Archive for February 16th, 2021

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 322

Tuesday, February 16th, 2021

Radio, radio!

A tour of WBCQ in Maine from April of last year. WBCQ is a new shortwave station:

WBCQ features a 1 million watt transmitter with a rotatable 400 foot tall high gain directional antenna array that has an Effective Radiated Power output of 20 million watts.

Bonus #1: We went on a virtual tour of the Early Television Museum. How about one of the Antique Wireless Museum?

Bonus #2: Another tour, this one of WLW in Mason, Ohio. WLW at one point was transmitting at 500,000 watts (between 1934 and 1939). They were forced to drop down to 50,000 watts, and still use that power level.

Despite no longer being the sole occupant of 700 kHz, WLW’s signal still sometimes spanned impressive distances, and in 1985 overnight host Dale Sommers received a call from a listener in Hawaii. Reception at the United States Air Force’s Thule Air Base in Greenland (4235 km) has been reported as sufficiently good for routine listening with an ordinary commercial AM-FM radio receiver at night during the Arctic winter.