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Weird AM mobile reception (KMOX, St. Louis)

P

pqgeorge

Last weekend, I was driving home from my weekend job from Manchester, New Hampshire, (Saturday night/Sunday morning). Generally, I listen to Sirius/XM and their "decades" channels. But, I always take a gander of the AM band, just to see what was happening on skywave. Just a few miles north of Boston, I came upon a very strong signal 1120 kHz. Thought it was local pest, WBNW. But, this station was playing some Christmas tunes and had ads for places I had never heard about. Then the announcer said KMOX/1120 many times. It was unique with chatter and Christmas music and ads for local St. Louis establishments. Yes, it was the one and only KMOX from St. Louis, strong and very listenable all the way home to Whitman, MA. I have tried to get them for years. Ever since the Clears were dissolved, it was harder to get the distant stuff, even WLS (a nightly visitor here in Boston, for decades) is the mud with a Johnny-come-lately local (WAMG). Though I have not QSL'ed in a few years, KMOX is one station I have yet to log with a QSL card. Hearing KMOX reminded me of the days when skywave reception was a part of life and was so fun to hear what other stations in distant places were playing.

I truly miss those days of AM DXing. Even back in the 1970's, for example, I would hear WJJD/1160 in Chicago quite well until they signed off at Salt Lake City sunset. After they pulled the carrier, I would be greeted by KSL/1160 Salt Lake City with a fairly listenable signal as well. It's a shame that AM has deteriorated to where to where every former Clear Channel frequency sounds like the "best" Graveyard channel. Sure, you can get virtually any station in the world on your PC or Mac. But..... it's just not the same.
 
I never got to experience those days (born in '79) but in East Providence I used to be able to pick up KMOX & WLS regularly. In Middleborough...I have to check. But I remember losing WLS to 890-Dedham when I'd visit my then-girlfriend (now wife) in East Bridgewater. Sometimes I'm able to pick up WGN but only if the WOR IBOC hash doesn't override it. Same thing with WSM & WFAN's hash (but I think it's been off for a while now!).
 
WBAP during blizzard of 78
WWL New Orleans just a few yrs ago
KOA Denver one night a few yrs back when WEEI shut down for equip work at 3 am
 
Even though WBNW has been at 1120 in the Boston area for about 25 years,. I still occasionally at my home in Norwood, Massachusetts get KMOX at night instead of WBNW.

The WBNW night signal is 1,000 watts, beamed due east from Concord, Massachusetts.
 
Here in New Britain, CT, there's no chance at KMOX-AM anymore, thanks to WPRX-AM 1120 of Bristol/New Britain. Another laughable nighttime signal is WRYM-AM 840 of New Britain, who has their studio and transmitter to the east in Newington, CT. At night, you can still hear WHAS-AM 840 of Louisville underneath. WLS-AM 890 of Chicago and CHML-AM 900 of Windsor, ON get stepped on by WLAT-AM 910 of New Britain, who's transmitter is to my northwest in Farmington, CT.
 
Here in south FL, yes, I'd say that KMOX is truly the last bastion of this kind of AM DX. Yes I remember those days in the 1970s....I had no idea how easy KSL was to catch, until I tried. Now, not so much.

I have even gotten the HD Logo flashing for KMOX, but I really doubt I'll get it to lock into HD here.

However, as all good things must come to an end, we have a CP for a WFNX 1120 in Coral Springs, FL, about a 45 minute drive from home. I have no idea how the signal will sound, but I would say that it'll give KMOX a run for the money.

cd
 
I get KMOX regularly at night without too much trouble. WSM is a great get, and WWL is one of the farthest 'gets' I ever got, even with a good night signal from WHCU in Ithaca NY. No wonder why Howie wants to jump to FM, this time of year during his show, I can hear other 680's WCBM Baltimore, CFTR Toronto, WINR Binghamton NY all fighting it out with "The Big 68".
 
The weird thing is that when I grew up on the south shore of Long Island, NY, I could not hear any of the Boston stations though of course stations from much farther away came in fine at night.
 
WWL and WBAP are my furthest catches too. Well.... Maybe those clock stations in Cuba? When the x-band first opened up, there was a 5000 watt station from Iowa that came in regularly.
 
raccoonradio said:
When RKO got knocked off air for 40 min or so earlier this week "680 News" Tor. was on clear
Click to expand...

There have been several reports that CFTR, like many Canadian AMs, does not operate in compliance with its license. CFTR should not be audible here--even if it were using its day pattern at night. The eight-tower day and night patterns are quite similar to each other. Both patterns are teardrops with a radiation maximum to the north-northeast and send an inverse-distance (ID) field of about 50 mV/m @ 1 km toward WRKO, which is at an azimuth of 93.5 degrees with respect to CFTR. An ID field of 50 mV/m is equivalent to about 4W nondirectional--four watts! Though such conditions are not unheard of, it would take very unusual conditions to get listenable reception from a 4W AM signal at a distance of 428 miles (the actual airline distance between CFTR and WRKO).
 
This is a great thread, and I thought I'd chime in with a bit of history myself. Although not directly related to AM broadcast, I remember back in 1993 (I was 13) I had a little realistic DX-342 shortwave radio and got the BBC on 9.59khz every morning with the antenna down. Crystal clear. What was even more amazing, is that one Saturday morning I was driving with my friend in his mom's Cadilac Seville, and when we were rewinding a tape on the cassette deck you could actually hear the BBC in the background. I knew it was the BBC because I listened to it every morning. Absolutely incredible that the signal was so strong it was getting into electronics 2000 miles away!

