It’s time to have some fun for a couple of hours chasing MW DX along the grey line. Please note: an important change has been made to the rules: you can choose either Civil Twilight at sunrise or Civil Twilight at sunset . . . but not both.
Here are the rules:
- Frequency range is the medium wave band: 520-1710 kHz
- From one hour before Civil Twilight your local time TODAY, Saturday, October 14, to one hour after Civil Twilight at your location . . . at either sunrise or sunset
- Any radio with any antenna, but must be the radio at your location (no using remote internet radios)
- The listener must hear the signal in real time
- The stations must be ID’ed by listening to the signal.
- Your report should include:
- Your name (or Internet handle)
- Your receiver and antenna (stay with the same setup from beginning to end; if you use multiple setups, provide a separate report for each).
- Your location
- The time, the frequency, and the ID of each station heard
- The total mileage of your top five most distant stations.
A final point: this is not a contest; it is a challenge. The reward for every participant will be fun and fellowship.
You can find when Civil Twilight begins at your location by visiting www.wunderground.com . Enter your location, click on “Full Forecast” then scroll down to the “Astronomy” section.
And when you have completed the Great Medium Wave Grey Line Challenge, please post your results in the comments below.
Found that the way to shoot MW signals in a barrel is to download the entire MW band on an SDR for the two minutes before and after the top of the hour. Suppose that one could download for the entire greyline period, but that will generate a HUGE file. The top-of-the-hour is the sweet spot as, while it only is for a few minutes (creating a lesser size file), it’s the point at which most stations ID. Then, one can work one’s way through the downloaded band at leisure, applying bandwidth and noise variations as appropriate to each and replaying IDs as often as necessary.
Of course, due to fading and antenna orientation, it’s not going to get everything. However, it’s incredibly efficient for getting a feel for the band at a given time. Later, one can try with different orientations and at different times.
Going to give it a shot during the greyline time this weekend.
Too bad rain and storm kept me from going to the dike on Saturday evening. :/ I also missed the morning grayline but that wouldn’t have been a challenge at all and also pretty unfair – I can hear 1130 WBBR and 1010 WINS at that time on most days (even at home!), that’s ~7,500 miles in 5 minutes, job done, go back to sleep. :).
13kda,
I like that: “7,500 miles in 5 minutes.” Cool!
Cheers, Jock
Looking forward to experimenting a little with this when I get home. Fortunately/unfortunately I’m away for this round … Six weeks in Italy and too little time even if I toted the Crane Skywave ssb along!
My Civil Twilight was from 6:44 am to 7:11 am EASTERN time ….. With the +hour before and after, my listening time was from 5:44 am to 8:11 am (0944 to 1211 UTC).
Name: Jim / AC3B
Location: Wilmington, Delaware / FM29ft. My home / driveway.
Radio: CCRadio-EP PRO
Antenna: “Twin Coil” inside the EP-PRO, plus I used a TERK Advantage tunable mini-loop
FYI: This my 1st ever pursuit of MW DXing…as such, I will list what I heard…but only in a few cases did I get the Station ID or Frequency…the rest I ‘put 2 and 2 together’ via google lookups….it a court of law…my list would others be ‘inadmissible’….
The only ones where I heard the station or location clearly were the following…and only WLW gave me the frequency (which if funny as WDEL (1/4-mile from my home drives me nuts with their repeating their Station ID and Frequency every 1-5 minutes…it’s maddening to listen to the station):
WFLA, Lynchburg, VA
WFAN – New York, NY
WLW, Cincinnati, OH
WBZ, Boston, MA
19-minutes prior to official start time:
0925 UTC, 580 kHz, WFLA Lynchburg, VA Distance (miles): 263
Results (within the +1-hour from my Civil Twilight times):
1. 1005 UTC, 550 kHz, WGAC Buffalo, NY Distance (miles): 277
2. 1047 UTC, 660 kHz, WFAN, New York, NY Distance (miles): 102
3. 1054 UTC, 700 kHz, WLW, Cincinnati, OH Distance (miles): 474
4. 1056 UTC, 710 kHz, WOR, New York, NY Distance (miles): 102
5. 1059 UTC, 720 kHz, WGN, Chicago, IL Distance (miles): 648
6. 1130 UTC, 800 kHz, WTMR, Camden, NJ Distance (miles): 23
7. 1202 UTC, 880 kHz?? WAME (is what I thought I heard)…Mexican Music
4 minutes after the end of the period:
1215 UTC, 1030 kHz WBZ, Boston, MA Distance (miles): 293
Total mileage: 1603 miles
Comments:
1) Radio stations, to my surprise, don’t seem to give their Station ID or frequency very often….I think most were iHeart stations.
2) Since my EP Pro only has an analog dial…it was very difficult to get the frequency. Sometimes I’d sit on a station for 15-minutes and never get it….Next time I’ll use my Tecsun-S-8800 and Terk Loop to get a digital frequency!
2) Since I wasn’t sure of the frequency it was hard to confirm my data on the MWList website.
3) Rain came early…around 8:00 am local….2 hours ahead of plan.
