I noticed WLEV has a permit to decrease power, thus backing their signal away from the philly market by 10 or so miles. Could this be a deal struck up with the new owners of W264BH, so they can change their highly directional pattern and bring their signal to the now heavily nulled north/northwest sections of the market. They seem to be protecting WLEV alot more than WZXL.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
wlev scaling down, but why?
- Thread starter daddyoo
- Start date
WLEV appears to have moved its site a few miles and at the same time raised the height a tiny bit. That would require a small power adjustment downwards.
The protected contour in the Philadelphia area looks very, very close to the old one.
I doubt that the WLEV move has anything to do with a Philadelphia area translator. It looks more like they moved to a better tower or consolidated with other FMs on one. Scott Fybush, who often checks in here, likely knows the reason.
WFMZ TV 69 has entered into a spectrum sharing agreement with WBPH TV, which has its own tower less than a mile away. So I'd assume WLEV is getting a top-mounted antenna on the same tower they have been on, instead of the side-mounted antenna that deferred to the television license on top.
So your saying WFMZ TV is going to move to the WBPH TV tower, thus freeing up their top mast and allowing WLEV to move there. Would this allow W264BH to ease up their tight pattern to the N/NW sections, if so, this move happened at the right time for the new owners. I thought WFMZ owned that tower, since way back when WFMZ was BM on 100.7.
If it’s just a nearby tower at simply a height increase (which is appears to be), the *only* thing to change would be the ERP decrease, height increase = lower ERP to compensate = identical pattern maybe a negligible improvement on extreme fringe if any. No benefit to the co-channel translator in any way and I can’t imagine a circumstance where one could be found short of something phenomenal that cumulus couldn’t say no to. I doubt, with the current times, that’s even remotely a possibility.
Either a cost benefit, coverage benefit (albeit slight) or both. With FM height is where it’s at...
Reading too much into the CP...
I'm pretty sure that WBPH moved to the WFMZ tower because that tower is located at WFMZ along with a generator for back up power.
Yes, the share-time signal carrying WLVT, WBPH, WFMZ and WPPT comes from the tower behind the WFMZ studios.
From what I can tell from the applications, WLEV was granted a CP in 2018 to move to a new antenna on that same WFMZ tower, and then in 2019 applied to modify that CP to shift the height to a different spot on the tower to accommodate DTV repack antenna moves.
The 2018/2019 apps showed a slightly different set of coordinates, because the 1992 CP application apparently was off by a second or two.
The upshot: the WLEV signal isn't changing - if it goes up on the tower, it goes down in power and the protected contours don't really move at all.
From what I can tell from the applications, WLEV was granted a CP in 2018 to move to a new antenna on that same WFMZ tower, and then in 2019 applied to modify that CP to shift the height to a different spot on the tower to accommodate DTV repack antenna moves.
The 2018/2019 apps showed a slightly different set of coordinates, because the 1992 CP application apparently was off by a second or two.
The upshot: the WLEV signal isn't changing - if it goes up on the tower, it goes down in power and the protected contours don't really move at all.
- Status