Smokin' aurora brings a RECORD GRAVEYARD LOG! 3/12/2012

[crainbebo]

Tonight, with the continued aurora, I picked up a graveyard station that is over 100 miles more than my record KNRY 1240!!

1240: KSMX Santa Maria, CA; Lars Larson Show and ID "Lars Larson on 1240 KSMX"-alone with no one else interfering!! NEW #445, 1kw, 878 MILES!!! Farthest graveyard ever caught, beating KNRY 1240 Monterey, CA on 1/24/2012. I also had an Asian station on 1450, likely KEST San Francisco but no ID, just Asian music over KSUH groundwave.

-crainbebo

 

[kenrayc]

Tonight, with the continued aurora, I picked up a graveyard station that is over 100 miles more than my record KNRY 1240!!

1240: KSMX Santa Maria, CA; Lars Larson Show and ID "Lars Larson on 1240 KSMX"-alone with no one else interfering!! NEW #445, 1kw, 878 MILES!!! Farthest graveyard ever caught, beating KNRY 1240 Monterey, CA on 1/24/2012. I also had an Asian station on 1450, likely KEST San Francisco but no ID, just Asian music over KSUH groundwave.

-crainbebo

The station on 1450 that has an Asian format is more likely KOBO Yuba City CA.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

Crain, how is that KWYZ 1230 Everett coming in by you at night during the aurora?

Reason I ask is that the GYers here, WPAM 1450 and WAZL 1490, come in the way they do via daytime signal strength on those nights. I'm a casual DXer these days (in fact, I gave up DXing for Lent) and haven't checked the nighttime dial here in a while.

But those GYers in themselves seem to be a terrific indicator for the auroral conditions, without having to tune all over the place to see if anything is afoot.

 

[crainbebo]

KWYZ was alone with maybe one other fluttering under. Sounded like daytime. After 10pm, I heard mostly KNRY on 1240.

-crainbebo

 

[cyberdad]

On the "640" thread I mentioned that in addition to Cuba being alone (eventually) on that channel, I also picked up a very surprising catch. KQAQ/970 from Austin MN.

KQAQ is 5kw days 500w nights with a very oddball 4-tower pattern. There's a major null in my direction, and I don't think I had ever heard them before here in Northern Illinois. But last night they were roaring in and clearly on top of the channel. This during the solar event when not much was coming in from north of me.

Even if they were operating daytime non-directional, STA, or whatever....they were kicking butt...while blowtorch WCCO, a little over 100 miles up the road from KQAQ...was nearly absent!

 

[crainbebo]

You need to try ALL, and I mean all, non-local channels tonight. The possibilities are endless! Low-Power Florida? Cuba? Venezuela? Colombia?

-crainbebo

 

[cyberdad]

You need to try ALL, and I mean all, non-local channels tonight. The possibilities are endless! Low-Power Florida? Cuba? Venezuela? Colombia?

-crainbebo

Will do!

The southern path for me wasn't really anything special last night....it was more of a case of the north and east being shut down (KQAQ notwithstanding). The west wasn't much better.

Aside from R. Progreso on 640, the only other reliable Cuban was R. Enciclopedia on 530. I was trying for R. Reloj on 570, 870, and 950. I may have heard the time tones breaking through on 950, but I'm really not sure. The others were absent. Meanwhile WSM, WBAP, WWL, and WSB were weak, while KAAY was pretty much missing entirely. The only "normal" southern signal was WOAI.

Maybe it was just me. Did anyone else notice the same thing?

 

[radioman148]

You need to try ALL, and I mean all, non-local channels tonight. The possibilities are endless! Low-Power Florida? Cuba? Venezuela? Colombia?

-crainbebo

Will do!

The southern path for me wasn't really anything special last night....it was more of a case of the north and east being shut down (KQAQ notwithstanding). The west wasn't much better.

Aside from R. Progreso on 640, the only other reliable Cuban was R. Enciclopedia on 530. I was trying for R. Reloj on 570, 870, and 950. I may have heard the time tones breaking through on 950, but I'm really not sure. The others were absent. Meanwhile WSM, WBAP, WWL, and WSB were weak, while KAAY was pretty much missing entirely. The only "normal" southern signal was WOAI.

Maybe it was just me. Did anyone else notice the same thing?

I noticed pretty much the same conditions as you did. Last night WWL was coming in OK, but not as well as over the weekend. OTOH the east coast
was weak but I was hearing it last night, but over the weekend I couldn't even hear WCBS or WBZ which are always strong.

 

[cyberdad]

You need to try ALL, and I mean all, non-local channels tonight. The possibilities are endless! Low-Power Florida? Cuba? Venezuela? Colombia?

-crainbebo

As it turned out, conditions were pretty much back to normal during the pre dawn hours this morning. The only Cuban present was R. Enciclopedia...very weak on 530. The north was back online with WCCO blasting, along with CBK and CBW both fair-good (KQAQ was also in, but nowhere as strong as the previous night.).

To the east, the usual suspects were back, including WJR, WABC, WCBS, KDKA, WBZ and KYW. One oddity was CFZM was exceedingly weak, but CKDO (1580) 40 miles further away from me (and with far less juice) was doing just fine.

 

[pianoplayer88key]

Also, speaking of 1450, for a brief time KFSD Escondido had some Asian programming in its lineup. They recently changed to a business talk format, though, taking over the format from 1000 KCEO in Vista, which is changing (if they haven't already) to a Catholic format.