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A little northern humor:

I was driving through northern Illinois last night listening to a call-in program on WGN in Chicago. People were calling in all upset about the goat's head sent to Cubs owner Tom Ricketts at Wrigley Field.

Some guy called in from Indiana and said, "Why are you all so upset cause someone sent

a goat's head to Wrigley Field?

Aren't you the guys that sent a horse's behind to the White House".

I almost ran off the road!

RPBrown wrote:A little northern humor:

I was driving through northern Illinois last night listening to a call-in program on WGN in Chicago. People were calling in all upset about the goat's head sent to Cubs owner Tom Ricketts at Wrigley Field.

Some guy called in from Indiana and said, "Why are you all so upset cause someone sent

a goat's head to Wrigley Field?

Aren't you the guys that sent a horse's behind to the White House".

I almost ran off the road!

That is funny right there.

Very funny! And true.

Grew up there and recognize WGN radio.

BobCat wrote:Very funny! And true.

Grew up there and recognize WGN radio.

Back when I was a kid (a pretty long time ago) WGN in Chicago, WSM in Nashville, and some station (I don't remember) down on the Rio Grande were your late night choice of music. The Rio Grande station peddled an 8x12 picture of Jesus suitable for framing.

You could get a "personally autographed picture of Jesus Christ" from station XEG.

Listened to X-Rock 80 from California to New Mexico on many a road trip. XEROK Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.

The ZZ Top song "I heard it on the X" refers to the high power Mexican station (s)
Opposite Del Rio TX that were cutting edge in the 1950's. The X would play the "race music"
(Black artists) that whitebread US stations would not. That radio preacher sold all sorts of
Sketchy products to idiots.

It was amazing how many miles an AM station would reach . I used to get WLS Chicago in
Boston about 1000 miles distant.

SIA

Wow! WLS - you bring back another memory. Does WJJD ring a bell with anyone?

By the way the Chicago station WLS stood for "World's
Largest Store" aka Sears Roebuck.

Sears is circling the drain and may cease operations
eventually.

SIA

surprise_I'm_armed wrote: It was amazing how many miles an AM station would reach . I used to get WLS Chicago in
Boston about 1000 miles distant.

SIA

It's all based on frequency and a little on power. AM stations in the America's transmit between 540–1610 kHz, and the signal in the HF frequency range will 'skip' or bounce off the ionosphere back to the ground. I have used my ham radio in the 1800+ khz band (80 meters) and talked all across the US and other portions of North and South America just running a couple hundred watts. WLS, WOR and others were running 50,000 watts, so they had very strong signals. Some of the Mexican Class A stations could run up to 100,000 watts. That's why the border was so popular with those stations playing the music the US stations wouldn't. Skip was better at night and as the ionosphere became de-energized from the sun, so you could hear those distant stations after the sun went down where you couldn't get them during the day.

On the other hand, FM broadcast is on the 88 - 108 MHz frequency range (VHF) and is 'line of sight' meaning the signal will only go so far before the curvature of the earth put you in the shadow from the path of the signal and it is lost. That is why FM stations only cover a couple of hundred miles at best in flat terrain if they have a lot of power and a tall tower to get the signal as high as possible to get the distance. AM stations can use smaller short towers to transmit and do a better job.