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Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

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bmw
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Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by bmw » Sun Jan 31, 2021 10:53 pm

There was a scheduled power outage this morning at 10 AM. What a great opportunity to do an AM radio bandscan. It was supposed to be off until noon, but it came back on at 11, so I I only had time to scan and log between 540 and 830. Kind of a bummer, I was hoping to have time to do most of the dial. Anyways, with the power out, the band really came to life!

My setup:

Grundig Satellit 700 Radio

Image

...enhanced with a Terk AM Antenna

Image

And I tell you what - that Terk antenna can REALLY draw in the stations, especially without the background noise that normally exists when the power is on. It also made it easy to identify unknown stations because of the precise direction-finding capabilities. In some instances where I wasn't certain of the station I took notes of format and precise direction and google helped me ID the station (with near certainty on every entry I had to research).

Signal strength is on a 0 to 5 scale based on both my ear and the 0-5 reading on my radio. In most instances I went with the reading on the radio, except for weak stations not strong enough to move it at all, in which case I rated it between 0 and 1. Anything 1.5 and over I would consider listenable. 1.0 you could basically understand everything being said but had to listen closely. 0.5 to 1 you could hear some words and generally identify a format, but that's about it.

Now, on to the results:

530 CHLO 3.0 - Brampton, ON
540 * (see notes)
550 WGR 3.5 - Buffalo, NY
560 CFOS 3.0 - Owen Sound, ON
570 CKGL 3.0 - Kitchner, ON
580 WTCM 2.0 - Traverse City
590 WKZO 3.5 - Kalamazoo
600 WSNL 4.5 - Flint
610 WTVN 1.0 - Columbus
620 WTMJ 3.0 - Milwaukee
630 CFCO 4.5 - Chatham–Kent
640 CFMJ 1.0 - Richmond Hill, ON
650 WSM 0.5 - Nashville, TN
660 WMIC 5.0 - Sandusky
670 WSCR 3.5 - Chicago
680 WDBC 1.5 - Escanaba
690 WNZK 3.5 - Detroit
700 WLW 1.5 - Cincinnati
710 *
720 WGN 1.5 - Chicago
730 WVFN 3.5 - East Lansing
740 CFZM 4.5 - Toronto
750 WNDZ 0.6 - Portage, IN
760 WJR 4.5 - Detroit (Worst-sounding audio BY FAR of any station, yikes)
770 WTOR 0.8 - Yountstown, NY
780 WBBM 1.0 - Chicago
790 WSGW 4.0 - Saginaw
800 CKLW 4.0 - Windsor
810 WGY 0.5 - New York
810 WMJH 1.0 - Rockford
820 CHAM 3.5 - Hamilton, ON
830 WMMI 4.0 - Shepherd

Unidentified stations:
540 - 2 stations fighting, both 0.5, neither identified
710 - Talk (sounded like someone interviewing someone who represented someone in government) - 0.8 Signal, either ESE or WNW
Possibly WDSM Superior, WI? If so that's an incredible catch. Otherwise I'm stumped on this one.

Surprises:
550 WGR from Buffalo came in VERY good, as did 670 WSCR from Chicago. I can normally pick them up marginally but they are always fighting with electrical interference.
610 WTVN Columbus - quite distant, was very nearly listenable. Certainly intelligible.
650 WSM - Tennessee - while unconfirmed, my notes say music and SSW direction. This has to be it. Surprised I picked up so much as a trace of this one.
680 WDBC Escanaba - quite listenable
810 WGY New York - impressive catch.



k8jd
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by k8jd » Sun Jan 31, 2021 11:08 pm

Nice catch with power outage.
When we had the neighborhood power down I also Went crazy loging a hundred stations on the GE SuperRadio . Then the wife told me to get the generator running for the refrigerator and sump pump to run !
WGY is in Schenectady, near Albany NY, omnidirectional I think,
710 maybe WOR in NYC, they have the Catholic Church religeous format now, problem with that is the 4 tower antenna is aimed away from Michigan !
Other 710 was in Niagara falls but may be dark now, was a kinda Travellers info station. Very directional North.
You had some lower power stations on your list, mostly here in MI, good to see them !



bmw
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by bmw » Sun Jan 31, 2021 11:18 pm

The last scan I did was over 10 years ago (and the power was on at the time, but not the level of interference I get today) and I specifically recall getting the Niagara Falls tourist station on 710. It was weak but listenable. Per wikipedia they went dark in 2012 (had their license revoked).



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Turkeytop
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by Turkeytop » Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:44 am

Now you've got me hoping for an ice storm to put the power out for a few days.


I started out with nothing and I still have most of it.

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SolarMax
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by SolarMax » Mon Feb 01, 2021 11:42 am

k8jd wrote:
Sun Jan 31, 2021 11:08 pm
...
WGY is in Schenectady, near Albany NY, omnidirectional I think,
710 maybe WOR in NYC, they have the Catholic Church religeous format now, problem with that is the 4 tower antenna is aimed away from Michigan !
Other 710 was in Niagara falls but may be dark now, was a kinda Travellers info station. Very directional North.
WGY is indeed non-directional. Been past that single stick on the NY Thruway many times. One of the few that still has the call letters on the tower. I hear them regularly in Detroit now, since CKLW here is pretty weak and modulation so low and lacking highs so no splatter up to 810 (or down to 790).
WOR is not Catholic or any religious format. Still iHeart w Premiere Net talk. Just copied them couple of nights ago.



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Turkeytop
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by Turkeytop » Mon Feb 01, 2021 11:50 am

SolarMax wrote:
Mon Feb 01, 2021 11:42 am
[
WGY is indeed non-directional. Been past that single stick on the NY Thruway many times. One of the few that still has the call letters on the tower.
That is rare. I asked a station engineer once where their tower was located. He told me they don't give out that information.

It's out of concern for vandalism. There was a case once, where someone severed the guy cables of a station they didn't like and collapsed a tower


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Ben Zonia
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by Ben Zonia » Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:57 pm

I had the same response in the early 1970s when I called WJR. He finally told me after running a background check on me that the tower was in Riverview.

Now anyone with a computer and internet access can zero in on an actual tower location on a map with the streets and everything. Usually the AMs are easy to drive to on low elevation flat land. Just don't turn around in mucky farm land on Gabel Rd. The FM and TV towers are often on the top of hills accessible only by a rugged 4 wheel drive vehicle or ATV. The ones in Northern Michigan are often on sandy hills, making even Summer access risky.


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Ben Zonia
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by Ben Zonia » Mon Feb 01, 2021 1:04 pm

btw-try turning off the power for an hour when you feel like resetting everything. It won't get too cold in an hour, unless it's really cold outside.


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Turkeytop
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by Turkeytop » Mon Feb 01, 2021 3:57 pm

bmw wrote:
Sun Jan 31, 2021 10:53 pm
There was a scheduled power outage this morning at 10 AM. What a great opportunity to do an AM radio bandscan. It was supposed to be off until noon, but it came back on at 11, so I I only had time to scan and log between 540 and 830. Kind of a bummer, I was hoping to have time to do most of the dial. Anyways, with the power out, the band really came to life!

My setup:

Grundig Satellit 700 Radio

Image

...enhanced with a Terk AM Antenna

Image

And I tell you what - that Terk antenna can REALLY draw in the stations, especially without the background noise that normally exists when the power is on. It also made it easy to identify unknown stations because of the precise direction-finding capabilities. In some instances where I wasn't certain of the station I took notes of format and precise direction and google helped me ID the station (with near certainty on every entry I had to research).

So, how do you like your Sat 700. It's a good looking radio. I've never seen one before.

I have the later version Sattelit 750.

I also have a similar loop anteena, but it's from Grundig

I leave them both in Florida and I'm stuck here. So I can't even use them. :rolleyes


Image

Image


I started out with nothing and I still have most of it.

bmw
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by bmw » Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:28 pm

The Satellit 700 is a solid radio. It has excellent fine-tuning capabilities and digital tuning, so you can tune 1 or even 2 khz away from center frequency (say 789 or 791 instead of 790 AM) to get away from adjacent interference. Reception on all bands, including FM, AM, and shortwave, is great. SSB listening on the HAM frequencies is rock-solid stable. Sound quality I would rate a 7 out of 10 for a radio this size. I've heard better but this one is pretty good.

There plus-side on the tuning is the ability to directly enter a frequency with the number keys. The downside, and probably my biggest gripe with the radio, is that it is painfully slow at band-scanning since it only moves in 1khz steps.

