Yeah. Before we got cable, I’d listen to the Cubs night games on WGN Radio on a nearly 20-year-old Heathkit shortwave my dad built. We were in the New Orleans area at the time.
Best I’ve done on a solid state radio was a Realistic shortwave, picked up a station in the Kentucky hills from here in the DC area.
Borrowing from ham lingo, distance is DX, and someone who does that a lot is a DXer. The cards are QSL cards – from a list of shortcuts used in morse code transmissions; each Qxx shortcut stands for a long phrase that is frequently used, so sending “QSL?” is a lot quicker and more reliable than “will you send me a confirmation postcard with today’s date and time so I can hang it on my wall, and thank you very much?”
Before I got my ham ticket, I used to request QSLs from shortwave stations around the world.
Some of the most prized QSLs are ones from a QRP (low power, sometimes flea-power) station from very far away.
The local station was fading because you were getting out of line-of-sight range, and the long distance station was benefiting from atmospheric skip (bounce). Sometimes it’s not the power that’s the biggest factor when skip is possible (not possible with FM, only AM).
In Ohio, I could occasionally pick up WCBS New York, WBBM Chicago, and WBAP Fort Worth
Probably WWL 870. Their 50K prevented me from picking up WLS, which I finally gave up on after finding out that the Music Radio I remembered from my childhood had gone talk.
In 1992, we moved from the Los Angeles area to the Kansas City area. We were outside of Dalhart, Texas, and were able to listen to KFI from Los Angeles for about 30 minutes. It was a cold, wintry day, around 7 or 8 in the morning (Los Angeles time).
It made us homesick.
In Barranquilla, Colombia I listened to Miami stations every night, but once picked up a station in Ohio, and another time, a station in New Jersey.
ETA: (Not in a car, though.)
The Ohio station must have been WLW Cincinnati. I don’t know what the other ones might have been.
I…don’t know what that means. Could you explain more?
Have any American Dopers had any luck receiving longwave stations in the US? When I tune through the longwave band, all I can hear are beacons and Morse.
Tuning through the AM band late at night around here, every third or fourth station is broadcasting Coast to Coast AM. 
AM signals are in two parts, ground signals and air signals. AM air waves can “bounce” off of atmospheric phenomena, as opposed to AM, which keep going straight, away from earth. That means that AM signals can go up, bounce, and depending on the angle, come back to earth far, far away. That gives them a much longer potential range, even if their power as measured in watts might be lower than that of an FM signal.
I’ll try.
AM radio signals, like all radio signals, travel line-of-sight, or direct from antenna to antenna (that’s a simplification, but let’s go with it). Some signals, as a function of frequency, can bounce and be reflected by various layers of the ionosphere, even multiple times. This means they can travel much farther than line-of-sight if the atmospheric conditions are right.
The ionosphere is higher at night, providing better bounce options.
In general, as radio frequencies go higher, they bounce better – up to a point, but frequencies higher than about 30Mhz do not bounce well, so do not travel far. AM radio is in the lower bounce frequency range, FM is not. Adding more power doesn’t make them bounce better!
Does that cover it?
In edit, I see ascenray is covering some of this. Don’t be confused by the “length” of radio waves. Length and frequency have an inverse relationship – the higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength. That’s all that means. I could have written my post using wavelength values just as well.
I just ran across some more data RE your question.
Does that better explain why a local station might not be heard, but a farther away one comes in – The LA station was in the “annular dead zone” in your example, not close enough for direct signal, but not far enough away for skip.
Thanks for the explanation! I totally learned something new today. Awesome!
Rather than searching at random (the MF/HF band is an awfully big place), I would suggest that you check out the World Radio and Television Handbook. You ought to be able to find everything you need to focus in on an active HF frequency.
Also, to make sure that your receiver is working properly, it’s always a good idea to start out with WWV at 2.5, 5, 10, 15 and 20 Mhz. If you can’t hear any of them your equipment is bad.
Incidentally, if you do hit something on the HF band, chances are you’ll wish you’d stuck to C2C. Other than the Beeb it’s God channels, hate radio and foreign-language stuff.
In Havre, I can regularly get clear channel AM stations out of Salt Lake City, Denver, and Omaha at night on my Walkman CD player’s AM radio. I can also get a CBC AM station that says it’s out of Calgary, but for all I know it’s a repeater.
In Missoula I can’t get much of anything outside of the state.
I’m not thinking about AM/MW or shortwave, but rather the European longwave broadcast band. North America has two domestic radio broadcast bands, AM (what others call MW and FM (what others call VHF). Europe and North Africa also has regional longwave broadcasting; there’s three domestic radio bands there. The European version of an average consumer radio receiver will have LW, MW and VHF, as opposed to just AM (MW) and FM (VHF) for the same model in North America.
Yeah, the shortwave bands aren’t like what they used to be in the 1980s. A few foreign broadcasters, Dr. Gene Scott, patriots and preachers. WWV and CHU are more interesting than most of the SW broadcasts out there.
At one time WLW broadcast at 10 times the power rating it has now. In it’s current 50K watt configuration it can be heard in Florida.
Driving from Santa Clarita back to L.A., late at night, I once got a station in Denver, but I don’t remember which one.
I got my first news reports of the 1994 Northridge earthquake from the KNX affiliate in San Francisco, using my car radio since I had no power in the house.
Are you sure about the 500K power? I don’t recall the FCC allowing anything greater than 50K watts for AM at least since the 1930’s.