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Cuba's "Radio Reloj"
- Thread starter Gregg
- Start date
radioman148
Walk of Fame Participant
Re: Cuba's \
Yeah TWR used to be an easy catch in the Chicago area, but no sign of it these days.
David67 said:
Yeah TWR used to be an easy catch in the Chicago area, but no sign of it these days.
Re: TWR / Bonaire
I have read somewhere that the 500kW rig got way too expen$ive to run, so it was decided to go directional with 100kW to focus power to their targets like the Caribbean and S/C America.
https://www.twr.org/projekt/733
gr8oldies said:
I have read somewhere that the 500kW rig got way too expen$ive to run, so it was decided to go directional with 100kW to focus power to their targets like the Caribbean and S/C America.
https://www.twr.org/projekt/733
Re: TWR / Bonaire
With 100kw, the target can only be the northern coast of South America, rougly from Maiquetia to maybe Santa Marta or Barranquilla, and very little else.
When 800 went on, there was not much on the channel, so they could even reach Brazil at night. Today, 800 is populated with many stations in comparable power levels, making anything but local groundwave service unreasonable to expect. There is no way they could really serve Central America from so far away, particularly with many 900 kHz stations ranging from La Exitosa in Panama to stations in El Salvador and Guatemala in the way.
There is nothing close enough in the Caribbean to serve, with the possible exception of Jamaica. For example, when they ran 500 kw, reception in Puerto Rico was only DX quality daytime and only usable on the South Coast at night.
And, since radio is so little used at night, the only coverage of any significance will be daytime ground wave. Of course, with Latin American use of AM even lower than that in the US, I just can't see any value in the ongoing operation of that facility.
stormy01 said:
With 100kw, the target can only be the northern coast of South America, rougly from Maiquetia to maybe Santa Marta or Barranquilla, and very little else.
When 800 went on, there was not much on the channel, so they could even reach Brazil at night. Today, 800 is populated with many stations in comparable power levels, making anything but local groundwave service unreasonable to expect. There is no way they could really serve Central America from so far away, particularly with many 900 kHz stations ranging from La Exitosa in Panama to stations in El Salvador and Guatemala in the way.
There is nothing close enough in the Caribbean to serve, with the possible exception of Jamaica. For example, when they ran 500 kw, reception in Puerto Rico was only DX quality daytime and only usable on the South Coast at night.
And, since radio is so little used at night, the only coverage of any significance will be daytime ground wave. Of course, with Latin American use of AM even lower than that in the US, I just can't see any value in the ongoing operation of that facility.
radioman148
Walk of Fame Participant
Re: TWR / Bonaire
Did TWR run ND when they were pushing 500KW?
DavidEduardo said:
Did TWR run ND when they were pushing 500KW?
Re: TWR / Bonaire
Initially, and we are talking early '60's there, they did. When they discovered they could target Brazil at night, they built some kind of directional. I had a station on 805 in Quito, and it made for an annoying heterodyne so I moved to 810. The signal was by no means regularly usable, there, though.
radioman148 said:
Initially, and we are talking early '60's there, they did. When they discovered they could target Brazil at night, they built some kind of directional. I had a station on 805 in Quito, and it made for an annoying heterodyne so I moved to 810. The signal was by no means regularly usable, there, though.
radioman148
Walk of Fame Participant
Re: TWR / Bonaire
They used to come in pretty well in the midwest so they must have been sending some signal north or northwest.
DavidEduardo said:
They used to come in pretty well in the midwest so they must have been sending some signal north or northwest.
Ai4i
Star Participant
Re: Cuba's
They were omni-directional on 800 KHz, medium wave, with a half megawatt transmitter feeding a single 5/8 wave vertical radiator. We go back to the days when Radio Netherlands rented time on the station each evening. It is our oppinion that Radio Netherlands was and remains the most captivating of all international broadcasters; not bad for a country of sixteen million people.
They were omni-directional on 800 KHz, medium wave, with a half megawatt transmitter feeding a single 5/8 wave vertical radiator. We go back to the days when Radio Netherlands rented time on the station each evening. It is our oppinion that Radio Netherlands was and remains the most captivating of all international broadcasters; not bad for a country of sixteen million people.
frankfrank
New Participating Member
DavidEduardo;4090434Radio Reloj said:
frankfrank
New Participating Member
It's pretty amazing that this format (and name) has existed for around seventy years and, yet, is not used (without considering content) anywhere else in the world. If one were to also consider content, they would probably allege that the format was quite "different" in the days before Batista in its earliest days, compared to what was to be 20 or 50 years later. Did it initially begin with the ticking, etc. in the Forties? I would guess, BECAUSE of the station name, that it did. I always thought the format was a rather ingenious one.
In the Sixties, when I lived a mere 40 miles west of CKLW, and in much of the Seventies when I lived a similar distance southwest of them, PJB would often detract from some of the enjoyment of listening to that wonderful Top 40 station.
I always found it strange, from Toledo OH in the 1970's, that if a DX'er was to hear THREE COUNTRIES in their log on 800, that probably meant they hadn't logged the United States there yet. Their signal was strong enough that even hearing the 5kW W. Va. station there was a challenge (and I assume that station nulled toward CKLW anyway), though PJB could sometimes almost bury them, and it was "seldom, but not quite rare" that XEROK might sneak in.
Oh, as far as your username, it reminds me of my favorite (butchered) radio slogan: "Good Times...and EIGHT Oldies!!"
The format was duplicated in a number of places in Latin America, but by the end of the 90's had become too much of an "old folks" format to be viable any more.
As an example, WKAQ in San Juan had a morning 3-hour newscast called "Radio Reloj" back to the 60's. By the early 70's, WKAQ became All News and remained in that format until the early 90's, when it became all talk with a news focus. In the early 80's, WUNO went all news which I called "NotiUno"; that also lasted until the mid-90's when the station went talk. Several other all news operations came and went in the same period.
The Dominican Republic had Radio Mil (actually on 1180 AM) which was all news under Mr. Jiménez Maxwell in the 70's and 80's. Guatemala had Radio Sonora with it's nearly all day "Radio Reporter" format. Perú still has RPP, which dates back to a news / drama / sports format (Radio Programas del Perú) which went all news about 40 years ago. Ecuador had Radio Minutera briefly in the late 60's, but the format was too expensive for me to maintain. Mexico City has Formato 21, but that format is only about 30 years old in that market but it is all news.
In many countries, like Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, the name was used but for music stations which gave time checks after every song. Mexico even had a station, XEQK, that did nothing but give a time check every minute and 11 5" ads in the rest of the minute. These were popular options in nations where a watch cost more than a month's salary for a manual laborer.
Yes, the ticking and the time beeps every minute go back to the origins; the station was a creation of Goar Mestre and his CMQ operation. Mestre went on to bring TV to Cuba and was also a TV pioneer in Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Argentina!
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CKLW would blast into my area (in Western Ohio about 175 miles from Windsor) almost like a local during the day; the change to night pattern and PJB eliminated them at night.
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