KXI79: NOAA Weather Radio for Hillsboro, Illinois
KXI79 is the NOAA Weather Radio transmitter at Hillsboro (transmitter at Coffeen-Hillsboro), broadcasting on 162.425 MHz at 312 watts. It carries the National Weather Service St. Louis office's broadcast and covers 4 counties, each listed below with the SAME code an alert radio needs to wake for that county and stay quiet for the rest.
Listed out of service in the NWS coverage data this page is built from (retrieved July 2026). If you cannot hear it, that is probably why - the finder lists the other transmitters covering each county below, and the NWS posts outage notices on its own site.
| Callsign | KXI79 |
|---|---|
| Frequency | 162.425 MHz |
| Transmitter | Hillsboro (transmitter at Coffeen-Hillsboro), Illinois |
| Power | 312 watts |
| Forecast office | NWS St. Louis |
| Status | Out Of Service (NWS data, July 2026) |
Marine radios often label 162.425 MHz as WX4, but WX channel numbers vary by brand - go by the frequency.
Counties KXI79 covers
| County | State | SAME code |
|---|---|---|
| Bond | Illinois | 017005 |
| Fayette | Illinois | 017051 |
| Macoupin | Illinois | 017117 |
| Montgomery | Illinois | 017135 |
Program the six-digit code into your radio's SAME location list - the SAME code guide walks through it, and how alert radios work explains what the radio does with it.
A radio that will use this code
KXI79 alerts are only useful inside a radio you can program the s codes above into. Two that do it, for two different jobs.
At home, always on
Midland WR120B. Mains desk radio with battery backup. Program the SAME code from the table and it stays silent until your county specifically is warned, then wakes you.
Check current price (Amazon)In the bag or the car
Midland ER310. Crank, solar and USB, with a flashlight. Receives KXI79 the same as anything else; it does not do SAME alerting. The one still working on day three of an outage.
Check current price (Amazon)Hearing KXI79
Any receiver that tunes 162.425 MHz FM can listen: scanners, VHF ham radios, marine sets, or a software-defined receiver. What those do not do is wake you at 3 a.m. - for that you want a dedicated radio with SAME alerting, covered in the buyer's guide.
Every Illinois transmitter, county and SAME code: NOAA Weather Radio in Illinois. Or look any county up with the finder.
Sources:
- “NWR County Coverage Listings”. weather.gov. Archived from the original on 2026-07-19. Retrieved 2026-07-16. Every figure on this page - frequency, transmitter site, power, operational status, and county SAME codes - is from this dataset. Transmitters move, change power, and go down for maintenance; verify locally before you rely on it.