[Jeffhs]

My AM radios do work a lot better when there is a power outage here. I live in an apartment building and, at times, have an awful lot of noise between stations in the daytime, but at night when the BC band opens up, I get stations like crazy; mostly 50kW ones from Boston, New York, Philadelphia and other Northeast and East Coast cities. However, when there is a power outage and the noise stops, I can hear stations in the daytime which I don't ordinarily receive, yup, you guessed it, due to the high noise level from computers, et al. One other factor that has all but stopped long range AM DXing is there are no longer any such things as "clear channels" on the broadcast band. Where there used to be only one or, at most, two stations on any given frequency at night after local sundown, now there are many low-power, former daytime stations which have been granted authority by the FCC to operate full-time, often with lower power output and directional nighttime signal patterns. Trying to catch these stations after their local sunset is a real challenge, as there may be several such stations on the frequency at any given time. Years ago, when I lived in a Cleveland suburb near a 500-watt daytime-only station on 1330 kHz, I would hear a bunch of very weak signals after the station signed off. I'll have to try that again, now that the station in question runs full-time with 42 watts nights and is all but inaudible here after dark. I bet I'll get some great DX on the frequency, depending on the time of the night (after the station lowers its power output and changes its antenna signal pattern so my area doesn't receive it) I happen to be listening.

I doubt if I will hear anything from the West Coast here, as I am in northeastern Ohio and am using radios with built-in antennas (I cannot erect wire antennas here); however, it will be interesting to find out what I do hear, besides the big 50kW stations I mentioned above. I have only heard two AM stations, both 50kW clear channel ones, west of here. The first was KOA-AM in Denver on 850 kHz, which I bagged on an early Sunday morning after a local station signed off for maintenance; the second was WBAP-AM in Fort Worth, Texas. I have not heard either station since, although with the clear channels having been abolished the chances of my receiving them are very slim. The Cleveland station does lower its output to 4700 watts nights and is likely directional from sundown to sunrise, but the signal is still very much audible here, even at night. Due to its nighttime signal, there is little or no chance of my hearing any kind of DX on its frequency, unless of course the Cleveland station signs off for technical maintenance again this weekend.

Edit: I have heard KMOX 1120 in St. Louis and KXEL 1540 in Iowa after dark, although it's been years since I heard either station. I should have said I do not hear stations from most of the Midwest or Rocky Mountain states, or anywhere further west than that, unless one of the local Cleveland stations signs off for any reason. I'm sure my reception of KOA-AM in suburban Cleveland was made possible only because the local station was in fact silent at the time. The AM tuner in the Zenith 4-mode stereo system I had then (mid '80s, IIRC) was little better than a glorified crystal set, and the AM digital tuner in my current Aiwa system isn't a whole lot better. I haven't listened to AM radio in quite a while, so I don't have a good idea of what kind of DX I could receive here just using indoor antennas. I could use the AM coverage in my Icom ham rig for trying to snag AM DX, even with an indoor antenna; I'll have to dig it out from under a pile of junk in my bedroom one of these days and try it on the BC band. Of course, being limited to indoor antennas will limit the number of stations I can receive in an apartment building, with the CPU hash and other interference I am getting (one tenant in this building still has a Zenith CRT TV instead of a modern flat screen, and I am told she watches it a lot, so I'm probably getting interference from its horizontal scan system during prime time). As I said, during power outages my AM reception is much better, but as soon as the power comes back on, so does the interference. I have no intentions of moving (long story), so I guess I'm stuck with the noise from my neighbor's TV and others' computers indefinitely.