• 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 660

Status
Not open for further replies.
My favorite 660 DX happened about a year after I got to Puerto Rico in late 1970. I got a surplus R390 made by Hammarlund and built a loop. Frequently I'd try to hear my old stations from Ecuador on frequencies like 570, 590, 840, 1480, 1140, 810, 1170 and others. Then, one evening I was on 660 when apparently the power went out in Cuba and a path to South America was open and I managed to dig out bits and pieces of Radio Carrousel from Guayaquil with cumbias and the same recorded liners I had produced a year or two before.
 
cyberdad said:
I'm a little surprised that you're not hearing KTNN in and around Oakland. During my business trips to the West, I pretty much heard it fairly regularly up and down the coast at night. Although, I suspect KNBR and perhaps KSTE aren't exactly helping matters for you.

Southeast Iowa in the late '60s was something of aa DXer's paradise. Especially if you liked top 40 music. KXOK, WHB, WLS, KIOA,, KSTT, and WIRL by day. WABC, WLS, KIOA, WBZ, KAAY, KOMA and XERF reliable by night. I was like the proverbial kid in the candy store! KCOB from Centerville.? I never heard it at my location (Mount Pleasant). 1400 daytime was WGIL (Galesburg, IL. Night was the usual graveyard slop.
Click to expand...
I can easily hear KTNN here in the West SFV area of SoCal. All you have to do is carefully turn your radio or external antenna to null out KIRN 670, (we're about 10 miles from KIRN's Simi Valley xmitter), and there it is.
 
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: nothing but splash from WSCR which is just 5 miles away from my location
Nighttime: WFAN

DX/RETRO: the following DX heard on this frequency in the past: KSKY (Balch Springs, TX), KTNN (Window Rock, AZ) with their unique programming, WVAL (Sauk Rapids, MN), WESC (Greenville, SC) and the following foreign catches CMEB (Santa Clara, Cuba), XERPM (Mexico City), XECPR (Felipe Carrillo, Mexico), HRNN (La Ceiba, Honduras), YNALN (Esteli, Nicaragua). The most recent catches on this frequency are WLOY (Rural Retreat, VA) and WXIC Waverly, OH) in 2022. Two additional Mexican stations received in 2022: XEDTL (Mexico City) and XEEY (Aguascalientes). This makes a total of 4 Mexican stations received here in Chicago area on 660 kHz.
 
CADXER said:
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

DX/RETRO: the following DX heard on this frequency in the past: KSKY (Balch Springs, TX), KTNN (Window Rock, AZ) with their unique programming, WVAL (Sauk Rapids, MN), WESC (Greenville, SC) and the following foreign catches CMEB (Santa Clara, Cuba), XERPM (Mexico City), XECPR (Felipe Carrillo, Mexico), HRNN (La Ceiba, Honduras), YNALN (Esteli, Nicaragua). The most recent catches on this frequency are WLOY (Rural Retreat, VA) and WXIC Waverly, OH) in 2022. Two additional Mexican stations received in 2022: XEDTL (Mexico City) and XEEY (Aguascalientes). This makes a total of 4 Mexican stations received here in Chicago area on 660 kHz.
Click to expand...
That is one IMPRESSIVE list. Nicely done!
 
Considering my proximity to WSCR I am quite happy with all the logs on this frequency. Also, keep in mind that until recently WSCR used IBOC making reception on 660 and 680 quite difficult.
 
DavidEduardo said:
They ID with the FM dial position because that is where perhaps 80% or a bit more of the listening is inside the New York City metro area; they don't care about and can't monetize more distant AM coverage."
Click to expand...
You're probably right about the 80%, but WFAN 660 is definitely useful for sports fans still in the New York "sports" market, but outside of the FM's range. Places like Danbury, Conn. Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and eastern Long Island come to mind as areas. 660 is easy to pick up in those areas 24/7, but the FM is not at all, especially with translators everywhere now.
 
