How far do your local radio stations go?

[dvferyance]

Reading this thread has made me think that my car's antenna is not a good one. I tried to pick up WBZ after reading this thread and couldn't pick it up until I got to Warwick, RI. I live in Mystic, Conn. and can't pick up Hartford stations; even WTIC-1080.

One out of market station I sometimes pick up is 90.3 WAMC out of Albany, NY. It sometimes overpowers URI's station (WRIU) even when I'm about 10 miles rom Kingstown.

Yeah I was wondering the other day myself why do AM's in the Midwest go much farther than AM's in the northeast? The Chicago stations go all the way down to southern Indiana to St Louis and to north well into Wisconsin. Yet the New York stations don't even make it to Boston. I would think where you live in Connietcut you would be able to getthe big stations out of Boston, NYC, Philly and especially Hartford. I noticed that WBZ does not even make it to Albany. I remember traveling through Virginia and I as lucky if I could still get WRVA from Appomattox which is only about 70 miles from Richmond. Yet back me I can get WTMJ from Green Bay which is 120 miles from Milwaukee. I could go on with many more examples but you get the point.

[Flint1979]

Reading this thread has made me think that my car's antenna is not a good one. I tried to pick up WBZ after reading this thread and couldn't pick it up until I got to Warwick, RI. I live in Mystic, Conn. and can't pick up Hartford stations; even WTIC-1080.

One out of market station I sometimes pick up is 90.3 WAMC out of Albany, NY. It sometimes overpowers URI's station (WRIU) even when I'm about 10 miles rom Kingstown.

Yeah I was wondering the other day myself why do AM's in the Midwest go much farther than AM's in the northeast? The Chicago stations go all the way down to southern Indiana to St Louis and to north well into Wisconsin. Yet the New York stations don't even make it to Boston. I would think where you live in Connietcut you would be able to getthe big stations out of Boston, NYC, Philly and especially Hartford. I noticed that WBZ does not even make it to Albany. I remember traveling through Virginia and I as lucky if I could still get WRVA from Appomattox which is only about 70 miles from Richmond. Yet back me I can get WTMJ from Green Bay which is 120 miles from Milwaukee. I could go on with many more examples but you get the point.

I think they go about the same. WBZ is an easy station to pick up in states like Michigan and Wisconsin due to their signal being directed towards the west since an omni directional signal would give them a lot of signal over open water which would be kind of pointless. I have problems at times getting WJR to come in anymore and I live under 100 miles from their transmitter. I think some of the problem is that WJR's transmitter is south of Detroit and I'm north of it but I'm still thinking that it shouldn't be a problem it's a 50,000 watt clear channel signal and one of the strongest stations in the country so I should have no problem picking WJR up at any time of the day and what's funny is that one night about a week or two ago I was dxing in the middle of the night and could pick up WLW clearly but WJR was in and out. I didn't have any problems pulling WJR in when I pulled up right next to their transmitter located at the corner of Sibley and Grange Roads in Riverview.

[Flint1979]

One cool looking transmitter building. This is WJR's transmitter. The building was built in 1934.


https://www.google.com/maps/@42.1698957,-83.2132919,3a,75y,194.79h,106.37t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s88icYawgEOoGp7dkXMk1jg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

[dvferyance]

Reading this thread has made me think that my car's antenna is not a good one. I tried to pick up WBZ after reading this thread and couldn't pick it up until I got to Warwick, RI. I live in Mystic, Conn. and can't pick up Hartford stations; even WTIC-1080.

One out of market station I sometimes pick up is 90.3 WAMC out of Albany, NY. It sometimes overpowers URI's station (WRIU) even when I'm about 10 miles rom Kingstown.

Yeah I was wondering the other day myself why do AM's in the Midwest go much farther than AM's in the northeast? The Chicago stations go all the way down to southern Indiana to St Louis and to north well into Wisconsin. Yet the New York stations don't even make it to Boston. I would think where you live in Connietcut you would be able to getthe big stations out of Boston, NYC, Philly and especially Hartford. I noticed that WBZ does not even make it to Albany. I remember traveling through Virginia and I as lucky if I could still get WRVA from Appomattox which is only about 70 miles from Richmond. Yet back me I can get WTMJ from Green Bay which is 120 miles from Milwaukee. I could go on with many more examples but you get the point.

