Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 8

A number of comments left on these posts have said the same thing-- that this series has in some way inspired them to consider twiddling the dial of a shortwave or AM radio again to seek out some distant signals. Well, it’s had the same effect on me.

And when I do get a break from everything else I pick up one of my radios to hear what’s out there. Just recently I discovered I can listen to the first hour of Lionel’s show on WCKY in Cincinnati, and I picked up Kuwait on shortwave for the first time in ages.  But I haven’t had time to reserve a few hours to actively listen and record the results. And adding to my desire is the fact that I recently a replaced a radio I’d previously had a lot of fun with and I’m trying to figure out how to reserve a future evening or two just to play with the damned thing. But the truth is I haven't had enough meaningful spare playtime lately.

Meanwhile, to write this I’m listening to more of the medium wave dial scan recording from August 2001 that I’ve featured in the last two posts. Two weeks ago, the audio accompanying my post started at beginning of the AM dial, at 530 KHz or so. By this week I’m up to the middle of the band, nudging the knob from 910 KHz up to 1060.

Not having any idea I’d ever showcase this recording, I now hear instances where I wish I would have fought harder to pull in a station or other notches on the dial I seem to have passed over in haste. But that’s the thing, when you’re DXing with a decent radio it’s easy to get frustrated with the ghostly echo of an almost impossible to read signal when a broadcast less distant, but more entertaining and intelligible, is probably just a slight turn of the knob.

At this point, I’m tempted to reach for some grand metaphor comparing the DX experience to something more meaningful, but I’ll resist. In some sense, scanning the medium and shortwave bands is no more of a significant cultural act than sitting on the sofa with a remote and flipping through the cable TV channels. It’s another type of self-appointed journey through contemporary media content. However, it is more of a challenge and a far less popular form of leisure.

Unlike cable TV or the internet, a radio receives its input out of the air. And getting a viable audio from hundreds or thousands of miles away without going through a satellite or hard wired connection is still a difficult miracle. I guess the magic of that is still a bit of a thrill to me. And the things about radio itself that used to be so important– an approach of reaching out to individual listeners, and a sense of service to their broadcast target area, are still ingrained in much of what occurs on AM & shortwave.

So, here’s chapter three from this AM radio listening session from August 23, 2001, recorded near the top of the lower peninsula of Michigan on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. The audio from the last post left off at CHML at 900 KHz in Hamilton, Ontario. So the section of the recording featured here begins at 910 KHz.

And here’s where you can find chapter one and two of this particular dial scan. All these radio posts are available here.

 Segment 3 - Northern Michigan Radio 08-23-01 (910 to 1060 AM) (download MP3 here)

910 - WSBA York, PA (probably)

It’s CBS News. Ohio is getting electric chair warmed up for the first time in decades.

920 - (Nothing Intelligible)

Might have been able to find something here if I would have been patient.

930 - WBEN Buffalo, NY

Ugly situation in the news. Angry suicidal vet, Samuel Bobo waged a homicidal attack on a Buffalo Veterans Hospital. Said if he was going to die, “he was going to take somebody with him.” While there were no fatal injuries, you gotta wonder why people like this guy don’t go ahead and commit suicide first and then see how they feel before causing more trouble.

If you're in the mood, pinch your nose and sing along with the lame Willie Nelson impersonator on the Isuzu SUV commercial included here.

940 - (Passed Over)

950 - WNTD Chicago, IL (probably) and WWJ Detroit, MI

It’s simultaneous reception, with the big Detroit news station right underneath a louder Spanish language call-in show. While both broadcasts are directional at night, WWJ is broadcasting at ten times the power of WNTD. The expected coverage map of WNTD favors my location, and the monstrous inland body of water offers an ideal reception path.

960 WSBT South Bend, IN

As I said before, I don’t really keep logs, so it can take a bit of detective work to figure out some of the stations received in these old listening sessions. Even more frustrating here is that the call letters are there, but almost unintelligible. After repeated listening I heard mention of meteorologist "Rick Mecklenberg" who I discovered via Google that he predicts the rain down in South Bend. Then when I heard a mention of South Bend buried in the radio noise and I knew I'd figured it out. This station is also not far from the southern lobe of Lake Michigan.

970 (Several Stations At Once)

980 WCUB Two Rivers, WI (probably)

Just across the big lake. A souped up version of “Brown Eyed Handsome Man.”

990 (Unknown)

Two women talking, one on the phone. A hard-core DXer would have stuck around to figure this one out. I didn’t. I guess I was weak.

1000 - WMVP Chicago, IL (probably)

It’s sports again. Can’t get away from sports. The topic for an upcoming call-in segment? What now-famous person did you play against in little league? That's a TOPIC? Maybe I didn’t spend enough time in little league, but I don’t remember name of any of those kids, let alone whether any became celebrities.

