WRNO Worldwide

[richllewis]

There is more signs that WRNO Worldwide is preparing to go on the Air. There has been a few more posts thai indicates that WRNO Worldwide Shortwave Station is in the process of doing testing. Some of you Louisianans may be familiar with what is going on but if you can update the following report I will pass it on to Glenn Hauser and we can pass it on to the Shortwave Listening public around the world. This is from DX Listeners Digest 8-083. The following is a report from an Engineer who works at one of the TV stations in Boston and was at the WRNO Worldwide location in Louisiana a year and a half ago:

This is from DX Listeners Digest 8-083.

Glenn: Did WRNO move the transmitter antenna location? I visited
the old site a few years ago and the main lobe was pointed into a BIG
subdivision!!!! LESS THAN 100 feet. Regards (David Frantz, TN, WWRB,
July 19, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

Dan, Got this inquiry from Dave Frantz at WWRB. I haven`t heard of any
change, and my impression is that it is the same site as before. What
say you? Tnx for the monitoring reports. 73, (Glenn to Dan Brown, via
DXLD)

Hi Glenn: I do not think so. When I saw the TCI Log Periodic antenna
at WRNO's transmitter site near New Orleans about a year and a half
ago the feedpoint was at the rear of the property, right near (within
a few hundred feet) where a new subdivision had grown up since they
went off the air years ago. The wide open part of the Log was toward
the street aimed towards a large group of trees across the street.

This site is near the WWL AM transmitter site across and down the
street a ways. My guess is Larry the engineer will be passing a lot of
ferrite RFI filters out and there may even be vandalism to the
transmitter building or antenna due to the interference. This is why
they wanted to put up a new fence around the property before going on
the air. The direction of the antenna will have little effect on the
blanket of RFI that will be created in the area anyway.

I think it'd be very hard to physically move the antenna and am
guessing the FCC historical records of direction angle should indicate
it is probably still always where it has been. My guess is the TCI LP
is still where it was originally built, I believe aimed to the
northeast and thus "the Middle East" over the North Pole as I
distantly remember.

But then I have not been there in a year and a half and maybe they had
some weird reason to move it, which would require a total dismantling
and re-erection of the antenna after the towers were moved.

The transmitter building is the same old building. The transmitter is
a new Elcor 50 kW (old style plate modulated class C, not PDM or high
efficiency) rig. Doesn't sound bad though. I emailed Janet Mawire and
told her I heard the station and asked for a QSL if possible. Hope
this helps. Thanks! 73, (W1DAN, Dan Brown, CBTE, CBNT, WBZ-TV/DT,
WSBK-TV/DT Engineering, Boston, DX LISTENING DIGEST)

You can check this out for yourself at http://www.w4uvh.net/dxld8083.txt

[richllewis]

A little clarification is in order here. Janet Mawire is the wife of the Dr Robert Mawire, the CEO and Founder of Good News World Outreach, the present owner of WRNO Worldwide.

There have been a few others who reported that they could hear the testing that has been going on at the WRNO worldwide transmitter.

[smashedcd]

I programmed the frequencies into my shortwave and I havent heard anything yet.


Smashed

[richllewis]

I live in Central Mississippi and am about 200 miles from New Orleans. I tried to pick this up but no luck. You must recieve this signal quite a ways from New Orleans. If you live within 150 to 250 miles away from New Orleans you probably will not hear it as it is in WRNO Worldwide's skip zone. It has been heard as far away as Boston, as close as North Central Oklahoma and South Florida and as far away as Costa Rica. Also you must keep the receiver on constantly on 15590 during the day and 7505 at night as the testing is going to be sporatic.

[richllewis]

For all of you who do not pick up World of Radio on Sirius, here is a mp3 of the program where Glenn Hauser reports that WRNO Worldwide was going the air on his show World of Radio: http://www.w4uvh.net/wor1418.mp3

[RFLA]

When on full power, within 30 miles or so of The tower you will hear the station as I used to listen and switch back and forth between WRNO 99.5 and Worldwide on 7355khz back during the 1st Iraq war.

weird to hear some of the local advertisers not realizing their ads were being heard in Toledo:-)

RFLA

[Sawtooth McMullen]

i remember wrno worldwide simulcasting wrno fm on the shortwave signal. it was like hearing wrno on am but with more static than a distant low power am.
brian

[Sam]

I could never get WRNO world wide clearly. The channels were always too noisy for me. And I had a Grundig radio!!

[flytrap]

I live in Central Mississippi also, and back in the 90's I used to hear WRNO coming in gangbusters at night with the hairbanging "Z-rock" format for a short while and then they would switch to some spanish programming.  I could never pick it up in the daytime although I remember rush limbaugh would sometimes mention on air that they were on WRNO shortwave.  I believe it was 15690Khz or something.  I suspect the reason I couldn't pick it up in the daytime was maybe because the signal was jumping over my head, because while on vacation in Missori I picked up WRNO blasting in on my grandmothers cheap AM radio.  Some cheap radios will occasionally bleed in shortwave stations.  Heard some good rock and roll that day.  I remember back in the 80's I used to listen to WRNO shortwave on my college roomates massive chinese jambox which could pick up shortwave, but was nearly impossible to tune because the entire band was squeezed onto SW-1 and SW-2.  It took a steady hand to tune anything in, since the knob wasn't geared down.  Back then WRNO came in good during the day.

[richllewis]

According to Glenn Hauser, there hasn't been any reports of WRNO Worldwide in the past week. The Post is as follows:

No reports of WRNO for the past week; testing finished, or more to
come before programming, really from August 1? (Glenn Hauser, DXLD)

This comes from DX Listeners Digest8-085 at http://www.w4uvh.net/dxld8085.txt