We Used To .....

[Buckhammer]

WION is still going strong. I listen to it everyday.

 

[Tony in SD]

I listened to KSDN, KABR, KKAA all in Aberdeen SD. Only KSDN has survived. Also listen to KFYR Bismarck and another ND station in Jamestown. Dont remember the call letters. And of course the first and biggest SD AM station 5 state WNAX. I still listen to it. In a former life, I worked on their main tower multiple times, changed the light bulbs and worked on the current loop. Now nerd talk: Their main tower is a 5/8 wavelength tower at 570 kHz. In other words 927 feet tall. Which is very near the tallest if not the tallest AM tower in the country. To properly tune a 5/8 wave tower to the transmitter/feedline, a current loop (detector) is placed at 1/2 wavelength point up the tower. Then you tuned the tower for minimum current at the 1/2 wave point..

 

[Crazy Horse]

Billy Joel said in one of his songs that Billy the Kid came from Wheeling, West Virgina. One of many inaccuracies in the song lyrics of 'The Legend of Billy the Kid. Great song though ......

 

[stevieb49829]

WKRP in Cincinnati!!!

 

[M Nut]

WCCO Minneapolis, MN

 

[olgentdc]

It was wonderful to read All your responses , It amazes me how far some station could travel at nite , WSM in particular . WHAS Louisville could follow Us all nite nearly to the Florida line back in 1980 in My 76 T-bird.. But Guys like Tony is who really should salute ..I understand That You climbed these towers on rung at a time ! . what kind of training did they give You , Did You ever have near freakouts up there!? What about nightmares? .. Golly , That was dangerous work !, And No Doubt still is .

 

[formerly ny bill]

WKBW in Buffalo, WLS and WCFL Chicago, WOWO Fort Wayne, WBT Charlotte and Rockin' Ray with the Sunday
Night Hall of Fame, CKLW Windsor, Ont, all came in to my transistor radio in upstate NY at night while I was doing my homework.

 

[ss55]

Daytime KIOA out of Des Moines and WHB out of Kansas City, nights WLS out of Chicago, and on weekends at midnight Beaker Street on 1090 ( KAAY ? ) out of Little Rock, AR.

We switched to FM radio in the farrowing barn to eliminate the heavy radio static whenever thunderstorms were near or far.

Now-a-days I only listen to AM for a few ball games a year.

 

[chuck machinist]

(quoted from post at 23:37:07 11/29/23) Paul, Try 1310 am when you have time. Seemed like it was a strong signal down to Hector when I was down that way the other day.

WLS IN CHICAGO Channel 89!

 

[Jim in NC]

WSJS, WTOB, WCOG, WKIX, WPTF, and when at the NC and SC beaches, WAPE from Jacksonville, Fla.
Whenever working in the house during the day farm wives listened to local radio. Most tobacco packhouses had a radio too. If tobacco stripping was happening during the world series, all those radios were tuned to the games.

 

[Tractorcedric]

I remember all of those guys as well. Sometimes I got the cousin brucie show out of Chicago. Later we got WMPI in Scottsburg

 

[Old Ford Mechanic]

I remember listening to the 1968 Iowa State Girls High School Tournament with Denise Long the star player over WHO radio out of Des Moines. A strong AM station reaching into Alabama. I was a 13 year old kid.

 

[rrlund]

Ya, I used to listen to it every morning in the barn when Phil Cloud was the morning guy. I remember when they started their FM sister station, WYON. The transmitter for that one was over off Lincoln Lake road, north of Lowell.

WPLB is WSCG now, but still on.

 

[Doug Wi]

WCCO out of mpls/stpaul. Morning DJ's charle Boone and roger erickson. a legend in their own minds Plugged the barn radio in at 6 am and unplugged the last thing at night. People that stopped by would look for me in the barn cause they heard the radio on. No it was just the cows listening to it.

