[quidnunc]

_Jim wrote: Do you remember the 'border blasters' on the AM broadcast band back sometime in the late 70's and 80's? Stations that ran 500,000 watts (ten times the legal limit in the US) and sold air time to various preachers who hawked various 'mystery' cures via the mail?

The 'border blasters' started operating in the '30s, though not at the power that they did later.

I remember listening to one from Del Rio, TX when I was a kid in NE Illinois in the '40s.

Incidently, singer Slim Whitman got his start on the 'border blasters'.

I get a little magazine about old-time radio called 'Nostalgia Digest'.

The spring 2003 issue had an article about the 'border blasters'.

[_Jim]

The 'border blasters' started operating in the '30s,

My recollection is a personal recollection of such stations coming out of Del Rio as XERF ... growing up in the Chicago - Grand Rapids - Detriot triangle we didn't hear a lot of other stations from the southwest part of the world - but I remember the 'corn' coming out of Del Rio!