I think they go about the same. WBZ is an easy station to pick up in states like Michigan and Wisconsin due to their signal being directed towards the west since an omni directional signal would give them a lot of signal over open water which would be kind of pointless. I have problems at times getting WJR to come in anymore and I live under 100 miles from their transmitter. I think some of the problem is that WJR's transmitter is south of Detroit and I'm north of it but I'm still thinking that it shouldn't be a problem it's a 50,000 watt clear channel signal and one of the strongest stations in the country so I should have no problem picking WJR up at any time of the day and what's funny is that one night about a week or two ago I was dxing in the middle of the night and could pick up WLW clearly but WJR was in and out. I didn't have any problems pulling WJR in when I pulled up right next to their transmitter located at the corner of Sibley and Grange Roads in Riverview.

I was referring to AM's during the day not at night. Typically at night the only NYC AM I can get is WCBS and that is only some nights due to every big Chicago AM being right next door. WLS is the farthest from me so that is why WCBS comes in sometimes.

[MantyMadTown]

WAPL (a classic rock station based in Appleton) goes really far. I can usually hear it as far south as Beaver Dam, on the way to Madison. Meanwhile, one of the radio stations in Sheboygan doesn't go very far, and usually cuts out before reaching Manitowoc.

[Flint1979]

Reading this thread has made me think that my car's antenna is not a good one. I tried to pick up WBZ after reading this thread and couldn't pick it up until I got to Warwick, RI. I live in Mystic, Conn. and can't pick up Hartford stations; even WTIC-1080.

One out of market station I sometimes pick up is 90.3 WAMC out of Albany, NY. It sometimes overpowers URI's station (WRIU) even when I'm about 10 miles rom Kingstown.

Yeah I was wondering the other day myself why do AM's in the Midwest go much farther than AM's in the northeast? The Chicago stations go all the way down to southern Indiana to St Louis and to north well into Wisconsin. Yet the New York stations don't even make it to Boston. I would think where you live in Connietcut you would be able to getthe big stations out of Boston, NYC, Philly and especially Hartford. I noticed that WBZ does not even make it to Albany. I remember traveling through Virginia and I as lucky if I could still get WRVA from Appomattox which is only about 70 miles from Richmond. Yet back me I can get WTMJ from Green Bay which is 120 miles from Milwaukee. I could go on with many more examples but you get the point.

I think they go about the same. WBZ is an easy station to pick up in states like Michigan and Wisconsin due to their signal being directed towards the west since an omni directional signal would give them a lot of signal over open water which would be kind of pointless. I have problems at times getting WJR to come in anymore and I live under 100 miles from their transmitter. I think some of the problem is that WJR's transmitter is south of Detroit and I'm north of it but I'm still thinking that it shouldn't be a problem it's a 50,000 watt clear channel signal and one of the strongest stations in the country so I should have no problem picking WJR up at any time of the day and what's funny is that one night about a week or two ago I was dxing in the middle of the night and could pick up WLW clearly but WJR was in and out. I didn't have any problems pulling WJR in when I pulled up right next to their transmitter located at the corner of Sibley and Grange Roads in Riverview.

I was referring to AM's during the day not at night. Typically at night the only NYC AM I can get is WCBS and that is only some nights due to every big Chicago AM being right next door. WLS is the farthest from me so that is why WCBS comes in sometimes.

During the day I can get WJR as far away as Dayton, Ohio to the south, probably somewhere around Houghton Lake to the north, Chicago to the west and probably about Buffalo to the east. Never really tried to the north or east. For NYC at night though I can get WFAN, WOR, WABC and WCBS pretty good and for Chicago WSCR, WGN, WLS and WBBM but I have a local station here on 790 which overrides 780 at times so WBBM is harder during the day.

[ftballfan]

WAPL (a classic rock station based in Appleton) goes really far. I can usually hear it as far south as Beaver Dam, on the way to Madison. Meanwhile, one of the radio stations in Sheboygan doesn't go very far, and usually cuts out before reaching Manitowoc.

WAPL can be heard consistently in Manistee and Ludington, across Lake Michigan

[Flint1979]

WAPL is 100,000 watts just like WUPS in Houghton Lake, I can listen to WUPS from about Saginaw to the Mackinac Bridge.

