The Old KBUY 1540 in Ft. Worth

There's probably a way to write one note & post it on more than one Board, I saw something in a thread on the DX Board yesterday about the old KBUY being 50kw but very directional. I wonder if any technical info for them is still around. As a listener I would've guessed that they had a pattern similar to 1190's. But I never knew where their transmitter site was, number of towers, etc. I could hear them well in Oak Cliff & Garland when they were on day pattern, but not at night.

I would Assume they were pretty close to what KZMP-AM is now.
http://radio-locator.com/info/KZMP-AM

The site was located off the Old Mansfield Highway near Kennedale. It had six towers, but used just three of them during the day in somewhat of an east/west orientation.

At night the 1kW pattern was very narrow and it was aimed northwest over downtown Fort Worth (with decent skywave into the Texas Panhandle). Virtually no signal made it into Dallas because of protection toward dominant stations; in the U.S. that included KXEL Waterloo IA and the former WPTR Albany NY (now WDCD) but it was also because 1540 was designated as a Bahamian Clear Channel. Back then such restrictions were much more stringent.

The old daytime pattern can be found here: www.fccinfo.com/CMDProEngine.php?sCurrentService=AM&tabSearchType=Appl&sAppIDNumber=35488&sHours=D

And here's that narrow nighttime pattern: www.fccinfo.com/CMDProEngine.php?sCurrentService=AM&tabSearchType=Appl&sAppIDNumber=35488&sHours=N

Also note that the coordinates are given so the old site can be mapped.

jd said:

The site was located off the Old Mansfield Highway near Kennedale. It had six towers, but used just three of them during the day in somewhat of an east/west orientation.

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The 1540 daytime signal into Dallas in those days I'd describe as "fairly decent." Not strong, but listenable.

At night the 1kW pattern was very narrow and it was aimed northwest over downtown Fort Worth (with decent skywave into the Texas Panhandle). Virtually no signal made it into Dallas because of protection toward dominant stations

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The night signal was actually better in the Panhandle than it was in Dallas. I recall listening to the signal on many trips between FW and Dallas in the 70's (during the KRXV days.) The signal in Dallas was pretty much nonexistant at night with KXEL dominating the frequency. On the drive back to FW the 1540 night signal didn't really get to a decent level until around the 820/121 interchange in NE Tarrant County.

Thanks to all of you for the great info. It did seem to me that, KBUY (by day) was noticably stronger in Oak Cliff than in Garland. I could listen to them in either location. They vanished (in both places) when they went to night pattern. The coverage maps that jd posted show that it would've. Thanks again to all of you for the great info.

jd said:

The site was located off the Old Mansfield Highway near Kennedale. It had six towers, ........

At night the 1kW pattern was very narrow and it was aimed northwest over downtown Fort Worth (with decent skywave into the Texas Panhandle). Virtually no signal made it into Dallas

And here's that narrow nighttime pattern: www.fccinfo.com/CMDProEngine.php?sCurrentService=AM&tabSearchType=Appl&sAppIDNumber=35488&sHours=N

Click to expand...

This seems somewhat like the present day 1360's night pattern. I live no more than 10 miles to the east of 1360's transmitter site, but I can't hear them at night.

jd said:

At night the 1kW pattern was very narrow and it was aimed northwest over downtown Fort Worth (with decent skywave into the Texas Panhandle). Virtually no signal made it into Dallas because of protection toward dominant stations; in the U.S. that included KXEL Waterloo IA and the former WPTR Albany NY (now WDCD) but it was also because 1540 was designated as a Bahamian Clear Channel. Back then such restrictions were much more stringent.

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I'm not sure what Clear Channel means anymore. Sometimes it seems like it means that no other station in the same market can be on that frequency. ;D I'm sure it's more than that, but it's certainly not what it used to be.

As I understood it, pre-1982, a 'clear channel' meant there was no other radio station IN THE WORLD on that frequency, and a 'regional clear channel' meant no other station on that channel at night within 800 miles. Now it's pathetic. I drove into Oklahoma early one morning and heard another station underneath 820.
An engineer once told me that (pre-1982) there was no other station on 1200 but WOAI. Now there are more than a dozen.

It's a little more complicated than that. The old "only one station on the channel, period" class I-A clear channels started to get broken down in the sixties, when the FCC began allocating class II-A 50 kW facilities on some of those channels out west. That was the period when stations like KBOI on 670, KDWN on 720, KCRL/KROW/KKOH on 780 and so on began to show up.

(And even by then, there had been nibbles on the edges of some of those frequencies - on 770, for instance, KOB in Albuquerque began sharing the channel with WJZ/WABC in New York as early as the forties, though a series of FCC protests and lawsuits kept that move from becoming official until the seventies.)

A few of the centrally-located I-A clear channels - WOAI in particular - held out without nighttime competition into the eighties.

There were also I-B channels that had multiple 50-kw signals at night, each of them protecting the other. KRLD is a good example - it protects WTIC at night, and vice versa, in an arrangement that goes back to the forties.

