Folks, I was unable to sleep last night, so I crept downstairs, cranked up the old Zenith console, and started to tune in to After Dark with George Noory. I got halfway across the dial when I picked up an OTR broadcast of Gangbusters. That drew me in and I was shocked to hear that it was coming from CHML in Ontario! Wow! My little 8s463 with just the wavemagnet antenna can do all that? So I set to writing down all the call signs I could find as I scanned the dial. I am very pleased with the results. I have four other stations that I could hear clearly but they played interminable broadcasts of After Dark and ESPN sports with no call sign so they are out. All stations logged between 0145 to 0235 hrs EST. I am in Lancaster, PA.

550 WER Buffalo, NY
900 CHML Hamilton, Ontario
580 WHP Harrisburg, Pa
570 WMCA NY, NY
610 WIP Philadelphia, Pa
650 WSM Nashville, TN
700 WLW Cincinnati, OH
710 WOR NY, NY
720 WGN Chicago, IL
740 CFZM Toronto, Ontario
760 WJR Detroit, MI
800 CKLW Windsor, Ontario
830 WEEU Reading, PA
880 WCBS NY,NY
1000 WMVP Chicago, IL
1040 WHO Des Moines, IA
1060 KYW Philadelphia, PA
1120 KMOX St. Louis, MO
1040 WWBA Tampa, FL
1250 WEAE Pittsburgh, PA
1390 WLAN Lancaster, PA
1220 WHKW Cleveland, OH
1490 WLPA Lancaster, PA
1520 WWKB Buffalo, NY
1530 WCKY Cincinnati, OH

If anybody could tell me how WWBA got on the list, I'd like to hear it-the FCC lists this as 3.6 KW daytime! Almost all of the rest of these guys are 50KW monsters...

Great list of catches for a casual bandscan! I used to be way heavy into AMDXing in the 60s and 70s but all the stations I used to listen to on a regular basis all went to nighttime network programming (anyone recall the Overdrive Trucking Network?)
I still occasionally browse the MW band but its not the same as it used to be. The thing I enjoyed most about the MW band way back when was each station actually had live local programming from Little Rock AK or Denver CO or wherever (I grew up in Albuquerque, NM) and I could get the "feel" of the town each station was broadcasting from. Now, it's all syndicated talk shows for the most part.

EDIT I just looked up your Zenith rig (http://www.tuberadioland.com/zenith8-S-463_main.html). Nice console! Bet she does pretty well on SW, too.

Thanks Able! Below is a link to my zenith:

http://s288.photobucket.com/albums/ll179/leadlike/?action=view&current=zenith.jpg

It looks a little different as I had to strip the whole cabinet-it must have been in a flood as the bottom half of the radio had very little veneer left on it. I spent a month building up the old layers of thin wood until it was level enough to apply new veneer. The most challenging refinish I have ever done. I did make up new photofinish strips to go around the top, but they looked terrible so I went with just doing the edges in a very dark finish. The rectifier was shorted when I found it, but luckily the power transformer was fine. I even restuffed the caps in this one.

Overdrive Trucking was music, right? I did listen in on the Midnight Trucking Radio network show out of Detroit, but that was more talk radio slop. The best station I found last night was out of Nashville, which was playing some music from the Grand Old Opry.

WOAH.. beautiful Zenith. I've got a 1939 that I would really like to get working.

You never mentioned in your thread as to where you are at. Did you restore this, or did you have it done by someone in your area or what?

Here's mine.. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dc-duo/1159846225/in/set-72157601529063635/ I've done a lot of work on the wood, (mostly just cleaning and refreshing the lost moisture) and got it almost new looking (just restored, not refinished) and now all I need to do is get the radio working..

Yes... the OTN was country music aimed, not surprisingly, at truckers on the road. Hearing more and more stations sell out to the syndicated networks was the death knoll of the fun days of AMDXing.

And WOW! Beautiful refurb job there. I'd never have guessed that it had any water damage. Nice job.