[Flint1979]

For every station in New York City and Chicago they are one station away from each other on the dial. Like 710 is WOR, 720 is WGN; 660 is WFAN, 670 is WSCR; 770 is WABC, 780 is WBBM; 880 is WCBS, 890 is WLS.

[bandit957]

I once read on another forum that if you took an FM radio out into the middle of Lake Michigan, you wouldn't be able to pick up anything except stations all interfering with each other. They said it was because water is a good conductor of FM signals.

Also, I have a family member who went on a commercial flight back in 1990 who said they had an FM radio (this was before the government banned radio on flights) and heard stations that had to be 200 miles away.

[Flint1979]

I once read on another forum that if you took an FM radio out into the middle of Lake Michigan, you wouldn't be able to pick up anything except stations all interfering with each other. They said it was because water is a good conductor of FM signals.

Also, I have a family member who went on a commercial flight back in 1990 who said they had an FM radio (this was before the government banned radio on flights) and heard stations that had to be 200 miles away.

WAPL should be able to be picked up in the middle of Lake Michigan fine. Their transmitter is actually closer to Green Bay than it is Appleton. I always check on transmitter coordinates so I know where I can pick up a station. I was able to pick up WAPL at Ludington State Park. I'm also pretty sure that Lake Michigan is at one of it's narrowest points between Ludington and Manitowoc. It's probably about 70 miles across the lake at that point, between Muskegon and Milwaukee it's more like 100 miles wide.

[michravera]

I actually thought of creating this very same thread when I got 98.5 FM out of La Almunia de Doña Godina, Spain (one of many Los40 frequencies) at the Aragon/Navarre border... near Yesa. But then it's not that far compared with others, only 80 miles or so. About the same are those stations out of Huesca picked up just Northeast of Calatayud, such as 96.9 FM (Los40) and 102.0* (SER). But my personal record came somewhere in Central Aragon with 95.3 FM. I expected to get Los40 out of Zaragoza, but instead got Onda Cero out of Tarragona, 110 miles away! (And 85 miles further away)

* In Spain the FM spectrum goes from 87.5 to 108.0 in increases of 0.1 MhZ.

For a long time there was an FM station in Sacramento and one in San Francisco and they both broadcast on 98.5. You would  get a fight for a short distance at the Altamont Pass and then the closest one would win.

How about along I-80? It used to happen the same way or just switched from one to the other?

Neither distance would be as impressive as over the Altamont. San Francisco and Sacramento are only about 140 km apart and in a direct line on I-80 (as probably provokes your question). The Altamont is about that distance from either city. I would be surprised that other FM stations from either city couldn't be heard further away than this, but haven't recently conducted the experiment.

In 1995, I was driving from either Reno or Sacramento to San Jose and wanted to listen to the NCAA basketball game. I got it on a Casper AM station and kept it almost all of the way home. A quick lookup shows the distance as 1450 km to San Jose. I suspect that I lost it 30-40 km north, but 1400 km seems likely! 

[Flint1979]

Around here 98.5 is a 100,000 watt blowtorch out of Houghton Lake. I'm about 68 miles from their transmitter and have no problem picking that station up. I was pulling it in on the Mackinac Bridge as well about 100 miles north of the transmitter.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

FYI the absolute record is held by Mike Fallon from Sussex, England, who managed to get the religious station La Voz de la Luz broadcasting from Salvaleon de Higüey, Dominican Republic, 4300 miles away. This was achieved through E-skip, an unusual form of radio propagation.

[MattCollopy]

Well, we had a radio in our house near Manchester, CT and we can pick up NYC stations on it.

[KEVIN_224]

Well, we had a radio in our house near Manchester, CT and we can pick up NYC stations on it.

I used to get a faint signal of WQHT-FM 97.1 (a.k.a. HOT 97) about once a week. That was in the south end of New Britain, roughly 10 miles southwest of downtown Hartford. Then the Spanish "Bomba" station (with a transmitter in Bolton) moved from 97.5 to 97.1. I even picked up WBLS-FM 107.5 a time or two. Despite WFCS-FM 107.7, the CCSU college station being 2.5-3 miles away, I'd still get it. It helps that the CCSU station is a mere 36 watts horizontal. In fact, if I had my antenna the right way, I'd get a weak signal from JAM'N 107.7 from the New London radio market! 

