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1340

Z

Zenith Transoceanic

I'm from Wilkes-Barre, so I don't know how the signals pan out on 1340 between Reading and Philadelphia.
I would have to think that WRAW and WHAT would clash horribly between Pottstown and Norristown.
Is that the case, or am I missing something?
 
Those stations were then Class 4 stations (now Class C) that were originally licensed for 250 watts fulltime. They are only proteceted as such. Most Class 4's were granted a blanket power increase to 1000 watts daytime in 1962 with the understanding they would accept the increased interference from other Class 4's as a term of the license. I'm sure there is a bit of overlapping in the daytime between the two stations, but at night the area of overlap between these two would be totally masked by skywave interference from all the other Class C's on 1340.
 
Thank you, vacuum tube, for your response.
I can see that the spacing would make sense if both stations were operating at 250 watts.
A bit close for both at a thousand.
 
Having grownup in Pottstown in 60's, here's the story. I can tell you in the EARLY 60's, on a 1930's Philco 70 with a longwire, it was zero...hash. Later, depending on the radio, turned in one direction you could listen to WHAT, spin it 90 degrees, and get WRAW, but usually both with chatter and only before/after critical hours. On that Philco, SOMETIMES, if the weather was right, I would get WMID from Atlantic City during critical hours, an hour or 2 before/after sunrise/sunset. Especially in winter.

That lasted through the mid 70's...then the noise floor began to rise. Cable TV, their boxes, digital timers and clocks, solid state TV oscillators and power supplies with no shields, solid state dimmers. By 1980...gone. If you're under 40, you don't know what you missed. AM was amazing to listen to. The band was so quiet, except for lightning, electric razors, mom's Sunbeam Mixmaster with bad brushes, and the dreaded horizontal oscillator of the TV. And in wideband, high fidelity...none of this 9kc filter brick...or in CC engineering thinking, 5kc! Or worse, manufacturers 3.5kc!!!! And no IBOC from 3 stations away.
 
Ain't that the truth, amfmsw! The AM band has been so intruded upon!
I must say, though, that I'm surprised that your '60s experience with the two stations was what it was.
I really would have expected there would have been chaos back then, and now.
Thank you for your input!
 
Both 1340s are so flea-powered, they don't even bother each other around Pottstown, a town that you mentioned in your original post. WRAW in Reading is pretty much gone by the time you get there. And WHAT from Philly the same thing. Pretty much gone by the time you get there. I've driven down Route 422 and witnessed this. It's funny. Only about a 45 minute drive and two totally different stations on 1340, with a gap of just noise in between around Pottstown.
 
Thank you for the report, Interstate 78. I appreciate your input.
I'm glad to hear from someone who has driven between the two cities,
and experienced how the signals operate.
I'm surprised, though. "Flea-powered", yes, but still...
 
BUT...back then, AM was king, and the ownership and engineering paid attention to the transmitting facilities: tower and ground. Today, many are rusted hulks with corroded copper fields for ground systems that should have been replaced a decade ago. Thos stations BOTH cover Pottstown, "Technically" by their license, but fall short "technically" by 2012 style AM maintenance, noise floor, WHAT IBOC, and poor radio design of the 21st century.

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

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

You can see how easy it was to just spin a radio with a loop antenna and choose which station I wanted to listen to.
 
Back in the spring and summer of 1969, I was privileged to work - at age 19 - as a jock at both WMID and WIBG, during the great war with WFIL. I drove back and forth from the shore working at both stations for several weeks in the summer. WMID had a free-standing tower which was originally built for WFPG-TV; the upper half had been dismantled when the TV went dark leaving a bizarre-looking stub. The tower was taller electrically than the typical 90-degree radiator and its ground system was a salt marsh at Ohio & Murray Avenues in AC, where the conductivity was 5000. As a result, with WMID operating with 250 watts at night, I did remotes from Wildwood, 40 miles down the shore, getting my cues off a transistor radio. Coastal AMs even on graveyard channels and power can have amazing coverage. WMID and WHAT were only about 70 miles apart, and of course were co-channel. I would drive to Philly and at the shore end of the Ben Franklin bridge, my '65 Chevy radio set to 1340 got WMID. At the western end, I would be getting WHAT.
 