Awrite !! It'll only get better til around March or so, when the thunderstorms start crankin' back up ! Moving the radio to the other side of the room, turning it 90 degrees, could easily bring up a whole 'nother list of stations on those same frequencies, as could listening at different times of the night.

I still play around on the AM band at night; but, not as much as I used to. I'm just so disgusted with the talk, talk, talk, talk, and more talk. I can still get music on WSM and WDIA. That's about it except for an occasional "music of your life" or "classic country" station that is full of noise and fades out within 3 minutes of finding it. I wish I was around during the '60's and early '70's when it was music, music, music, music, and more music!

Yeah. "AM" stands for "All Mumbling" because that's about all you hear these days. I used to drive my mom nuts when she'd come in to the room in the morning and find my earphone still crammed in my ear. I used to tune in to KSL Salt Lake City UT to listen to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, then tune to KFAB Omaha for their "Serenade In The Night" show which was nothing but un-rock music like Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Ferrante and Teicher, Henry Mancini etc. The mix was about 70% instrumental and was perfect for me to sleep to. If I woke up before 6am Mountain time, KFAB would be back to the daytime programming which always started with the farm reports (pork belly prices, cattle prices, farm supply commercials, etc.) I don't know what they did for regular daytime programming because as soon as the sun came up, KFAB disappeared till the next night. KOA in Denver was another music station on the graveyard shift as was KOMA. And who can forget the great XRock 80?
Sad. So sad. AM used to be a great place for such varied entertainment.

It's why I'd like to win the lotto because I'd start an AM station and run it like they USED to be run in the 60s and 70s.

Folks, I was unable to sleep last night, so I crept downstairs, cranked up the old Zenith console, and started to tune in to After Dark with George Noory. I got halfway across the dial when I picked up an OTR broadcast of Gangbusters. That drew me in and I was shocked to hear that it was coming from CHML in Ontario! Wow! My little 8s463 with just the wavemagnet antenna can do all that? So I set to writing down all the call signs I could find as I scanned the dial. I am very pleased with the results. I have four other stations that I could hear clearly but they played interminable broadcasts of After Dark and ESPN sports with no call sign so they are out. All stations logged between 0145 to 0235 hrs EST. I am in Lancaster, PA.

550 WER Buffalo, NY
900 CHML Hamilton, Ontario
580 WHP Harrisburg, Pa
570 WMCA NY, NY
610 WIP Philadelphia, Pa
650 WSM Nashville, TN
700 WLW Cincinnati, OH
710 WOR NY, NY
720 WGN Chicago, IL
740 CFZM Toronto, Ontario
760 WJR Detroit, MI
800 CKLW Windsor, Ontario
830 WEEU Reading, PA
880 WCBS NY,NY
1000 WMVP Chicago, IL
1040 WHO Des Moines, IA
1060 KYW Philadelphia, PA
1120 KMOX St. Louis, MO
1040 WWBA Tampa, FL
1250 WEAE Pittsburgh, PA
1390 WLAN Lancaster, PA
1220 WHKW Cleveland, OH
1490 WLPA Lancaster, PA
1520 WWKB Buffalo, NY
1530 WCKY Cincinnati, OH

If anybody could tell me how WWBA got on the list, I'd like to hear it-the FCC lists this as 3.6 KW daytime! Almost all of the rest of these guys are 50KW monsters...

I'm amazed you were hearing WHKW in Cleveland from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which was formerly top-40 WGAR 1220 in the '60s-'70s--despite the fact that WHKW is a 50kW station. I just looked at the signal pattern for that station on Radio-Locator.com and found that even its "distant" signal pattern doesn't reach much beyond Pittsburgh. WHKW is directional (one pattern) 24/7 because of a Canadian station on 1220.

I also looked up station "CFZM" in Toronto on 740. Radio-Locator could not find a station with those calls. I think you may have meant CHWO 740 AM in Toronto, which is (or was) a big-band station until recently.