There's also a Grundig Satellit 500 - a very similar radio that can be had for about $100 less.



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Ben Zonia
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by Ben Zonia » Tue Feb 02, 2021 5:09 am

That's a different radio from the other bandscan you did. Do you still have that radio? Massive portable? Can you repost that bandscan? Can you send a picture?


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k8jd
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by k8jd » Tue Feb 02, 2021 10:24 pm

SolarMax wrote:
Mon Feb 01, 2021 11:42 am
k8jd wrote:
Sun Jan 31, 2021 11:08 pm
...

WGY is indeed non-directional. Been past that single stick on the NY Thruway many times. One of the few that still has the call letters on the tower. I hear them regularly in Detroit now, since CKLW here is pretty weak and modulation so low and lacking highs so no splatter up to 810 (or down to 790).
WOR is not Catholic or any religious format. Still iHeart w Premiere Net talk. Just copied them couple of nights ago.
CKLW is not terribly strong up here in oakland county, Most of it's signal goes north and northeast.
I have not heard WOR well lately, not aware they changed fomats again !!
AM radio has become disappointing to me over the years, Now many of the big clear channel signals are carrying the same handfull of syndiacated talk and sports progtrams at night.
When I was kid I had fun tuning in the variety of hit music the stations in different cities were playing and the zany personalities on the air.
Could hear statons from Chicago, New York, Buffalo, Fort Wayne, Des Moines, Boston, Richmond, Nashville , St Louis, and on and on across the dial every night ! They all had locally originated programming.



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Ben Zonia
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by Ben Zonia » Wed Feb 03, 2021 1:52 am

CKLW hasn't had a very good signal to the Northwest in 40 years or more. There are different theories as to why that is. Some say the the pattern was officially changed at some point from what it was in the late 1940s, when they went from 5 kW nondirectional to 50 kW directional. They were 5 kW nondirectional on 1030 before they moved to 800 in a BIG NARBA reallocation in 1941. Most stations just moved 0 kHz to 30 kHz higher. Some speculate that the pattern was let out during the Big 8 years, and it wasn't ever supposed to be that good of a signal to the Northwest. The overlap with WSGW is HUQE, and always has been. The CKLW nulls were designed to be the close equivalent of the old 5 kW nondirectional levels.
Image


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k8jd
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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by k8jd » Thu Feb 04, 2021 3:40 pm

I have checked out the 5 tower pattern they have, different lobes day and night. Aimed E. and NE. at night but in daylight , a lobe goes SW also.



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Re: Partial daytime AM Band Scan during power outage in Tawas City

Post by innate-in-you » Sat Feb 06, 2021 12:02 pm

Ben Zonia wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 1:52 am
CKLW hasn't had a very good signal to the Northwest in 40 years or more. There are different theories as to why that is. Some say the the pattern was officially changed at some point from what it was in the late 1940s, when they went from 5 kW nondirectional to 50 kW directional. They were 5 kW nondirectional on 1030 before they moved to 800 in a BIG NARBA reallocation in 1941.
CKLW likely has the same coverage today that they had 50 or more years ago. It just didn't matter as much, since, back then, there weren't hundreds of thousands of people in Livingston County to complain about the weak signal.

In the early seventies, my mother drove us to Grand Rapids to spend time with her family. I was surprised that CKLW was unavailable, with a little station on 810 (I think the calls were WJPW at the time).

I was among very few children who liked the easy listening format.

Were KYW and (old) CKLW on 1030 at the time? (usual progression would have every station on 1030 going QSY to 1060 - that would have been quite the dogfight).

CKLW on 800 is using a Mexican Clear channel, ergo, its trifolar pattern gives way to semi-bifolar, with Toledo getting a weaker signal at night.

In fact, Kahn used a recording of CKLW to demonstrate the effects of co-channel interference on an AM stereo signal.

(To be sure, while the platform motion effect was a demerit to the sound quality, ALL of the AM stereo systems, with the exception of Kahn and Belar, the latter of which was dismissed beforehand for other reasons) resulted in the full volume of co-channel interference, being heard, even if the phase of an interfering signal were in quadrature with the desired station. In the Kahn system, the co-channel interference presented full interference only when the undesired signal were in-phase and when in 180° out-of-phase, so there is less total volume of interference in ordinary (diode detector) receivers.



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