The Wikipedia page for WXTI in Lafayette, Florida isn't much either. But apparently on August 31, 2018 they switched from another, more, er... "interesting" call sign.
WLW, star of today's "Facts", ran 500,000 Watts and was readily received deep into Russia. I have heard ("I read on the internet") that you could find Russians with strong mid-west(US) speech patterns, who learned English from WLW. There were lots of complaints worldwide, but Crosley also made most of the refrigerators in America, so they let him flood the air until WWII gave an excuse to limit a lot of radio. (WLW could give news to the whole country but it could also guide long-distance bombers to the Heartland.) Postwar the 500KW stayed on standby with maybe monthly "tests". In fact the exciter may have been the 50KW 'legal' transmitter?)
In the 1980s there were several big midwest AM stations which threw reliable ground wave hundreds of miles in the daytime, skip and night waves even further. WCBS AM at NYC is tightly patterned to minimize rays to Europe and Canada.
Low flying aircraft-- as you come onto the Maine Turnpike at Bangor the jetliners and military tankers (101st Air Refueling Wing) are on final-final approach and it looks like they are landing on your roof. Or clipping the "Low Flying..." sign. I should get out and whack the top of that sign.....
They really look closer than the mini-planes at our local strip as they glide in over the traffic light at the grange.
At certain times in recent years there was a LOT of cross-Atlantic traffic into Bangor, some of it needing mid-ocean re-fueling. Sometimes four tankers at ones. Also a lot of personnel rotating in and out (Bangor had dedicated greeters).
It's not as bad as Gibraltar, where the highway runs across the field and they have to close the highway to land a plane (the LAX-like tunnel project is taking forever).
They really look closer than the mini-planes at our local strip as they glide in over the traffic light at the grange.
At certain times in recent years there was a LOT of cross-Atlantic traffic into Bangor, some of it needing mid-ocean re-fueling. Sometimes four tankers at ones. Also a lot of personnel rotating in and out (Bangor had dedicated greeters).
It's not as bad as Gibraltar, where the highway runs across the field and they have to close the highway to land a plane (the LAX-like tunnel project is taking forever).
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Big city radio stations come and go like dirty socks. For as long as I can remember (mid 50's) there was one constant in Miami, WQAM. Their 50KW "clear channel" transmitter on 560 KHz had a single 1/4 wave (huge) tower rising right out of Biscayne Bay behind the Miami Herald (newspaper) and Dupont buildings. It was my "lighthouse" when sailing in the Atlantic Ocean at night. It could be received clearly even in daytime if you were near the Atlantic Ocean as far north as New England, or near the Gulf of Mexico almost to NOLA. Get a few miles inland, and WQAM was gone. Several friends who were originally from Cuba tell of listening to WQAM in northern Cuba, especially Havana. They would set their radio on the table and rotate it to null out the local Cuban station on a nearby frequency, then turn the dial down to 560 to hear the Beatles in the 60's. WQAM was one of two top 40 stations in Miami. Both competed with each other for listeners, promoted music through concerts and media, and even put out their own compilation records. The other station, WFUN was at a large mall in the late 60's giving out free 45 RPM records with their call sign on them.
From childhood until the 80's these two ruled the teen market in Miami......then the music died. WFUN went away, and WQAM went country. Miami was now back to the dirty socks stage since there were now three dominant languages spoken, by then AM radio had several non English, stations that were mostly talk. There was virtually no music on AM for anyone under 30 except country and Latin disco. FM had come and conquered the music radio scene. WQAM had to tear down the huge tower in the bay, as did WRIZ / WRHC who had a smaller directional array with the 10 KW transmitter out on a platform in the bay in what was known as "Stiltsville." WRIZ and a few other Miami stations were given an STA from the FCC to increase power to "combat intentional jamming by stations in Cuba." In reality they were cranking up the power and directionality of their signal in order to be heard in Cuba. A high school classmate became the "engineer" at WRIZ when he returned from Vietnam. He lived in a shack in the middle of the bay for 4 days on, 3 days off. "Don't touch anything, read the meters, write the numbers in the log book, call us if anything gets close to the spec line." "Fish all day, party all night, what's not to like."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiltsville
TWR Bonaire (the "biggest signal on the planet) could be heard in Miami by rotating the radio to null WFUN on 790, then bumping the dial upwards. They had somewhere around a zillion watts into a similar tower in the water broadcasting from an island off the coast of South America. Their target audience was Cuba.
