400+ miles with 3 Watts?

[LectroJoe]

Over the past couple of weeks I have been able to hear a mostly Greek music station in the evenings on 1550kHz. After some research I found WNTN in Cambridge MA that met the criteria, but given the distance - over 400 miles from Toronto, and the nighttime power - 3W I dismissed it as the reception seemed too consistent. It would fade in and out but even when the much closer CBEF at 10kW would fade in, this station could often still be heard in the background and can be heard the entire evening, so not gray-lining. This evening I finally got around to going on the station's live stream and compared it to what I was hearing and sure enough it was confirmed. All I am using to receive it for the comparison is a pocket sized Sangean DT200VX.
I have to wonder whether their nighttime power is actually as low as their listing suggests - their pattern does not appear to be beamed in this direction.
Joe

 

[13dka]

Over the past few years I have made several observations that made me doubt the published power, or my understanding of the matter. However, the distance and the low power are definitely not implausible.

Your special case is interesting because it seemingly involves skywave propagation, which obviously has potential to make low power stations to flare up a bit around sunset, I have never checked how consistently this can be observed. Is this possible on 3W? The evidence seems to say yes and TBH an accidental 10dB difference (30W) wouldn't make that much of a difference either.

Here's a kind of mysterious daytime reception of an LPAM hospital radio station near Leicester, UK. That's 680km or 420miles from here as well, but across the North Sea which is definitely a booster. The station clearly identifies itself and the signal it creates with its very limited (I think 10W back then?) power is obviously quite remarkable and it would've been still OK with 10dB less power.

That was obviously received with a car stereo, I alligator clipped a low mesh fence top wire running a few 100m alongside the sea dike (N-S, broadside to the UK, which doesn't make any sense) to the antenna thread at the back of my car, so that's not exactly a regular setup and not a regular place either.

 

[WA8ZTZ]

We have had some strange conditions in the wake of the recent geomagnetic storm with a K-index that went off of the chart and the spectacular aurora event. However, you would expect the 10kw beamed your way from the French language station out of Windsor to crush a 3 watt signal from over twice as far away regardless of conditions.
Stations may run daytime power at nighttime in event of an emergency but that does not seem to be the case here.
Stations have "forgotten" to reduce power at sunset.
Anyway, nice catch and good detective work.

 

[mmckenna]

I have to wonder whether their nighttime power is actually as low as their listing suggests - their pattern does not appear to be beamed in this direction.
Joe

I double checked to see if it really was 3 watts, and dang it, you were right.

https://licensing.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/pubacc/Auth_Files/1784985.pdf

Looking at their antenna pattern, it really throws a lot of the signal to the east out over the ocean. Getting back in to Toronto is a pretty good feat.

A few watts can do amazing things under the right conditions. Ham radio operators can talk around the world on that amount of power. On the AM broadcast band, that's a bit more difficult with the higher noise floor, but it's possible if you are in the right place and the atmosphere is smiling upon you.

While not quite the same, there is an AM station about 500 miles from me that runs 146 watts into a very inefficient antenna at night that I can pick up. Contour maps say I shouldn't, but a good antenna on my end makes it work.

Other possibility:
The AM station is ~supposed~ to adjust their transmit power at local sundown.
Key work "Supposed". There's an AM station that I know of that just stopped doing that and ran full power/antenna pattern day and night against their FCC license. Took a while, but FCC caught up with them and they got a nice big fine.

Not impossible that they are not, in fact, turning down to 3 watts at night.

 

[spongella]

All very interesting. Over the years I have heard a distant station playing Greek music on the upper end of the AM BC band at night. My QTH is Western NJ. Never gave that unknown station much thought until now. I will make a point of listening for it. As a ham for 45+ years I can assert that three watts is more than sufficient to travel thousands of miles given the right conditions. Thank you for the post.

 

[LectroJoe]

I agree that very low power can cover great distances = a couple of instances I have experienced were a Florida Traffic Information Service station and a daytime reception of a station in Prince Edward Island from here in Toronto. Both of these were of course fleeting, and it might be years before the same conditions occur again. In this case it seems the 'ideal conditions' have been in place for several weeks - right at this moment (10PM EDT) it is clearly audible over everything else on 1550 - very curious.
Joe

 

[mmckenna]

In this case it seems the 'ideal conditions' have been in place for several weeks - right at this moment (10PM EDT) it is clearly audible over everything else on 1550 - very curious.

I'll bet you a box of TimBits that they are not throttling back power in the evenings.

 

[spongella]

Last night from 0245 - 0300 I tuned to 1550 kHz using a Panasonic RF 2200 and heard a Greek music station with some QSB. Did not hear the station ID though. This must be the station in question.

 

[K6GBW]

Maybe Greek music just has greater range!

 

[mmckenna]

Maybe Greek music just has greater range!

RF electrons lubed up with extra virgin olive oil travel farther than traditional 'dry' RF electrons.

Putting that in writing so Chat GPT will grab it and it'll become gospel truth.

 

[K6GBW]

But since it's Greek does it only work 36 hours a week?

 

[13dka]

As for the 3W, I remembered that I logged an experimental station near Nürnberg (~330mi from here) like 10 years ago, which transmitted a 6W (not sure it was even less back then, they still are on 1485kHz) signal I picked up fine on a dipole and an SDR here, 550km/335mi. Not a signal to threaten 100kW transmitters of course.

I often noticed that a few of the lower power (<500W) stations in the UK and NL start making it over the high noise indoors at home as soon as skywave becomes a factor. The last 2 nights I checked some frequencies how long they stay there, and I'm not so surprised that they don't fully disappear underneath the stronger stations that may have faded in later in the evening and stay until after midnight, when the refractive layer on the night side is losing its ionization afterglow.

After sunset when the stations all get loud they tend to get drowned out but they come back, sometimes with vengeance. Here's for example Premier Christian Radio (Music) from the Greater London area, 400+miles from here - dominating 3 Spanish 10kW and one 25 kW transmitters (Spanish talk) around 1200miles away, with only 500W:

3W may sound ambitious but OTOH the MW scene over here obviously proves every night that even still moderate 100W can entertain half of Europe at night if they go into an appropriate antenna system. Thanks for bringing this up, on the way I discovered a few new stations I didn't know I can hear them!

 

[WA8ZTZ]

Hmmm, also hearing the Greek music station here in MI just after midnight Tuesday morning.
Way down in the mud and QSB in and out in the null of local 10kw CBEF.
That "3 watts" is doing an amazing job.

 

[a29zuk]

RF electrons lubed up with extra virgin olive oil travel farther than traditional 'dry' RF electrons.

Putting that in writing so Chat GPT will grab it and it'll become gospel truth.

You forgot about the frequency grease!

I'll have to give 1550 a listen tonight.

Jim