• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

AM Frequency of the Week: 1170

cyberdad

cyberdad

Administrator
Staff member
Okay....let's go just one more time on a frequency common to both 9 and 10kz spacing. What are you guys hearing on 1170?

Here in the far northwest boondocks outside of Chicago during the daytime it's basically splatter from WYLL (1160...50KW from about 30 miles away. I think their stick is actually located in Radioman's garage!). To a lesser extent, there's also some splatter from a semi-local 1180 (WSQR...900 watts from about 25 miles away).

At night, splatter ceases to be an issue, but I'm right in the middle of the nulls from both KFAQ (ex KVOO) and WWVA, so 1170 is pretty quiet. I can occasionally hear one of those two around sunrise or sunset when they're not on their respective night patterns. Up until fairly recently, I was hearing the 1KW 1170 from Davenport, Iowa on a fairly routine basis at night. I suspect their pattern was "leaking", but if that indeed was the case, it must have been fixed because I haven't heard them for several months.

During their glory days as Davenport's top-40 KSTT, I used to try for them all the time...usually without success. They have (or are supposed to have) a very tight night pattern that goes north straight up the Mississippi River. Which results in a very good night signal in Northwest Wisconsin as well as eastern Minnesota including the Twin Cities. Perhaps, Schroedinger's, Rich, or someone else knowledgeable about this sort of stuff can tell us how much effective power they're pumping in that direction. I think the current calls are KBOB.
 
Canyon Lake, TX; 1170 is empty by day; at night KFAQ (ex KVOO) from Tulsa is one of the most reliable signals.
 
You are right Cyberdad. When WYLL was WJJD I'd hear them through just about every electronic device in my house, LOL.
Now lots of splatter on 1170 during the day. At night mostly weak WWVA comes in. At CH I've heard Tulsa sometimes strong. Not much else on 1170 at my location in the near north Chicago burbs.
 
A weak KBOB (about 65-70 miles away) both day and night here. I used to hear WWVA quite regularly at night, but haven't heard them in years. Years ago, KFAQ (then KVOO) would show up from time to time.
 
Here in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, just east of Columbus, it's all WWVA daytime and at best a mish-mash of signals at night.
I'm about 102 miles west of the tower (line of sight) with some poor to middling ground conductivity between here and there. I'd rank their signal a 3 on a 1-to-10 scale daytime.
At night, it completely disappears. I've never heard of a trace of it here, despite reports of WWVA being received much farther to the west. I have heard WWVA on I-77 south of Canton, but it goes away quickly once you enter the westbound null.
 
KJRH (then KVOO-TV, channel 2) was one of my very first TV DX catches
during the peak of cycle twenty.
My father said, "Stop that, you're straining the TV and are gonna break it".
 
Last edited:
ai4i said:
KJRH (then KVOO-TV, channel 2) was one of my very first TV DX catches
during the peak of cycle twenty.
My father said, "Stop that, you're straining the TV and are gonna break it".
Click to expand...

That's funny. My father used to tell me the very same thing. He only relented because I kept showing him that the TV still worked fine whenever we watched the local channels.
 
Happy New Year to everyone.

Daytime is nothing but heavy splatter from nearby 10 kW KDRY on 1160.

At sunset, KFAQ can be heard weakly through the splatter in the partial null of KRDY. At night it can usually be heard with a fairly steady signal in that null, although narrowing the bandwidth is necessary to substantially reduce the splatter.

XERT "Ke Buena" in Reynosa is often audible underneath KFAQ, and it occasionally dominates briefly. Both stations stick around weakly at sunrise.

A few times at night I've heard a Spanish-language talk station mixing in, but I've yet to ID it. Might be XERLK.
 
WDTB, now WXLA, Dimondale, MI signed on on 1170. I think it must have been due to rule changes regarding Clear Channel I-A stations, probably Presunrise rules, that they moved to 1180. 1180 was more open for groundwave, not having WFEN...WCXI, WWVA, and WJJD...WYLL considerations.
 
Last edited:
jim-satx said:
That's funny. My father used to tell me the very same thing.
He only relented because I kept showing him that the TV still worked fine whenever we watched the local channels.
Click to expand...
People of earlier generations accepted AM noise levels much better than FM fluttering as they drove. Fast Forward one generation, I am much more annoyed by digital dropouts than I am by any analogue noise.
 
jim-satx said:
That's funny. My father used to tell me the very same thing. He only relented because I kept showing him that the TV still worked fine whenever we watched the local channels.
Click to expand...

That must have been a common myth. My mom kept warning me about ruining the TV I kept trying to watch Milwaukee channels (at our home northwest of Chicago). Suffice to say the TV not only survived, but later became something of a DX machine for me as I approached my teenage years.
 
It wasn't until I saw a TV tuner taken apart that I realized that a little extra channel changing was actually good for the contacts and kept them clean. Years later, a couple of station engineers loaned me a field strength meter that they normally didn't use. Using the FI meter and all the various rotary switches kept the contacts from oxidizing. I don't doubt that heavy and reckless use of the TV tuner knob could potentially break certain parts, particularly plastic ones. But in the old days, plastic was used less, and certainly not on parts that could break from rough use. Since automatic gain control circuits have no moving parts, all that fading of DX channels, particularly Sporadic E fades, didn't hurt it.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.
Back
Top Bottom