Thanks…it was still a lot of fun for me…
73, Jim / AC3B
https://www.qrz.com/db/AC3B
Jim,
Nicely done. I’m glad you had fun.
Cheers, Jock
Aaron from Doylestown, PA here. Fun little diversion on a rainy chilly fall evening. The weather kept me inside, radio was an XHDATA D-808, internal antenna.
Lots of stations on top of one another, a very busy night for college football across the country. Many stations annoyingly don’t give station call letters but their station byline, so I had to look some of these up to get the proper call letters.
Not much excitement in any long distance DXing here. Mostly Class A stations, and lots of NYC stations. Couldn’t make out the station IDs on a bunch that were audible but faded. Total distance of top 5 to transmitters to antennas is 985 miles per my math. This was a surprisingly challenging activity to listen long enough to get active ID on what I was hearing
+——-+————+——–+
| Time | Frequency | Station|
+——-+————+——–+
| 17:53 | 610 | WTEL |
| 17:59 | 660 | WFAN |
| 18:22 | 860 | WWDB |
| 18:24 | 880 | WCBS |
| 18:24 | 920 | WNJE |
| 18:30 | 990 | WNTP |
| 18:31 | 1010 | WINS |
| 18:32 | 1060 | KYW |
| 18:33 | 1090 | WBAL |
| 18:35 | 1130 | WBBR |
| 18:36 | 1180 | WHAM |
| 18:52 | 790 | WAEB |
| 18:56 | 1030 | WBZ |
| 18:56 | 1170 | WWVA |
+——-+————+——–+
Aaron,
Well done!
I gave it a shot early Saturday morning and found — like you — that getting station IDs was the biggest problem.
Cheers, Jock
My Civil Twilight was from 6:44 am to 7:11 am EASTERN time ….. With the +hour before and after, my listening time was from 5:44 am to 8:11 am (0944 to 1211 UTC).
Name: Jim / AC3B
Location: Wilmington, Delaware / FM29ft. My home / driveway.
Radio: CCRadio-EP PRO
Antenna: “Twin Coil” inside the EP-PRO, plus I used a TERK Advantage tunable mini-loop
FYI: This my 1st ever pursuit of MW DXing…as such, I will list what I heard…but only in a few cases did I get the Station ID or Frequency…the rest I ‘put 2 and 2 together’ via google lookups….it a court of law…my list would others be ‘inadmissible’….
The only ones where I heard the station or location clearly were the following…and only WLW gave me the frequency (which if funny as WDEL (1/4-mile from my home drives me nuts with their repeating their Station ID and Frequency every 1-5 minutes):
WFLA, Lynchburg, VA
WFAN – New York, NY
WLW, Cincinnati, OH
WBZ, Boston, MA
19-minutes prior to official start time:
0925 UTC, 580 kHz, WFLA Lynchburg, VA Distance (miles): 263
Semi-Legal Results (within the +1-hour from my Civil Twilight times):
1. 1005 UTC, 550 kHz, WGAC Buffalo, NY Distance (miles): 277
2. 1047 UTC, 660 kHz, WFAN, New York, NY Distance (miles): 102
3. 1054 UTC, 700 kHz, WLW, Cincinnati, OH Distance (miles): 474
4. 1056 UTC, 710 kHz, WOR, New York, NY Distance (miles): 102
5. 1059 UTC, 720 kHz, WGN, Chicago, IL Distance (miles): 648
6. 1130 UTC, 800 kHz, WTMR, Camden, NJ Distance (miles): 23
7. 1202 UTC, 880 kHz?? WAME (is what I thought I heard)…Mexican Music
4 minutes after the end of the period:
1215 UTC, 1030 kHz WBZ, Boston, MA Distance (miles): 293
Total mileage: 1603 miles
Comments:
1) Radio stations, to my surprise, don’t seem to give their Station ID or frequency very often….I think most were iHeart stations.
2) Since my EP Pro only has an analog dial…it was very difficult to get the frequency. Sometimes I’d sit on a station for 15-minutes and never get it….Next time I’ll use my Tecsun-S-8800 and Terk Loop to get a digital frequency!
3) Since I wasn’t sure of the frequency it was hard to confirm my data on the MWList website.
4) Rain came early…around 8:00 am local….2 hours ahead of plan. (Jock..did you arrange the rain?)
Thanks…it was still a lot of fun for me…
73, Jim / AC3B
https://www.qrz.com/db/AC3B
Civil Twilight starts at my location at 6:45PM and ends at 6:56PM. Used the new NOAA Calculator:
https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/
Turned the R390A on about 15 minutes ago at say… 5:00PM. It outta be warmed up and ready to go in another ~15 minutes. If a station needs nulling, I have an SR-1 right here…. 🙂
Chuck,
Nothing like hollow-state technology that glows in the dark.
Cheers, Jock
Greetings from Europe! 🙂
134 frequencies in 2 hours – a real challenge.
Here is my log:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IOUGAlnI1Wn6IynGDrjZLwUx6tz65zCN/view?usp=sharing
Top five most distant stations add up to 6665 miles.
Thank you for this AM evening.
Michael
Michael,
Good work! I particularly liked your map.
