These three towers are an amazing source for a powerful 50,000 watt signal.  The towers may reside at 35.333450° -97.505217°, 35.333276° -97.504729° and 35.333092° -97.504224° respectively but their signal can be heard well over 1,000 miles away.  My dad use to work at this station back in the 1960′s when it was KOMA AM.

I remember on a freakish couple of days in 1996 when I was in Fairbanks, Alaska, or more specifically at the Moose Creek Apartments located… 64.715154° -147.166405° when I received KOMA.  Me and my family were stationed at Eielson Air Force Base (AFB) at the time.  It was dark as it usually is during the winter and I was sitting int he car scanning across the band when I jokingly tuned across 1520 KHz and heard some 1950′s music.  I was intrigued and left it on there.  To my surprise I heard them discussing a Sock Hop program on Oklahoma City’s 1520…K-O-M-A.

I was so excited that I ran into the house and got my wife to come out to the car.  How unbelievable to think I was receiving a radio station more than 3,000 miles away AND it was a hometown station at that.  I thought about contacting them and telling them that I was hearing them in Alaska but I did not think they would believe me.  I have told many people about it and they nodded their heads in agreement but I am skeptical they believed me either.  

The amazing thing about it is that not only was this more than 3,000 miles away but there is another 50,000 watt station in Portland, Oregon (KGDD).  I use to live in Tucson, and Phoenix, Arizona when I was stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB, and Luke AFB respectively, and was able to receive KOMA/KOKC at night 365 days a year.  Their signal was very strong and very dependable.  KOKC is now a 24 hour news station and can heard nearly to the Canadian Border to the North and to the Pacific Coast to the West.  They broadcast on the center tower during the day and then go on all three at night to produce their directional signal.  As a designated clear channel station they are protected from other stations impeding on their signal.  Just as their is a station in the Buffalo, New York station called WWKB on the same frequency that is protected from KOKC.  This is why they require the directional signal at night.

The powerful signal is attenuated during the day by an invisible "D" layer of the ionosphere that is energized when the sun shines.  This layer absorbs most signals below 10 MHz preventing them from reaching the "F" layer that causes famous radio "skip".  The term skip means that radio signals are refracted or bent as they hit the "F" layer of the ionosphere causing the signal to be bent back to the earth and the signal is received at great distances.  The 50,000 watt signal can easily reach this much desired "F" layer during the evening when the lower level "D" layer virtually disappears with the absence of the sun.

This is a phenomenon that ham radio operators enjoy on high frequency (HF) operation.  Since the HF band is in the 2 MHz to 30 MHz shortwave  spectrum it is ideal for this skip.   These three towers are very prominent if you approach Oklahoma City from the South on Interstate 35 (I-35).  The towers are actually in the city limits of Moore, Oklahoma but when they were built many years ago this area was rural.  Now the towers are in a densely populated area with houses all around them.  The above photo was taken from a cemetery on the East side as the sun was rising behind me.

The station’s studios are in North Oklahoma City and their audio is transmitted to these towers and transmitter via a studio to transmission link (STL) using microwave.

Posted via web from Paul L. McCord Jr.

Wow!  We often complain about never having snow here in Oklahoma City.  Most of the time if we do have winter weather, it ends up being sleet or freezing rain.  Yesterday it was a nice 65 degrees and we were really enjoying it.  This morning I woke up at 6:00 AM and it was raining.  By 7:15 it had turned to sleet.  The sleet fell for nearly four hours before turning to snow.  By noon the National Weather Service had issued a blizzard warning for most of Oklahoma including Oklahoma City.  In my 43 years I cannot remember ever having a blizzard warning here.  The picture above shows looking behind my house toward the North.  The picture below shows a view looking across the street.  I was having a difficult time taking this picture because I the snow was blowing in my face even though the wind was from behind the house and I was on the front porch.

To be honest, I was very skeptical of this being much of a winter weather event because we have been promised these storms before and ended up with rain.  When these pictures were taken, the wind was blowing 50+ miles per hour (MPH).  Although we received 14.1 inches of snow, the drifts were pretty high.  We had to shovel a huge drift from behind the car just so we could back out of the drive way to pick up my son from work.

The good thing about this snow is that tomorrow is Christmas and we have not had a white Christmas in 20 years.  As of the time I am posting this, it is still snowing pretty hard.  The radar shows that it is almost over.  It looks like the snow will not last more than a couple more hours.  Tomorrow should be a nice clear day for Christmas although we will have a nice snow covered day.  While it is nice to have the snow, I have been watching the weather coverage all day and it has been telling us about one car accident in Midwest City that involved 50 cars.  Another accident in El Reno involved 20+ cars.  I know there have been many others but these two are the ones that really stood out to me.  Let’s hope no one was seriously injured.  It would be tragic for someone to have injuries on Christmas eve.  I did drive to the store just outside my residential area about an hour ago and it was tough but manageable.  As long as  you don’t stop in a deep snow drift you are okay.  We had to help push another car so they could get moving.

