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AM transmitter moves that turned out to be the station's downfall
- Thread starter DanStrassberg
- Start date
gr8oldies said:
They made some good money on that sale. County property records said they paid $88,000 for the current site and sold the last one for $757,200. The old site was worth lots of money for development, but the new one's in a flood plain and worthless for any other use. Great for a radio station though as far as ground conductivity goes.
Wasn't delared "wetlands"? Wow...
gr8oldies said:
So this would be a success story, not a failure. ;D
This is going off on a new tangent, but why would a station barring some kind of governmental eminent domain thing give up a functioning transmitter site for one that is less than efficient? I can't see WSM or WLW, for example moving anytime even though there is, looking at Google maps, a lot of commercial and residential development in their areas. In Los Angeles KFI jumped across a lot of legal and NIMBY challenges to keep their tower in the same location even though it is now sandwiched into a commercial industrial complex.
Further more is there not a need to show that any site specified in a construction permit is capable of providing coverage of the intended target area? If not why pay for the expense of those engineering studies and just buy the land, put up the towers and go full speed ahead.
In closing, if the land you are on is so valuable and the value of your station insufficient to turn down the cash should you not just turn in the license and cash the check? The loss of some of those transmitters might go a long way to cure a lot of the noise and interference issues currently affecting the AM band and coming soon to an FM radio near you .
In WGNZ's case they made serious cha-ching. There are others who have gone silent because the land was more valuable. I don't know how eminent domain could come into play with a radio station being a federal licensee..if someone were going to try to evict WLW for another strip center.
nmoore6676 said:
I don't think many people realize just how hemmed in KFI has become. Big problem is from KIRN on 670; just about rules out a move to the north. A diplex with KNX has all sorts of problems. For example, KFI broadcasting from the KNX site could not meet Class A AM minimum efficiency requirements because a tower designed for 1070 is too short for 640. Still, if CCU had the $$$ to spend and wanted to spend them on a KFI project and if CBS were willing, a KFI aux at the KNX site using a diplex into KNX's main stick would make a heck of a lot more sense than the short stick that KFI has for an aux. It can barely handle 25 kW, let alone 50. And it is WAY less efficient than the 1070 stick would be at 640. Now, the existing 640 aux would work better at 1070 than it works at 640. Even at 1070, it would be really short, however, and I don't know if it could handle more than 25 kW, but what, if anything, does KNX currently have for an aux stick?
techie2 said:
It would come into play if a local government operating under the present interpretation of eminent domain decided that the presence of a radio transmitter, especially a multi-tower array was keeping them from using the land for a more revenue generating activity. Not saying it has been done but it could be.
DanStrassberg said:
They already own the now vacant site in Montecito Heights which they used as an alternate site while rebuilding the main tower on Trojan Way. So doing a diplex off the KNX site wouldn't be needed. The former 1150 towers they did use are shorter yet but apparently they could still protect KIRN. That could be why they didn't use the 570 site for the time they needed to not have RF at the main site to protect the tower crews.
KE4KLS_RADIO, WTLQ 730 in Charleston is licenced for 1,1kw day and 103watts night. When WMBL was in Morehead City at the old site on Radio Island, The ground system was saturated with salt water from Bogue Sound. With a BC1T Transmitter, WMBL could be heard from FLA to NY. We had no nighttime power, but, The station was very popular. After the move to Morehead, the station coverage was never the same. Clear Channel bought it and killed it for 730 in Charleston and now it belongs to Indigo and is barley hanging on. Extention refiles over and over to go 5kw and they have a construction permit never acted on. Carteret county NC has no AM station now with the move of what used to be WBMA,1400khz to Jacksonville, NC 35 miles away. Clear Channel= Death to local radio.
DanStrassberg said:
I assume you're talking about 1510 (the former WMEX)? That station would certainly qualify on this thread as well, though they were already on a downward spiral before the site move. In their case the power increase (and the associated pattern changes) in the late 60s were probably the beginning of the end.
Oldbones said:
Yes, I was writing about WWZN. The increase to 50 kW D, with no change in the 5 kW-N power or pattern from a two-tower array in Squantum (AKA N Quincy) didn't go on the air until the early 70s (1973 or later) although work must have begun a lot sooner. The station was still WMEX at the time. 50 kW-D required the addition of a tower (two towers D and two towers N, with one tower common to the D and N arrays). In the midst of the project, the Commonwealth took a portion of the land to replace a bridge across the Neponset River (AKA Fore River). This necessitated construction of two new towers instead of the one that was originally planned, but each of the two arrays/patterns remained unchanged; the arrays were just displaced from their original locations by a few hundred feet. The old DA-1 pattern, an inverted figure eight on a north-south axis, continued to be used at night. The new D pattern was a modified cardioid on an axis of ~120 degrees with the radiation maximum to the east-northeast. Most people would have said that the D pattern was insane. It sent much more than the equivalent of 50 kW ND out to sea, but WMEX didn't have much choice--WNLC (10 kW-D/5 kW-N, DA-2 now dark) had been built in New London CT, a mere 77 miles to the south-southwest and its 10 kW-D pattern was actually directed toward WMEX!
