According to the Albany board WKAJ 1120 is on the air. At least testing with an oldies format. I wonder if Hank Brown will still do the morning show? Even though WKAJ's transmitter is technically in St Johnsville it will primarily serve the Little Falls -Herkimer area. That's the Utica-Rome market.
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WKAJ is on the air
- Thread starter therealjm12
- Start date
And you know you can always trust Hank to tell the truth.
Have been meaning to post, since catching 1120.
I get them pretty well, at my EAST of Amsterdam locale. Perhaps having a CCRadio, along with a Terk and a CCrane twin-coil antenna help. But they come in almost as strong as 1490 does, and are actually less muddy-sounding than 1490.
The first day I remembered to try them while in the car, I was near Everett Rd in Albany, and could actually hear them! Amidst the static, I could make out what song they were playing without verifying it first on WCSS. Not bad!
I get them pretty well, at my EAST of Amsterdam locale. Perhaps having a CCRadio, along with a Terk and a CCrane twin-coil antenna help. But they come in almost as strong as 1490 does, and are actually less muddy-sounding than 1490.
The first day I remembered to try them while in the car, I was near Everett Rd in Albany, and could actually hear them! Amidst the static, I could make out what song they were playing without verifying it first on WCSS. Not bad!
I was in the Utica area over July 4th. The signal was very week but listenable. I was in the Valley - Ilion and Mohawk and still not that strong. I don't think I was more than 25 miles from the transmitter. I know they are directional but I think the pattern covers that area. Are they operating at 10,000 watts? BTW, 1150 & 1450 still off the air.
C
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therealjm12 said:
Heard similar reports about WKAJ from a reader in Utica proper, late last week. The contour map on radio-locator.com backs up your assumptions -- although the directional pattern goes much farther out north-south than it does east-west, it should still be decent in Utica. Amazing how much smaller that nighttime pattern is.
And remember - radio-locator still overstates the useful nighttime coverage of most AM stations. The inner (red) contour on the R-L maps represents 2.5 mV/m, while the outer (purple) is 0.5 mV/m. Looks pretty, sure...but:
The only number that matters when looking at an AM station at night is the nighttime interference-free contour - how much signal does the station need to be giving a listener to overcome everything else that's coming in on the same frequency from elsewhere via skywave? That number is different for every station. Only for class A stations like WHAM and WGY is it as low as 0.5 mV/m - in other words, only for those stations can the purple contour be said to represent any kind of vaguely usable signal in the real world (and even that doesn't take into account the interference WHAM gets from Cuba on 1180.)
For WKAJ, the magic number is 13.872 mV/m, a figure determined mostly by the incoming interference from KMOX. If you're not within WKAJ's 13.8 mV/m contour, you're probably going to get interference to your reception, making it less than satisfactory.
Needless to say, if R-L plotted WKAJ's 13.8 mV/m inside the 2.5 and 0.5 contours, it would be pretty tiny indeed. According to WKAJ's own FCC filings, it encompasses the village of St. Johnsville and doesn't get more than a few miles beyond it on route 5 east or west. It doesn't reach Little Falls or Fort Plain/Nelliston, nor does it get north even as far as Dolgeville.
The only number that matters when looking at an AM station at night is the nighttime interference-free contour - how much signal does the station need to be giving a listener to overcome everything else that's coming in on the same frequency from elsewhere via skywave? That number is different for every station. Only for class A stations like WHAM and WGY is it as low as 0.5 mV/m - in other words, only for those stations can the purple contour be said to represent any kind of vaguely usable signal in the real world (and even that doesn't take into account the interference WHAM gets from Cuba on 1180.)
For WKAJ, the magic number is 13.872 mV/m, a figure determined mostly by the incoming interference from KMOX. If you're not within WKAJ's 13.8 mV/m contour, you're probably going to get interference to your reception, making it less than satisfactory.
Needless to say, if R-L plotted WKAJ's 13.8 mV/m inside the 2.5 and 0.5 contours, it would be pretty tiny indeed. According to WKAJ's own FCC filings, it encompasses the village of St. Johnsville and doesn't get more than a few miles beyond it on route 5 east or west. It doesn't reach Little Falls or Fort Plain/Nelliston, nor does it get north even as far as Dolgeville.
As of 7/24/13, WKAJ-AM 1120 is back on...still working on a few issues from the thunderstorm that hammered through a few weeks ago.
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