Over the Christmas break I hope to find some time to listen to some US or Canadian medium wave stations. Any suggestions on best frequencies to try?

WINS New York on 1010 kHz is something that's often heard over here, just before dusk UK time ?

1510 WMEX Boston with its 50kW directional antenna would be a good place to start. Whether the content is worthwhile is another matter...

Yes if you like listening to Baseball games! I only heard this station once when I had insomnia. Best times to catch it are between 3 - 6am GMT.

Doh. I meant Dawn

Your best bet is to look for high power stations from the US/Canada where the European and North American frequency rasters diverge the greatest. Also, in Great Circle terms Canada is much closer to Europe than the US making stations such as CJYQ in Newfoundland & Labrador a (relatively) easy catch on 930 kHz - nearest European frequencies 927 kHz / 936 kHz.

A synchronous detector such as found in the Sony 2001D is pretty much essential, so as to be able to maximise the raster window and also to eliminate strong upper/lower sideband European interference. Disclaimer: I've not listened in to CJYQ since 80s holiday trips to my now-home in the Hebrides so don't know how 'listenable' its new country music format is.

D'oh ! DS mangled the previous directional antenna link.

Why bother?

Just use Radio Garden to find suitable stations then listen to them online:

http://radio.garden/live/

Don't bother climbing Mt Snowdon, just get the train up <rolls eyes>

For DXing in general, it might be useful to know how atmospheric pressure is playing out. The following pressure model is for a week ahead - if you've not seen this particular one before, have a play around to see how it can be advanced by "hours" or "days"...

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-b...=glob&VAR=pslv

Good luck with your quest !

I understand listening on the west coast of ireland is easier due to the atlantic path.

This is indeed what happens when Christmas gets too merry...

VOCM (Voice of The Common Man) on 590 kHz is also a fairly easy catch if conditions are right.

I'm sure I managed to pick up this station a few years ago but have not been able to do so since. The signal wasn't that strong, perhaps it doesn't have enough power to normally successfully be picked up on the north east of England coast?

How many kW of power does the station broadcast at?

WINS is 50 kW

BTW I've just had a quick scan with my radio and I'm picking up faint audio from the following New York stations

710 WOR
1010 WINS
1520 WWKB

And it's directional. Most of the big New York AM stations have their transmitters in New Jersey and beam more-or-less east to the city, which is quite helpful for us in Europe (North-east would be better, but I don't think they'll move on our account!). The ground is marshy and wet, so presumably quite an efficient location. Quite what the effective radiated power might be, I don't know.

This thread brings back memories. I remember listening to WINS and WMEX maybe as much as 50 years ago. The UK's MW was a bit quieter back then so it was somewhat easier.

I don't think the pressure or anything else about the atmospheric weather has any effect on MW Dx. The reflecting layers for that are too high up, >150km, way above the weather.

It's VHF and UHF that is affective by various types of weather conditions. Medium Wave and Long Wave are not affected much.

The US does not have very high power Medium Wave transmitters like the Europe does though I seem to remember Radio Marti is quite high power.

WMEX doesn't run the sports format anymore - it's a bog-standard US talker with the usual syndicated right-wingers.

Another couple of interesting MW DX catches come from Asia. This year, I've managed to catch All India Radio on 1566 and China Radio International (in Russian) on 1521, both on the east coast of England. Both these stations run huge power and are fairly easy to hear during dusk.

Now is a good time for MW DX as many of the high-power European stations are gone - however, there seem to be a few UK MW community radio stations in the pipeline which could cause issues in the future.

There's a section here on Medium Wave Propagation, for DX see in particular how the geomagnetic A index can be used to predict Transatlantic Medium Wave progation conditions.

The last section about mentions how wet weather improves groundwave MW propagation.

http://www.mwcircle.org/mw_intro.htm