I am also surprised you are hearing stations from Florida in Lancaster. I live near Cleveland and have never once heard any Florida stations on AM at night, either where I live now or where I used to live; the former is a small town near Lake Erie, the latter is an eastern suburb of Cleveland. In fact, the only time I ever heard anything at all from Florida on any of my radios was back about 38 years ago, when a thunderstorm knocked one of the local stations off the air. It was during the summer of that year; there must have been a temperature inversion or something of that nature, as I was hearing a station from West Palm Beach, Florida on our local station's dial position (107.9 MHz), strong as any of the Cleveland stations and even in stereo (!), shortly after the local station went silent. Amazing, as I was listening at the time on a 17-transistor AM/FM stereo portable radio with only a short telescoping whip antenna. However, I have never heard any other Florida stations on AM or FM since then. Another amazing DX catch I made, purely by accident, about 20-some years ago, was KOA-AM in Denver, Colorado. I heard this station when a (at the time) 10kW station in Cleveland went off the air for technical maintenance. That was the first and only time I ever heard any AM stations from Colorado here in northeastern Ohio. The best I can do, as far as nighttime DX is concerned on AM, is WCCO 830 in Minneapolis, Minnesota and sometimes 1040 WHO-AM in Des Moines, Iowa, but again, I have never heard anything further west than the latter since bagging KOA in the eighties.

BTW, I know what you mean about those AM stations that run syndicated talk shows and sports all night long, with only one station ID at or near the top of every hour. That, plus the fact that the FCC abolished AM "clear channels" in the mid-eighties, limiting even a 50kW station's range to 750 miles at night (as the former "clear-channel" stations must now use directional signal patterns at night in many cases), has taken almost all the fun and mystery out of AM DXing, unless you want to hang around the "graveyard" frequencies such as 1240, 1490, et al. and try to snag small local-service stations running 1kW or less.

I hardly ever listen to AM radio anymore because all the stations that used to be top-40 in the '60s-'70s (when I was growing up) are now talk or sports, not only in Cleveland but in every city in the U.S. nowadays. The only AM music station in Cleveland, for example, is Radio Disney on 1260, which was a top-40 rock-and-roll station from 1965 until 1974 (I have tapes of their old jingles). Couldn't get enough of that station (and a 50kW powerhouse on 1100, also a top-40 station at the time) as a teenager growing up in suburban Cleveland.

Ah, memories of how AM radio used to be.

Hi, Leadlike,
Lots of fun DX-ing the AM band. I'm in Cleona PA, up near Lebanon, so we ought to hear the same stuff. Others you ought to be able to add to your list easily:
660 WFAN New York City
690 Montreal, in French, their I.D. is "Info Six quatre-vingt-dix." phonetically "eenfo sees catra-van-dees."
750 WSB Atlanta
780 WBBM Chicago
870 WWL New Orleans
890 WLS Chicago
New Orleans and Atlanta are often better in the wee hours before dawn, but conditions vary. Does your console have a loop that rotates inside the cabinet? Could help to pick up some weaker stations. Otherwise if there's an antenna terminal on the back you could try adding ten or twenty feet of any insulated wire you have lying around and just lay it around the baseboard of the room, etc.

You join the legions of folks who started doing this almost a hundred years ago, the thrill of hearing a voice from hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Happy DX-ing!
Reece

Jeff,

I found CFZM through this wiki article. Their line following their call sign was 'the best of the best' which helped in my search:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFZM

I agree with you on this dinky Florida station. I would like to think that as this was just playing the national ESPN sports feed, that some slovenly local ESPN affiliate was just repeating the Florida signal during their off hours. Hence, the Florida call sign rather than their own. Although if that was true, it would have to be a heck of a coincidence that they shared the same frequency on the dial...

I used to get a Raleigh station when I worked right on the Susquehanna river. The river formed sheer cliffs on all sides except to the south, so there was no television or FM radio. But we did get that one weak am station out of Raleigh. I believe it was WPTF as that was my first exposure to Art Bell and the freaky side of late night radio. I still get that station from time to time here, but that has been my record for southern reception.

Great memories, guys!

