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Mystery English talk on 1300

W

wildthangjim

Leading Participant
I'm in Guanacaste Costa Rica on vacation and had a few minutes to check the AM band around sunset (6pl local, 0000-0030 UTC. Only English I heard was a weak KVNS 1700 ond a quite strong Mark Levin show on 1300. Couldn't wait around for an ID, but was armchair level with no fading. Any idea what this is?
 
wildthangjim said:
I'm in Guanacaste Costa Rica on vacation and had a few minutes to check the AM band around sunset (6pl local, 0000-0030 UTC. Only English I heard was a weak KVNS 1700 ond a quite strong Mark Levin show on 1300. Couldn't wait around for an ID, but was armchair level with no fading. Any idea what this is?
Click to expand...

There are two directionals pointed towards Costa Rica... one is KAKC in Oklahome, with a single main lobe steered that way. The other is news / talk WFFG in Marathon, FL. Sends a primary lobe right at Costa Rica.
 
There seem to be quite a few U.S. ex-pats living in Costa Rica. Is there any English radio or TV based there?
 
WFFG is 2.5 U3 with a 240 degree spaced two tower array. It has four fairly large lobes. The East and West Major Lobes are largest. The one to the South is somewhat smaller, but still substantial. The Format seems right, but can't find Mark Levin listed in the schedules I found. And no, it's not WOOD "circling the earth" like the engineers at WKBW used to claim. They have Dave Ramsey in that time slot. WOOD has a huge major lobe rivaling Class As/I-Bs though, but in the wrong direction. KKOL has Ramsey but the rest is Business Talk. Also KKOL has a huge major lobe in the wrong shorter great circle direction.
 
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DavidEduardo said:


There are two directionals pointed towards Costa Rica... one is KAKC in Oklahome, with a single main lobe steered that way. The other is news / talk WFFG in Marathon, FL. Sends a primary lobe right at Costa Rica.
Click to expand...

Thanks David. WFFG doesn't have a website, but is listed as an affiliate on Levin's site so must be them. Tulsa is sports.

We are in northwest CR, remote from the capital and pretty unpopulated. There may be English stations in San Jose, but haven't heard any here. During the day, the strongest stations here are mostly Nicaragua to the north. We're out on a point here so Managua is mostly water path.

I'm surprised not to hear more US stations here, but the band is quite crowded.
 
I remember hearing and QSLing TIFC, an evangelical shortwaver from Costa Rica that had a significant amount of English programming, in the '70s. The SW signal is long gone, but does the ministry still have a MW presence, and does it still do English?
 
Doesn't look like much on AM in Costa Rica, so it's good for DX. WFFG radiates about the equivalent of 3.1 kW @ 190 degrees true toward San Jose, Costa Rica, based on Class B minimum efficiency. The Levin site doesn't show any affiliates outside the US, and WFFG is the only affiliate on 1300 that I could find.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
Doesn't look like much on AM in Costa Rica, so it's good for DX. WFFG radiates about the equivalent of 3.1 kW @ 190 degrees true toward San Jose, Costa Rica, based on Class B minimum efficiency. The Levin site doesn't show any affiliates outside the US, and WFFG is the only affiliate on 1300 that I could find.
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The last list I saw had under 60 stations on AM in the whole country, with a dozen of those in the 1500 to 1600 range with just 250 watts for local community service.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
WFFG radiates about the equivalent of 3.1 kW @ 190 degrees true toward San Jose, Costa Rica, based on Class B minimum efficiency.
Click to expand...
WFFG began with four towers at their site, but got rid of two.
I wish they had more sticks so they could control (steer) their deep nulls,
but do away with those unnecessary north and south lobes that go nowhere.
 
DavidEduardo said:


The last list I saw had under 60 stations on AM in the whole country, with a dozen of those in the 1500 to 1600 range with just 250 watts for local community service.
Click to expand...