But the FCC (and the international treaties involved) eventually reclassified all of the I-A and I-B clears as simply "class A," with no distinctions between the old I-A and I-B. When that happened, it was pretty much open season for new stations to come on the air at 820 or 1200 or 1040 or what have you. The only condition is that the new night operations can't interfere inside a certain protected contour of the class A signal at night.

"800 miles" is a rough approximation of that protected contour - but it's only an approximation. It can be less in some areas, more in others, depending in part on the skywave characteristics of the transmitting antenna at the class A station.

Good information Flybush.

I recall a Chicago station on 820 back in the days. When they signed off at sundown then WFAA 820 came in like a local in Chicago.

In the wintertime when sign off was 5:15 WHO started eating away at KPBC on 1040 as early as 4:30.

unclepudd said:

Good information Flybush.

I recall a Chicago station on 820 back in the days. When they signed off at sundown then WFAA 820 came in like a local in Chicago.

In the wintertime when sign off was 5:15 WHO started eating away at KPBC on 1040 as early as 4:30.

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WWL would do that to KJIM (later KFJZ) 870. Thanks to all of you for the info.

unclepudd said:

Good information Flybush.

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No "L" - just "Fybush."

I recall a Chicago station on 820 back in the days. When they signed off at sundown then WFAA 820 came in like a local in Chicago.

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That Chicago station is actually a very good example of what could be done once the rules started changing. It had been a daytimer (with, IIRC, the ability to stay on until Fort Worth sunset), and once the protection rules changed in the eighties, it added nighttime service.

And then it was sold and lost its transmitter site - and returned to the air around 1991 as a daytimer operating from a different site within Chicago city limits. (The old site was in Elmhurst, due west of Chicago.)

Just last year, 820 built a new night site southwest of Chicago, and it's once again a fulltimer, operating from the Chicago site during the day and from the southwestern site at night, aiming northeast to protect WBAP.

Scott Fybush said:

unclepudd said:

Good information Flybush.

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No "L" - just "Fybush."

I recall a Chicago station on 820 back in the days. When they signed off at sundown then WFAA 820 came in like a local in Chicago.

Click to expand...

That Chicago station is actually a very good example of what could be done once the rules started changing. It had been a daytimer (with, IIRC, the ability to stay on until Fort Worth sunset), and once the protection rules changed in the eighties, it added nighttime service.

And then it was sold and lost its transmitter site - and returned to the air around 1991 as a daytimer operating from a different site within Chicago city limits. (The old site was in Elmhurst, due west of Chicago.)

Just last year, 820 built a new night site southwest of Chicago, and it's once again a fulltimer, operating from the Chicago site during the day and from the southwestern site at night, aiming northeast to protect WBAP.

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Ya und dey used to promo der R. Galloway show before sign off to
try und get der Chicago people to leef der tuners on 820 all night.

I think it's great to see my old alma mater as a subject on this board. I've been on this board since about 2004 and don't recall KBUY ever being written about.

I was there from 1966 to 1972 and loved every minute of it! Good people, great times and long time friendships!

While I was there we would occasionally get calls from West Texas. We had a call from California once!

Jay Weaver said:

I think it's great to see my old alma mater as a subject on this board. I've been on this board since about 2004 and don't recall KBUY ever being written about.

I was there from 1966 to 1972 and loved every minute of it! Good people, great times and long time friendships!

While I was there we would occasionally get calls from West Texas. We had a call from California once!

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It was a great station to listen to ! To the east, I heard it a time or two in Titus County (with a special antenna.) When I think of 1540 I remember it's Country days as KBUY. (I'm not old enough to remember KCUL but I've heard some good KCUL airchecks !) I had forgotten about it's Easy Listening days as KRXV & KMZK (Looking at Mike Shannon's website refreshed my memory.) I listened to it some under those calls as well (by day, of course, I was in Dallas Co.)

Anyone know if Miclachevski is still with the network (I know the spelling is wrong)? I remember him working 1540 during the good music days.

unclepudd said:

Anyone know if Miclachevski is still with the network (I know the spelling is wrong)? I remember him working 1540 during the good music days.

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According to Wikipedia (page about him says it was last modified April 16 of this year) he is.

I believe James is a Fort Worth native. He used another last name before he went with his real name, but I don't remember it.

jd said:

The site was located off the Old Mansfield Highway near Kennedale. It had six towers, but used just three of them during the day in somewhat of an east/west orientation.

Click to expand...

Back when we were teenagers in the late 1970s there was a single tower in Kennedale, would have been North of I-20, obviously decommissioned, a slab were a power box used to be, no fence, tall Johnson grass, already some homes being built nearby. We climbed up about halfway.. Been gone at least 25 years now. We assumed that might have been 1540's old tower...didn't they just have one tower with 50kW-daytime and 1kW-night early on? All we had was an outdated White's Radio Log someone gave one of us.

Re: Jim Miklaszewski
James Allen was his air name on KRXV. Wikipedia says born 1949 Cudahy, Wisconsin, He retired from NBC in 2016. Sorry for dredging up old threads. Bill Mack made a facebook post about that "country station inside Seminary South"