In the early 70's when I was a Detroit area teenager, this same outlet (as WCFL) was a favorite rock and roll station after dark. Bob Dearborn was in charge.

1010 - (Nothing Intelligible)

1020 KDKA Pittsburgh, PA

Call in show, didn't stick around long. I believe the hamster dance is played in some way. Not coming in as well as usual. This station claims to be the world's first radio station, and it just might be true. Either way, they've been broadcasting since 1920.

1030 WBZ Boston, MA

I really like WBZ, at least what I know of it from overnight listening. It’s a conversational talk station with a local and eclectic focus. I wish more clear channel AM stations put out programing as unique and professional as WBZ overnight.

That said, this isn’t an amazing clip, just what I happened across that evening. It’s the Steve Leveille Show. Apparently his show has united listeners Ellen and Rosie. Nice. And there’s some more legal guesswork on the Gary Condit/Chandra Levy situation from listener Floyd.

1040 - WHO Des Moines, IA

It’s a Trucker show. Although WHO plays “Coast To Coast” overnight these days, I seem to remember that they ran a trucker show in that slot not that long ago. And in my experience, WHO has been the westernmost reliable AM clear channel catch from Michigan.

From the sound of it, some guy named Keith Bissell caused a lot of grief for truckers passing through Tennessee. And the host here also bemoans a plan to save some Salmon in Washington state. It's typical righteous talk radio fare, along with a low-grade piercing whine for your enjoyment.

1050 - (Nothing Intelligible)

1060 - KYW Philadelphia, PA

KYW was one of the first all-news radio stations. The tradition continues here, with a another flavorful slice from Chung's TV news spectacular featuring Gary Condit under fire.

Thanks For Listening

Comments

[Kip W]

You're bringing back my childhood. Those happy hours before falling asleep, slo-o-owly prowling up and down the dial, writing down the call letters (or my mistaken hearing of them) and cities. KMOX, KRLD, WHO, WLS... I was in Colorado, but we have some overlap. WHO used to play Lum & Abner every night at 9 -- this was around 1970, clearly not first-run! Dallas's KRLD had their Midnight Radio Theater, a hip DJ named Dylan ("Montage with Dylan"), and... Garner Ted Armstrong! Laugh THAT off, Mister Scientist!

Once in a while, there were special treats. One day, sick in bed, I checked the dial and found I was getting FM stations from all over the country, for some reason. Another time, I got a Canadian station in daylight hours. The best was one night when I watched TV until the local channels had turned off their transmitters, and I flipped the dial a bit, unwilling to call it a night yet, and discovered that I was getting the picture (no sound) from a mystery station, which turned out to be from New Jersey -- I figured it out from the car ads; the station never showed a card. After a few minutes of watching some dumb movie in silence (their movie bumpers were just like the ones Denver's KWGN used), the picture suddenly went away, never to return.

There were other thrills along the way, but I'll cut this short while the possibility still exists that everybody's not bored yet.

[Ed]

Tune til it Hertz, that’s my motto. There are very few of us left. For a teen today, radio may be more frequently associated with the two satellite services.
I discovered AM “propagation” when I was in high school, sometime not long after Adam and Eve were scooted out of their primo digs. I had a tendency to stay up all night on school nights, listening to the AM band, amazed by how stations from diverse areas would fade in and out. This followed me through to college, where the occasional binge would put me in the all night mode..
It’s always struck me, as these threads of audio faded in and out, as the kind of thoughts I’d have before falling asleep. Stretching this to more absurd lengths, I tended to think of these “random” (a deceptively un-simple concept) transpositions of meanings as having an odd dreamlike feel. I felt as though I was listening to a collective unconscious. Luckily, no one yet has the ability to insert adverts in our dreams, but wouldn’t they love it if they could.
To finish the path, today I love African and other world-source music. That’s where shortwave can be interesting. I appear to have unconscious processes that weed out the noise and static bursts, because I still enjoy listening to the music.
Thanks for making it possible to re-appreciate this phenomena, which also may be fading into the noise.

Ed

[Pete]

Never saw this post way back when, but yes, WBZ has an excellent nighttime talk thing going. Used to start with professorial and politely cantakerous David Brudnoy, who has since shuffled off the antenna coil, and now consists of buddy-at-the-bar gadfly Paul Sullivan followed by the folksier Steve Leveille (and the old ladies inexplicably up to call in at 3 in the morning), as you said, covering 12 to 5.

I've met a few people from WBZ, and they're hardcore radio people. They seem to love that they're at this odd oasis -- a WCBS 880-type station during the day that never loses sight of its smaller-market quality.

A perfect illustration is every Christmas Eve, when all the news broadcasters and talk show hosts get together and do a full-cast reading of "A Christmas Carol." On a news station that's actually at the top of the local radio ratings. I couldn't see Bloomberg 1130 or even your NY Disney outpost at 770 ever doing anything of the kind.