1970's WAEB TRANSMITTER SITE(S)

[tube man]

Back in the early '70's I worked for Rust Communications, who owned WAEB. I was never at that station but there was talk about the station having 2 separate transmitter sites....one for daytime and another for night. Supposedly, the studio was at one of the sites. Is this true? If so, does anyone know anything about these sites, number of towers at each, transmitters, when did this all happen, etc. and why were there two separate sites? Or did I just dream this all up?

I do remember that WAEB ruled the Lehigh Valley as a top 40 giant.

Thanks much!

 

[edarmsttrong]

You are correct. WAEB had their single tower daytime site co-located at the former location of the studio on Fenwick street, in the east side of Allentown.

The 5 tower night site is now the station's only site. It is located in Whitehall Twsp. PA, just north of the city of Allentown, about 5 miles north of the Rt. 22/ PA145 interchange (their current studio location.)

My guess is that they didn't have the real estate at Fenwick street to put up the 5 towers for nighttime service.

Maybe someone else could shed more light on some of the questions?

 

[Bill790]

You are correct. WAEB had their single tower daytime site co-located at the former location of the studio on Fenwick street, in the east side of Allentown.

The 5 tower night site is now the station's only site. It is located in Whitehall Twsp. PA, just north of the city of Allentown, about 5 miles north of the Rt. 22/ PA145 interchange (their current studio location.)

My guess is that they didn't have the real estate at Fenwick street to put up the 5 towers for nighttime service.

Maybe someone else could shed more light on some of the questions?

I was a part-timer there in 1974-75. The daytime site was at the corner of North Fenwick and East Tilghman (40.618144, -75.448072). Looking at google maps, it appears that the same building is there, but with a couple of large additions.

There were actually two towers at the daytime site. At the time, East James Street did not connect with North Ellsworth. I think the towers were on either side of what appears to be a drainage ditch just north of the East James extension.

One of the daytime towers had the call letters on it, facing north. They lit up sequentially at night and could be seen from Rt. 22.

WAEB was 1 KW day and night at the time. The daytime pattern was a very broad ellipse, roughly east-west. The nighttime pattern from those five towers in Whitehall had a fairly big lobe to the south-southeast. There were places to the west where you could see the towers at night, but barely hear the station. However, the signal was good in Allentown and Bethlehem and carried quite well down toward Trenton.

I remember when we signed off at 3 am on Saturday night/Sunday morning, CKLW came through pretty well on the studio air monitor!