For us, it has been a nice day.  Our white Christmas is a welcome site and we are happy to see it despite having nearly zero visibility.

Gangland: Crazy Killers (Latino Gang In Oklahoma City, OK) [44 Minutes]

You may remember a post back in January when I took many gang graffiti pictures around South Oklahoma City.  This post had become a hostile place for rivals to post their hatred toward one another.  It got so bad that I had to disable the post.  At that time, I never realized that we had much of a problem other than the graffiti.  This week, the History Channel’s Gangland profiled a local gang, the South Side Locos and their hatred for another gang, Grande Barrio Centrals (GBC).  The above video is that program that was on television.  I know that many times the media tends to exaggerate things and that may be the case here as well.  I do however remember a couple of the events in this video happening.  We often hear about a shooting on the South side on the news but when it is reported on TV we never hear what it was about.  Most people ignore it because there are always going to be shootings on the news.

I was surprised to see this video on a national network.  For one thing, I never thought it was that bad around here.  Another thing is that I am not sure how wise it is to give them coverage on a national stage.  It is hard to imagine what positive things could come from this type of exposure.  In my opinion, this exposure can do nothing more than inflame the situation.  In the entire story, they consistently put down this GBC gang.  Although I am not really familiar with either of them, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand that the GBC’s are likely going to be offended by this program resulting in even more violence.  On another front, I am not too sure that any city chamber of commerce wants this kind of publicity.  When you have your city profiled on a national network for gang activity, it turns potential new residences away.  I mean, people that just want to live in peace are not likely to want to move to a place that is on national TV for gang violence.

Although I do think this program does exaggerate the situation to some degree, there is no denying their is a gang issue on the South side.  If you drive anywhere from I-35 West to May Avenue, and between 15th down to 59th, the graffiti is very prominent.  I have seen entire buildings that are painted over from the ground to the roof as displayed in the photo below.

In the picture above you can see on the bottom right where someone has posted LK for Loco Killer.  Someone quickly changed the L to a C for Central Killer.  These two gangs are talked about in the video above.  These two gangs are not the only ones in the area but they are the ones that are profiled in this program.  The photo above is just one small example of the tagging that has taken over the South side.  It is sad to see the constant vandalism that has taken over this area.  I have always seen small areas of graffiti around but it was quickly covered up.  It is so bad lately that it would take thousands of dollars just to cover up what is already there.  I have always been proud of my home town but this is the sort of thing that no one wants for their town.

One of the sad things about all this is that I have actually heard people defend the vandalism by calling it art.  It is not art when they are destroying other people’s property.  If they want to paint up their own house then so be it but leave other people’s property alone.  I first read about this story on the OKCTalk web site.  They were posting about the show being on at the moment but I missed it.  I found it on the Internet and thought I would post it here.

Hopefully in my idealist world, the people will see this and take a stand to clean up the problems.  Unfortunately it will likely result in more hostility between two groups that are being ‘dissed’ on national TV.  That is likely going to be the end result of this program’s airing.  It will make them even more emboldened where the tax payers are less safe and end up being stuck paying to repair all the damages.  I hate to be so cynical but the media coverage paints a rosy picture as though there is nothing wrong.  Our local media does not even know their is a South side.  One thing that I have noticed about this city is the enormous blinders that are on.  Our city has a North side that tends to reap most of the financial benefits that come with having one of the lowest unemployment numbers in the nation.  There are lots of great stories about how our economy has faired well in this downturn.  I have met people on the North side that have not been to the South side in 20 years.  They have lived here their whole lives and do not even know where some of the main streets go through.  It is this vacuum of knowledge about what is going on around them that keeps these problems out of the media.

The local media is almost exclusively comprised of North side residence.  I work with people that live on the North side that do not even know about the things that go on in the South side.  I do hold a little hope that having a national television exposure will wake up those in our local media so that the tax payers will know what is going on.  I sometimes think it is sort of like that awkwardness that people experience when they are at a red light and there is a homeless person standing there holding a sign.  It is too easy to stare straight ahead and pretend he is not there.  It is easy for our locals to pretend our problems are not there and ignore it because they live in their expensive home on the North side.  We do not want these types of stories getting national attention because it only exacerbates the problems.  I still love my home town and hope to see it retain its family values roots.  I do not want to see it become a den of crime to a point that no one wants to live here.

