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WNJC 1360 Update

I know you've been on the edge of your seat waiting for an update on WNJC.

Well, as of writing this, it's been off-air for at least five days. And prior to that, it's been off and on air with transmitter issues.

I've spoken with one of the owners recently about WNJC, and basically he told me that the land that the towers sit on was bought by a land development company who plans to turn that piece of land into homes. A case of the land being worth more than the station & towers.

I can't say for sure if the transmitter is off air for maintenance or if it has finally bitten the dust.
 
I know you've been on the edge of your seat waiting for an update on WNJC.

Well, as of writing this, it's been off-air for at least five days. And prior to that, it's been off and on air with transmitter issues.

I've spoken with one of the owners recently about WNJC, and basically he told me that the land that the towers sit on was bought by a land development company who plans to turn that piece of land into homes. A case of the land being worth more than the station & towers.

I can't say for sure if the transmitter is off air for maintenance or if it has finally bitten the dust.
EDIT: Spoke with Joe Glessner, one of the guys working on WNJC. This is what he had to say is going on. I was, admittedly, far off.

"We overnighted a new oscillator board from Mike Patton. We tried to install it today and it didn’t work either. So now I need to figure out what wrong with the original or the new one...We’re trying to get it back on. Just having a hard time going about it."

Ignore my original post.
 
Last I heard of WNJC was when they did that DX test last September -- the one with the sweep tones, the Morse IDs and the stairstep tones. They were atop the frequency here, despite 'local' WPPA Pottsville, which sends its 500-watt nighttime signal mostly south, away from me.
My buddy near Cape Cod says WNJC was L & C by him, despite WDRC being on.

I believe the original WNJC calls were WWBZ, licensed to Vineland, 1 kw omni day and 500 watts directional at night back in the 60's. The three locals in Vineland in the 60's were WWBZ, WDVL 1270, and WMVB Millville. Those last two were daytimers.

WNJC's nighttime pattern appears to pull it in, away from Cincinnati and Hartford. Lol -- WPPA Pottsville does the same. So what do I get when WPPA is off? Why, WSAI and WDRC, naturally.

 
WNJC has been 5kW omni-directional despite what radio-locator says for a few years now.
The license specifies 5 kw daytime with 4 towers and 800 watts at night with two towers. I can not legally be non-directional at any time.

Look the station up at the FCC site. You can look at the public file that has the technical data. 5 kw day, directional, 800 watts night, directional, separate patterns.

Radio-Locator and other online station listings simply "import" the FCC data and present it in their preferred format.
 
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I can not legally be non-directional at any time
I know what the information says, but speaking with the engineers who work on WNJC have told me that when they took it over from the Forsythe guys, they were running one tower (out of the original four) and running it non-directional.

Now, maybe they are back to their directional patterns, but I know from first hand account they were, at least at one point recently, non-directional.
 
I'm not often privy to the FCC site the way so many of you folks are. Most of my casual searches are off Radio-Locator and this site:


And I'm just a DXer -- technically and ever-so -- the worst of the four guys who furtively plied our hobby when the rest of the zip code in SE Queens was asleep.
So a thumbnail surmise is that when the 1360 facility in south Jersey went from 1000 omni day to 5000, they couldn't stay omni. And according to older logbooks they were always directional at night irrespective of their wattage. In the DAYTIME, though, their increase in power needed to pull it in, away from things like WPPA Pottsville. Both R-L and NF8m pages show that. WPPA is also 5000 watts day, but directional sort of E-W.

Off R-L, here's WPPA Pottsville's nighttime 500 watt signal:

The R-L tower usage is a bit misleading, by the way. WPPA has five towers, distributed like the '5' on a die. So they use three of them in the day and the other two in the die at night.

As David often says, those outer red contours are optimistic. I'm guessing that they were visually graphed to portray the individual stations' reach as if they were the only station on the frequency. And WPPA gets chewed up at night by me, just south of the first 'n' in 'Shenandoah'.

Similarly, I doubt that WNJC listenably comes into parts of South Philly at night despite that red-contour claim.
 
I know what the information says, but speaking with the engineers who work on WNJC have told me that when they took it over from the Forsythe guys, they were running one tower (out of the original four) and running it non-directional.

Now, maybe they are back to their directional patterns, but I know from first hand account they were, at least at one point recently, non-directional.
A station that has antenna issues can get permission to run at a lower power as long as that level does not exceed the minimum radiation in any direction under the licensed value. So, if in the deepest null, the station is the equivalent of 560 watts, then that is all they can run non-directionally.
 
Last summer I noted being able to receive WNJC at night from about 60 miles to their northeast, even though their signal is supposed to be deeply nulled in my direction:
Yup, have a friend who lives in Mercer County NJ, and can hear WNJC clear during the day.
 
According to Radio-Insight's FCC Report 5/8, the FCC has notified WNJC that its license will expire on June 1 at the end of its licensed period for failing to file a license renewal application.
 
According to Radio-Insight's FCC Report 5/8, the FCC has notified WNJC that its license will expire on June 1 at the end of its licensed period for failing to file a license renewal application.
Back in the Mike Venditti days of WNJC and their oldies format, their signal came thru like a local in the middle of the night thru center city and west of Route 1 on 76. That was in the late 90’s and there was talk back then that there was no way they were operating legally. It’s been about a decade since I’ve tuned them in but despite their signal the audio quality was absolute garbage by that point, and I’m one of the few who will tolerate music on AM if it’s processed correctly. Hopefully someone has done some fine tuning since then.
 
According to Radio-Insight's FCC Report 5/8, the FCC has notified WNJC that its license will expire on June 1 at the end of its licensed period for failing to file a license renewal application.

Seems like a pretty big thing to miss. Something WNJC can "late file" assuming they want to keep the license?
 
Who? What? Did a tree fall in the forest? 😉

No. i dont think 1360 has had more then a few dozen listeners at any given time in the last 2 decades.
 
Who? What? Did a tree fall in the forest? 😉

No. i dont think 1360 has had more then a few dozen listeners at any given time in the last 2 decades.

I thought you guys were pro-brokered programming which is what this station apparently is. Funny how you were calling me out in the Seattle thread yet here you are making fun of it yourselves.

Anyway, this station has an active website and a regularly updated FB page so it seems like they're on the air and someone probably forgot to file the renewal. Oops.
 
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