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"Black cat before the attack." Martin Munkácsi. Arts et métiers graphiques. January 1, 1931.

1977: Star Wars is released, featuring, of course, Darth Vader

(Pictured: Darth Vader)

1984: Director Todd Durham releases his Star Wars parody movie, Hyperspace, featuring Darth Vader inspired villain Lord Buckethead.

(Pictured: Hyperspace poster featuring two Jawa-esque aliens flying through space in a shopping trolley.)

1987: Hyperspace is released on video in the UK, under the new title Gremloids.

(Pictured: Gremloids cover in the style of the original Star Wars poster, featuring Lord Buckethead.)

To promote the film, Mike Lee, the owner of the distributing company, ran for parliament as Lord Buckethead. He ran in Margaret Thatcher's constituency, Finchley, in order to get on TV. Lord Buckethead was representing the Gremloids party.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead on TV with Margaret Thatcher.)

1992: Gremloids is re-released. Lord Buckethead rides again, this time against prime minister John Major in Huntingdon. (Here's a fun fact about Huntingdon: I was born there! :D) 87/92 Buckethead seems to have leaned pretty hard into the space supervillain thing, with campaign promises including 'demolish Birmingham to build a spaceport'.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead on TV with John Major. Other notable candidates include Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party.)

2017: comedian Jon Harvey, having recently watched Gremloids and learned of Lord Buckethead's candidacy for parliament, decides it's a great bit. He runs against Theresa May in Maidenhead. 2017 Buckethead seems to have a wackier and also more political approach, with campaign promises ranging from nonsense like 'nationalise Adele' to gesturing at actually sensible policies with stuff like 'lower the voting age to 16 and restrict voting after age 80'.

He also made an appearance on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. As with his previous incarnation, he was a member of the Gremloids party.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead dabbing on stage with Theresa May.)

2018: Director Todd Durham asserts his legal ownership of Lord Buckethead. Jon Harvey opted not to go to court over Buckethead and handed over the reins. Todd Durham extended an invitation to anyone who wanted to be the 'authorised' Lord Buckethead.

(Pictured: the new Lord Buckethead.)

2019: Lord Buckethead, now played by journalist David Hughes, stood against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. He ran for the Monster Raving Loony Party, the UK's pre-existing gag candidate party. He ran with a similarly silly manifesto as the 2017 incarnation, but with a bit less of a political edge. His promises included 'All doorways to be increased by 1 foot (30 cm) in height' and 'Nigel Farage to be sold for parts'.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead and Count Binface square up.)

Meanwhile, Jon Harvey in his new persona Count Binface, also ran against Boris Johnson. Buckethead and Binface face off! Binface ran as an independent with a manifesto once again blending silly and semi-serious promises such as 'nationalising model railways' and 'giving £1 trillion a week to the NHS'. This was also I believe the debut of his promise to 'move the hand dryer in the men's toilet at Uxbridge's Crown and Treaty pub to a more sensible position'.

(Pictured: Count Binface presenting the offending hand dryer, inconveniently close to both the sink and the urinals.)

He has a point.

2021: Count Binface runs for the position of Mayor of London for the first time, with promises such as 'London to join the European Union'. He notably finished ahead of far right party UKIP.

2023: Count Binface runs in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election following Boris Johnson's resignation. He once again gets more votes than UKIP.

May 2024: Count Binface once again runs to be Mayor of London, debuting his now iconic 'build at least one affordable house' promise. Notably, he finished ahead of far right party Britain First.

(Pictured: Count Binface with Rishi Sunak. Also pictured: Monster Raving Loony Party candidate Sir Archibald Stanton with a ventriloquist's dummy.)

July 2024: Count Binface stands in the general election, running in Richmond and Northallerton against prime minister Rishi Sunak. He debuts his promise to cap the price of 99p flakes at 99p. This is his most successful election to date with 308 votes.

