By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM
It was Bob Colegrove’s post — this one — that inspired me and set me on this path.
Medium wave broadcast band DXing (MWBCB) has a certain fascination for me, but I am poor at it. Oh sure, I have read the advice: map the band at noon, then again at midnight, and you’ll have a better idea of what’s unusual as you are tuning around. But I have never gotten around to doing the mapping, so my DXing skills are lousy at best.
When Bob asked, “What’s your favorite corner of the dial?”, he also mentioned the challenge hunting below 600 kHz. The implication: whatever is in that section of the band, there are probably not a lot of stations, and they are hard to hear. So, I reasoned in my tiny little brain: “If I hear anything down there, it’s likely to be DX.”
So I tried it, firing up the Grundig Satellit 800 hooked to an MFJ 1886 loop during the daylight hours. With exception of WROW, 590, in nearby Albany, NY, blasting oldies with 5,000 watts, I found nothing . . . and I do mean nothing: nada, diddly, bupkas, cipher, rien . . . dead band . . . deader than old Jacob Marley. I try it again in the early evening with three different radios with exactly the same results. Nuts.
But then I try again with the Satellit 800/1886 combo at a little after 0900Z and take Bob’s advice about using single sideband. Aha! Carriers 540, 550, and 560. Then at 570, a weird mixture: religious programming in American English over male and female voices in Spanish with time ticks and tones in the background. Is there a time station on this frequency or is it some sort of bleed-over?
On Tuesday evenings I run the Radio Monitoring Net on the 146.94 repeater. During the net, I mentioned the unusual signal I had heard on 570, and W2SRA, an expert DXer, responded with the opinion that this was likely a religious station on Long Island, NY, intermixed with a station known as The Clock from Cuba.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it: Radio Reloj (Spanish for Radio Clock) is a government-owned Spanish-language radio station in Cuba . . . The station is noted for the sound of a ticking clock in the background, with its hosts announcing the time, every minute of broadcast.
I checked the distance from Troy, NY, to Santa Clara, Cuba where the 570 AM station is located; it’s 1449 miles. Wow! According to Wikipedia, the AM transmit power is 50,000 watts
Then I remember that William, KR8L, mentioned that he likes searching above 1620 (another less populated region of the band), so I give that a try. At 1690, I hear oldies, followed by ads for Southern Maryland. The station finally ID’s as WPTX, 1,000 watts nighttime power, in California, MD, a distance of 339 miles. Yes!!
Thanks, Bob and William, for turning me on to some more radio fun!
Wikipedia is a good starting point but you should really go to the source of the information https://www.radioreloj.cu/home/ says it is an internet broadcaster. I cannot find any mention of any transmitters.
I thought it may be a standard frequency and time transmitter, for which I cannot find any mention which reinforces the netcasting tag.
Whilst there are internet time servers which are run from caesium beam atomic clocks, there is delays in delivery making the time less accurate. The most accurate is to use GPS because longitude is the time! The many satellites transmit the UTC time and their location so the delay can be calculated and applied. The time reference for the satellites comes from the average time from tens of caesium beam atomic clocks.
The digitisation of telephone networks has spelt the end of ‘talking’ clocks because of delays.
This radio station is a newscaster but if it only netcasts, it makes it pretty useless in a hurricane due to electricity blackouts and water into signal cabling.
Hello Jock – Been traveling here the last couple of months and won’t be home from the Baltics until next month. But I’ve been reading along and am itching to get the home gear cooking again – especially on the AM broadcast band.
Been playing with the XHData D-220 here and there – hearing a new to me SW log “WIL Shortwave” with a UK email that I suspect is a pirate. I’ll need to do a little more digging when I get home.
In Vilnius, it was nice having a big BBC English signal smack in the middle of the FM band! In Italy, anything English is a tough find, although I managed to hear Radio Caroline on AM one night. Otherwise, China and Romania are the only English signals I’m hearing here day to day.
Stay well and good DX to all.
Try also if you can catch RNZ on 13755 kHz. It gives good signal just now (1115 UTC) here in Helsinki.
In addition, Radio Poland should have one daily program in English on 1386 kHz via Viešintos, Lithuania at 13 UTC. (I still need to test if this info about R. Poland transmission is valid any more).
SamA,
Great to hear from you.
I’ve been playing with the D-220 as well . . . it’s fun!
Cheers, Jock
Great write-up Jock. This is what the radio hobby is all about. There is literally a world of possibilities on the radio bands for those willing to search for them.
Marty,
Thanks for the kind words.
The top end of the band was really hopping this AM (well before sunrise) with a couple of oldies stations above 1600, a religious station, and a red-eye radio station in addition to the Southern Maryland station.
And I finally got a positive ID on that religious station on 570: WMCA out of New York City.