Ablethevoice, sounds like we had similar childhoods. I listened to CBS Mystery Radio Theater when it was still on, and Beaker Street booming out of Little Rock on KAAY. It seems like we had WLS on pretty much every night, all night, and listened to the news on it in the morning (the old station id- wLs!!- is still burned into my brain). I used to fall asleep to the radio *every* night (except for periods of my high school years when I got into other sorts of things..) practically until I was married.

My mom tells the story of listening to AM out of Shreveport, LA when she was a teenager, digging on Howlin' Wolf and other good stuff.. I realized one day that my mom is about Bob Dylan's age, and he has a similar story of hearing that great blues out of Shreveport. Pretty cool. Those were the days, when radio could literally spawn a revolution.

My AM experience nowadays is pretty much the same as radiotvnut's, I still tune in the opry broadcasts on WSM, listen to classical occasionally on the CBC via 990, when I can get it. And then there are the Mexican stations, which can be a real hoot.

One of these days I'm going to find myself another Yamaha T-80 and get a Kiwa pocket loop for it- that combo yields some pretty impressive nulls so you can pull the Mexican and Canadian stations out pretty easily. I'm a little down on the AM count at the moment, though my Kenwood KT-7500 doesn't do too badly.

ponderbear...so glad you mentioned "Beaker Street". A fantastic program that introduced a LOT of folks to music they otherwise wouldn't have been aware of. It's still the ONLY place I've ever heard "The hour of The Wolf" by The Hassles, and, of course, "The Legend of the Titanic" by Jaime Brockett....among a bunch of others. The story of the show is so cool...Clyde Clifford did it from KAAY's transmitter site instead of the studio. (Union rules prevented him from both being on the air and operating the controls at the studio...so it was off to a backup studio at the transmitter.) Sitting next to an air-cooled 50kW rig means LOTS of background noise when the mic is on, so Clyde tracked that famous "bleeep, bloop" stuff underneath his live breaks. The "bleep, bloop" is from an actual LP called "Head" by Head (what else did you expect?!?!?!) on Buddah records. (I mean, where else??) I found a copy in a huge pile of cutouts purchased by a friend who owned a record/stereo shop. He let me have first look at about 5,000 lps...and there it was! Clyde's still on the air with "Beaker Street"...log on to www.beakerstreet.com. He's on 94.1 The Point in Little Rock every Sunday nite, and it's streamed. The site even has archived files for downloading. Puts you right back, late at night in your 57 Chevy, hash pipe in hand. I mean, just take a look at the playlist from Sunday 11/16!!

Great list of catches for a casual bandscan! I used to be way heavy into AMDXing in the 60s and 70s but all the stations I used to listen to on a regular basis all went to nighttime network programming (anyone recall the Overdrive Trucking Network?)
I still occasionally browse the MW band but its not the same as it used to be. The thing I enjoyed most about the MW band way back when was each station actually had live local programming from Little Rock AK or Denver CO or wherever (I grew up in Albuquerque, NM) and I could get the "feel" of the town each station was broadcasting from. Now, it's all syndicated talk shows for the most part.

EDIT I just looked up your Zenith rig (http://www.tuberadioland.com/zenith8-S-463_main.html). Nice console! Bet she does pretty well on SW, too.

It's Little Rock, AR. AK is Alaska :P

The "bleep, bloop" is from an actual LP called "Head" by Head (what else did you expect?!?!?!) on Buddah records. (I mean, where else??) I found a copy in a huge pile of cutouts purchased by a friend who owned a record/stereo shop. He let me have first look at about 5,000 lps...and there it was!

Nice story! I have a copy, too.. after I found out where those sounds were from I had to find it. Only the 60s (and early 70s by "contact high" :))could have made an album like that.

It's Little Rock, AR. AK is Alaska :P

I be a doof and I stand corrected. :D:smoke:

Back where I grew up in Beaumont Texas we'd pick up KEEL 710 "K-double E L" Shreveport LA when they were a rock & roll station back in the late '50's. Attached is a Larry Lujack "Double-you ELLL ess" audio clip.
http://airchexx.com/markets/chicago/morning-madness-larry-lujack-on-wls-am-fm-chicago-january-1984

Reece

Hmmm... What am I doing wrong? I went to your linked page, clicked on the CLICK HERE TO PLAY and got a popup window which proved to be the home page of Airchexx.com. No audio. My first guess is that the website is optimized for broadband and ignored my click-in request because I'm on dialup.

