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1380 Radio Disney- WWMI

D

drt

Just curious to know whether they are off the air or on reduced power. (or none of the above!) ?

Where I've been today about 52 miles n.n.e. of Tampa, they are usually very weak but receivable during the day; mid afternoon, they were MIA/not there...... and between 5 and 5:30 I was receiving the 1380 out of Daytona Beach and the 1380 out of Asheville, NC, without a trace of WWMI in the background.

drt,
not in St. Petersburg
 
Cedric said:
I drove by their transmitter site last night and they were definitely off the air. I figured they'd be back up by now...
Click to expand...


Thanks Cedric,

I had googled WWMI for both web info and news info and came up with zero info; over the years I can't ever recall 1380 being off the air for more than a half hour or so.


For those, who dx the AM band, this will present a good opportunity to not only dx 1380, but 1370 and 1390 as well, w/o the IBOC sidebands.

drt
 
FYI - 1380 Radio Disney, St Petersburg, was recently granted a power increase. The FCC construction permit will allow them to increase daytime power from 5kw to 9.8kw, and nightttime will go from 5kw to 6.5kw. This may, or may not, have something to do with them being off the air for an extended period of time right now.
 
Yes, WLCY 1380 was a great station in the 60's and 70's.... Too bad it's a waste of a frequency now...

We had WYND 1280 (500 watt day timer only )
and WKXY 930 (1000 w D 500 (east to west <great in the Gulf) N
 
drt said:
For those, who dx the AM band, this will present a good opportunity to not only dx 1380, but 1370 and 1390 as well, w/o the IBOC sidebands.
Click to expand...

Interestingly WWMI was originally on 1370 with the call letters WBOX before moving to 1380 and becoming WTSP, WLCY, WNSI, WRBQ and now WWMI.
 
They are back on, now. They must be the only 24hour iboc in town.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
 
I can get them too here in north florida (wakulla county) where I am I notice it too drt was right they were off the air.

I get WDAE,WWBA,WHBO,WMGG and AM 680 AM 1500 and 1520 and WTAN. WFLA 970 seek to be weak these days they are not that powerfull as they used to. Once in a while I get WAMA 1550 but most of the time i dont.

I know WAMA 1550 is a 10,000 watts daytime with ESPN Deportes I can listren to it online. but on my radio not a thing to hear it.

on the other note I get AM-640 and AM-670 could be cuban stations.

How much longer will WWMI will stay with Radio Disney
 
To echo some of the previous comments, WLCY 1380 was indeed a great station. In the early years, one of their neatest promotions was The Weather Chick, a comedy Marilyn Monroe type who accompanied the station's weather reports. A short audio clip of her can be heard on www.RadioYears.com .

While this power increase will no doubt improve their daytime signal, at night they are required to throw everything to the south, so if there is any nighttime improvement, it'll be way, way down to the south.

Re WKXY Sarasota, when I was a kid here in South Tampa in the mid- to late-1950s, we could receive WKXY as a regular daytime station (it just wasn't as loud as the more local stations). It was perhaps the first in the area to regularly feature Top-40 music, although it didn't go in for the jingles and image-building. So for several years in the mid-1950s, we were regular listeners of WKXY. Probably switched when WALT went Top-40.
 
Did Tampa ever have two 24/7 AM top 40's battling it out like WQAM and WFUN?
 
nfladxer said:
FYI - 1380 Radio Disney, St Petersburg, was recently granted a power increase. The FCC construction permit will allow them to increase daytime power from 5kw to 9.8kw, and nightttime will go from 5kw to 6.5kw. This may, or may not, have something to do with them being off the air for an extended period of time right now.
Click to expand...

It's a "power increase" only on paper. What they're doing is removing most of the tall (400+ foot) middle tower, shortening it to 199 feet so the towers no longer have to be painted or lit. That reduces the efficiency of the antenna system considerably, and the increase in transmitter power output allows WWMI to maintain its existing signal coverage, more or less.

I featured the 1380 site (and the rest of the Gandy Boulevard towers) last month on Tower Site of the Week:

http://www.fybush.com/sites/2011/site-111014.html
 
Scott Fybush said:
It's a "power increase" only on paper. What they're doing is removing most of the tall (400+ foot) middle tower, shortening it to 199 feet so the towers no longer have to be painted or lit. That reduces the efficiency of the antenna system considerably, and the increase in transmitter power output allows WWMI to maintain its existing signal coverage, more or less.

I featured the 1380 site (and the rest of the Gandy Boulevard towers) last month on Tower Site of the Week:

http://www.fybush.com/sites/2011/site-111014.html
Click to expand...


Thanks for "the rest of the story"....... the facts you present, would explain why the coverage maps in Radio-locator.com for the before and after the the WWMI CP are identical.

I was hoping that they would actually be improving their signal "footprint" back to the prior coverage that seemed to go by the wayside, once the nearby mangroves were encroached by condos (pratically on the tower site) as well as a gas station in the immediate vicinity of the tower sight.

Also apparently while doing tower work during this past summer, they were for a time non-directional at night using 1,250 watts instead of the usual 5,000 directional, according to a letter in file at the FCC site:

http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/getimportletter_exh.cgi?import_letter_id=26341

drt
Click to expand...
 
You'd think that by having to double their power in order to shorten the stick, their increase in electrical consumption would offset the savings on the tower. Obviously not -
 
dwtpa97 said:
You'd think that by having to double their power in order to shorten the stick, their increase in electrical consumption would offset the savings on the tower. Obviously not -
Click to expand...

Not even close. The tower bulbs alone probably consume more power than the extra power output from the transmitter, especially if they use a fairly efficient new transmitter (it's Radio Disney, so they'll almost surely use a Nautel), and then there's all the expense of tower painting that they won't have to worry about anymore.
 
For the one who posted that WWMI might be the only IBOC in TSP, did 1250 drop it?

cd
 
cd637299 said:
For the one who posted that WWMI might be the only IBOC in TSP, did 1250 drop it?

cd
Click to expand...
WWMI is the only 24/7 IBOC station in the bay area. 620, 970, and 1250 run it during the day only. I'm not sure if WSDV 1450, Sarasota, is running IBOC now or not.

As far as I know other than Radio Disney, Clear Channel is the only chain running IBOC on the AM band in the Tampa/St. Petersburg market.

drt
 
drt said:
cd637299 said:
For the one who posted that WWMI might be the only IBOC in TSP, did 1250 drop it?

cd
Click to expand...
WWMI is the only 24/7 IBOC station in the bay area. 620, 970, and 1250 run it during the day only. I'm not sure if WSDV 1450, Sarasota, is running IBOC now or not.

As far as I know other than Radio Disney, Clear Channel is the only chain running IBOC on the AM band in the Tampa/St. Petersburg market.

drt
Click to expand...

Miami's Disney 990 dropped their IBOC altogether a month or two ago---so, if you get a 990 *with* IBOC, Orlando!

Miami's only 24/7 IBOC is 1260 WSUA. In fact, no other Miami AM has IBOC at all now.

cd
 
Scott, Thanks for the explanation of the recently granted "power increase" at 1380 Radio Disney Tampa Bay. Before Disney sold AM 600 in Jacksonville, they took down two towers in that five tower array, were originally going to rebuild them, and then decided not to. The result: they got permission to re-work the nighttime pattern with the three remaining towers, down graded the night power from 5,000 watts to 1,800 watts, and then sold it! Of course Tampa-St. Pete is a larger market, so, they may not have the same desire for WWMI.
 
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