From childhood until the 80's these two ruled the teen market in Miami......then the music died. WFUN went away, and WQAM went country. Miami was now back to the dirty socks stage since there were now three dominant languages spoken, by then AM radio had several non English, stations that were mostly talk. There was virtually no music on AM for anyone under 30 except country and Latin disco. FM had come and conquered the music radio scene. WQAM had to tear down the huge tower in the bay, as did WRIZ / WRHC who had a smaller directional array with the 10 KW transmitter out on a platform in the bay in what was known as "Stiltsville." WRIZ and a few other Miami stations were given an STA from the FCC to increase power to "combat intentional jamming by stations in Cuba." In reality they were cranking up the power and directionality of their signal in order to be heard in Cuba. A high school classmate became the "engineer" at WRIZ when he returned from Vietnam. He lived in a shack in the middle of the bay for 4 days on, 3 days off. "Don't touch anything, read the meters, write the numbers in the log book, call us if anything gets close to the spec line." "Fish all day, party all night, what's not to like."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiltsville
TWR Bonaire (the "biggest signal on the planet) could be heard in Miami by rotating the radio to null WFUN on 790, then bumping the dial upwards. They had somewhere around a zillion watts into a similar tower in the water broadcasting from an island off the coast of South America. Their target audience was Cuba.
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Oh, not Politics discussion, just mentioning what kind of muscle was behind them.
Back in the day, 1 M Watt Radio Beijing was the loudest, at night I could easily listen to it in Argentina as if it were a local station.
All it needed was the whole Pacific in the Night/shadow area so as to have an undisturbed troposphere reflection area in between.
I listened at Night (of course) and after 20 Hs I started picking signals coming from the East, over the Atlantic, anything from Russia to rest of Europe to Egypt, etc. ; at about 6 started to hear first China because of its sheer power but then Japan and Korea ...until our own sunrise which bloated the Sky.
During the day, only relatively nearby and powerful Brazilian stations and a couple Chilean ones, just a stone throw away.
Back in the day, 1 M Watt Radio Beijing was the loudest, at night I could easily listen to it in Argentina as if it were a local station.
All it needed was the whole Pacific in the Night/shadow area so as to have an undisturbed troposphere reflection area in between.
I listened at Night (of course) and after 20 Hs I started picking signals coming from the East, over the Atlantic, anything from Russia to rest of Europe to Egypt, etc. ; at about 6 started to hear first China because of its sheer power but then Japan and Korea ...until our own sunrise which bloated the Sky.
During the day, only relatively nearby and powerful Brazilian stations and a couple Chilean ones, just a stone throw away.
I've never heard that about the 500kW WLW. Crosley may have had a slant but mostly he seems to have been a salesman.
TWR Bonaire is papered for 500kW but equipped for 450kW (1dB shy of WLW in its prime) and because they built on a barren (tourist) island the electricity costs forced them to dim to 100kW for a few years while they roused support. TRW is Christian Gospel. Political or not, they claim great interest from Cubans.
I was running student radio in the 1970s and I recall being advised off the main Voice Of Cuba frequencies which indeed did come booming into NJ.
WAWZ, the Pillar of Fire Church, "Your Voice of Faith and Inspiration", operated in a corn/cow field in central New Jersey and had a fairly good AM signal (part-time, 5kW). But as George says, AM went out of style and they shut the AM side down in 1983. Pillar Of Fire was well up the hill from the Alexanderson Alternator (50kW then 200kW, 22kcps) on the Raritan River, which gave clear solid non-Marconi trans-Atlantic service in WWI. Some of these spun again for WWII. That Spanish-tile building was still there until a few years ago.
However, avoid exposing your LPs to direct sunlight...
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