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550 Pensacola

R

Rob

I thought I heard 550 come back to life with Charles Stanley earlier today, did they flip the switch once again or was this another 550 I heard? I don't know the calls. I know 610 is alive and well and booooming in here during the day, 550 would throw a kick ass signal both day/night for the lucky group who gets it. At last time, it was relaying 610.

-Rob
 
Maybe! I would have responded sooner but this was reported as an attack site and had to figure out how to make an exemption.

..and others are having this problem, is this a god caster this J'Ville station? Most Jacksonville stations are directional

-Rob
 
WAYR has been a religious station for 50+ years. 5,000 w. @ 550 can carry a long ways if conditions are right.
 
So can 1010 XL, and that I believe is a full 50KW heard a football game between Middleburgh and Jacksonville, even after the sun went down.

-Rob
 
If you heard 1010 after sundown they probably "forgot" to switch to their night-time array as they are supposed to blast 30,000 w. east into the Atlantic.
 
I don't know why the blast into the atlantic, does it expand their coverage?

and sometimes during football games, they don't lower their power.

-Rob
 
The whole thing about not lowering power during sporting events is not uncommon, if not probably legal. I'm aware of several small town stations that "stay on late" if they're a daytimer or stay on day power/pattern when carrying local HS football, so it wouldn't surprise me if a station did it for college or pro ball.

In a way it adds a new dimension to DXing on Friday nights because you never know what small town station will pop out of the ether in the graveyard channels.
 
Still a hell of a catch, yea, know about those FCC rules, but the Atlantic seems kinda odd to point a tower.

-Rob
 
They don't have much choice, with regard to their pattern. You have to protect everyone who was there first -- 1010 Jacksonville was one of the last stations authorized to operate at night on that frequency, so it has to protect just about everyone else. That doesn't leave them many options, with regard to where their antenna pattern must point. There aren't any stations to interfere with out in the Atlantic -- so that's pretty much where their power *must* go.

So, once you know that you have to shoot all your power out into the ocean to avoid interfering with anything... you pick a transmission site such that this power must go through the city you're trying to serve on its way out to sea.

Which is exactly what WJXL has done: their transmitter is out near MacClenny, west of Jacksonville, beaming all their nighttime power due east across Jacksonville.
 
WOKV (690) also has their night-time towers west of the city and aims their power east. I wonder how many other stations have separate day time and night time locations?
 
I tuned in tonight and low and behold, a godcaster, it was fainter but it was there, thus proving a signal can be heard 5 hours from it's target area.

I wonder if the APE's former frequency (690?) is now directional, cause back in the day, we heard them up in New York and it was a killer signal.

-Rob
 
I'm confused. Does (or did) Rob believe WASG 550 Cantonment had been reborn? Only Jesus could do that at this point.

Hey Rob, you do remember the pastor pulled that sucker up from the earth, put it on a flat bed, and moved it 50 miles down the road to Mobile, a much more lucrative radio market that was in dire need of a new AM radio station until a new daytimer on 540 showed up to fill the gap, now Mobile has just the right amount of radio stations... no AMs simulcasting or anything like that.
The Pastor then promptly sold WASG 540 (even though it had lived at 550 in Pensacola). I don't even know if he had it in Mobile long enough to get the equipment dusted off... He did the smart thing in "the AM daytimer radio station with no co-owned translators" business, he took the money and ran.
As I recall the land owner cancelled their tower lease and tore that baby down about a year after they got the station on the air in Mobile, so now WASG sits silent again... waiting for some sucker new owner to come along and pour some money on it and make it bloom again. I believe Mario has the low-down on that story. Not to say it can't or won't ever happen, but it would be very difficult to move WASG back to Florida, it would also probably cost more than the station is worth today. I would be less surprised to see the WASG license deleted than a move back to Florida.

Was WASG ever officially licensed to Florida? The FCC listed the COL as Atmore when the transmitter was in Cantonment and I don't believe the signal was strong enough in Atmore to count as local service.