I would like to thank Shawn Wright for Tweeting the post…

“@tmonews can you confirm 3G in OKC? My phone just started indicating 3G…”

It was his Twitter post that made me check to see if it was true.  It looks as though our T-Mobile has finally turned on 3G for most of the Oklahoma City metro area as you can see from the map above.  This image was taken from the T-Mobile site.  I am both happy and disappointed by this map.  Happy because it is finally here and sad because the metro area coverage is very poor, even missing Norman completely.  I am going to believe based on previous examples of T-Mobile’s 3G deployments that this is just the first wave of coverage that is expanded within weeks.  I have seen this happen in other cities around the country as well.  I do think this is a positive step and I thought it was important enough to share even before leaving for work.  Since neither T-Mobile, nor Tmonews.com has announced OKC’s turn on yet, it leads me to believe this is not even official yet.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope that T-Mobile does a massive expansion over the OKC metro real soon.   This is great news for the T-Mobile faithful.

Yesterday I was driving around in our local Asian District and thought I would take this picture of the sign.  I have mixed feelings about things like this because although it is nice to have many cultures around, it also makes me wonder if our own culture is being squeezed out.  While Oklahoma City is not a huge city, it is large enough to see that different parts of town are predominantly one race or culture while others are different.  For example in this area of the city in the photo above it is predominantly Asian with a heavy population of Vietnamese.  On the South Side, there are mostly Hispanic leaning heavily on Mexican.  On the Northeast side of the city, there it is mostly a black population.

While I have nothing against any of these groups, I often wonder about all the promise in the 1960’s and 1970’s of our country being a melting pot where immigrants would come and assimilate into society and become American.  I am not saying they should give up any cultural influences of their homelands. I have seen that in many cases the various groups of people have become segregated from the rest of society into pockets.  Since my school years were in the 1970’s and 1980’s I can remember all the talk about integration and desegregation.  Despite all that talk, we find ourselves in a position where differing cultures are separate.  Again, understand that I am not putting anyone down but rather telling of my observations.

We have gone from being the “melting pot” to a multicultural society where differing cultures live in the same community maintaining their own cultures.  In some cases they are keeping the native language of their homeland furthering the segregation.  I am still unsure of whether this is a good thing or a bad thing but it does tend to go against all the lessons we were taught in school in the 1970’s.  Back then it was the prevailing thought that if you integrate children then they will be equal.  The idea was that separate but equal was not the same as equality.  Despite the teaching of those days we find ourselves living in communities where differing cultures are segregated into pockets.  Our community leaders are promoting this multiculturalism by honoring the different cultures with designating certain areas of the city as “culture” districts.  In the above photo we see how city leaders have chosen to not only give them an entrance into their community but also change the street signs to look like more of an Asian by using certain Asian fonts.

On the Southside of Oklahoma City the Mexican population has exploded and many businesses are not only in Spanish but fly the Mexican flag.  I have not seen any attempt by city leaders to give them an entry sign into their neighborhood but they do have their own Oklahoma City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.  Since my mom was born and raised in Southern New Mexico I have a soft spot for Mexican culture.

To date I have not heard any complaints about this type of segregation but I did think it was worthy of mentioning.  With the civil rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1960’s it was really pushed that we would not allow segregation.  At the time it seemed their motives were pure, and to help create a more equal society.  It was seen that whites were the dominating force and were suppressing the rights of others.   The portrayal of other races being segregated was being a bad thing and would not be tolerated.  It seems that now it is not a white force but rather differing cultures joining together to form their own communities.  There is no racial factor at all but rather the normal human nature that people are more comfortable within their own groups.  This comfort is not a slap in the face at others but just that, a comfort level.

In a similar way you could have a room full of white people and one black person.  A new black person enters the room and will naturally gravitate to the other black person when they do not even know each other.  This is not a discrimination thing but rather just desiring some comfort from familiarity.  It is my belief that some of this comfort level along with cultural pride has caused our communities to have segregation all over again.  I do not see it as a bad thing as long as our American culture does not begin to fade.  I am not too worried about that because these segregated communities have been going on for several decades now and yet most of these differing cultures have no problem working together at their employer.  I have found it to be interesting that a practice just 20 years ago would be frowned upon is now encouraged.  The term “melting pot” has faded from the vocabulary of most Americans.  In many neighborhoods you do find differing cultures living on the same street.  Despite this, we still have pockets of predominantly one race over another and that is not necessarily a bad thing. It seems that despite the racial concerns of a few, America is now more accepting of others and for the most part that is a good thing.  People no longer worry about having a certain race in their neighborhood like they use to.  I for one like not having to be concerned about having “one of them” in my neighborhood.  It is a different world now from what it was when I was younger.  I can remember when people would make racial slurs openly and not even think twice.  Looking back on it, I feel that it was shallow to feel that way.  I was one of them when I was younger but then that was all I was exposed to at the time.  I am curious how this will play out in the end.  How about you?