I hope you had fun.
Cheers, Jock
Michael,
I meant to say that I particularly liked your logging sheet.
Cheers, Jock
My Civil Twilight was from 6:44 am to 7:11 am EASTERN time ….. With the +hour before and after, my listening time was from 5:44 am to 8:11 am (0944 to 1211 UTC).
Name: Jim / AC3B
Location: Wilmington, Delaware / FM29ft….outside on my driveway
Radio: CCRadio-EP PRO
Antenna: built into the radio plus I used a TERK Advantage tunable mini-loop
FYI: This my 1st ever pursuit of MW DXing…since the 1960’s as younger kid….as such, I will list what I heard…but only in a few cases did I get the Station ID or Frequency…the rest I ‘put 2 and 2 together’ via google lookups….it a court of law…my list would likely be ‘inadmissible’….
The only ones where I heard the station and location clearly were the following…and only WLW gave me the frequency (which if funny because I live .25 mile from WDEL and they drive me nuts with their repeating their Station ID and Frequency every 1-5 minutes):
WFLA, Lynchburg, VA
WFAN – New York, NY
WLW, Cincinnati, OH
WBZ, Boston, MA
19-minutes prior to official start time:
0925 UTC, 580 kHz, WFLA Lynchburg, VA Distance (miles): 263
Semi-Legal Results (within the +1-hour from my Civil Twilight times):
1. 1005 UTC, 550 kHz, WGAC Buffalo, NY Distance (miles): 277
2. 1047 UTC, 660 kHz, WFAN, New York, NY Distance (miles): 102
3. 1054 UTC, 700 kHz, WLW, Cincinnati, OH Distance (miles): 474
4. 1056 UTC, 710 kHz, WOR, New York, NY Distance (miles): 102
5. 1059 UTC, 720 kHz, WGN, Chicago, IL Distance (miles): 648
6. 1130 UTC, 800 kHz, WTMR, Camden, NJ Distance (miles): 23
7. 1202 UTC, 880 kHz?? WAME (is what I thought I heard)…Mexican Music
4 minutes after the end of the period:
1215 UTC, 1030 kHz WBZ, Boston, MA Distance (miles): 293
Comments:
1) Radio stations, to my surprise, don’t seem to give their Station ID or frequency very often….I think most were iHeart stations.
2) Since my EP Pro only has an analog dial…it was very difficult to get the frequency. Sometimes I’d sit on a station for 15-minutes and never get it….Next time I’ll use my Tecsun-S-8800 and Terk Loop to get a digital frequency!
2) Since I wasn’t sure of the frequency it was hard to confirm my data on the MWList website.
3) Rain came early…around 8:00 am local….2 hours ahead of plan. (Jock..did you arrange that?)
Thanks…it was still a lot of fun for me…in spite of drizzling rain….
73, Jim / AC3B
https://www.qrz.com/db/AC3B
I want to thank Jock (and Thomas) for always providing new ways to inspire and inform and educate in all things radio.
I knew I would be busy this evening for my own (evening) greyline period so I had a go at this challenge earlier in the week. I’m glad I did! I’ve never actually tried MW DXing at this time – I more usually try in the middle of the night. Some unusual stations really jumped out, crystal clear, from places I had never knowingly heard before, like Hungary and Tunisia.
I was listening in Hastings on the south coast of England with an XHData D-808 paired with a Tecsun AN-200 loop antenna. I recently managed to eliminate a source of horrible RF interference in my home which has made MW listening much more enjoyable.
I hope some other Europe-based readers of this website provide logs as well, and I will read with interest the results from everyone wherever they are.
In the spirit of doing things ‘officially’, my loggings came to a total of approx 5,250 miles for the top five, and I think I’ve made a public log and map available here: https://www.mwlist.org/mw_logmap.php?omid=2596&datum=2023-10-10
(The times are approximate – I was tuning around on and off for the whole two hour period but did not write down my exact times, just the order I stumbled on them.)
Thanka again Jock and Thomas
I want to thank Jock (and Thomas) for always providing new ways to inspire and inform and educate in all things radio.
I knew I would be busy this evening for my own (evening) greyline period so I had a go at this challenge earlier in the week. I’m glad I did! I’ve never actually tried MW DXing at this time – I more usually try in the middle of the night. Some unusual stations really jumped out, crystal clear, from places I had never knowingly heard before, like Hungary and Tunisia.
I was listening in Hastings on the south coast of England with an XHData D-808 paired with a Tecsun AN-200 loop antenna. I recently managed to eliminate a source of horrible RF interference in my home which has made MW listening much more enjoyable.
I hope some other Europe-based readers of this website provide logs as well, and I will read with interest the results from everyone wherever they are.
In the spirit of doing things ‘officially’, my loggings came to a total of approx 5,250 miles for the top five, and I think I’ve made a public log and map available here: https://www.mwlist.org/mw_logmap.php?omid=2596&datum=2023-10-10
(The times are approximate – I was tuning around on and off for the whole two hour period but did not write down my exact times, just the order I stumbled on them.)
Thanks again, Jock and Thomas
Paul,
I really like that map! Well done.
Cheers, Jock