Attempt to resurrect a dead thread beginning.....NOW
I have been an active AM, FM, and SW DX'er since I was around 8 years old. I started out on a sharp multiband radio and slowly moved to bigger and better things...
It is a shame that this thread hasn't gotten more replies and personal testimonies- one of my greatest enjoyments growing up as a kid was tuning around on the AM dial late at night while reading various books and magazines, sometimes until 2 in the morning!
The Chicagoland area is somewhat clear for DX, some of the most commonly heard
stations are:
600: WMT Cedar Rapids, IA
650: WSM: Nashville, TN
700: WLW Cincinnati, OH
740: CFZM: Toronto, CA
750: WSB Atlanta, GA
770: WABC NYC (rare, usually wiped out by AM 780 WBBM)
830: WCCO: Minneapolis, MN
840: WHAS Louisville KY (Depend on it!)
850 KOA Denver, CO
860 (Some Francophone station out of Montreal)
870 WWL New Orleans, LA
1040: WHO Des Moines, IA
1100: WTAM Cleveland, OH
1140: WRVA: Richmond, VA
1510: WLAC Nashville, TN
There are probably a few more that I have forgotten, maybe I will add them later. These can be listened to pretty much every night with even the most basic radio for the clear channel ones (most of them are if not all); radios with dual ferrite AM bars work well as well as ones with external antenna jacks, which allow for the plug-in and setup of a wire array that you can sling out of your window. A good long wire slung high with a slingshot or bow and arrow works wonders for receive- I probably tripled my reception of foreign SWL stations as well as a major increase in the number of hams I could pick up...
It doesn't take a lot of money at all but it may take a little ingenuity, but radio DX'ing is a great hobby- I would recommend it to anyone on here who is intrigued by faraway stations beckoning from the ionosphere and beyond...