Hemingray said:
"Well, haul 'er on over one night!"

Sandy_G said:
"Nah, you need an R-392, the "portable" version of the R-390...Makes a dandy heated campstool, & you can stick one under a corner of yr Jeep to hold it up, if you've lost a jack...Supposedly, they'll work underwater, but even I'M not stupid enuff to test that myth...(grin)"


Ahhh, Yes! the R-392 otherwise the "R-390 lite"... perhaps only 50 Lb. instead of 90-95, but still a bit much to drag over 2000 miles or so for an evenings Dxing... sounds like fun, though.:music:

jr

The new regulations certainly can be confusing; my thanks to jr_tech, et al. who set me straight on the 750-mile rule. (I will print that information and file it for future reference.) That explains why I can often hear WBAP-820 in Dallas, WWL-870 in New Orleans, et al. here in northern Ohio after sundown (both stations are well over 1000 miles from my home), and without using an outdoor antenna -- just my Zenith C845 (probably the best AM DXing radio I've ever owned) with its built-in Wavemagnet antenna. Even with many smaller stations permitted to operate with lower power and/or directional signal patterns at night, the 750-mile rule prevents them from interfering with former clear-channel 50kW stations that very likely were there years or decades before any of the smaller local stations were even thought of, and therefore have absolute priority on the frequency in question.

AM DXing can indeed be more interesting than the program content of the stations heard, especially nowadays when many AM stations carry network or satellite programming (particularly talk shows) that is repeated across the US. I think most AM/FM DXers are much more interested in hearing the identification signal of a station they just picked up than they are interested in the programming itself. In many cases, the station ID and local commercials are the only original facets of AM radio programming, as these are always unique to the area in which the station is located.

It wouldn't surprise me either if most big 50kW US stations are running on skeleton crews or less after midnight, when the station is running satellite programming. A small 0.5kW day/0.042kW (42 watts) night former day-only station near where I grew up is now running almost 100 percent satellite-delivered talk programming, as it has been since about five years ago; it would not surprise me if there is only one engineer on duty after midnight and/or after normal business hours, as it doesn't take many people (I don't think, anyway) to operate a radio station programmed almost entirely from satellite feeds. The station near my hometown, in fact, is probably close to 100-percent automated.

A 1kW day/0.5kW night local station about five miles from me is probably, even likely, running 100 percent satellite programming as well, having dropped local programming several years ago. This is the station I've mentioned in previous posts that runs overmodulated black gospel music 24-7; they probably get the programming from one or more satellites and have very few actual people in the studio at any time, except of course for transmitter technicians and the folks who oversee the satellite operations.

The AM and FM dials are pretty full here in Seattle, with nighttime AM DX stations regularly heard from as far south as KNX in LA on 1070 and as far east as the CBC on 540 in Saskatchewan (can't remember the callsign at the moment).

I'm mainly an AM listener but recently decided to give the commercial FM stations a listen. I couldn't believe how many commercials they carry now! I mean, in an hour they probably play 35 minutes of music and 25 of commercials. I don't remember it being like this 20 or even 10 years ago. Guess they're trying to make up the lost ad revenue (i.e. lower rates) by having more advertisers.

AM is probably just as bad, but somehow it's less jarring to hear talk constantly interrupted than music.

Jeffhs said:
"my Zenith C845 (probably the best AM DXing radio I've ever owned) with its built-in Wavemagnet"

Just for grins, have you ever tried AM Dxing with your Icom ham transceiver? I believe that most of these units contain a "general coverage" receiver which will tune the broadcast band. Connected to a loop antenna or length of wire, a modern Icom might well do better than a 50 year old (or so) consumer product. I use my Icom 8500 a lot for AM Dx... The sensitivity, lack of spurious responses, bandwidth choices and upper as well as lower SSB modes provide a definite advantage over a standard "consumer grade" radio for Dxing.

Jeffhs said:
"it would not surprise me if there is only one engineer on duty after midnight and/or after normal business hours, as it doesn't take many people (I don't think, anyway) to operate a radio station programmed almost entirely from satellite feeds."

The situation may be even worse than you describe. The satellite receivers are usually run by a computer and some of the programs may even have been downloaded in advance, and are just playing off of the computers' hard drive. No need for anybody to be there.
The chief engineer or contract engineer is likely asleep,:boring: but with a cell phone turned on... if any of the stations' operating parameters fall outside of pre-programmed limits, the cell phone will provide instant alert, and in many cases the problem may be corrected through the internet control panel displayed on the phone.

jr

Seattle is only about 150 miles from Vancouver, British Columbia; you should be able to hear AM stations from the latter city quite well most of the time (I found out the location of Vancouver while watching the Olympics earlier this year).

