What's your BEST NOON-Time AM DX ?

[KR4BD]

Conditions on the AM band seem amazingly good this year. Over the years, I've had some interesting Noon to 2 PM skip show up. My best, distance-wise occurred about 15 years ago when I heard WBZ on my car radio at 12:30 PM EST in January here in Lexington, KY. It was nearly rock solid with virtuallyno fading for over an hour. That's a distance of just under 800 air-miles. That's entirely over land...not a saltwater path.

 

[cyberdad]

I'll say WWL at noon in downtown Moline, IL. Mid 1970s on a car radio. I'll guess about 800 miles. The one thing in common in both this and the first post is that the daytime skywave may have been helped out a little by directional antennas.

 

[cd637299]

It was 1 pm, and it was in November 1997, but WWL 870 from Cape Hatteras ain't bad!

I believe that from noon to 1 pm on maybe June 28, 2005, from Bermuda, as I started on the low end and worked up, RVC Turks on 530 (when it was still strong) & WKAQ 580 in PR may have been the first far away ones I bagged.

cd

 

[radiorob2.0]

Conditions on the AM band seem amazingly good this year. Over the years, I've had some interesting Noon to 2 PM skip show up. My best, distance-wise occurred about 15 years ago when I heard WBZ on my car radio at 12:30 PM EST in January here in Lexington, KY. It was nearly rock solid with virtuallyno fading for over an hour. That's a distance of just under 800 air-miles. That's entirely over land...not a saltwater path.

I heard WBZ at noon while in Richmond, Kentucky circa 1990. About five years ago I heard WBAL Baltimore and WBBR New York City for a short time at around noon.

 

[radioman148]

In the Chicago area around noon in December sometime in the mid 70s I was shocked to hear most of the east coast blowtorches.
Among them were WABC, WCBS, WBZ, KDKA, WCAU (now WPHT) & WHAM among others.

 

[davideduardo]

Eastern side of Cleveland, OH, in the early 60's: 4VEH-1035 Cap Hatien, Haiti. 10 kw on a "split" frequency at about noon time on a cold, snowy day. Almost 100% readable in Kreyol.

Second best would be 1470, Regina, Sask., at 11:30 AM in one of the CONELRAD tests where no domestic station was on the channel. 540 Watrous also heard, but of course it is much higher power. Same location and era.

 

[jd]

Quoting one of my posts from last year, in response to "farthest non-saltwater daytime reach":

"The situation has changed since my most distant daytime reception, none other than the aforementioned KWMT Ft. Dodge IA. It was sometime in January around noon and I was listening on a Delco car radio. This was back when KWMT was still running 1,000 watts and a few years before a local 540, KDFT, had signed on from Ferris TX. My location at the time was in Irving, just west of Dallas and approximately 678 miles from Ft. Dodge."

 

[Lawppy]

Probably WCBS 880 in Coldwater, MI on a dark, rainy November afternoon in 2008 or 2009. Readable signal, but not the world's greatest reception. It was about 1:30 PM.

WLAC 1510 Nashville is audible in the jumble all day sometimes in December-January.

I managed CBW 990 Winnipeg, MB one very frigid January morning around 11:00. Not noon-time DX, but honorable mention.

 

[crainbebo]

I think my best noon hour DX was KFBK 1530 Sacramento. Followed by 1660 KXOL in Utah.

-crainbebo

 

[Bongwater]

I think my best noon hour DX was KFBK 1530 Sacramento. Followed by 1660 KXOL in Utah.

-crainbebo

Mine was a 50,000 watt 1180 KOFI Kalispell, MT in mid December sometime in the late '80s.

 

[w9wi]

WBZ in Lexington is a nice catch!

My best is KRLD-1080 Dallas, logged near Nashville one November noon. Probably the best daytime distance on a *routine* basis is WLW-700 Cincinnati.

 

[audioguy]

I remember hearing WMAQ and WGN just north of Atlanta around mid-day in the car, driving back to Chicago. Have also had occasional reception of CBW from Winnipeg and some North Dakota stations around 11 am in the north Chicago suburbs. Thank goodness WMVP shut off their IBOC or it would be impossible to hear CBW.

 

[cyberdad]

If we're going to talk about regular signals from the greatest distance....here in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, it would probably be WLW and/or WJR....both well over 200 miles. "Going the other way" (and as posted in a previous thread), WSCR, WGN, and WBBM are all audible daytime in Windsor, ON Canada and for a few miles beyond (east) on the 401 Freeway. In my travels these three also usually make it to St. Louis and suburban Cincinnati to the South, Des Moines to the West (barely...but around 300 miles) and to the UP of Michigan to the north.

 

[gar hi]

Around 1 pm on a cold December day a couple years ago, I heard a good listenable signal from WLW on Clearwater Beach. It was a Bengals game they had on. It lasted the whole time I was there and had some slight fading.

Weird thing is, I checked all the other big frequencies with 50 kw stations up north and not a trace of anything, not even a trace of WCKY on 1530.

WLW was gone by the time I got back to Tampa.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

In Southeast Michigan, and Northwest Lower Michigan, before WUFL came on the air WBZ was the most frequent daytime skywave around noon. The directional stations seem to have an advantage in their maximum directions. In the Mackinac Straits area, 50 kW stations with directional antennas with maximums in the northern directions are heard throughout the day in December. Stations like WFDF and WWJ have a groundwave in the 50 uV/m range, so they fade in and out much of the time, as the skywave is of about the same strength. Somewhere in the 800 kHz range, the skywaves seem to disappear and WJR seems to only have groundwave usually. Sometimes, stations in certain areas with as little as 1 kW show up alone at a distance of several hundred miles. This is usually in a clear channel former Class I-A or Class I-B frequency protected skywave area where few daytime stations were allowed.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

This isn't exactly on-topic, per se, but from three main DXing locales over the decades, I finally managed to hear three of the elusive 'closest unheard' AM stations around the exact midday (one at each locale).

Doubtless, the atmospherics generally are being minimal at that time. So, am just suggesting that if anyone has one of those aggravatingly proximate stations missing from the log, DXing during lunch might do the trick.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

New York City clears, except WOR, from Daytona Beach Shores, FL. Absolutely dependable no matter what time of year.

 

[KR4BD]

New York City clears, except WOR, from Daytona Beach Shores, FL. Absolutely dependable no matter what time of year.

Just curious... I know that is a saltwater path for you. I've very clearly heard all the NYC biggies on the Outer Banks of NC on my car radio at noon. What kind of rig & antenna are you using at Daytona Beach? A beverage antenna????

I've heard WOR on Bermuda mid-day on a mini-portable (Tecsun PL-606) which I would estimate about 800 miles--all over saltwater..

 

[gar hi]

Here's what I was able to hear on Daytona Beach with my Sangean PR-D5 on 880.

It was around 2:30 pm on Sept 30, 2009.

There's two weak stations, the stronger being WZAB from south Florida and the fluttering station behind it was most likely WCBS, as the Cuban station on 880 would have to go right up the spine of the state and it's barely audible daytime in Tampa where there's a much better and closer saltwater path.

So I would say you're hearing an inaudible trace of WCBS here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoNF4v6i5b0

 

[nocomradio]

Here in Central Va in the middle of the day, I have been able to pull in 1210 WPHT from Philly on occasion. I know its a 5 hour drive to there from here, so its pretty decent in terms of mileage, even in a straight line.

Not much else though.