Farthest Stations You've Ever Picked Up (SiriusXM, station, listened, AM)

[James1202]

Originally Posted by tvdxer

What's the farthest station you've ever picked up....

on AM?

on FM?

on Weather Radio?


On AM, it would have to be 530 RVCI (Radio Voz Cristiana Internacional) from Turks & Caicos, about 2,110 miles away. I used to hear it regularly on winter nights with my ICF-2010.

On FM, one has to make the distinction between tropo and E-Skip. Via tropo, I've logged 94.7 KHBZ Oklahoma City, OK, "The Razor". At the same time I had signals from Missouri, Illinois, and Nebraska, and closer by, pouring in like crazy. E-Skip is an entirely different mode of signal propagation that uses the E-Layer and normally bounces signals distances of 800 (but not less) to 1,300 miles. I've heard a Tucson-area station 1,410 miles via that.

On WX, the farthest I've ever gotten was WXM251, from South Shore, SD, 251 miles away.

AM: Trenton, NJ (123 miles)
FM: Elizabeth, NJ (72.5 miles)
Weather: nothing...nothing came in...static

[Marv101]

Most of the major league baseball teams which jefffla01 mentioned on the previous page are on clear-channel or class 1-A signals, which have exclusive rights to their assignef frequencies for several hundred miles.

When the Dodgers were on KFI (640 AM) many years years ago, you could hear Vin Scully's flawless voice throughout the western half of the country quite easily.

Even driving around on the north side of Las Vegas, 10 miles north of the Strip as I did last year, you could also pull in tons of stations from everywhere; one of the most startling to me was listening to a San Antonio Spurs game on that wonderful city's class 1-A flamethrower, WOAI (1200 AM).

Palm Springs is another great city for long range radio-listening; stations from SLC, SF and many other faraway cities come in very easily, even in the early morning up to 60-90 minutes after sunrise.

Then there AM 880 KRVN in Lexington, NE (225 miles west of Omaha), which came in like gangbusters at night when I visted a friend in Phoenix last year.

The possibilities are endless regardless of where you live, and especially at night.

[case44]

This was years ago, but in one of my old cars, I had a new stereo put in one day. I live in Dallas, and as I turned on my radio and scanned through the dial, I somehow picked up an FM signal out of Los Angeles. It happened on 92.3, and it was the durndest thing. Ended up being short-lived, but it was pretty wild. Typically, as you know, FM stations' signals don't usually extend a thousand miles.

[Dude111]

From where I am the farthest AM station i ever recieved was 1.1314Mhz -- IT WAS OVER SEAS SOMEWHERE (Could barely hear it a couple times)

[catman]

I managed to snag the Corpus Christi weather radio station from San Antonio, about 130 miles away.

[Hamish Forbes]

Originally Posted by AksarbeN

^^

I was always interested in building my own homebrew quad antenna for just AM DX listening back then. If made simple enough and lightweight one could even turn it with a small tv rotor.

How would this go? IIRC, a cubical quad is a two-element antenna, having a driven element and a parasitic element to provide added gain. Each element is about one wavelength long, bent into a square, meaning that each side of the square is a quarter wavelength long. The plane of parasitic would be held parallel to the plane of the driven element, a quarter wave away from the driven element, with the two elements being separated by the boom (thus outlining a cube). For the AM broadcast band, however, one wavelength is 300 meters (at 1000 KHz). This would make the CQ antenna huge, a 75x75x75 meter structure! Also, its Q would likely be high enough to make it unusable even slightly away from its resonant frequency.

A much more practical antenna might be a tuned, multi-turn loop. This could be as small as a few feet in diameter, and could have a very sharp null when turned against an interfering station (I think that the null may be toward the plane of the loop rather than its edge, which seems a bit counterintuitive, but i don't remember for sure) . The old radio magazines would have plans for these kinds of antennas from time to time. Commercial versions may (or may not) still be available; about ten years ago there was a beautiful version on the market for about $400 (IIRC??).