Cheers, Jock
Marty,
“There is literally a world of possibilities on the radio bands for those willing to search for them.”
Perfectly put!
Thomas, somebody ought to put that on a T-shirt! (hint)
Cheers, Jock
Jock, the AM broadcast band was my introduction to DXing as a child in the late 1960s with a pocket transistor radio. That was until my uncle brought home a shortwave radio on his leave from Vietnam. I was hooked on shortwave from that point on. However, I still get most enjoyment even today from AM dxing. The great thing about this hobby is there’s so many ways to enjoy it. Good luck!
Thanks, Tim, for the encouragement!
Cheers, Jock
A great start on some medium wave DXing! With the change of seasons and the longer nights I need to get back to listening to that part of the spectrum. A couple of resources that I have found helpful in making IDs are RDMW 2024 and radio-locator.com.
A quick search for RDMW 2024 will take you to Medium Wave Circle where you can download it for a donation of about $4.00 (actual amount is in Euros). No installation required, just put it in a folder and click the html start file. Gives a great presentation of each station’s pattern and expected coverage, although as we know, stations can often be heard well beyond their expected coverage area.
With radio-locator.com you can select Advanced Search and then put in whatever search terms are appropriate (frequency, city, state, format, etc.). A couple of things it will give you that help with IDing a station are the type of programming and a link to the station’s website.
Comparing a station’s live stream with what you’re hearing on the air is a pretty positive way to make an ID! Religious broadcaster on 570? According to those two resources there are only two possibilities, and their coverage maps don’t overlap.
Thanks, William, that is very helpful indeed.
Cheers, Jock
Congrats, Jock. MW DX is really fascinating indeed.
I remember when I was in the coast of northeast Brazil and managed to listen to AM radio stations from North of Africa, South Spain and even Caribbean.
Carlos,
“North of Africa, South Spain and even Caribbean”
Wow, cool!
Thanks for the kind words.
Cheers, Jock
Hi Jock,
I’ve enjoyed your post, and Bob’s, on AM dxing.
I’ve been interested is receiving AM Radio Stations since I was in high school back in the 60’s. I remember Whites Radio Log was my go to for a list of radio stations. I kept a small notebook where I would enter the callsign and frequency of each station received. I’ve lost my original notebook. I now just keep a simple spreadsheet.
I just took a look at my spreadsheet and see that there are quire a few frequencies where four stations were logged. And two frequencies, 1290 and 1590, with five different stations.
The 570 Cuban station you received is definitely a Cuban Time Signal. They are on many different frequencies across the a AM band. I’ve received them on 570, 800, 870. They sometimes broadcast 55 seconds of news, then the RR in code at the top of the minute. The RR code (and the ticking sound) makes it easy to identify them under other stations.
If you really want to do AM DXing, then you should build a tunable loop antenna. These are easy to build, some wire wrapped around a box of some type, and a 365 variable capacitor to tune the loop. There are plenty of web pages showing homemade loops and some calculators for determining the number of turns.
With a tunable loop that you can rotate, its fun to peak a station, then rotate the loop and peak a totally different station on the same frequency. I have a loop that is similar to a hula loop – the wires are inside the plastic tubing. Then it has a switch that selects either the upper or lower portion of the AM band with a tuning capacitor for peaking the signal. While it’s 27″ in diameter, it’s very light weight and easy to transport.
Some good reference pages:
Cuban Radio Stations – Map of Cuba with stations on it:
https://www.bamlog.com/cubalist.htm
Mesa Mike’s List of USA AM Band Radio Stations:
http://mesamike.org/radio/amdb/
Canadian Radio Directory:
https://www.canadianradiodirectory.com/
One of the things that is useful is to have a recorder running of what you are listening to. I note on a piece of paper when the recorder started and then make notes of the times when something interesting is heard. This is a great help for frequencies where there are many stations being received. Going back and carefully listening it is sometimes possible to pull out a station ID from under other stations.
The problem with digital recorders is that they can introduce noise into the radio. I use a Edirol R-09 digital recorder. A six foot shielded audio cable is used to place the recorder away from the radio and antenna.
United States AM stations are supposed to ID every hour – plus or minus about 10 minutes from the top of the hour. Unfortunately, a lot of stations are NOT IDing their call sign but using station jingle type ID’s. Worse, some stations are linked together and they may use the wrong station callsign. I guess that’s all the fun in trying to identify which station is being hear.
Enjoy the AM band while we still have it.
73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ
Hey, Bill, good to hear from you . . . and thanks for the links to those Useful Goodies and the very helpful suggestions.
I have noticed the problem with IDs. There is a local station on 590 MW that often IDs as “Magic 100” because of its twin FM station. Only occasionally do they broadcast their 590 ID.
You’re right: it seems like IDing stations is like a separate sport in itself.
Cheers, Jock