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105.7 & Other Jersey Shore Signals

E

eyg2181

Guest
Does anybody know how far The Hawk gets out into the atlantic ocean? dont know what made me think of this, but im very curious how far this would go out. it definitly goes further out there than it does on land, but how much further? the philly stations probably even have another 30 or so miles to go when they hit the ocean.
 
Only AM. The FM signals are pretty much the same with the same decay/mile over water as land. SJ is pretty flat, so there isn't much terrain interference. Radio-Locator is fairly accurate.
specs: http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/info?call=WCHR&service=FM
coverage: http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WCHR&service=FM&status=L&hours=U

The AM's are a whole other animal. Once that longer wavelength hits the salt water, it's pretty well preserved. Since 1450Kc in Virginia Beach went dark, WENJ Atlantic City is again listeneable in the Hampton Roads/Tidewater Virginia area again. WOND 1400 is listenable at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel every day. Pleasantville's WTAA 1490, all 400 flamethrowin' watts, gets listener confirmations/reception reports from Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Great Britain and coastal France. The city grade signal is preserved for an easy 50 miles over saltwater.
http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WTAA&service=AM&status=L&hours=D

WIBG even further: http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WIBG&service=AM&status=L&hours=D Now imagine the coverage reversed.
They would need 100,000 watts to get that city grade signal to cover Lancaster, Pottstown PA. at the top left of the map.

FM enjoys no such privilige from physics.
 
WCBS 880 could be heard in Miami Beach in the daytime because it's all water.
The Jersey shore FM stations can be heard on Long Island every day in the summer due to tropo. With a good tropo opening, the stations would go hundreds of miles on the open water. And it seems like coverage inland in NJ is better when the stations have more signal in the ocean.
 
Since I practically live in the ocean (I'm on Long Beach Island) I'll add my two cents.

The farthest FM station i can get with a GOOD car radio is WAEB-FM at just over 100 miles and it's prone to fading in and out.

The Philly FMs are just over 60 miles away and crystal clear on any car radio and most of the stations come in decently even on a regular boom-box type radio.

Wilmington's WJBR & WSTW come in fairly listenable on a car radio but are impossible on anything less.

The NYC FM stations are 75+ miles away and virtually non-existent, even on a car radio.

From mid-May to mid-September Long Island's WBLI (105 miles) comes in like a local almost every day as does DelMarVa's WZBH (95 miles).

On AM, 50,000 WTIC from CT (160 miles away) booms in loud and clear all day long, even on a Walkman.

On a good radio 5,000 watt WPRO from RI comes in regularly during the day from over 200 miles away.
 
At the southern end of Atlantic County and Cape May County, I regularly recieve WALK 1370 AM from Patchouge, NY while driving around on Rt.9, and is plainly listenable on my 2230 Marantz receiver and older portables. It is only 500 watts.
 
JerseyShor said:
On a good radio 5,000 watt WPRO from RI comes in regularly during the day from over 200 miles away.
Click to expand...

I remember those days, but didn't that change a bit when 640 from Mt. Holly signed on?
 
Wayne McMannors said:
JerseyShor said:
On a good radio 5,000 watt WPRO from RI comes in regularly during the day from over 200 miles away.
Click to expand...

I remember those days, but didn't that change a bit when 640 from Mt. Holly signed on?
Click to expand...

On a decent portable you can null out 640 enough to get WPRO.
 
I remember being able to hear 11-7 radio (WHLW, Lakewood) on the Belt Parkway in Lower Brooklyn, as well as far inland as the Sheepshead Bay area. I always found it ironic that you couldn't pick up the station as close as one mile north of its studios and towers in Howell Township, NJ, yet it could be picked up 70 miles away where nobody knew or cared about the station.

I also enjoyed listening to myself on the radio (on spots and pre-recorded shows) in my own home town :)
 
And if I'm not mistaken, the strange recording group The KLF somehow got an aircheck of ME on WNBC over in England and used it on some very odd record with just bits of noise...ala "Revolution #9" by John Lennon.
You can hear me clear as night saying Big Jay on 66 WNNBC....talk about chilling.
How incredibly cool is THAT? Perry Simon--currently the All-Access.com talk maven told me about it. I was on cloud nine for days. But I want my royalties, which by now should be about 30 cents. Did anyone BUY that album? I guess my little bit scared people away.

