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WGOP 540 Moving Closer to DC?

D

DXingRadio

So the simple line in their suspension of operations says,

“Move WGOP to Charles County permanently, once renovation are completed.”

No application to back that up, of course. The station has been limping along with very low power STA since the fire. If the owner wanted a AM station in Charles County I’m sure the late WKIK 1560 would’ve been cheap!

I’m remembering 20 years ago Birach was going to move WDMV and WGOP to a site north of DC near Damascus. Never happened, I think mostly because of area NIMBYs.
 
WGOP is sandwiched between co-channels WWCS Canonsburg, PA and WBWD Islip, NY. There is not much power increase that can be had without jumping to a directional array. WKIK had to contend with Family Radio 1560 in New York City. At 1000 watts day-only, WKIK struggled most days due to skywave interference.
 
From a quaint old "public service" standpoint, it should stay in Pocomoke. Might only be worth the price of a beat-up third-hand pickup truck. But as an actual business proposition? Go west, young man.

Personally, I'd rather see it donated to the Joy FM folks.
 
At first I thought the 540 frequency would be a challenge to diplex at the 1030 site (50kw) but perhaps it's possible. WWGB's antennas are 106.7M tall while the (last) WGOP antenna is only 97.7 meters tall. Now diplexing a 1 kw signal onto a higher power system might be difficult.
 
10 days later the STA was expanded upon,

Draft Copy « Licensing and Management System « FCC

Licensing and Management System
enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov

Silent Status Narrative
As previously advised, there was a fire at the WGOP and W293DN
transmitter/studio. The studio was moved to a temporary location. I
request to Move WGOP and W293DN to Charles County permanently.
Once renovations, proper signal evaluation and equipment are installed
I request to resume broadcast. This application supersedes the previous
application submitted because of filing time passed the time requested
to go silent. Additional time will be required to return the facilities back
to the air. As such, we respectfully request an extension of silent
authority for each station.
Thank You
Roger Waters

First question, doesn't Pink Floyd have something better to do? Second question, where's the application to move WGOP closer to DC?
 
RF101 said:
At first I thought the 540 frequency would be a challenge to diplex at the 1030 site (50kw) but perhaps it's possible. WWGB's antennas are 106.7M tall while the (last) WGOP antenna is only 97.7 meters tall. Now diplexing a 1 kw signal onto a higher power system might be difficult.
Click to expand...
Handling very different power levels in a duplexed operation is not that difficult. All components need to be able to handle the higher power level, right down to tower insulators.

An electrically short tower can be tuned to "match" the frequency with coils and caps. I had a station licensed to 570 AM but the tower was just 200 feet high and top loaded. I could not justify the cost of higher towers due to huge shipping costs, high import taxes and lack of experience high metal tower crews.

Diplexing does two things: it tunes the station to the tower and rejects the feedback of the other station into the first station's transmitter. Both are relatively simple to do.
 
Moving the AM will be much easier than the translator. Even southern Charles County struggles to have an open FM translator channel. I do not know what other issues may arise. When it's an FM translator move rebroadcasting an FM station you have to show some sort of overlap from the old to new contour. I do not know if that works for cross-band translator moves. Care to chime in experts?
 
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