Tried the link in my post and it worked for me. Try this: here's the link to the player itself. See if that works for you.
Reece

http://airchexx.org/wp-content/plugins/embedthevideo/popup.php?url=http://airchexx.org/mp3/2006-Adds/June/0184-wls-llujack.mp3&height=225&width=470

I'm convinced its the connection speed. I clicked on the other link you posted and:
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=118845&stc=1&d=1227204915

That's all I got. I have pretty much every media player known to mankind installed on my system. Seems no matter where I went, there was always a site that required me to DL yet another player to handle the media on their page. I have the QT as well as the Real player but neither of them open.

Thanks for trying anyway.

I'm overdue for a migrane anyway. I guess I'll call BellShit and pester them again about getting DSL out here.

Hi nice list i still am dx .Dont forget to try the new expanded band 1.600 to 1.710mhz.Ihave heard many stations there.Good luck on dxing try right at sunset and just befor sun rise.Should be able to get many more stations.Sprman : 0

I get to drive from Montreal to Quebec City about once a week, starting around
4:45 AM, and I do spend much of the time (about 3 hours including a stop for
breakfast) with the scanner running on AM. Quite interesting, two Chicago
stations among the regular catches.

For something exotic, including a fair share of nice music, anyone in the North
East can try the French CBC outlet from Toronto at 860 kHz. Happy DXing!

There was a station in Cincinnati at 1530 that USED to play very good music-Of course, they HAD to go to a Sports Talk format...

There was a station in Cincinnati at 1530 that USED to play very good music-Of course, they HAD to go to a Sports Talk format...

Yes, I used to pick them up from time to time. They played all the less common oldies that are not heard on FM. Then, one night I tuned them in just to hear the usual talk chatter that everyone else is kicking out.

We used to have an FM oldies station; but, it changed to a (c)rap/r&b (if you wanna call it that) format. They could have probably hung on as an oldies station; but, all they played was the same top 10 oldies over and over. I think everyone got tired of hearing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and "My Boyfriend's Back" 20 times a day!

We also had a small locally owned daytime only AM station that actually had real DJ's that would take request. They played old country, pop, and a little old gospel during the week and there was a rock n roll oldies show on Saturday morning. The original station owner passed away and it wasn't long before his son made a "business decision" and let go of the DJ's, went automated, and changed the format to African-American preaching and gospel music! That move irritated 100's of listeners to the point of calling the station and writing letters to the newspaper. That was about 3 years ago and they are still doing gospel music. The question I'm asking myself is why do we need another gospel station? We only have a half dozen in my area but not a single "oldies" station.

Oh, yeah. We got "Wholly Roller" stations up here by the bushel. Seemingly, in a lot of 'em, the owner/preacher's wife is the Station Engineer, & she knows NOTHING about such advanced concepts as Modulation-they simply turn everything up to 11 & let fly. Nor do they understand concepts of Equipment Grounding, so lotsa times they have a nice 60Hz HUMMMMMMMMM on about all of their broadcasts. Nevermind, though, for The Word HAS to get out; There are Souls to be Saved.

There is one such hole in the wall station here. The station owner plays engineer and often causes more harm than good. I don't know if he's cheap or what the deal is; but, he won't call in an engineer unless the transmitter goes down. They were running an old worn out Gates transmitter until the room flooded where the transmitter is located and he was forced to upgrade. They also had a Gates "yard" tube mono control board. I bought that board when he finally upgraded to a solid state model; but, the Gates board was in sad shape. I finally sold it for what I had in it. He still uses old cart machines that don't look to have been cleaned in years. His turntable was an old QRK (also in sad shape) with a tonearm that tracked at about 5 lbs. And, his signal is usually terrible. It's either filled with hum or is very distorted.