Lets add some fun to this post. Games!
Who can name all the call letters, frequencies, cities of license and maybe even dark times that WASG has lived though? No cheating, off the top of your head only.
 
WOKV is on the same 690 as the old "Big Ape" and still broadcasts 50,000 w. from their daytime tower in Orange Park. They are directional at night from their towers off I-10 west. I'm sure they don't have the same daytime reach as in the old days due to all the competing signals and electronic noise out there. That's the same clutter that is slowly killing AM radio. :-[
 
Aww, that sucks, I think I know where Orange Park is. I know APE is on FM at 95.1. Wonder how successful they are. heard their sound, at least they still have the original ape from the old days.

Hearing the old tapes kinda makes me feel sad, at least Freddy sung about it in "Radio Gaga"

-Rob
 
WASG is still on the air according to Mario. They and 1270 got on temporary facilities. 540 is not a daytimer anymore either, I think it is 24 hours now.

Before the tower got taken down, 540 actually put out a decent day signal from Pritchard.
 
Zach said:
WASG is still on the air according to Mario. They and 1270 got on temporary facilities. 540 is not a daytimer anymore either, I think it is 24 hours now.

Before the tower got taken down, 540 actually put out a decent day signal from Pritchard.
Click to expand...

I think WASG has always had 10 or so watts licensed at night. They never used it (on purpose) while on the air from the Cantonment site. In Pensacola it was a 550/610 simulcast. If you wanted to hear WASG, tune to 550 in the daytime. When 550 shut down the 10KW signal at night... no fear... about 2% of their potential audience was covered by 610's 100 watt signal. I believe that's about how they had it worded on their website on the "how to hear us" page... which included a coverage map including New Orleans and New York.

I was unaware that the move to 540 allowed WASG to move up from flea power or no power at night. How was the WASG move related to the WVMI shut down in Biloxi again?
 
[Note: content removed per TOS.]
Click to expand...

Yep, but the first filing window after WVMI was deleted caused several stations to make a play for their old spot on the dial. One was either 550 or 610 in Pensacola. I forgot the rest.
 
Well, meanwhile on the Pensacola dial, all is well, 104.1 DLT and 106.1 are still airing the same old crap.

One noticeable difference, 106.1's audio isn't as wide as 104.1. Is this a sign of things to come? Maybe putting WCOA on 106.1 as someone predicted last year?

HMN seems to be sounding better but still a crappy signal even in Pensacola. They need to go back to 100KW.

-Rob
 
To expound on my earlier post, WASG's 2.5 kW day signal was pretty good from Prichard, simply because of Mobile Bay and the marshy land nearby. With just one tower day and night it was a pretty efficient operation and ripe for pairing with a translator, which never happened (that went to WIJD, which is co-located with 540.) I didn't have any serious issues hearing it as far east as Bellview and Ensley in Escambia County on a sufficiently narrow radio.

The night power is now shown as 19 watts, and I've heard WASG clearly as far south as Fairhope after dark, so it is (was) a pretty good reach for such flea power.

Now it's on an STA for 1 kW days and who knows what at night. I can't hear it any more over in Baldwin County, while WIJD at 1270 is on a 2.5 kW STA from the same temporary pole at the old TX site, and is mostly clear down here in the burbs.

Rob, I don't think the audio processing of 106.1 has anything to do with anything. Engineers never change the processing before a format flip in my experience. In fact processing seems to be a most minor concern, what with the overloaded plate most engineers say they have these days, they fit in tweaks in what little free time they have.

The last couple of times I've heard 104.1 and 106.1 back to back they were playing different songs and different commercials, so I don't think there's any simulcast afoot. As long as Crumulus can sell commercials on 106.1, it isn't going anywhere.

And since we're veering happily off topic, I'll say that since Crum took over 104.1, the HD has been fubar. It no longer decodes despite a fine signal and the HD icon glowing steady. The analog's processing has gotten worse, too. It used to sound really clear and clean, now it sounds all 8-bit raspy.
 
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