[SonySegaTendo617]

I haven't played with my dad's transistor radio(or whatever that special kind of radio is called where you can pick up stations pretty far away) in years, but I remember I used to be able to pick up stations every so often a few states away, and once in a great while I think a station or 2 would come in from Canada. I live on the north side of Chicago, btw. Wouldn't be surprised if Chicago stations are under the FCC 50,000 watt rule, since Rockford, South Bend, and Milwaukee are not too far outside of Chicago.

What I've always found interesting(though it has nothing to do with that radio I believe my dad still has, but hasn't used much in recent years), is how well 95.1 WIIL out of Pleasant Prairie, WI(just outside of Kenosha) comes in on car radios, boomboxes, etc., based on how well it can pick up far away stations. I'm always surprised how well it picks up, and I've noticed that station will pick up well in the car, even as far south as Lincoln Park and neighborhoods like that. And the signal doesn't get fuzzy, like I thought it would when I tested out if that station would pick up in the car, when passing through those neighborhoods. Go figure....

[tvdxer]

Just an addition, what are the farthest stations you have picked up traveling, or while living in different locations?

In Spain and Morocco, Saudi Arabia was audible on AM, 2,500 miles away. Longwave from Luxembourg was audible in Lanjaron, Spain, some 1,000 miles away, in mid-day. I might have even heard the U.S. (Radio Farda?) transmitter from Djibouti - some 3,500 miles away from where I received it (Marrakesh, Morocco). In Pitres, Spain, numerous Moroccan stations on FM came in loud and clear from approximately 150 miles away over the Mediterranean.

In Yucatan, I heard stations from Cleveland, San Antonio, New Orleans, and either Des Moines or Chicago on AM.

[radiojunky]

Yes, I like threads like this. I normally notice when driving with regular radio the stations that pick up better than others.

From Brunswick, GA - WNOK 104.7 Columbia, SC - 230 miles
From Cocoa Beach, FL - WQGA 103.3 Brunswick/Waycross, GA - 247 miles
From Winston-Salem, NC - WINC 92.5 Winchester, VA - 285 miles
From Richmond, VA - WINC 92.5 Winchester, VA - 136 miles
From Charleston, SC - WAPE 95.1 Jacksonville, FL - 198 miles
From Wilmington, DE - WBBO 98.5 Manahawkin, NJ - 106 miles
From Harrisburg, PA - WINC 92.5 Winchester, VA - 118 miles
From Tuckerton Beach, NJ - WSTW 93.7 Wilmington, DE - 106 miles
From Palm Coast, FL - WFLZ 93.3 Tampa/St. Petersburg, FL - 165 miles
From Naples, FL - WEOW 92.7 Key West - 248 miles (driving)/107 miles (nautical miles via ferry) - This means their radio signal travels over water, but friends have told me that WEOW can be heard in Miami, Havana (Cuba), and even in parts of Fort Meyers.

[Mytfastss]

So far, this is the best of what I'm been able to get...

AM 570, KNRS out of Salt Lake City ( estimated 590 miles )

AM 660 KTNN out of Window Rock Arizona ( estimated 720 miles )

AM 690 CBC out of Mexico ( estimated 450 miles )

AM 730 CHMJ out of Vancouver ( estimated 830 miles )

AM 770 KKOB out of Albuquerque ( estimated 860 miles )

AM 800 CKOR out of Penticton Canada ( estimated 855) miles

AM 850 KOA out of Denver ( estimated 930 miles )

AM 930 KSEI out of Boise Idaho ( estimated 530 miles )

AM 1030 KTWO out of Casper Wyoming ( estimated 905 miles )

AM 1040 WHO out of De Moines Iowa ( 1530 miles ) My record!!!

AM 1060 KCMX out of Calgary Canada ( estimated 1030 miles ) Very clear!!


I stopped at AM 1230 for now, boy that frequency have a lot of "wobble" at night!!


Honorable mentions
KFI 640
KOMO 1000
KDXU
KTAR
KNX 1070
I can get and receive pretty easy where I'm located. I would love to try to pick up WBAP out of Fort Worth Texas, but the 50KW transmitters for KGO AM 810 are 30 miles away (exactly ). How I was able to able AM 800 from Vancouver is a mystery.