(Pictured: Count Binface with Andy Burnham. Also pictured: independent candidate Robert Pownell, dressed as a fox for his own reasons.)

June 2026: Count Binface stands in the Makerfield by-election against Andy Burnham, (recently) former Mayor of Manchester running for parliament with the intention of standing in the Labour Party leadership contest.

(Pictured: Count Binface on BBC's Newsnight.)

for instance: on 1030 kHz, you have 3 authorized "class a" clear channel stations, each broadcasting at 50 kilowatts and routinely receivable for hundreds to thosuands of miles around with no special equipment beyond a standard AM radio:

CKWX is in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada KWKH is in Shreveport, Louisiana, USA WBBR is in New York City, New York, USA

Every other radio station across north america and into the carribbean and as far south as the northern bits of south america that also broadcasts at 1030 kHz has to use reduced power to ensure no interference with these 3 stations, and often they'll be required to turn off entirely at local nightfall or reduce power severely to support this.

So what do their coverage patterns look like? well it's funny

This is WBBR in daytime and nighttime measurement. It operates full 50 kilowatt output both day and night, but switches to a directionally aligned signal at night in order to help support having a clear channel.

Roughly speaking, "local" reception quality indicates you'll have no problem pulling it in even on a really low quality AM radio even in most buildings. "distant" indicates you might have to make sure to be outside or connected to an internal antenna but an average car radio should be fine. "fringe" indicates you'll have some significant needs to use a particularly sensitive radio that's being fairly precisely directed to it to ensure you can hear it. You'll also notice all the reception paterns going very far over the ocean and major bodies of water - quite simply it' s because the radio signal at these frequencies will bounce along water and also there's no structures or landforms otherwise impeding its travel.

And you'll notice there's no "fringe" line drawn on the nighttime map. Why is that? Because as a high power AM band station its fringe reception area is highly variable and fairly distant. It is routine for people with nice radio setups in western Europe to hear it strong and clear enough on nights with favorable conditions. It is routine to hear it well up Eastern Canada and down the eastern seaboard of the US. It is routine to hear it well into the midwest. If you tried to make a map showing areas that are more or less guarenteed to be in its fringe reception, it'd be so far out that it'd be impossible to make sense of the local and distant reception areas!

So let's look at the other stations on the frequency:

Here's KWKH. It's always operating with directional antenna arrays, though the directional pattern changes between day and night. The very wide range of guaranteed daytime reception is due to having a well placed high point for the antenna arrays. Much like WBBR, it's frequently received thousands of miles away, though once you get as far north as Chicago, it's more likely you're going to pull in WBBR (this is helped by the fact that when WBBR gets bounced over the mountains, it tends to get great assistance in signal from being able to conduct and bounce along Lake Ontario and Lake Erie). And here's CKWX:

Also directional, also switches directional patterns for night. Also this is a little awkward because from what I've read it's actually temporarily off the air due to some stuff being up with current ownership? Currently the license has been surrendered to the CRTC and is dormant, but this was the reception patterns up til 4 days ago at the time of this writing. It's likely it'll be re-issued to new ownership, as clear channels are highly valuable due to their natural reach. You'll also see that the Canadian detail is sparse to say the least, because the website used here only provides detailed info for US locations and only includes Canadian/Mexican/Carribbean stations that have braodcast patterns that reach into the US consistently.

Anyway, CKWX while operating was frequently heard at night well down the US part of the Pacific coast and some inland regions. It was also not infrequently received in the middle of the Pacific and in certain parts of Russia and Japan by radio enthusiasts. Many enthusiast setups could also reliably pick it up at night deep into inland northern Canada and occasionally in the US as far as northeast Texas (at which point KWKH in Louisiana on the same frequency would be much closer of course, but clearly the skywave conditions for that night weren't benefitting KWKH).

These stations are or in CKWX's case were/will be again massively distant from each other, but at their high power outputs can have massive shared nighttime reception areas from day to day.