WCUE 1150 Cuyahoga Falls now strong in Cleveland

[RadioFixerCLE]

The last couple of days I've noticed reception of WCUE's daytime signal (5 kilowatt, extremely narrow hourglass) to have a DRASTIC improvement in midtown Cleveland.

I've even picked it up inside a noisy office building on a fairly cheap tatty radio, with reasonable quality; something I couldn't do before.
What was once a faint whisper is almost equivalent in quality to WCCR's daytime signal. On a car radio, reception is clean with little evidence of noise.

At night, WCUE drops to 500 watts.

 

[snowdog88]

The last couple of days I've noticed reception of WCUE's daytime signal (5 kilowatt, extremely narrow hourglass) to have a DRASTIC improvement in midtown Cleveland.

I've even picked it up inside a noisy office building on a fairly cheap tatty radio, with reasonable quality; something I couldn't do before.
What was once a faint whisper is almost equivalent in quality to WCCR's daytime signal. On a car radio, reception is clean with little evidence of noise.

At night, WCUE drops to 500 watts.

If you're anywhere near or around Downtown Cleveland, you should get a decent signal of WCUE. Also note that during winter when the ground is frozen, ground conductivity is much better, so AM signals tend to be stronger in weaker areas. Once such case with me years ago was with WCCR (then still WWMK). I'm located just outside of their local reception contour, and my drive was down SR 82 to Brecksville, almost right up to their transmitter. On typical days, reception was always plagued with interference until I got to Sagamore Hills, even though I was about halfway inside their local contour at that point. However, one morning around this time in 2008 (maybe it was February), I was able to drive from my house to Brecksville and listen to AM 1260 with absolutely no kind of interference what so ever. Even listening at home during the winter months resulted in much better reception, where a few times I was able to listen late at night and into the early morning hours, which was a rarity as 1260 is wiped out completely by other stations in my area on a normal basis as dusk approaches, even before switching to their nighttime power.

However, during the summer months when the ground is dry, AM reception of a station is usually at its worst near or outside of their local coverage contour, with the static floor noise sometimes being much louder than the station itself. Along with modern electronics that tend to pollute the AM band with more interference than ever before, it's no wonder very few people still listen on AM.

 

[davideduardo]

If you're anywhere near or around Downtown Cleveland, you should get a decent signal of WCUE. Also note that during winter when the ground is frozen, ground conductivity is much better, so AM signals tend to be stronger in weaker areas.

Actually, the "winter effect" is more based on a near-total absence of atmospheric noise.

However, during the summer months when the ground is dry, AM reception of a station is usually at its worst near or outside of their local coverage contour, with the static floor noise sometimes being much louder than the station itself. Along with modern electronics that tend to pollute the AM band with more interference than ever before, it's no wonder very few people still listen on AM.

Again, the issue is noise level. That's why AM DXers consider the season to be from around October to April, not May to September.

 

[RadioFixerCLE]

Actually, the "winter effect" is more based on a near-total absence of atmospheric noise.

Again, the issue is noise level. That's why AM DXers consider the season to be from around October to April, not May to September.

I'll continue to keep an eye on it. The night signal quality over Shaker Heights (500 watts) is about what I remember when I moved to Cleveland sometime in the summer of 2015: vaguely listenable but with prominent noise sometimes drowning it out.