Fun on 1080

Friday at 2150 UTC, I turned the radio on and randomly tuned up the AM band from 860 kHz. When I arrived at 1080 kHz, I found no one there! I live 12 miles from the transmitter site of WTIC, a 50,000-watt IBOC station on 1080 and because of that proximity, I have never logged another station on 1080 except WTIC. I don’t know why WTIC was off the air, but here was an opportunity to log something new on 1080.

Initially, I heard nothing except splatter from WBAL on 1090. Gradually, a gospel station starting building strength, but I never heard a station ID, nor could I match it with any AM radio simulcasts on the Internet. 

A second station appeared, a religious station with a preacher preaching. The signal eventually came up. There was no station ID, but I did match it exactly with WWNL’s Internet simulcast. WWNL is located in Pittsburgh transmitting 25,000 watts west-southwest of this location.

WTIC returned to the air at 2232 UTC with no mention as to why it was off the air,

It was fun while it lasted!

Earlier in the week, Wednesday at 0545 UTC, I logged a new one on 550 AM: WAME in Statesville, North Carolina, transmitting 53 watts, 586 miles to the southwest.

The WAME logging was better DX than the WWNL logging, but the WWNL logging was a once in a lifetime (so far) logging!