I'll add that I don't have anything against gospel music in general. I just don't care for the type played around here. There is one southern gospel station here that I'll listen to sometimes, usually when I'm checking a radio out that I repaired; but, all the screaming and hollering on the other stations don't do it for me.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I think I'll check out KMOX this Saturday and see if they are still running their oldies program called Route 66.

About two weeks ago I decided to flip my (semi-newly-acquired*) Hammarlund HQ145 to MW and see what was going on at dark-o'clock in the morning. Amongst all of the normal AM garbage I expected, I was shocked to hear: 1) A live DJ actually playing 2) real music!! Turned out it was KMOX. This was late Sat/early Sun maybe 130 am. Pretty good stuff in his mix. Not the normal stuff our local FM oldies station plays.

*Semi-newly-acquired meaning I got it in my hands on March 31

I can basically trace my whole interest in old radio and television to some night around 1980, I'm 8 years old, checking out the am band on a little Panasonic am/fm handheld. I picked up WBZ Boston, and then something out of Chicago. I was hooked. I have some old logs hidden away somewhere. I really need to take a night and see what I can find-haven't really done it in over 15 years, not like I used to. I did play around earlier in the week with the boat anchors but none of them are in the shape they should be. Maybe I'll pull a chair up to my Philco 38-3.

There is a small am daytimer in our county that plays nothing but recorded preaching. (they were playing the OTR show that was hosted by Stan Freberg, I forget the name, but I haven't tuned in lately to see if it's still on) As with others mentioned, the quality is terrible. Many of the shows are inaudible. From what I gather they are paid programming and I guess if the tape is lousy it doesn't matter to the station, they get paid either way. I think it's good that they are on the air with the message, but I have to say I've never been anywhere where someone was listening to them.

Further note: early in my DXing I heard the old syndicated "Comedy Show" with Jack Carney, which hooked me on OTR and comedy albums. Great memories.

Mine goes back somewhat further, but is a similar story. My gramma sent me a Lloyd's 6 transistor portable radio when I was about 6. For a couple of years, I listened mostly to the station my dad worked at as a morning-drive DJ (610 AM KGGM Albuquerque 5KW). One night, I was tuning pretty much randomly when I happened to land on WOAI San Antonio TX during a station ID. I was so excited! I raced over to my dad and he told me that a lot of more powerful stations could be heard from out of state. I began to tune a lot more slowly between the strong local stations, stopping at the slightly staticky, slightly fading voices and was thrilled to discover I was listening to Denver, Dallas, Los Angeles. Remember, this was with a tiny 6 transistor 9-volt powered radio with a thumbwheel tuning knob. I got pretty good tuning REALLY slowly across the band and also got pretty familiar with the "landscape" of the AM band circa 1968. That Christmas, I got a no-name solid-state multiband radio (AM, FM, "marine band" which could actually be classified as shortwave because it was 1.7 to 4.5 mHz, one SW band covering 4 to 12 mHz and VHF which was essentially a worthless band to manually scan). The whole world opened up to me then with BBC, Radio Nederland, Radio Japan's General service, RSA, National Radio of Spain, etc. I did a lot of AMDXing on that radio, too and was a regular listener of KOA, KFAB, KNX, Xrock80 and WOAI. dad and I spent a lot of time on our roof setting up some pretty involved antenna systems to feed that goofy little rig. A couple of years later, I found a Hallicrafters SX110 for $10 at the local flea market which worked perfectly and stomped the daylights out of that no name SS rig I'd been using for so long. A couple of years after that, I found a "military surplus" communication rig for $80 (including shipping!!) which turned out to be the venerable AN/GRR-5 ("angry-5") complete with power supply and I was all set. And hooked. Till I discovered music and stupidly sold it all to buy a drum set. Ah well. It was fun while it lasted. I'm glad I was able to get a hold of a nice working Hammarlund recently which has satisfied my skywave fix.