BE BIG
Yoko
 
Wow...I played that the other Sunday ( 20 second of it) and segued into #9 Dream by John Lennon. It was dedicated to Gov Spitzer.."Nuber 9, number 9, number9, number 9..."
 
bigjay said:
And if I'm not mistaken, the strange recording group The KLF somehow got an aircheck of ME on WNBC over in England and used it on some very odd record with just bits of noise...ala "Revolution #9" by John Lennon.
You can hear me clear as night saying Big Jay on 66 WNNBC....talk about chilling.
How incredibly cool is THAT? Perry Simon--currently the All-Access.com talk maven told me about it. I was on cloud nine for days. But I want my royalties, which by now should be about 30 cents. Did anyone BUY that album? I guess my little bit scared people away.

BE BIG
Yoko
Click to expand...

The KLF were big when I worked at WDRE/WIBF. Their two big "hits" were "3AM Eternal" and "Justified and Ancient" (with vocals by Tammy Wynette). They would be considered Euro-techno and aimed at a modern rock audience. I would imagine G-Rock (and their predecesor, WHTG) played it or still would on a "flashback" weekend. It's good stuff, actually.

I know I don't belong in this exchange, but thought I'd give a background for those who are like "KL-Who?".
 
Once again, how come the FM stations from the shore go far inland, and the stations inland aren't heard at the shore as well? I noticed that during the most recent tropo.
 
There's another thread on this board about WMGM being picked up in Pottsville, measured by Tom at 126 miles. No question, a long haul. I would consider the HAAT, and more importantly, height Avboce Sea Level. Pulling up "t-102" info, they hav a 128ft tower, but are mountain located with a HAAT of over 500', and Height Above Sea Level of over 1900'.

That's one tall reception tower. But why isn't it reciprocated? Possibly just the concentration of stations at the shore areas. Nearly all of the Philly Class B's have a Class A adjacent here. 92.5 has WOBM 92.7. 93.3 has WDTH 93.1. 94.1 has WILW 94.3. 95.7 has LPFM 95.5. 98.1 has WTKU 98.3...it goes on and on. Lots of adjacent channel bleed and co channel signals from DE and MD. NYC has their Class B's covered with Docket 80-90 CLass A's.

In High School, I regularly listened to Tom McNally on Rock 104 WMGM in Pottstown on a Grundig table radio. WRNJ, WFPG-FM as well, with just the built-in "dipole". And I guess that was when WMGM was still side mounted on the short WOND tower. I couldn't wait for the spots and ID's to show off what a long pull-in I had. But it only could be pulled in in the elevated North End of town, and along the Schuylkill River at the Mrs. Smith's Pie Company at the south end! Otherwise you needed a yagi and rotor. (sorry to give up your age Tom)

I don't know if this is the real reason, but it's plausable.
 
amfmsw said:
There's another thread on this board about WMGM being picked up in Pottsville, measured by Tom at 126 miles. No question, a long haul. I would consider the HAAT, and more importantly, height Avboce Sea Level. Pulling up "t-102" info, they hav a 128ft tower, but are mountain located with a HAAT of over 500', and Height Above Sea Level of over 1900'.

That's one tall reception tower. But why isn't it reciprocated? Possibly just the concentration of stations at the shore areas. Nearly all of the Philly Class B's have a Class A adjacent here. 92.5 has WOBM 92.7. 93.3 has WDTH 93.1. 94.1 has WILW 94.3. 95.7 has LPFM 95.5. 98.1 has WTKU 98.3...it goes on and on. Lots of adjacent channel bleed and co channel signals from DE and MD. NYC has their Class B's covered with Docket 80-90 CLass A's.

In High School, I regularly listened to Tom McNally on Rock 104 WMGM in Pottstown on a Grundig table radio. WRNJ, WFPG-FM as well, with just the built-in "dipole". And I guess that was when WMGM was still side mounted on the short WOND tower. I couldn't wait for the spots and ID's to show off what a long pull-in I had. But it only could be pulled in in the elevated North End of town, and along the Schuylkill River at the Mrs. Smith's Pie Company at the south end! Otherwise you needed a yagi and rotor. (sorry to give up your age Tom)

I don't know if this is the real reason, but it's plausable.
Click to expand...

its funny you should mention t102. terrible signal. the station itself sucks too. it gets all staticy 10 miles from its transmitter, and you lose it on the NE Extension shortly after the Allentown Service Plaza. its pretty bad that the philly stations reach pottsville and especially the southern surrounding areas pretty well, but yet, t102 doesnt even come within 30 miles of philly
 
amfmsw said:
Only AM. The FM signals are pretty much the same with the same decay/mile over water as land. SJ is pretty flat, so there isn't much terrain interference. Radio-Locator is fairly accurate.
specs: http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/info?call=WCHR&service=FM
coverage: http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WCHR&service=FM&status=L&hours=U

FM enjoys no such privilige from physics.
Click to expand...

Hi... I'm here to correct some big misstatements.