There are 98 records for 49 stations in the Region II Database, accessed through AMQuery using the TI callsign designation. This does not imply that the stations are still operating. TIGL is shown as 1 kW Day and 1 kW Night, 1 U1 in concise WRTH/DX nomenclature. It is the only allotment in Costa Rica on 1300. I'll look in my most recent copy of WRTH but it's pretty old.

https://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/...&slat2=&NS=N&dlon2=&mlon2=&slon2=&EW=W&size=9

WRTH 2006 shows TILC 1300 Cartago with 7.5 kW. The email address shows

[email protected]

This page has more info. It says nothing about English, though from what I have read, there are some US business people (also news accounts of legal problems) operating in Costa Rica, so who knows.

http://radiostationworld.com/locations/costa_rica/cartago/radio_stations/

Format shows Music, News, Sports.
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
There are 98 records for 49 stations in the Region II Database, accessed through AMQuery using the TI callsign designation. This does not imply that the stations are still operating. TIGL is shown as 1 kW Day and 1 kW Night, 1 U1 in concise WRTH/DX nomenclature. It is the only allotment in Costa Rica on 1300. I'll look in my most recent copy of WRTH but it's pretty old.

https://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/...&slat2=&NS=N&dlon2=&mlon2=&slon2=&EW=W&size=9

WRTH 2006 shows TILC 1300 Cartago with 7.5 kW. The email address shows

[email protected]

This page has more info. It says nothing about English, though from what I have read, there are some US business people (also news accounts of legal problems) operating in Costa Rica, so who knows.

http://radiostationworld.com/locations/costa_rica/cartago/radio_stations/

Format shows Music, News, Sports.
Click to expand...

WRTH 2016 shows 58, and 2017 shows a few less. A number of the listed ones are silent and likely will not return.
 
CTListener said:
I remember hearing and QSLing TIFC, an evangelical shortwaver from Costa Rica that had a significant amount of English programming, in the '70s. The SW signal is long gone, but does the ministry still have a MW presence, and does it still do English?
Click to expand...

Faro del Caribe is on AM and FM. When CR reallocated AM channels the moved from 1075 to 1080. They added FM in the 70's and that is the main focus.

AM is dying even for religious stations. Venerable 50 kw HCJB in Quito shut the AM off in December and is FM only.
 
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Solid WFFG ID tonight during Levin station break. Also heard 1640 Biloxi and an unid English religious station on 1030.
 
I will try to check to see if there are any "NEW" Costa Rica stations in the database. There is no specific way to just turn up Costa Rican records. I suppose we could ask them to add that feature. The TI callsign was what I came up with first. Keep in mind, these "NEW" records may be vacant allocations like the ones in Canada, or they may actually be operating.
 
DavidEduardo said:


WRTH 2016 shows 58, and 2017 shows a few less. A number of the listed ones are silent and likely will not return.
Click to expand...

The latest list from the Departamento de Control Nacional de Radio shows 26 "national" channels, allocated every 30 kHz or 20 kHz starting at 530 (with some gaps or bigger separations). These are clear in all the country for one station alone.

Then there are 44 local channels, some with multiple low power stations, every 20 kHz starting at 960. 12 of those are very low power cultural repeater stations on 1600, and another 11 from the same entity are on 1580. Another 5 are repeaters for the national Columbia network. So 28 of those 44 represent just 3 "stations" in a repeater system much like EMF in the US.

There are 84 FMs, not including the equivalents of the US translators for signal fill in. This includes 31 stations on 88.1 and 88.3 run by the same cultural group as the 1580 and 1600 AM stations. Their goal is to do radio education and information programming.
 
Looked in AMQuery for all records within 200 km of the coordinates of San Jose, Costa Rica. No "NEW" records turned up. There is one allotment with two records that I think may have the wrong country code, EC, but has a TI callsign. It appears that there is a Limon, Ecuador as well as a Limon, Costa Rica. There is also a Limon, Colorado.
 
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DavidEduardo said:


I am not even sure if 107.5 is in English anymore.
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Further research shows that The Scorpion 107.5 is now Yeah! FM, with EDM and all but the music in Spanish.
 
DavidEduardo said:


Faro del Caribe is on AM and FM. When CR reallocated AM channels the moved from 1075 to 1080. They added FM in the 70's and that is the main focus.

AM is dying even for religious stations. Venerable 50 kw HCJB in Quito shut the AM off in December and is FM only.
Click to expand...

Do you foresee this happening for religious stations here? While CCM programming is making FM inroads, thanks mainly to EMF's seemingly bottomless pockets, teaching and preaching remains largely on AM, plus low-power FM translators. Will those AM teach/preach stations eventually turn off the AM and call it quits, keep the AM and try to get a translator approved, or somehow find a way to turn off the AM and move to FM, either as a full-power signal or an LPFM?
 
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