Quickie Louisiana DX session

[cyberdad]

Detoured to a stop in Covington Louisiana on my way home from the gulf coast to start the week. Covington is about 27 miles north-northwest of New Orleans. I got to spend a little over a half hour with the SRF-37 Walkman in the hotel room about two hours before dawn. (4:30-5:00 CST, 1030-1100 UTC) Here are afew highlights.....

620: XENK, Mexico City. Absolutely blasting and with a positive ID. No trace of usual suspects WJDX or WDAE. The "program" was a loop promoting the station (oldies). I'm wondering if they were doing testing of one sort or another.

670: WSCR was on top of R. Rebelde. WGN and WBBM were also in. WLS was audible, but underneath R. Progreso.

730: XEX. Hadn't heard this one in quite a while. Conditions were good to Mexico. In addition to XEX and the aforementioned XENK, I also had XEW, XEWA,XEOY (covering up WMVP), as well as XEEP under local WLNO on 1060.

800: WSHO. I was looking for TWR (Bonaire), but all I got was New Orleans WSHO. 231 watts enough to make the hop across Lake Ponchartrain (brackish water).

880: WCBS. Fair signal. Enough to break through moderate WWL splatter. Not much else from the northeast, however. WABC was in (barely), as was WHAM mixing with Cuba.

1090: KAAY in with a monster signal. Just like "back in the day".

1230: WBOK Apparently, Lake Ponchartrain has just enough salinity to bring in a New Orleans GY station from the opposite shore.

1510: WLAC with a good signal. Other than that, the top end of the dial was relatively quiet. Although KOKC and WCKY were audible with weak signals.

1620: R. Rebelde. Weak, but alone.

 

[radioman148]

Wow, Mexico City blowing out WJDX & WDAE. That's a surprise, at least to me at your location in Southern Louisiana.
Thanks for the road report cyberdad. Glad to hear that WLNO is back. Of course my fondest memories of that frequency down there are from the WNOE days.

 

[cyberdad]

Wow, Mexico City blowing out WJDX & WDAE. That's a surprise, at least to me at your location in Southern Louisiana.

Well I was flat-out astonished!

I never expected to hear XENK at all....let alone clobbering WJDX and WDAE. Unless something has changed, they're supposed to be non-directional 10kw day, 5kw night. And they certainly didn't sound like either. Although as I said, conditions from Mexico City were very good. Although I didn't hear XEQ (usually audible in the New Orleans area under WYLD) or XEB. But maybe those two were off.

 

[wildthangjim]

Back on the 17th February at 7pm local here in Houston, I noted XENK completely dominating 620. Normally 620 here is a jumble, with WJDX and KEXB up in the Dallas area the only ones I've ID'd. I have not heard them that clearly since.

I was thinking they may still have been on 50kw daytime power (as listed in MWList and Fred Cantu's site), as it was only ~30mins after their sunset.

 

[cyberdad]

Back on the 17th February at 7pm local here in Houston, I noted XENK completely dominating 620. Normally 620 here is a jumble, with WJDX and KEXB up in the Dallas area the only ones I've ID'd. I have not heard them that clearly since.

I was thinking they may still have been on 50kw daytime power (as listed in MWList and Fred Cantu's site), as it was only ~30mins after their sunset.

50kw would be more in line with what I was hearing. R-L had them at 10/5kw, but I forgot all about Fred's site, I should have checked that one.