[Flint1979]

I was trying to do some DXing in between but I listened to Clemson crush Alabama on 700 WLW tonight. I was driving through Cincinnati when the game started and made it almost to Knoxville, Tennessee when the game ended.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

I also like to do DXing. I used to do it from time to time (mainly with local stations, such as 96.9 which is part of Los40). But what got me in was a few months ago when I finally managed to get 98.5, another Los40 station but out of Inoges (near Calatayud, on the first page I mentioned it as broadcasting out of La Almunia de Doña Godina but that is where it is licensed), in my hometown, just to turn a corner and suddenly finding a Catalan-speaking station on the very same frequency! I identified this station as Catalunya Informacion from the Mont Caro trasmitter in Southern Catalonia (which I now know as the "hundred-mile transmitter" because that is the distance in a straight line from home). Soon after I started finding some stations from near Logroño, and then I learned about tropospheric propagation (the "tropo"). I took advantage of this phenomenon not too long ago, when after some foggy days the fog cleared up in my area leaving a temperature inversion, which allowed me to pick up Catalunya Radio from Barcelona on 102.8 (As I've noted earlier the FM band in Spain, and Europe in general, goes from 87.5 to 108.0 with 0.1 increments). Meanwhile 98.5 has become my favorite frequency, as I can switch between the two stations mentioned earlier just by turning the antenna.

[golden eagle]

The more powerful FM Jackson stations can get as far as Meridian and Hattiesburg.

[Road Hog]

I can pick up most Dallas radio stations going north right up until I cross the Arbuckle Mountains In Oklahoma. On the other side I have to switch to OKC.

[golden eagle]

I've always been impressed how deep down into Illinois the big Chicago AMs would reach in the daytime. I remember hearing a faint signal of WGN as far down as the Marion/Carbondale area.

In San Diego, KFI and KNX could be heard like if they were locals. 

[Flint1979]

I've always been impressed how deep down into Illinois the big Chicago AMs would reach in the daytime. I remember hearing a faint signal of WGN as far down as the Marion/Carbondale area.

In San Diego, KFI and KNX could be heard like if they were locals.

I had WJR on a few months ago when I was in the Dayton, Ohio area during the daytime and it was still coming in pretty good, that'd be about 175 miles. I can pickup Chicago's big stations during the daytime here as well. As the crow flies Chicago is about 215 miles away.

[golden eagle]

I've always been impressed how deep down into Illinois the big Chicago AMs would reach in the daytime. I remember hearing a faint signal of WGN as far down as the Marion/Carbondale area.

In San Diego, KFI and KNX could be heard like if they were locals.

I had WJR on a few months ago when I was in the Dayton, Ohio area during the daytime and it was still coming in pretty good, that'd be about 175 miles. I can pickup Chicago's big stations during the daytime here as well. As the crow flies Chicago is about 215 miles away.

Could you pick up WTAM, WHAS or KDKA?

[Flint1979]

I've always been impressed how deep down into Illinois the big Chicago AMs would reach in the daytime. I remember hearing a faint signal of WGN as far down as the Marion/Carbondale area.

In San Diego, KFI and KNX could be heard like if they were locals.

I had WJR on a few months ago when I was in the Dayton, Ohio area during the daytime and it was still coming in pretty good, that'd be about 175 miles. I can pickup Chicago's big stations during the daytime here as well. As the crow flies Chicago is about 215 miles away.

Could you pick up WTAM, WHAS or KDKA?

WTAM comes in just as good as Chicago's big stations here, I can hear that one 24 hours a day.
WHAS comes in great at night but fades in and out during the daytime hours.
KDKA comes in better than WHAS does during the day but fades in and out at times but not as much as WHAS.

When I was in Dayton a few months ago I switched to 700 WLW after I got closer to Mason and Cincinnati. I'm sure WHAS would have been coming in pretty good in Dayton.

One time I was sitting at the corner of Sibley and Grange Road right next to WJR's transmitter and antenna and put it on 760 just to hear what it sounded like that close and the signal was actually vibrating as it was coming in.

WJR has perhaps the best looking art deco transmitter building I have ever seen https://www.google.com/maps/@42.1699016,-83.2127609,3a,21.2y,211.99h,96.06t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sbrbXXDSweb0XB4TLrpEc4A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

[Roadgeekteen]

Sort of related, but it always seem like my local radio stations have a bigger range than out of town ones.