It’s 10:07 PM CENTRAL and I am hearing a barely listenable signal here on the eastern edge of Missouri coming from KYAL in Tulsa Oklahoma at 1550kHz. The only thing about it is that their nightime power is only 40 Watts!
Their day power is 2.5kW, so even that would be unusual to hear.
Low Powered AM DX
Hi Carl!
I’ve gotten a few of those. As you know,
I’m in West Hartford, Connecticut.
On 1590, I heard a Detroit station that
was 54 watts at night. (And it sounded
that way.) It came up on top briefly and
went back down just in time for an ID.
Not too long back, I heard a West Virginia
station on 690 KHz that had a nighttime
power of 46 watts. It was pretty loud, so
I wondered if they had forgotten to go to
night power.
If I’m correct about this, the frequencies
that used to be referred to (and maybe
still are) as Canadian and Mexican clear
channels used to be full of daytime only
stations. Back 30 years ago, if you looked
at, for instance, 1550, or 1570, or 1580,
you would see tons and tons of U.S.
stations that went off at night.
As you know, sometime after that, these
stations were granted lower power in the
morning (presunrise authorization) and
then later on in the years they were granted
similar relaxing of the rules at night. First it
was post sunset authorization until a certain
time in the later evening – and then (after a few
more years) some other lower power for all
night long.
Back sometime ago, a good friend of mine was
the CE of a 1KW daytimer on 1550 here in
West Hartford. The station had a presunrise
authorization of 2.5 watts. One night, when
the dominant Canadian on the channel was
off, we did a DX test for some people. One
of our good friends in Chicago was able to
hear the 2.5 watt 1550 KHz carrier if we turned it on
and off. He could not hear the audio, but
with a BFO on his receiving end, detecting
that low power carrier was no problem.
I think it was in the early 1980s. I believe
our friend was using a Yeasu FRG-7 on the
receiving end.
I find AM DX is fun to snag if you rig up a
recorder of some kind to listen to IDs at
the top of the hour. Then you can play
it back whenever you want. I have heard
30 stations on the local channels this way
here in West Hartford. For me, that’s a lot,
but some DXers (that have been doing this
for decades) have heard hundreds of stations
or more. I have only been doing this casually
for a couple of years. (1230, 1240, 1340,
1400, 1450 and 1490 kHz.)
All my DXing is casual.
I do it when I feel like it. My first and best
love is TV DXing, followed by AM and FM.
I stared TV DXing when I was 7, and the bug
bit REAL hard. Now, you really HAVE to have
a roof antenna for TV DXing. I don’t have
any antennas on the roof. However, there
is one guy on the TV DXing boards who has
had luck with a big CB whip on his roof.
He uses this to snag Sporadic E HDTV skip
on TV channel 2. All you need to do is
decode a few frames of video and the
HD converter will give you an ID.
If you go on YouTube, there are tons of
videos of TV DX from TV DXers all over the
world. It is really fun to look at, even if
the receptions are taking place on a
continent other than ours.
Lately, I have been DXing the Long Wave
broadcast band which runs from about
162 KHz to 285 (?) kHz. I guess I have
heard about 10 stations. None of them
are in English, which makes it even more
mysterious. I really like listening to Iceland,
which is on 189 kHz. They play all sort of
folk music and the language is a lot of fun
to listen to. This reception is made possible
by an old longwave boat radio that a friend
of mine bought at a tag sale for five bucks.
The radio has an analog readout. I used a
signal generator to calibrate the dial, using
my Sony 2010 as a reference. This radio
works on Longwave MUCH better than my
Sony 2010. But, the trick is, it has to be
outside in the backyard. I put it in a little
enclosure, put it on a channel, and transmit
the audio back into the house with my
C Crane FM transmitter. It is so cool to
hear an unknown longwave broadcast ID
at the top of the hour with time pips and
the news. It doesn’t matter
that I can’t understand the language. It
is just plain cool.
Oh well, if you gotten this far, then I am
Bruce, MICRO1690/1700