AM Frequency of the week: 770

[wildthangjim]

In west Houston, TX, daytime is usually nothing, although I have heard a weak KAAM in DFW sometimes in the winter. At sunset, KAAM is a regular, along with XEACH in Monterrey and often Radio Artemisa from Cuba. Sometimes KKOB is in the mix as well. At night KAAM still comes in pretty well, with Monterrey strong in their null. I have never been able to ID WABC from here, although I've heard them on the Galveston SDR, about 50 miles southeast of me. At sunrise it's mostly KAAM and XEACH, with KKOB sometimes heard. For some reason, I've never noted KKOB with a good signal at any time. Very odd considering WCJ is hearing it over in Orange.

Retro, Tulsa in the early 70's, at night I could usually hear both KOB and WABC fighting it out. They are both on ~the same bearing from there so difficult to null. I remember WEW at sunset and hearing Colombia and maybe Nicaragua at night (wish I still had my old logbook and didn't have to rely on memory!).

 

[dlf1]

Canyon Lake Texas by day is KAAM with a weak, but listenable signal. At night Monterrey and KKOB duke it out. No trace of WABC here.

One of the few good memories in Ohio was my dad and I going to the pony keg and hearing 77WABC playing “Rocky Mountain High”.

 

[CADXER]

Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: nothing except splatter from nearby WBBM
Nighttime: normally WABC

DX/Retro: WEW can be heard during local sunset. Others heard in the past include KJBC (Lafayete, LA), KATL (Miles City, MT), WVNN (Athens, AL), WJMM (Nicholasville, KY), HJJX (Bogota, Colombia), the now defunct YSKL (San Salvador, El Salvador), Radio Rebelde (Vitoria de las Tunas, Cuba), Radio Artemisa (La Salud, Cuba). My most recent new logs on this frequency are WAIS (Buchtel, OH) in 2021 and XEFRTM (Fresnillo, Mexico) in 2022.

 

[TXPH97]

DFW, Texas

Daytime: Local KAAM Garland, TX with religious programming.
Nights: I can get a slight null on KAAM by aiming North/South (transmitter is to my East). In the null, I usually hear XEACH Monterrey NL or XEFRTM Fresnillo Zac., sometimes one or the other, or both. On more than one occasion, I have heard KATL Miles City MT with a fair/weak signal with modern pop music, most likely on day power. WVNN Athens AL (daytimer) was heard late one night with conservative talk giving local KAAM fits. I have only managed to hear KKOB one time, in the early morning with Red Eye Radio and America in the Morning.

Not for lack of trying, I have never been able to hear WABC.

 

[cyberdad]

In MPLS?

Day: Strong Reception of KUOM 770.
Night: Not much above the noise floor.

Welcome to the board, Wolfie. We look forward to hearing more from you.

The Twin Cities used to be a frequent destination for me in the 80s and 90s.. My memory of KUOM is "good signal, but muddy audio".

 

[jim-satx]

From NW San Antonio:

Day: Just splatter from local 760 KTKR.

Sunset: KAAM in Garland, TX, comes up and is listenable if I use a narrow filter to reduce the splatter. XEFRT “W Radio” in Fresnillo is usually underneath and faint. Once back in December 2018 I heard XEANT in Tancanhuitz de Santos mixing in with a good signal before signoff.

Night: To the NW, KKOB in Albuquerque has a fairly steady signal. To the NE/SW, KAAM and XEFRT are in/out and take turns dominating.

Sunrise: KAAM is strong and mostly steady at day power/pattern with a weak XEFRT under it for a while. Later XEANT is often heard underneath or mixing in at sign-on with indigenous music.

DX/Retro: I have not heard XEACH in Monterrey in quite a while, which is odd since it’s closer to me than the other two Mexican stations. I logged XEREV in Los Mochis once back in 2015 before it was retired.

 

[gar hi]

15 miles south of Orlando.

Days nothing

Nights Usually Cuba. Occasionally WABC comes in underneath it.

It was the same for me when I lived in Tampa.

But it was a completely different story over on the east coast of Florida at Daytona Beach.