First of all; FM broadcast signals do propagate much better over ocean than over land. The reason is that trees, houses and vegetation do actually absorb the signal.

Second; The Radio Locator coverage maps you reference are not at all accurate. These are the same maps taken from the FCC's web site database. These maps are derived without any propagation modeling. The reason for no propagation modeling in the maps is that the FCC is not especially sophisticated about that because they don't have to be. Good propagation models use detailed data about terrain elevations and include details about what is on the surface (trees, buildings, water etc.) into the math. The software is expensive and proprietary but well worth it when you need to know. I used it when moving a class C FM station in Honolulu.

For a good example of how bad an FCC coverage map can be, have a look at the Radio Locator coverage map of KHCM in Honolulu: http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=KHCM&service=FM&status=L&hours=U

I was the chief engineer of this station for four years when it was the legendary 98 Rock (KPOI). We had regular listeners on the West side of Maui yet Maui isn't even shown on the coverage map since it's so far out from the FCC's contour. Also notice that the north shore of Oahu, Pupakea and Liea, are well inside the local contour yet nobody can get the signal there because of terrain shadowing from the mountains.

One other thing; I've seen posted on this board is that "FM is only line of sight". That's not right either because of something called knife edge diffraction. Knife edge diffraction comes into play in Hawaii. An example: Kailua town on the east side of the island listens to KHCM and other FM's with transmitter sites in Honolulu and antennas at about 400' MSL yet there is a 2500 foot tall mountain range right between them!

You can believe that 105.7 and other coastal stations have a much better signal over the ocean than the FCC maps show.
If you really need to know how far that is you can get a real coverage map from a consulting engineer. I'd bet a trip out on a charter boat for tuna would be cheaper and you'd learn the same thing.
 
Quote from: amfmsw on March 29, 2008, 04:00:51 am
Only AM. The FM signals are pretty much the same with the same decay/mile over water as land. SJ is pretty flat, so there isn't much terrain interference. Radio-Locator is fairly accurate.
specs: http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/info?call=WCHR&service=FM
coverage: http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WCHR&service=FM&status=L&hours=U

FM enjoys no such privilige from physics.



Hi... I'm here to correct some big misstatements.

First of all; FM broadcast signals do propagate much better over ocean than over land. The reason is that trees, houses and vegetation do actually absorb the signal.
Click to expand...


Also, FM tends to travel better over the ocean or other bodies of water because there is a tendency for temperature inversions over water, where warmer air sits above cooler air down near the surface. Since the speed of light (and radio waves) is faster in warmer air, the signal tends to "bend" -refract - beyond the horizon.
 
eyg2181 said:
its funny you should mention t102. terrible signal. the station itself sucks too. it gets all staticy 10 miles from its transmitter, and you lose it on the NE Extension shortly after the Allentown Service Plaza. its pretty bad that the philly stations reach pottsville and especially the southern surrounding areas pretty well, but yet, t102 doesnt even come within 30 miles of philly
Click to expand...

lots and lots of inaccuracies within this thread, pretty scary actually...first of all, i don't know what kind of radio you're using, but T102 has a monster signal. case in point...down at the nj shore it is an absolute regular on even portable radios once you get away from 101.9 in NYC.

secondly, people who are stating that signals travel better inland than at the coast are absolutely insane. the best trop conditions are ON the coast. check the logs of professional dxers near the coast...it is ALWAYS better there. how people could think the opposite true is beyond me...terrain and other obstacles are much more of an issue as you go INLAND, not at the COAST.
 
I agree the FM signals are not "line-of-site". I agree the maps are a fairly good guide, but their accuracy is not absolutle. The mountanous topography of the islands are similar to Puerto Rico and the SoCal LA area, with FM "wholes" abundant. It's similar in NE PA.

But the FM saltwater advantage is nothing like AM. Since it in unimpeded by buildings and such, the FM would carry somewhat further than the maps would show, but not like AM.

The FM signal decay is plain physics. But the saltwater path actually adds gain to the AM signal. Here at the South Jersey Shore, like Honolulu, since many xmtrs are located in coastal marshes, not the center of the coverage area, the FM bays are usually mounted on the west to north side of the stick, toward the mainland, like KCHM. They're not usually on top of the tower on a mast, but side mounted to protect them from Storm wind damage and beneficial wind loading. The mounting creates a slight null over the ocean or Delaware Bay, and that's ok because Arbitron still doesn't give diaries to the fish.

My point is our strongest local Class B 50kw FM could be probably be picked up 75 miles offshore on a high quality radio. Our graveyard 1kw AM's can be plainly picked up on a portable radio 100 miles out, but barely 15-20 miles inland.
 
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