I guess it is that time again.  The photo above shows the temperature as 109 degrees while the National Weather Service only listed the high as 105.  Oklahoma gets a little of both cold and hot.  This is fairly common temperatures to get in summer though it only happens about two weeks each year.  The average high on the hottest day of the year is 94 degrees though we have periods of much warmer like this.  Just thought I would share this.

Tonight a storm went by here and barely brushed by us to the East.  We did manage to get enough light rain while the sun shine over head.  The one good thing that did come from this was this pretty rainbow to the East.  I will take whatever rain we can get but we really need some more.  The rainbow was a real blessing to look at it.  Also it cooled the temperature from 97 degrees to about 85 in just a half hour.  I just wanted to share this image.

I ran across this video on Youtube today advertising some motorcycle event coming to Oklahoma City this month.  I have never been much of a motorcycle fan myself but I have many friends and relatives that do.  This event is supposed to bring thousands of Harley Davidson riders to the Oklahoma City area.  It looks like it will be very interesting to bring more visitors to the area.  We already have a large motorcycle ridership here in the metro as I have seen hundreds of them Bricktown and over on Meridian Avenue near the airport.  This event is supposed to be June 26th and 26th so people will need to be paying attention to the roads.  I hope you get a chance to come to the area and visit.  Since the city of Oklahoma City put this video together, it is clear the city will be welcoming them with open arms.  This could be a huge event to see.  Hopefully I will be available to take some photos. Maybe it is wishful thinking but it would be nice.

I have been off work the last couple of days because I have poison ivy from cutting down some trees at my dad’s place.  Since I usually have to go to bed early because I have to be at work early, I usually miss out on the good storms.  Last night around 10:45 PM we had a storm come through with circulation near my house so we decided to go out for a drive and check it out.  I live in Del City, a suburb of Oklahoma City and the circulation was two miles to the Southwest of my house.  The tornado never did touch down but it was pretty exciting.  I made seven videos lasting more than an hour and I uploaded one of them onto Youtube so I could share it with you.

It starts out with me and my son Kevin standing in the front yard with the tornado sirens blowing and lots of lightning.  It sort of reminded me of the old days when I could do this all the time.  It seems like the only time we have storms around here is in the middle of the night or when I am at work in a building with no windows.  For this reason I miss about 90% of them that come through.  Every day I hear people complaining about all the rain and how they wish it would stop.  I cannot chime in with them because I rarely ever see it.  Anyway, as I have told you before, I just love severe weather and always have.

I took this photo of some mammatus clouds that were at the leading edge of the storm earlier.  At this time it looked as though the storm was going to miss us again.  Later the line reformed and came across giving us an exciting night.  I saw on the television advisory last night that their radar had detected over 1,000 lightning strikes in the last hour.  It was very interesting to watch.

Well I am going to try to go back to work tomorrow because I have already taken off two days.  I took off because of the poison ivy on the back of my legs gets really irritated by the pants rubbing against them.  At least at home I can wear shorts.  The rash seems to be getting better but the itching has not subsided and I only got two hours of sleep last night.  I had one and a half hours the night before and only one hour the night before that.  The itching makes it difficult to sleep.

The OU commencement is tomorrow night at 7:30 PM at the University of Oklahoma football stadium.  The smaller convocation will be on Saturday.  It should be a very exciting time.  This has been a long time coming and I am glad to have it over.  Now maybe we can get back to life again soon.  Well I just wanted to share our little storm we had last night because it was a welcome sight.  Do not get me wrong, I do not want anyone to get hurt or have their property damages but I do like to see storms when I can.  I still kick myself for not becoming a meteorologist.

This afternoon I was driving around and came upon this arch about 50 feet tall in the affluent Rivendell housing development in Southwest Oklahoma City where some home values exceed $1 million dollars.  This arch is at a roundabout near Southwest 131st Street, just East of May Avenue. I was amazed that it was not gated allowing me to drive through the neighborhood. 

In this photo we see the tree lined entry way to this neighborhood on Southwest 131st Street.  I was impressed at the whole area and these photos do not give it justice.  I thought it was a nice area that I have not been to in years.  In fact I had no idea this neighborhood even existed.  I was surprised at how much population had settled this far South. The last time I came through here a few years ago this was all rural farm land.  Now it has filled up pretty dense almost down to Southwest 149th Street.  Although this is still Oklahoma City, it is actually in Cleveland county almost to Norman.  If you care to look it up on Google Earth, you can go to 35.338095° -97.557840° and you can zoom right on top of it though when the pictures were taken, this did not exist.

I am not one of those wealth or celebrity worshippers like some you see on television but just thought this was a pretty area.  I for one would not want to live this extravagant even if I had the money.  There becomes a point where I think keeping up with the Jones’ can become more work than it is worth.  It is nice though to see our city thrive with success and know that not all is bad despite what you hear on the news.