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1010 signal not North/South enough

The station's pattern has never changed - its always been a "bowtie" pattern with the transmitter in Seffner -I remember first hearing it as WINQ in 1970 (a talk station), except that it was daytime only.
 
Yes, it's amazing how poor that 50,000 watt signal is in the northern and southern suburbs of Tampa. As others have noted, the signal is ok to the east.
 
Yes, 1010 must protect Jacksonville... but Florida soil is not very conductive, and the null toward Jax falls over thinly populated areas like the Green Swamp that are not really part of the Tampa Bay metro.

The bigger problems appear to be nulls over the Gulf to protect stations in Louisiana and the Panhandle. Those fall over populated areas like Trinity, Citrus Park and New Port Richey.

My suggestion would be to find the relatives of the 85-year-olds who are sending in money to keep that religious station on 1010 in Louisiana alive, and let them know what mom or Aunt Edna is doing with their inheritance. ;)
 
They don't have to protect that Louisiana station at night.. WCKW 1010 Grayville (West of Metarie) is a 250 Watt non Directional Daytimer.
Click to expand...

It's actually 500 watts... and its protected daytime contour goes all the way to the Gulf... meaning our 1010 has to make sure that no more than .025 millivolts makes it across the Gulf to Louisiana... which means putting no more than a whisper along parts of the U.S. 19 corridor during the daytime.

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WCKW&service=AM&status=L&hours=D

Remember that "weak signal" is relative. You may be able to pull in 1010 in Citrus Park, but it's going to sound weaker than a lot of other stations... and it may frustrate people using a small radio in a building.

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WQYK&service=AM&status=L&hours=D
 
couple of additional thoughts and pieces to this puzzle...

In addition to WJXL (AM1010) in Jacksonville and WCKW (AM 1010) in Louisiana.. there was a another... WCNU AM 1010 in Crestview.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WCNU

Without digging thru the dusty archives, it's probably a safe bet that AM 1010 in Tampa went on the air after AM 1010 in Crestview and was forced to protect it. WCNU is dark now, and was deleted from the FCC database a dozen years ago.

Several times between 1996 (when WCNU went dark) until I left in 2005, I suggested a new engineering study to see if the pattern could be let out a bit. I could be wrong, but I think the current "bowtie" came about when the station gained 24 hour status... 50k day / 5k night... of course, protecting Crestview. It may have been less directional as a daytimer. (Dr. Frank might be able to fill in more of the story as well.)

There's another side of this... if the stations signal really matched the red squiggly line on the Radio Locator map, we wouldn't be having this discussion 'cause it wouldn't be that bad. But the reality is that the old 50k transmitter probably should have been replaced several years ago. I can tell you from first-hand experience that the engineering staff put together a plan to replace that old transmitter with a new high efficiency unit. The cost analysis proved that the expense of the new transmitter would be paid for with the energy savings after just a few years.

A new high-output, high-efficiency transmitter with a pattern that's been adjusted would make quite a difference.

Maybe the new guy in charge is listening and reading this...
 
Isn't the 50kw transmitter at 1010 a "handmedown" from one of the CBS NY stations? A friend of mine who is in engineering at WFAN mentioned that and I was never certain if he was kidding or not.
 
Isn't the 50kw transmitter at 1010 a "handmedown" from one of the CBS NY stations? A friend of mine who is in engineering at WFAN mentioned that and I was never certain if he was kidding or not.

It's possible... I do remember that there was discussion about purchasing three new 50kw transmitters... two for New York City and one for Tampa. Maybe they settled for two and shipped a hand-me-down transmitter to Tampa. To install it, wouldn't there have been considerable downtime ???
 
Excellent post, Mike. We all get so caught up in reinventing the wheel that we forget to look at cheaper and more obvious possible alternatives. I've often suspected that the 1010's signal was less than advertised...not from any technical knowledge at all, but just from wondering if a signal that big on paper could perform so poorly (for my needs). With the change in administration you can't figure on getting any kind of technical request getting handled in any kind of expeditious manner by the FCC and with the economy in the tank, what company is going to engage in that kind of expensive and possibly futile pursuit of a pattern change?

Any improvement at all in coverage and signal quality (not to mention electricity savings) could make your idea a big winner on the (relative) cheap.
 
Going on a possibly bad memory here...I don't remember any huge change in 1010's coverage from the WINQ-WCBF days, until the site was rebuilt. It's always been good east-west but poor north-south. Even in Lutz (where I used to live) the signal was pretty bad in the car, let alone anyone who would want to listen at home. I do know, prior to the rebuild, the WCBF site was horrible. I think they pretty much bulldozed the place and started from scratch. I seem to remember vastly improved audio after 1010 returned to the air but I don't think there was a significant change in coverage area. I'm sure Dr. Frank can enlighten us.
 
Back in 1987/88 when I rebuilt the transmitter plant, we augmented the directional pattern to the north and to the south. Even with these augmentations, with a transmitter power of 52,600 watts, the effective power into the northeast and northwest nulls is only 158 watts.
The east/west signal is very good. As I recall, the array puts out about 230,000 watts into the main lobes.
 
Hi Frank, was that xmtr stereo?
 
Mike_Serio said:
couple of additional thoughts and pieces to this puzzle...

In addition to WJXL (AM1010) in Jacksonville and WCKW (AM 1010) in Louisiana.. there was a another... WCNU AM 1010 in Crestview.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WCNU

Without digging thru the dusty archives, it's probably a safe bet that AM 1010 in Tampa went on the air after AM 1010 in Crestview and was forced to protect it. WCNU is dark now, and was deleted from the FCC database a dozen years ago.

Several times between 1996 (when WCNU went dark) until I left in 2005, I suggested a new engineering study to see if the pattern could be let out a bit. I could be wrong, but I think the current "bowtie" came about when the station gained 24 hour status... 50k day / 5k night... of course, protecting Crestview. It may have been less directional as a daytimer. (Dr. Frank might be able to fill in more of the story as well.)

There's another side of this... if the stations signal really matched the red squiggly line on the Radio Locator map, we wouldn't be having this discussion 'cause it wouldn't be that bad. But the reality is that the old 50k transmitter probably should have been replaced several years ago. I can tell you from first-hand experience that the engineering staff put together a plan to replace that old transmitter with a new high efficiency unit. The cost analysis proved that the expense of the new transmitter would be paid for with the energy savings after just a few years.

A new high-output, high-efficiency transmitter with a pattern that's been adjusted would make quite a difference.

Maybe the new guy in charge is listening and reading this...
Click to expand...

This may be a stretch as they're all the way across the Gulf, but, here in Houston we have KLAT on 1010 as well.
 
David Sharp said:
Hi Frank, was that xmtr stereo?
Click to expand...

It was. I had two Delta CQUAM exciters One for the daytime 50kw transmitter and one for the nighttime 5kw transmitter.
 
Let's put Marvin Boone on ALL the stations 10-3...That would solve all the technical problems with 1010 and all other stations... Didn't you read that in the owner's manual? ;)

Mark Tillery
 
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