You are correct as to the insane amount of commercials on AM and FM radio stations nowadays. It is the same in every major city in the US, no exceptions. I don't listen to radio (AM or FM) much anymore for just that reason, listening instead to Internet radio and my own music collection, a good part of which is on my computer's hard drive; I access it through Nullsoft's Winamp media player and have my computer's sound card connected to my stereo system. The sound quality, IMHO, is excellent.

Talk radio is the reason I gave up on AM, except occasionally for DXing. I am old enough (almost 54) to remember AM music radio (I grew up listening to every rock and roll radio station in Cleveland, not to mention powerhouses of the time the likes of 66WNBC in New York, 89WLS in Chicago [now playing oldies in streaming audio at trueoldies947.com], "The Big Eight" CKLW-AM in Windsor, Ontario, "Big Ten" WCFL 1000 in Chicago, et al.) The oldies (now called "classic hits") in most major cities are now on FM--on 105.7 in Cleveland and also, where I live today (33 miles east of downtown and within a mile of the south shore of Lake Erie), on a station one county east of here on 102.5.

However, that's progress. I like oldies well enough, now being old enough to remember when those songs were top-40, that I bookmarked the websites of WLS-FM and also KOOL-FM 105 in Phoenix, Arizona. That's one great thing about the Internet -- many radio stations now stream their programming online, so one never has to be far away from his or her favorite music. The only thing I don't like about streaming audio is that, to listen to at least one of my favorite stations' streams (wouldn't you know it, the classic hits station in Cleveland) requires a media player I don't have and cannot use on my 10-year-old computer, running Windows 98se. Oh well. WLS-FM's streaming oldies and those from the Phoenix station, IMHO, more than make up for that. :yes:

BTW, from where you are in Seattle, I would think you would hear AM stations just about everywhere on the West Coast and the southwestern US as well. Even within your own state you should be able to hear stations from Spokane and other areas as well, unless the Seattle area is not conducive to DXing by virtue of mountains, hills, etc. California is especially bad in this regard; I read years ago in an old issue of the (now defunct) Popular Electronics magazine a letter to the editor from someone who had lived for decades in the Los Angeles area, and had never heard FM radio stations from any other state. I couldn't believe the L.A. area is that isolated from the rest of the West Coast (or the Western US, for that matter) as far as radio signals are concerned.

Some of my best DX catches on radio were, about 25 years ago, station KOA-850 in Denver, which I heard one early Monday morning when one of the Cleveland AM stations was off the air for maintenance, and WEAT-FM (yes, FM) in West Palm Beach, Florida, forty years ago. I was 14 years old at the time and was listening to a Cleveland FM station that summer afternoon, when the station suddenly went off the air. Imagine my surprise when, about a minute later, WEAT-FM came booming in, in stereo yet, just as clearly as if it were right next door.

On television, I have had several good DX catches, all before I had cable. The best one, I think, however, was WPBT-TV channel 2 in Miami. I lived in an eastern Cleveland suburb at the time, and one summer day about 33 years ago, I idly turned my TV dial to channel 2 and saw the Miami station, as clear as any of the locals in Cleveland. The weird part was that I continued to receive this station, with the same great picture quality, for the next five days in a row! I didn't have a fancy antenna, either--just a pair of rabbit ears atop the set.

I also had a surprise one afternoon, 30+ years ago, when I turned on the TV in my living room, put it on channel 2, and saw--to my dumbfounded surprise--a station ID from a television station in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The TV was hooked up to an antenna pointed at the Cleveland television transmitters, which are all southwest of the city; well, there must have been a wide-open path to the southwest well beyond Cleveland that day, as I was getting TV from Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma, just about every station in the southwest on channel 2. I did get one Texas station from the Beaumont/Port Arthur, Area on channel 4 that summer as well, but no other spectacular DX on any other channel except for one day (very early morning) in the '70s, when I picked up channel 5 from Saginaw, Michigan, about a half-hour before channel 5 in Cleveland signed on. I also got Saginaw's channel 25 about an hour or so before the local PBS station began its schedule of broadcasting.