I like to do DX work on my Radiola 18, though its 0-100 dial makes it a little more work. I use that one just because its my oldest, and given its lack of selectivity, it makes it more work to really pull stuff in properly.

To the OP, its sort of intersting you get KYW clear out there in Lancaster. I know its a 50kw station in nearby Philly, but here in southern NJ I barely pull it in. I think I must be in one of the nulls in their radiation pattern or something because I can pull in 50kw Chicago stations with much stronger signals. Also, are you sure on the call sign for 740? I get 740 as CHWO out of Toronto, unless they changed call signs or something. Big Band Sunday Night is a fun program, and they have Bandstand on Saturdays which features mostly 50s music. They also do an OTR hour from like 10-11 pm on weeknights.

Jeff,

I found CFZM through this wiki article. Their line following their call sign was 'the best of the best' which helped in my search:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFZM

I agree with you on this dinky Florida station. I would like to think that as this was just playing the national ESPN sports feed, that some slovenly local ESPN affiliate was just repeating the Florida signal during their off hours. Hence, the Florida call sign rather than their own. Although if that was true, it would have to be a heck of a coincidence that they shared the same frequency on the dial...

I used to get a Raleigh station when I worked right on the Susquehanna river. The river formed sheer cliffs on all sides except to the south, so there was no television or FM radio. But we did get that one weak am station out of Raleigh. I believe it was WPTF as that was my first exposure to Art Bell and the freaky side of late night radio. I still get that station from time to time here, but that has been my record for southern reception.

I looked up CFZM on Wikipedia myself earlier tonight and found that it is the former CHWO-AM 740 in Toronto; its website, however, is the same as it always was: www.am740.ca. I live near Lake Erie and hear 740 over the air very well, 24/7, but I have also bookmarked its website in my browser so I can listen when I'm working at the computer. Noticed the station has changed its format, from big band to oldies. It dawned on me at that moment that there had been talk of the station dropping its big band format for some other type of music, but they weren't saying at that time what the new format would be.

The Florida station I heard 38 years ago on my stereo FM radio was, IIRC, WEAT-FM, 107.9, and I was in a suburb of Cleveland then. Must have gotten that station on a fluke, as the frequency was dead silent at the time, the local Cleveland station having been knocked off the air by lightning as I explained in my post. The Florida station was a rock station at the time (1970); ESPN (radio or TV) did not exist then. I don't know what the "dinky little Florida station" you were referring to could have been, as I have never heard any Florida AMs here in my entire life (I've been an Ohioan all my 52 years; never lived anywhere outside the state).

I like to do DX work on my Radiola 18, though its 0-100 dial makes it a little more work. I use that one just because its my oldest, and given its lack of selectivity, it makes it more work to really pull stuff in properly.

To the OP, its sort of intersting you get KYW clear out there in Lancaster. I know its a 50kw station in nearby Philly, but here in southern NJ I barely pull it in. I think I must be in one of the nulls in their radiation pattern or something because I can pull in 50kw Chicago stations with much stronger signals. Also, are you sure on the call sign for 740? I get 740 as CHWO out of Toronto, unless they changed call signs or something. Big Band Sunday Night is a fun program, and they have Bandstand on Saturdays which features mostly 50s music. They also do an OTR hour from like 10-11 pm on weeknights.

WABC-AM in New York also has an oldies radio program on weekends, Saturday nights, IIRC. I've only heard it a few times because I always forget to make a note of when it's on, but when I do remember to tune it in I do so because I really like 1950s-1960s oldies. There is an FM radio station near here that programs classic hits ('60s-'80s, so they can't be considered oldies--yet, anyway) and another in the next town east of here that plays nothing but 1950s-'60s oldies, even obscure ones that probably didn't get much air play when they were new.

Hi nice list i still am dx .Dont forget to try the new expanded band 1.600 to 1.710mhz.Ihave heard many stations there.Good luck on dxing try right at sunset and just befor sun rise.Should be able to get many more stations.Sprman : 0

I know, I once picked up KDIA out of Berkeley, California on the radio in my 1994 Ford Explorer here in Pittsburgh.