 

[55 50 Ron]

Tony, I understand your nerd talk. I took care of maintenance of KOWO AM and FM for several years as an after-hours job. Both now have different call letters. The call letters of Jamestown ND AM were KSJB. Maybe it's still that? While I was in electronics engineering college (NDSU) I worked at KXJB-TV Channel 4 control room which at the time was located along US highway 10 between Fargo and West Fargo with transmitter at Pillsbury ND. Later they built the new transmitter tower near Galesburg ND and it claims to be the tallest TV tower in the US.

 

[55 50 Ron]

OLD 560, I definitely agree about throwing your TV away. But I need to say I earned a lot of money working for RCA building TV transmitters in the early 1970s. Now I'm not very happy admitting I helped build them.

 

[Northvale PA]

I became a college basketball fan listening to Md Terps games on WBAL, while driving home from work. The announcer was Johnny Holliday and he was great. These days you can get many stations on the internet..look them up. I still prefer the radio at all times.

 

[55 50 Ron]

Growing up in ND I liked CKY Winnipeg at 580 AM. Country DJ was Porky Gene Charbonneau. Closest to home was KDLR 1240 AM Devils Lake with Bert Wick DJ. Also visited KFOX AM in Long Beach, CA while I served in the Navy.

 

[PJH]

Back in the early 50's everybody in our family loved to play gin rummy. Except me. I couldn't and still can't get interested in any kind of card game. Instead of joining in the card game, I would turn on our 1933 Crosley cathedral radio. I would slowly turn the frequency dial looking for the weakest signal. Fading in and out. I'd find one and patiently listen until it broadcast their call letters, then I would grab the ''call book'' and see if someone in the family had already discovered this station. Usually I would strike out - the station call letters and frequency were already entered by someone else in the family, but occasionally I would find a new one and my excitement would break up the hot card game while everyone confirmed my new find. 10 minutes of listening until it was broadcast again. Lots of back-slapping and then they were back to the cards, and I was onward in my quest for another new weak station. Sounds boring, I know, but we had no TV then and in that era people entertained themselves or went to bed. The old Crosley also had a shortwave band and I would often move over there to listen to the mysterious morse code transmissions. Then my oldest brother came home from the army with a nice Hallicrafter short wave receiver. I ''helped'' him string a wire antenna between two big elm trees in our yard. He was an army radio operator and he would decipher the mysterious morse code conversations for us. When he would go out on a date I would turn his Hallicrafter set on and run the bands. He would notice that someone had been fooling with his radio and he would box my ears, since I was the likely suspect. I learned to jot down the dial numbers before I moved them and then return the dials to his settings after playing with his radio. What he didn't know didn't hurt him. The shortwave broadcasts fascinated me and at the age of 40 I studied and learned to transmit and read morse code. After passing my Ham test here in Southern Illinois I convinced said older brother in northern Ohio to take the Ham test himself. He passed the test quite readily and we had lots of early Sunday morning fun pecking out CW conversations on 40 meters.

My favorite AM broadcast stations remain - KDKA in Pittsburg and WBAP in Ft. Worth/Dallas. Some of the oldest in the nation. Most stations are ''W'' east of the Mississippi and ''K'' West of the Mississippi.

WSM is memorable too. I had a radio that I would take to bed with me. It was supposed to be portable, but that was wishful thinking. My brother rigged up an AC power supply for it. It needed to be grounded, and I discovered that I could stick the ground wire in my sock against my ankle and it was happy, even in my upstairs bedroom. I'd fall asleep listening to the Grand Old Opry on Saturday nights.

I still have the 1933 Crosley.

 

[Rich'sToys]

Growing up, my folks used to listen to WCCO n the Twin Cities and KTOE in Mankato.
When we kids got old enough, we listened to WDGY in Minneapolis for the rock & roll music. At night we could get WLS from Chicago and KOMA from Oklahoma City.
In later years, KSTP in the Cities took over the modern music. Later on it went to a talk radio format. I used to listen to that when I had my mail route.