I thought some of you would get a kick out of that! I know I did back when I was 13.... :)

OK, back to the topic at hand!


cd637299 said:
Here in south FL, yes, I'd say that KMOX is truly the last bastion of this kind of AM DX. Yes I remember those days in the 1970s....I had no idea how easy KSL was to catch, until I tried. Now, not so much.

I have even gotten the HD Logo flashing for KMOX, but I really doubt I'll get it to lock into HD here.

However, as all good things must come to an end, we have a CP for a WFNX 1120 in Coral Springs, FL, about a 45 minute drive from home. I have no idea how the signal will sound, but I would say that it'll give KMOX a run for the money.

cd
Click to expand...
 
Was 9.59 mHz (not kHz) coming from the BBC's English transmitter site or from Sackville, New Brunswick? I remember the World Service's 49-meter signal (5.975? 6.175? Both?) from Sackville being very strong indeed, certainly strong enough to get into my Sangean portable with the antenna down. Getting into the cassette deck, though, doesn't seem possible, even for a SW signal from the relatively nearby Canadian Maritimes.

indystorm said:
This is a great thread, and I thought I'd chime in with a bit of history myself. Although not directly related to AM broadcast, I remember back in 1993 (I was 13) I had a little realistic DX-342 shortwave radio and got the BBC on 9.59khz every morning with the antenna down. Crystal clear. What was even more amazing, is that one Saturday morning I was driving with my friend in his mom's Cadilac Seville, and when we were rewinding a tape on the cassette deck you could actually hear the BBC in the background. I knew it was the BBC because I listened to it every morning. Absolutely incredible that the signal was so strong it was getting into electronics 2000 miles away!

I thought some of you would get a kick out of that! I know I did back when I was 13.... :)

OK, back to the topic at hand!


cd637299 said:
Here in south FL, yes, I'd say that KMOX is truly the last bastion of this kind of AM DX. Yes I remember those days in the 1970s....I had no idea how easy KSL was to catch, until I tried. Now, not so much.

I have even gotten the HD Logo flashing for KMOX, but I really doubt I'll get it to lock into HD here.

However, as all good things must come to an end, we have a CP for a WFNX 1120 in Coral Springs, FL, about a 45 minute drive from home. I have no idea how the signal will sound, but I would say that it'll give KMOX a run for the money.

cd
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
>>CFTR should not be audible here

Somehow it was coming in though; RKO had a transmitter prob and on the small radio in my kitchen I could hear, fairly clearly, "680 News time is...now to the traffic..." etc Prob. not complying with
the set limits I guess. And indeed just before sunset on RKO, you can hear either music (Binghamton) or talk (most likely Hannity on WCBM) in the background. I was driving on a winter weekend from
Burlington VT to Rutland and as WVMT faded I tried RKO (this was prob post sunset when they
should go north-south and of course I was to the northwest) and found the Balt. station was
doing a lot better--though the radio-locator map for nighttime suggests the WCBM signal points to
the southeast toward the DelMarVa peninsula (day signal also pointed that way)

One time it was around sunset I was in Beverly and I was getting WDTW (poss. diff. call letters at the time) 1310 from Detroit even though they're supposed to beam north-south. Sports at the
time; now prog talk but to go silent at the end of the year as Clear Channel donates it to
a programming-for-minorities concern (...once they can build new towers for it...)*

The 680 in Binghamton is Real Oldies, owned by Clear Channel (the iHeart Radio link at top is a dead giveway)
http://www.680winr.com/main.html
--
* http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/113493/report-wdtw-a-to-go-dark-december-31st
 
As to CFTR, I caught it once on a drive up to Lynchburg VA in 1983.... may have been around Danville or somewhere along the NC/VA border. The top 40 music stood out, although the signal was certainly not great. They may still have been only 25 k night signal then; not sure.

As to WCBM's day signal, I was in Bermuda in June 2005 trying to catch anythng I could during the day, with Superadios & Select-a-Tenna. I did get WRKO on 680 and possibly WAPA in Puerto Rico in the day----but going by that pattern mentioned, I would think that WCBM would be a possibility. Their day power may have been only 10 or 20 kW then----but still possible to hear in BDA. But, nope.

cd
 
raccoonradio said:
should go north-south and of course I was to the northwest) and found the Balt. station was
doing a lot better--though the radio-locator map for nighttime suggests the WCBM signal points to
the southeast toward the DelMarVa peninsula (day signal also pointed that way)
Click to expand...

The R-L nighttime maps show only predicted groundwave coverage, which is a factor of both the transmitted directional pattern and the effects of varying surface conductivity. Because surface conductivity is so much better over the water of Chesapeake Bay than the surrounding land, pretty much any AM station in or around Baltimore will look on the R-L map as though it "points to the southeast." (Check out WRBS 1230, for instance, which is nondirectional.)

None of that, however, affects the skywave signal that would be getting WCBM from Maryland up to New England. For that, you want to ignore R-L and look to a site that shows (transmitted) pattern maps rather than (received via groundwave) coverage maps. FCCinfo.com, for instance, shows that WCBM's transmitted pattern is indeed aimed mostly east-southeast, but with several side lobes, one pointing north-northeast up at western New England with a null to WRKO.
 
sure miss the good ole days of am dx-ing.. heavy into from '60 - '70 living in northern indiana. popular elec call back then was WPE9HMT, from '62... new pop comm call is WPC1AA, 52 yrs of dx-ing ;)
 
The AM dial was crazy Sunday afternoon. Got WTWK 1170 from Pattsburgh NY loud and clear on Cape Cod...Heard the 2pm id and Bloomberg reports.
they are a 5kw daytimer!!
 
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