CADXER said:
Considering my proximity to WSCR I am quite happy with all the logs on this frequency. Also, keep in mind that until recently WSCR used IBOC making reception on 660 and 680 quite difficult.
Click to expand...
That was my first thought. All the more impressive when WSCR had their IBOC noisemaker turned on! :)
 
CentralFL said:
You're probably right about the 80%, but WFAN 660 is definitely useful for sports fans still in the New York "sports" market, but outside of the FM's range. Places like Danbury, Conn. Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and eastern Long Island come to mind as areas. 660 is easy to pick up in those areas 24/7, but the FM is not at all, especially with translators everywhere now.
Click to expand...
The situation would be much worse if the Mets were the current baseball team on WFAN rather than the Yankees. The Yankees still have a good-sized radio network to fill in coverage gaps, so southern Connecticut, for example, would still have WICC Bridgeport to fall back on should WFAN put Yankees games only on FM. The Mets, IIRC, totally dismantled their radio network a couple of seasons ago, leaving WCBS(AM) the only option for fans in the hinterlands.
 
I got nothin' compared to CADXER, just little ol' WNBC, now masquerading as WFAN. First heard on a really good night in the spring of 1971 on a Sony pocket radio with WMAQ nulled just so and the voice of Marv Albert calling a Rangers playoff game. In the WSCR post-IBOC era, it's a regular most nights (say, 80 percent of the time) with the radios I have now (ICF-2010 and a Crane). I've never tried for anything else given the proximity to WSCR and the regularity of WFAN. Maybe I should poke around for one of those Quantums to help my chances.
 
From Mountain View, Hawaii

Daytime - nothing

Nighttime - a weak KTNN


And looking back to the mid 80's when I had my AM Stereo Walkman, WNBC aka 'WNNNNNBC' had a listenable signal during the daytime where I lived 80 miles from New York but you could hear the 'snow' in the background which you hear more of the farther you are away from an AM station.

But at our shore house down on Long Beach Island also 80 miles from New York, WNBC had a local quality signal with no snow at all in the background.

At night at the shore, there was a very small amount of skywave/groundwave cancellation sounds but nothing like it was back home.
 
gar hi said:
..... at our shore house down on Long Beach Island also 80 miles from New York, WNBC had a local quality signal with no snow at all in the background....
Click to expand...
I attended a corporate meeting on Cape Cod in the mid 90s, and was mildly surprised at how well WNNNNBC came in there 24/7. A year or two later I was at another function in Northern New Jersey and had to drive from there to Pittsburgh. WNBC good on the car radio until about 50-60 miles past the NJ-PA state line via I-80.
 
Back in the 70's, I could sometimes hear WCBS in California late at night when KRVN signed off the air but never WNBC for some reason.

And there was nothing closer on 660 at night to block it out back then.

Of course, WABC was impossible even then because of KOB.
 
cyberdad said:
I attended a corporate meeting on Cape Cod in the mid 90s, and was mildly surprised at how well WNNNNBC came in there 24/7. A year or two later I was at another function in Northern New Jersey and had to drive from there to Pittsburgh. WNBC good on the car radio until about 50-60 miles past the NJ-PA state line via I-80.
Click to expand...

It still amazes me that I was able to catch WFAN in my rental car in northwest Maryland on a July afternoon several years back. It might have been 2016 or 2017. In the Midwest, I'd never have thought twice about a catch at that distance, but this was on 70 between the PA line and Frederick, probably close to a 300-mile haul from High Island.
 
Rocklin, CA

Daytime: Splatter from 650 KSTE Sacramento
Nighttime: KTNN Window Rock, AZ

Vallejo, CA

Daytime: Little Splatter from 650 KSTE Sacramento
Nighttime: KTNN Window Rock, AZ
 
SF East Bay in the Lafayette/Orinda/Moraga area:

Daytime: Pretty much nothing
Nighttime: Usually a weak KTNN fading in and out, with maybe some other unidentified stations overlapping during the fade outs.

c
 
cc333 said:
Really? Hmm. Is it expected to come back, or has it gone permanently silent?
Click to expand...
They have had difficulties with the maintenance of their transmitter in the past, both due to the cost and the shortage of spare parts for an older transmitter.

They are not going silent permanently, as they are the official voice of The Navajo Nation.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom