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WDJO Signal

R

rzeis

Anyone notice WDJO's signal this morning. Seemed about 10 times better than normal. Listened from Forest Park to downtown and it was almost perfect the entire drive. Can just about hear them for a lot of the trip on any other day. Maybe running their daytime power?
 
Snow and cold help groundwave a bit due to the added moisture at ground level, but the biggest help to WDJO is auroral activity. When solar radiation is increased due to solar flares, it affects the earth in many ways, not the least of which is the expansion of the magnetic field. If you would, imagine a donut sitting over the north and south magnetic pole...that's what the footprint of the magnetic field looks like. The visual effect of the aurora borealis is a byproduct of the magnetic field's footprint reacting to the atmosphere. MW (AM) skywave is disrupted within the magnetic field's footprint. When solar storms occur, that footprint gets larger, and skywave is disrupted further south (and further north in the southern hemisphere). Dunno if there was increased solar activity last night, but NOAA tracks this stuff as do many ham radio operators.
 
WYLL is operating on REDUCED POWER [15kw] because of highway construction very close to their site in Chicago. In Franklin County, IN – WDJO is overpowered by the critical-hours signal from WYLL by about 4PM. Yesterday, my Brother mentioned that he actually heard WDJO clearly up to the point that it reduced power and changed to its night pattern at 5:45PM! That nearly-NEVER occurs in east-central Indiana during January.
 
Thanks to everyone for your replys. I knew you guys would have the answers. Here's to cold weather and road construction. Both of which I hate. I do like the big signal. The difference was amazing this morning.
 
I remember a couple instances of solar flares where the lack of skywave was very noticeable on the "graveyard" channels...it sounded almost like daytime conditions on those channels.
 
techie2 said:
I remember a couple instances of solar flares where the lack of skywave was very noticeable on the "graveyard" channels...it sounded almost like daytime conditions on those channels.
Click to expand...

An early-October evening in 2004 was “an all-time high” for this condition. The shortwave broadcasters regularly track these effects, and reported near-total paralysis in the spectrum between 3-10 MHz for about three evenings. I was visiting my parents in east-central Indiana at that time, and remember CLEARLY hearing 740 WNOP [on their VERY-low nighttime power with NO interference from the dominate Toronto 50kw “clear” nearly SIXTY-MILES out] and 1360 then-WCKY [within their deepest null]... Also, "graveyard" 1490 WKBV Richmond was listenable TWENTY-FIVE MILES from their TX—ASTONISHING!

I’m not sure if anything remotely approaching that condition was in-play yesterday with regards to WDJO’s spike in reception quality... At 4:15PM Monday, WHO Des Moines, was clearly receivable in Charleston, SC [generally, it ISN’T solid here - even at 10PM] – and I noticed “typical” band conditions.

WDJO’s worst enemy is WYLL, and Chicago's 1160 is on an STA to operate at reduced power on an intermittent basis. I suspect WDJO is enjoying that Chicago highway construction W-A-A-A-Y more than WYLL is!
 
These posts give some great examples of the importance of interference to AM reception at night. Too bad the people in charge of regulating the AM band don't read this board.
 
It's amazing how far a few watts will go. WTRE once had a failure of their 500W day transmitter and were on the 30 watt LPB for a couple days. It was audible at 45 miles...which proves my point that the first watt is by far the most important watt...
 
I don't know if this is a factor, but I read in Popular Communications that we are experiencing an unusually low amount of sunspots. This affects ham radio and shortwave broadcasting more than AM, but it could have something to do with WDJO. The past few weeks I've been having a weird experience with 1520. Normally I get some bit of WWKB's signal, but lately I've been getting KRHW, a 1600 watt country station out of Sikeston, MO that uses 6 towers at night to aim its signal north-south. Also, WSAI has been coming in pretty good at night. Normally I get graveyard mud on that frequency, which annoys me when I'm trying to get ESPN updates.
 
When the sun is supercharged enough, especially to the point the Northern Lights might be visible in the U.S. (not sure that's happening now) northern AM signals can be wiped out. Couple that with good skip from the south, and AM DX possibilities are endless. I remember one auroral event where litrally other than the locals, I couldn't get anything but WLAC (and it was rapidly fading up and down) and a weak KXEL (playing a country song on a truckers show about the northern lights) from Ohio. A caller to the Truckin' Bozo show said from Tennessee he could only recieve WBT in Charlotte across the whole AM dial.
 
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