@Savage: and believe it or not...the same RCA BTA-1 transmitter is still in service there as backup. The Blaw-Knox tower was originally WFPG-TV. But it is desperate need of paint. That 'missing' top section was reattached in the '90's to add height for the FM sister @ 99.3. But sadly, it resulted in FCC action of them exceeding Class 4 signal, and qualifying as 'major antenna changes' for WMID. That huge tower was grandfathered...that broke the deal, and they had to reduce power to 890 watts. With today's noise levels, you need every watt you can legally squeeze. Shame.
from Tom McNally's great site: transmitters http://mcnally.cc/gallery/wmid06.jpg

with top section reattached: http://mcnally.cc/gallery/wmid09.jpg

and as WMID looked ORIGINALLY in 1952 when built as WFPG-TV 46 (note the Atlantic City Electric generating plant IN the city in the tower pic) http://mcnally.cc/wfpgtv.htm
 
amfm, a hearty thank you! for the WMID updates. Yep, there's that BTA-1R in the back room and what was then the backup - I think it was a BTA-250L, K or J. Bob Badger, who was the fabled GM in the Merv Griffin days, also did the morning show and functioned pretty much as chief engineer. In 1969 there was no limit on positive modulation so WMID would push that 1-R to 165% positive peaks. The transmitter would do it easily, but it beat up the modulator tubes. 4-400s back then were only about $50 each so the station regarded cooking tubes as a normal everyday cost of doing business. After several weeks (!) in the modulator stage, they were "retired" to PA service. I recall watching Badger running to the back room to warm up the 250L, then playing "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel - which at 5:05, gave him enough time to swap tubes in the 1-R. He'd pull the still-hot 4-400s using paper towels, and before S&G were done singing "lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie" etc. the 1-R would be back on the air with fresh mod toobz.

Those were the days.... :D ;)
 
I have often wondered about the graveyard channels.

I know the man-made noise floor is a very big problem in this day and age and I am far from being an expert on these issues.

Would the graveyards be better with less power at night?

If they were relegated to say 100 or 250 watts at night, wouldn't they actually get better coverage at night, due to less on channel interference?

As I said, I am not an expert and maybe completely wrong about this, it would be an intersting expirament though.

If only for a couple nights, run all stations on 1340 at 100 watts at night and see how they do, compared to 1kW. I just think the lowering of all the co-channel interference would make the frequency better.

If not that, why make them max at 1kW? Why not 2 or 3kW since they are interfering with each other anyway?

Of course both of the things I mentioned would only be for night operations, and a the power increase part of this would have to consider adjacent stations.

I know that most of you here are pro's and would be better at knowing the impact of changes like this.

I would like to hear your thoughts :)
 
It's an interesting question, Nashville, but I'm afraid it's one for which we'll never get the answer. To do this experiment you'd have to get the cooperation of literally every graveyard station out there on at least one or two of the six channels. Everyone would have to simultaneously drop power to 100 or 250 watts for a few evenings while measurements were taken on the experimental channels as well as on the remaining non-reduced channels for comparison. The problem is, some of those graveyarders are running IBOC now, and at 100 or 250 watts the digital coverage would be absurdly low and ineffectual, even worse than the current situation - remember that the digital component is 1% of analog power. Currently the stupid HD only gets out a couple of miles at night, and 1 watt or 2.5 watts would be even a smaller footprint. Graveyarders represent about 50% of HD-AM stations operating at night, so this would amount to a huge obstacle to even the experiment you suggest, much less having any hope of implementation.

Probably, even without HD-AM, a large number of Class C operators would vote for keeping the 1kw at night, even with increased interference. They don't want to put out advertising sales materials top potential advertisers specifying a throbbing 0.1kw coverage on AM.
 
Right, savage it will never happen.
Theoretically if you reduce everyone by the same amount the RSS levels should lower, but the ratio of intereference would still be the same, plus there are other factors like propagation that is different every night. The interference RSS level can change even from minute to minute.
The problem with lowering the power to 100 or 250 watts is losing 6 to 10 db of signal in the strong local coverage area that is masking electrical interference from motors, dimmers, computers, etc.
If I remember correctly, the reason for the blanket night time power increase back in the 80's was to help with this situation. I was working for a Class 4\C station at the time and really didn't notice any difference in the fringe coverage after the power increase.
 
In the period from 1962 'til the 1980s, most of the 1 kilowatt stations on the "local" frequencies DID drop power to 250 watts at night, with a few exceptions in a few of the larger cities, and it is just as has been stated by vaccuum tube. You could hear the babble underneath your local 1340 1240 or 1400 at night. It seems the ionosphere does its thing regardless of the power being pushed. And yes, the local signals do slightly better at night with stations running 800 -1Kw at night than they did at 250 watts, in the sense that they are stronger in the local area, and - in essense - suppress some of the babble.
 
I lived on the west side of Chester PA til the early 70's and can remember listening to WMID tear up WHAT when it was nulled and WMID was actually LOUDER then WHAT which was about 20 miles away. I was also always amazed at the signal WCMC had there, even in their 100 watt days, a solid signal. WMID had (and still does) a listenable signal daytime in Dover, DE. It took me years to hear WRAW there and I finally did when WHAT was off the air because of a 1 day strike, and then WMID made it very tough.
 
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