CBC has many small transmitters to fill up isolated areas operating on 540 kHz, for
some reason. The only CBC AM powerhouse that still exists AFAIK is the French
Toronto transmitter on 860 kHz, an easy to identify catch in Eastern Canada and
NE USA. Regards.

Their signal pattern must not include northeastern Ohio, as I have never heard anything on 860 from here (eastern Lake County, Ohio, 33 miles east of downtown Cleveland), even at night. I can hear WHAS-840 in Louisville, Kentucky and WWL-AM 870 in New Orleans after sundown, but in all my years of AM DXing I have yet to hear anything on 860. Perhaps that's because there is a 50kW day/4.7 kW night Cleveland station on 850 that bleeds over to 860 just about everywhere the signal can be heard in northeast Ohio and beyond. The problem is worst in areas very near the transmitter, which is located in a southwestern suburb of Cleveland. If you are within a few miles of the station's towers, their daytime signal will take over your radio dial, even being heard in between other local stations. I lived in a Cleveland suburb about 38 years ago on a street just about a third of a mile from a local FM station on 92.3 MHz. That station came in exceedingly well on my FM radios, on my TV on channel 6, and even on a transistorized stereo tape recorder. Believe it or not, I was even hearing the station, very faintly, at several spots on the ten-meter ham band on my old Hallicrafters SX101-A, which was the receiver in my first ham radio station.

Leaving that suburb (Cleveland Heights, Ohio) three years later cured the problem; it did not repeat itself, either when I moved back to the suburb where I grew up or when I moved to where I live now. I don't have that kind of trouble here since I am perhaps 40 miles from Cleveland's AM and FM radio stations, and at least as far from the city's TV stations. The only thing that could possibly cause me trouble here as far as interference is concerned (but doesn't, thank goodness) is a 1kW/0.5kW (day/night) AM station five miles away. The only problem that station ever caused me (if you can call it a problem) is that it comes in at two points, 900 kHz (0.9 MHz) apart on the digital AM/FM tuner in my stereo system. Most of the time, however, I don't even know the station is there.

I've never forgotten the problems that 27.5-kW ERP station's signal caused me, and I'm sure I never will. I had an aunt who lived only about five miles from Cleveland's TV transmitters; she could get excellent reception on all three (at the time) local network stations, using just a length of wire on the set's antenna terminals. I swear she was getting almost city-grade reception at times without an antenna--that's how strong the signals were in her area.

AM's far from dead. A good example is being set by an independent operator in St. Cloud (about 75 miles E of me). They have a long-established hard rock FM, an all-sports outlet on 660, a classic country on 800...and recently signed on a nostalgia format ("Uptown Radio") on 1010. They also have a CP (construction permit) for ANOTHER AM...a 250 watter on 540! The 660, 800 & 1010 signals are all directional with sharply-reduced nightttime power, and IIRC the 540 will be directional as well to protect Regina, Sask. Here's the cool part: ALL the AMs run through ONE antenna system through a complicated system of filters, combiners, etc. The system was designed by my friend Mark Persons of M.W. Persons & Associates and works exactly as designed. Mark is a real stickler for quality audio...and the stations' sound shows it. Visit his website @ www.mwpersons.com for pix of this & other installations he's done. Mark's an engineer's engineer for sure.

Me too. I love to listen to music over AM, I even prefer that over FM music. I guess I just think back to when I was a kid. I do believe AM will be with us for a long time to come, AM does have one advantage, it can cover longer distances in the day and much more at night. I like to tune around when I'm out of town and still be able to hear Pittsburgh in places like North Carolina, Florida and so on. My uncle in Florida up until he passed away always listened to KDKA at night and my cousins forever remember him trying to tune it in over the static and so on.

I don't know about how many radio stations there are in Canada but if we went all or even 90% FM in this country, the band would be so overcrowded. I remember even in 1987 when I drove through the San Jauquin Valley on I-5 in California, there were several FM stations battling it out over the same frequency on my car radio. I think it is a mistake to go over to FM all the way, if you're out in the country, at least you still know what is going on by pulling in stations at night.

You could be in a "skip zone" for KDKA where the signal is above you before it comes back down a distance away. Also, you're in a mountainous area which can play tricks with a signal.

I've experienced amazing skip before,

One day driving home from work, I had an extremely hard time receiving any local stations due to interference from distant stations, but had no problem receiving WQOL 103.7 FM from Vero Beach, FL. No static whatsoever despite moving at 55mph down US167.