Here in Mountain View, Hawaii it's mostly a weak KKOB at night but sometimes KCBC.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

WABC here, as Cole Porter would lament: night and day ..... day and night .... in the roaring traffic swoon .....
Despite WABC being the closest NYC 50K omni stick to here, I can't distinguish or position their day or night signal in comparison with NYC omnis 880, 660 -- and even with the directionals 1130, 1560 and 710. There's no signal meter on the GE SR 2.
Could be the house here is in a cancellation zone of sorts at night as well, subject to those atmospheric goblins, amaflied electron agitations mixing with sinewave cannibalism, and possibly the eroding ohmage in the guy wires and ceramic resonators plus teutonic resonation of bi-polar amperage peculiar to every ground radial system.
Or more likely, the daytime signal indifference is caused by the terrain between There in Lodi and Here in Coal Country (Northern NJ actually has a wide spectrum of clashing and unlikely geological characteristics for such a small state).
* * * * *
Retro in Queens NYC, and off-topic but only by 5 kHz : One night with WABC on, a demonic loop null of them (maybe with some equally wicked Auroral cx) I got a logging of Radio Uno on 775 from Costa Rica, listed as 'TIW'. The two station bearings were practically an easy, dead 90-degree null. All-water path with the only land being the peninsula part of Florida. That catch was off a Lafayette HA-600a I used for some 40 years.

 

[cyberdad]

From NW San Antonio:
Sunset: KAAM in Garland, TX, comes up and is listenable if I use a narrow filter to reduce the splatter.

KAAM has an impressive day signal, as I'm sure you already know. I used to sometimes make the run from Joplin. MO ans Dallas via U.S. 69 and 75. KAAM was listenable for most of the journey. Pretty much the same between the DFW Metroplex and Austin.

For a number of those years, I also got a kick out of the morning host signing off with Roy Rogers' "Happy Trails to You". I knew I was listening to a Texas station fer sure!

 

[CentralFL]

WABC here, as Cole Porter would lament: night and day ..... day and night .... in the roaring traffic swoon .....
Despite WABC being the closest NYC 50K omni stick to here, I can't distinguish or position their day or night signal in comparison with NYC omnis 880, 660 -- and even with the directionals 1130, 1560 and 710. There's no signal meter on the GE SR 2.
Could be the house here is in a cancellation zone of sorts at night as well, subject to those atmospheric goblins, amaflied electron agitations mixing with sinewave cannibalism, and possibly the eroding ohmage in the guy wires and ceramic resonators plus teutonic resonation of bi-polar amperage peculiar to every ground radial system.
Or more likely, the daytime signal indifference is caused by the terrain between There in Lodi and Here in Coal Country (Northern NJ actually has a wide spectrum of clashing and unlikely geological characteristics for such a small state).
* * * * *
Retro in Queens NYC, and off-topic but only by 5 kHz : One night with WABC on, a demonic loop null of them (maybe with some equally wicked Auroral cx) I got a logging of Radio Uno on 775 from Costa Rica, listed as 'TIW'. The two station bearings were practically an easy, dead 90-degree null. All-water path with the only land being the peninsula part of Florida. That catch was off a Lafayette HA-600a I used for some 40 years.

It seems like WABC is the underdog of the NYC big signals. WFAN and especially WCBS seem like they get out more.

 

[schmave]

Based on my experience of catching the New York 50Ks at night in central Ohio, WABC usually is third in strength behind WCBS and WFAN. It's rarely struck me as a powerhouse, like WGN, WMVP or KMOX. It was always stable enough to hear Yankees games when they carried those years ago, but WFAN sounds better.

 

[cyberdad]

Based on my experience of catching the New York 50Ks at night in central Ohio, WABC usually is third in strength behind WCBS and WFAN. It's rarely struck me as a powerhouse, like WGN, WMVP or KMOX. It was always stable enough to hear Yankees games when they carried those years ago, but WFAN sounds better.

Interesting. At my location northwest of Chicago, WCBS is strongest. Same as at where you are. But WABC is a relatively close second. Pretty much as what I encountered during my college years in southeast Iowa. In each instance, these are the NYC signals that are fairly reliable nightly.

