A bit of good news?

We were doing some overnight maintenance on one of the class A AMs in New York the other night. The aged Automatic Transfer Switch on the electrical service entrance needed to be replaced, thus the power to the entire facility needed to be cut while the old switch was removed and the new switch installed.

During this period, we took the opportunity to do some maintenance on the main and aux towers. All went well. We also notified the National Radio Club that the station was going to be off the air so that their members could log some rare DX. My thought process here was that we might also find a few daytimers who were still on the air or a DA night who was operating with their daytime facilities. A quick look at MW list shows that there are several such stations on 770 KHz:

MW list, North American 770 KHz

Alas, the answer was no, nobody was on the air who should not have been. Reports from Cape Cod, Massachusetts; New Foundland, Canada; Manassas, Virginia; West Union, South Carolina; and southwest, Ohio have Cuban and South American stations on the air (Radio Artemisa, Radio Rebelde, Radio Oriental) but all of the east coast daytimers are off.

The 180-degree main mast for WABC is in good shape. You can deride AM and say it is outdated. However, it still gets out and covers vast distances.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

3 thoughts on “A bit of good news?”

  1. Dang.
    If I’d known in time might have been able get KKOB go Non-DA for a little bit after midnight MST.

  2. Back in the 1960’s, many of the 50KW stations would go off the air every week around 11:30 pm / midnight Sunday for maintenance until about 5am Monday. At the same time, some daytimers would come on briefly for testing. It was a great time to dx.

  3. I recall reading of a daytime station on 870 that got busted for running at night during Katrina. Lots of people were trying to listen to WWL (including me in Iowa with my Radio Shack pocket radio). One of my client stations is also an 870 daytimer. I make damn sure the remote control is shutting down that station on time. If I turn on my radio at night and hear Bobby Hebert on 870, I know I’m good. 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *