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Tuesday, June 12, 2012

RADIO-TIMETRAVELLER Maps #3

1 Watt At Night - U.S.

1 Watt At Night - U.S.

The ultimate DX. How good (or lucky) a DXer are you? Have you ever tried for extremely low power AM stations at night?

Every night, 15 stations across the U.S. transmit with an output power of only one watt. How far does one watt travel normally, let's say under static conditions during the daytime? I'm glad you asked.

One watt into an omni-directional antenna (1 tower), over medium ground conductivity (8 mS/m), will get you out 10 miles, at which point the signal enters the "fringe" area of reception (0.15 mV/m and less). A good receiver will hear somewhat farther than that. At night, and using a directional pattern, who knows how far that signal will travel? All things are possible.

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CallSign       Freq    Power Class Location                     
-----------------------------------------------------------
WCKB            780        1    D  Dunn, NC                     
WRFM            990        1    D  Muncie, IN                   
WHFB           1060        1    D  Benton Harbor-St. Jo, MI     
KLEY           1130        1    D  Wellington, KS               
WGAB           1180        1    D  Newburgh, IN                 
WSQR           1180        1    D  Sycamore, IL                 
WPGR           1510        1    D  Monroeville, PA              
WENG           1530        1    D  Englewood, FL                
WJJT           1540        1    D  Jellico, TN                  
KBOA           1540        1    D  Kennett, MO                  
WBNL           1540        1    D  Boonville, IN                
KLKC           1540        1    D  Parsons, KS                  
KDYN           1540        1    D  Ozark, AR                    
WZRK           1550        1    D  Lake Geneva, WI              
WSRY           1550        1    D  Elkton, MD

Here's some statistics for our 15 one watt stations, taken from the 5-27-12 FCC database:

All 15 are Class D.

12 are located east of St. Louis, 3 are west of St. Louis.

KLEY-1130, Wellington, Kansas, is the most westerly, leaving no 1 watt stations from there all the way to the west coast.

11 are "W" callsigns. 4 are "K" callsigns.

The 15 stations broadcast using 24 towers.

11 stations broadcast an omni-directional pattern (single tower). 4 broadcast a directional pattern (multi-tower).

1 station is on the FCC "Silent" list: WZRK-1550.

Interesting to note: 5 of the 15 are on the same frequency - 1540 KHz.

The lowest powered daytime station in the FCC's database broadcasts with 135 watts.

The most interesting broadcast pattern is that of WRFM-990, Muncie, Indiana. This station broadcasts using 6 towers. Its pattern projects generally to the north, covering Muncie and Delaware County as shown in the radio-locator graphic. WRFM-990's daytime power is 250 watts.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Mexican AM List Updated Once Again

Just a head's up. Mexico's Federal Telecommunications Commission "Cofetel" has published the official Mexican AM station list in .PDF form again. The list is dated May 31, 2012. This is starting to become a regular thing of late, as the last update was just two months ago. Kudos to them!

Get the list at the Cofetel site.

Don't be mislead by the 2008 date in the site link. After downloading the PDF, you can find the actual list date at the bottom of the document.

This list can be made into a nice spreadsheet form by converting the saved PDF document to an XCEL (.XLS) file. If you don't have the software to do that, a great, free online conversion site can be found at Zamzar on the web.

Viva Mexico!