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Originally Posted by jr_tech
On the other hand, DXing was a fairly common activity with these old TRF sets. My parents grew up in the midwest (Nebraska) on farms in the 20s, and both related childhood memories of evening listening to stations across the country from New York (early in the evening) to Los Angeles (later in the evening). jr
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Your folks probably didn't have to deal with 50kW powerhouse radio stations in Nebraska in the '20s. My understanding is that most radio stations of that era were extremely low power (by today's standards), most folks were listening to out-of-town or even out-of-state stations, and there weren't that many radio stations in the entire US at that time. Cincinnati's WLW in the '30s was an experiment that was cut short by the government, because its 500-kW signal was wreaking havoc with other stations in the US and even in other countries; the station was forced to cut back to 50kW at that time. No other US radio station that I am aware of ever attempted such a bold experiment; they couldn't if they wanted to, since the FCC eventually capped the maximum power output any US station could have (under certain conditions, of course) at 50 kW.
DXing in the midwestern US is probably much more interesting than it is in other parts of the country, since a radio listener living in the midwest can likely hear stations from just about anywhere, including the West Coast. Nebraska is near the geographical center of the US, so even with a modest DXing setup one could log many stations in a short period of time. There is much less noise in that part of the US as well, the most interference probably coming from tractor engines and the like.
DXing on the East Coast or the Great Lakes is possible, of course, but the noise level, especially these days with computers and other digital devices, is often high enough to mask extremely weak stations. Case in point: I live in a 12-unit apartment building, 30 miles from downtown Cleveland. I often get noise that sounds like TV horizontal oscillator harmonics between stations on my radios, especially my Zenith C845, which has an RF amplifier stage for AM and FM (one tube functions for both bands). That RF tube amplifies everything the antenna receives, including noise, making it nearly impossible to hear anything much other than the big 50kW stations such as KYW in Philadelphia, KDKA in Pittsburgh, WMAQ (now WSCR) in Chicago, et al.
Other than those stations and the 50kW stations I normally receive from Cleveland (plus a 1kW/0.5kW day/night station in the next town south of here), I don't get much of anything at night other than the HO harmonic noise I mentioned earlier. The smaller 5kW stations in Cleveland usually change their signal patterns at night to favor the greater Cleveland area, so I rarely hear them. One station in a far-eastern Cleveland suburb absolutely drops into the noise shortly after sundown. That station isn't very powerful to begin with (500 watts during daylight hours); their nighttime signal is only 42 watts and directional to the Cleveland area at night, so it couldn't reach my area even under the best of conditions. I once emailed the station's technical department to find out their actual coverage area and found, in the reply, that their 500-watt daytime signal is not meant to reach my area, let alone anywhere east of here...and at night, their 42-watt sharply directional signal is only meant to be heard within about ten miles of the transmitter site, due to several full-time stations on the same frequency. The station had to install additional towers to keep their signal within 10-15 miles of the city of license at night, if they were to run 24 hours a day (the station for decades was 500 watts, daytime only). They have since put their station's audio online, on their Internet website, so the limitations on the signal's range are not nearly the problem they once were, but that's another story.