After those two, there's a "dropoff" with WBBR third strongest. But only semi-regular. WFAN is usually either missing or unable to break through splatter from WSCR (670). Although I did hear WFAN a couple of times earlier this week. The path to the east has been relatively open this week with WGY, WHAM, CFZM, and CJBC all also doing well.

 

[Mark Roberts]

Also note that the three classic big-network signals in Chicago are 10 kHz above similar allocations in New York City, though in only one case was the same network represented by adjacent stations:

WFAN (ex-WNBC) 660 -> WMAQ 670
WABC 770 -> WBBM 780
WCBS 880 -> WLS 890

I doubt that this just was a coincidence.

 

[gr8oldies]

Based on my experience of catching the New York 50Ks at night in central Ohio, WABC usually is third in strength behind WCBS and WFAN. It's rarely struck me as a powerhouse, like WGN, WMVP or KMOX. It was always stable enough to hear Yankees games when they carried those years ago, but WFAN sounds better.

When I was growing up, in Western Ohio, WABC was stronger than WLS. mainly because of our being in the WLS cancellation zone. Remember CKLW disappeared for us at night so even non-DXers went exploring

 

[gr8oldies]

It was the same for me when I lived in Tampa.

But it was a completely different story over on the east coast of Florida at Daytona Beach.

Here in Mountain View, Hawaii it's mostly a weak KKOB at night but sometimes KCBC.

Something I've always wondered....WABC, even from my teenage-hood in the Midwest, had that het or whatever it is we hear in this recording. This even on non-DX radios. Certainly my clock radio isn't getting Algeria or wherever, especially at times that don't make sense

 

[gar hi]

Something I've always wondered....WABC, even from my teenage-hood in the Midwest, had that het or whatever it is we hear in this recording. This even on non-DX radios. Certainly my clock radio isn't getting Algeria or wherever, especially at times that don't make sense

I always thought that sound was from a TV near by and I remember it as far back as I started listening to WABC from a distance in the late 60's.

I made that video back in 2010 in a hotel that still had TVs with a cathode ray tube.

On another note, I had an uncle who lived in Hasbrouck Heights and you could see WABC's tower looking down their street.

If you picked up their telephone, you could hear WABC in the background.

 

[Weiserguy]

Something I've always wondered....WABC, even from my teenage-hood in the Midwest, had that het or whatever it is we hear in this recording. This even on non-DX radios. Certainly my clock radio isn't getting Algeria or wherever, especially at times that don't make sense

Not Algeria, but very likely Cuba.

 

[Weiserguy]

On another note, I had an uncle who lived in Hasbrouck Heights and you could see WABC's tower looking down their street.

If you picked up their telephone, you could hear WABC in the background.

Had that same situation, but with the FM sister of WABC, 95.5 WPLJ. My wife, before we were married, had an apartment on East 37th St. off Lexington Ave. in Manhattan. WPJL (like most FM's in NYC) comes off the Empire State Bldg, 5th @ 34th. That's a quarter mile, if that much. WPLJ was the on-hold sound in the background of every phone line in her building.

OTOH, I once set up a P.A. system in a lumberyard near the Queens-Nassau line. (This was late '60s.) High Island, where WCBS and WNBC [current-day WFAN] transmitted from, was 5 or 6 miles away across the Long Island Sound. WCBS was this flamethrower that was always there in the background unless the P.A. mic was hot. I offered to install a trap, but it turned out they liked having the station in the background. (Don't recall if it was before or after the all-news format launched.)

 

[schmave]

Interesting. At my location northwest of Chicago, WCBS is strongest. Same as at where you are. But WABC is a relatively close second. Pretty much as what I encountered during my college years in southeast Iowa. In each instance, these are the NYC signals that are fairly reliable nightly.

After those two, there's a "dropoff" with WBBR third strongest. But only semi-regular. WFAN is usually either missing or unable to break through splatter from WSCR (670). Although I did hear WFAN a couple of times earlier this week. The path to the east has been relatively open this week with WGY, WHAM, CFZM, and CJBC all also doing well.

WABC is never bad or really tough to hear, but to me it doesn't stand out like KMOX, WGN, WMVP or WSM to name a few.

 

[MarioMania]

Dayton, NV

Daytime: Nothing
Nighttime: KKOB Albuquerque, NM