No idea what they run after that, but I think their slogan includes 'news-talk'.

I sometimes hear them here in W. Washington in a very weak null of local 1540 KXPA.
 
WYLL had to propose a different channel for 1160 in Thunder Bay, ON, and upgrade WHBY Kimberly, WI to 20000 day/25000 night to go North at night from near Joliet. The Des Plaines site went SE at night and had deep nulls toward Thunder Bay and Kimberly. It's interesting that Class I-A KSL didn't preclude WYLL from being 50 kW night, but III-As preclude many former Class IIIs from being more than 15-25 kW night. Only four former Class IIIs have been able to get 50 kW night, those being KMJ, KJR, WWJ, and WXYT, very old stations who could send their power into oceans and thinly populated areas of Canada, and already interfered with many other stations as a primary interfering station. A 10% reduction is still more than protecting all stations to 25% RSS.
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
WYLL had to propose a different channel for 1160 in Thunder Bay, ON, and upgrade WHBY Kimberly, WI to 20000 day/25000 night to go North at night from near Joliet. The Des Plaines site went SE at night and had deep nulls toward Thunder Bay and Kimberly. It's interesting that Class I-A KSL didn't preclude WYLL from being 50 kW night, but III-As preclude many former Class IIIs from being more than 15-25 kW night. Only four former Class IIIs have been able to get 50 kW night, those being KMJ, KJR, WWJ, and WXYT, very old stations who could send their power into oceans and thinly populated areas of Canada, and already interfered with many other stations as a primary interfering station. A 10% reduction is still more than protecting all stations to 25% RSS.
Click to expand...

Interesting stuff. Thanks for posting. As you say, all four of those 50kw former class IIIs have been around forever and are either close to an ocean or near a border with sparsely populated areas not far away. I didn't know about the Thunder Bay station that was on 1160, but I have a little bit of familiarity with WHBY. It came into being (or more correctly, its predecessor on 1150, WYNE, came into being) after WISN jumped from 1150 to 1130 in 1965. I'm sure when what's now the current WHBY tower site was constructed alongside U.S. 41 back in the day, nobody had any inkling that the Chicago 1160 would eventually be aiming fifty nighttime kilowatts right at it!
 
Again, one at a time....

Mario: 680 was pretty much empty. I have, however heard KNBR in Wisconsin a few times before. Mostly in the western part of the state. As for 810, I've never heard KGO east of the Mississippi River. In Wisconsin, 810 at night is basically all WGY.

Crain: Yes, I'm hoping to get back out west at least once next year. Probably at some point between spring and early fall. Lots of family and friends up and down the coast. I'm also expecting Santa (aka known as my kids) to bring me a new radio for Christmas to replace my increasingly feeble Eaton E-10. Either that or a lump of coal. I'm planning to break it in during my stay in St. Pete next month. (The radio, if it turns out I've been good all year....or coal if not, and if it turns out to be cold in Florida). Seriously, I do want to see if I can spend more time on the GY channels in the new year.

Boombox: I think KXEL was running that Jim Bohannon morning syndicated program. I didn't hang around on 1540 very long because there's no doubt as to what I was hearing. KXEL is a monster during the hours of darkness throughout the northern half of the Midwest. (Although on some rare occasions, CHIN sneaks in).
 
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1160 Thunder Bay, ON is or was a vacant allotment. There is a dummy facility with a proposed array and pattern for presumed use. It is unclear whether there was ever an actual application for the frequency. I believe it is still in the Region II Database.

AM Query reveals that they may have replaced 1160 with 1170 in Thunder Bay, ON. It proposes a complicated four tower array with four different heights. Don't know what was proposed for 1160. International treaties don't require first adjacent skywave protection.
 
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It might have been an allocation for Thunder Bay, there are a few allocations for Canadian cities that never got built...they were there for future use. When allocated nobody saw corporate radio flipping their AMs to FM. I don't recall any station in Thunder Bay ever being on either 1160 or 1170. I think it might still be on the books, but I don't see any station being built on that frequency any time soon. There's an allocation for 1600 AM in Cornwall Ontario that was never used, and the 2 frequencies that were once in use there, just like in Thunder Bay are now silent.
 
mimo said:
It might have been an allocation for Thunder Bay, there are a few allocations for Canadian cities that never got built...they were there for future use. When allocated nobody saw corporate radio flipping their AMs to FM. I don't recall any station in Thunder Bay ever being on either 1160 or 1170. I think it might still be on the books, but I don't see any station being built on that frequency any time soon. There's an allocation for 1600 AM in Cornwall Ontario that was never used, and the 2 frequencies that were once in use there, just like in Thunder Bay are now silent.
Click to expand...

I remember the two AMs in Thunder Bay. 580 and 800. On 580, CKPR was an occasional visitor here in the Chicago area. (As was the also-now-silent CKAP/580 from Kapuskasing, ON). As for the other allocation there, 1160 might actually be a better choice. 1170 KJOC (the former KSTT) From Davenport, Iowa is only a killowatt, but it's all aimed north, and puts a very nice nighttime signal into northern Wisconsin and Minnesota.
 
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I remember CKAP...it was a frequent visitor in southeast Iowa in the 90's. I only heard CKPR once, and that was when flying over Thunder Bay just after the FM flip had been approved, but before the flip actually happened I made sure to listen for a bit because I knew I'd never hear it again.
 
I believe the unused allocations also still exist. There's always the possibility the fm dial gets so overcrowded that AM might have to be used again. Slim but a possibility.
 
mimo said:
I remember CKAP...it was a frequent visitor in southeast Iowa in the 90's.
Click to expand...

I never heard CKAP during my years in southeast Iowa in the late '60s. Nothing dominated 580 at night. Most likely to be on top was WIBW. CKY would also turn up once in a while. WIBW was audible...barely...daytime.
 
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