On the day of the DTV changeover, as alot of stations here in AR and over in TN switched over, I was able to receive WUND-2 from Edenton NC, and later on, KDKA and WTAE from Pittsburgh, PA. KDKA came in clear enough for a good amount of time that day, for me to watch part of a soap opera along with some message on the bottom about the DTV transition.

In the US, yes, you are correct (I hope we have AM here for quite a while, as it is still an excellent medium for news, local emergency information and those in FM fringe areas, not to mention AM DXers), but in Canada they are silencing AMs left and right, as Rodzilla mentioned in his post. I cannot begin to imagine a city such as Halifax, NS with absolutely no AM radio except one small station on 540 kHz. I don't know how big Halifax is, but unless the one remaining local station has a 50kW signal, a network of repeaters, or Halifax is a very small city, I can't see how one station can cover the entire area. I live in an area of northeastern Ohio that several Cleveland-area stations do not reach at night and can just barely be heard during the daytime; this describes a 500-watt daytime/42-watt nighttime station near my hometown to a T, and can probably describe a lot of other small, local-service stations--many located in small towns or suburban areas--as well.

Fifty-kilowatt stations such as CKLW in Windsor, Ontario will likely be around for many years to come, even if and when many of the smaller AMs in Canada eventually go silent or to FM. CKLW was a top-40 rock and roll station on 800 kHz in the '60s-'70s, flipping to a news-talk format some time later (I'm not sure exactly when the switch actually occurred). Their FM arm for many years was CKLW-FM on 93.7; I don't know what their format was at that time (probably elevator music), but I do know that some time either in the late '90s or very early in the 21st century the station changed its call sign to CIDR and adopted a modern rock format. CKLW-TV is now CBET-TV channel 9, serving Windsor and Detroit; it is a CBC television network affiliate. I was able to see the TV station here in northeastern Ohio from early spring until late fall before I got cable; I still hear the FM station on occasion when the conditions are right.

The FM radio dial in Canada must not be nearly as crowded with stations as it is here in the US if many Canadian AMs are going silent and, in many cases, transferring their entire program schedules to FM. This may well be why many US AM stations go silent rather than switching to streaming audio over the Internet or to FM when they find themselves on the verge of failure--again, the FM dial in most areas of this country is far too crowded as it is, with most existing FMs already running established formats (some having been on these stations for decades) and unwilling to abandon them any time soon. I think of a small station about 20 miles south of here that went silent about five years ago, after going through no fewer than four formats--including a satellite feed from Sporting News Radio--in just under 40 years. I wonder if that station might still be active today had it switched to FM, if only to a low-power signal at the low end of the dial, below 92 MHz. This would have worked out perfectly (in fact the results would have probably been phenomenal); since the station was located in Geauga County, Ohio, the elevation ASL (above sea level) of which is much higher than most other parts of this area, any station replacing it would have probably had incredible coverage of the county, several surrounding counties, and much of the greater Cleveland area as well.

I had that happen to me just north of the Arkansas border a few months ago - for a few minutes I got a station at 104.7 from Hollywood, FL, then a few minutes later it changed to a station from north Florida - drowning out the 104.7 I was trying to listen to that's about 70 miles from where I was.

I had my very first ever digital FM DX last week with my Sangean HDT-1 HDRadio that I've had for about 6 months now. KDWB 101.3 from Minneapolis was coming in good enough for their HD to pop on for a few minutes here in southwest WI. A distance of 170 miles.

Cool ! My almost dx (about 110 miles away) classical station increased the power of their digital sidebands by 6db a few months ago and are almost 100% digital copy now on my Sony F1HD/APS9 set up. Some stations have been able to increase by 10db... can't wait 'till the tropo gets a little better, could land a few digital Dx logs this summer. :yes:

jr

IIRC, Canada used to have AM broadcast radio stations up around 6MHz in very sparsely populated areas. As a signal on 6MHz could cover very large areas. Like in the northern end of their various provinces, or in the area just south of the north pole.

Starting mid-week I'm going to be laid up for several days and plan to do a lot of DXing. I have my Superadio, Realistic DX-440 and '42 Zenith 14-tube monster at bedside, along with some coax run to that side of the room to make use of my outdoor antenna for FM. Just wish I had a rotator on that thing. I was going to patch in a portable cassette recorder but the belt went bad, c'est la vie.

CFRB in Toronto (1010 kc) still does broadcast on 6070 kc, I pick them up here in Pittsburgh.