Anyhow. besides turning WMEX into a local during the day in Yarmouth NS, the 50 kW D setup did OK for WMEX in much of greater Boston, The signal to the north (over Boston and beyond) was obviously better than the old 5 kW and even to the west, there was a noticeable improvement. However, a few years later, when the State St South office complex was constructed to the immediate west of the site, the night coverage to the west, which had never been very good, was utterly destroyed. I haven't time right now to complete this narrative (the story has many twists and turns), but it was the office complex that led to the increase to 50 kW-U DA-2 and the move to Waltham. Arguably, it was the ONLY location that could have worked, but the move was more or less a disaster.
Here's a few thoughts on why so many new TLs for AMs have mixed results at best.
1) The new first adjacent rules were unnecessary. Few people listen to stations where their 0.5 mV/m signals came close to overlapping anyway. They do all this fancy footwork to meet 0.25 mV/m to 0.5 mV/m overlap and and often have to reduce power in the process.
2) The ratchet clause. Even if the station can maintain a decent night power level, the null areas become critical.
3) The FCC's adherence to "standard patterns" means that stations often build arrays with broadside components to maximize power by minimizing RSS and RSS/RMS ratios. This results in the deepest standard pattern nulls, but often more fading. In line (and slight dogleg) 1/4 wave spaced (+ or -) arrays with binomial design that allow a single tower to act as two or more results in higher RSS and thus higher standard pattern nulls. However, if some the nulls are perpendicular to the line of towers, the pattern acts to make the towers function as if they are much taller, and this is also reflected in greater "pattern gain". This also reduces fading as if the towers are actually taller, and is reflected in the vertical radiation pattern. The AM antenna expert at the FCC as much as said that a properly designed and tuned (and reradiation detuned) array has measured FI closest to the theoretical not the standard pattern anyway.
4) There used to be more research into finding the best sites from a conductivity standpoint. Now there are often too many degrees of restriction to allow this, or it is ignored.
5) Playing games with the power increments. Many stations were not operating af full input power, but with equivalent efficiency for the power increment, whether it was 5 kW or 50 kW or any of the other increments. Now, to say they are 50 kW, or whatever high power they want to be, many compromises are made with the patterns and array design.
6) Goofy locations way away from the center of the Metro, as opposed to central locations with less power.
Kear and Kennedy did a marvelous job back in the 1940s in my neck of the woods. Where these arrays have been replaced, it is often not an improvement, even when the power is ten times higher.
On another board we have predicted these types of problems with new AM TLs time and time again when the applications went in and long before they were built, and we have been proven right time and time again.
1) The new first adjacent rules were unnecessary. Few people listen to stations where their 0.5 mV/m signals came close to overlapping anyway. They do all this fancy footwork to meet 0.25 mV/m to 0.5 mV/m overlap and and often have to reduce power in the process.
2) The ratchet clause. Even if the station can maintain a decent night power level, the null areas become critical.
3) The FCC's adherence to "standard patterns" means that stations often build arrays with broadside components to maximize power by minimizing RSS and RSS/RMS ratios. This results in the deepest standard pattern nulls, but often more fading. In line (and slight dogleg) 1/4 wave spaced (+ or -) arrays with binomial design that allow a single tower to act as two or more results in higher RSS and thus higher standard pattern nulls. However, if some the nulls are perpendicular to the line of towers, the pattern acts to make the towers function as if they are much taller, and this is also reflected in greater "pattern gain". This also reduces fading as if the towers are actually taller, and is reflected in the vertical radiation pattern. The AM antenna expert at the FCC as much as said that a properly designed and tuned (and reradiation detuned) array has measured FI closest to the theoretical not the standard pattern anyway.
4) There used to be more research into finding the best sites from a conductivity standpoint. Now there are often too many degrees of restriction to allow this, or it is ignored.
5) Playing games with the power increments. Many stations were not operating af full input power, but with equivalent efficiency for the power increment, whether it was 5 kW or 50 kW or any of the other increments. Now, to say they are 50 kW, or whatever high power they want to be, many compromises are made with the patterns and array design.
6) Goofy locations way away from the center of the Metro, as opposed to central locations with less power.
Kear and Kennedy did a marvelous job back in the 1940s in my neck of the woods. Where these arrays have been replaced, it is often not an improvement, even when the power is ten times higher.
On another board we have predicted these types of problems with new AM TLs time and time again when the applications went in and long before they were built, and we have been proven right time and time again.
J
joewhlm
Guest
Check out the WNYR Rochester tower move back in mid 80's. It was something like a tower or two with 1kw or 250 watts in town. It moved the towers west of the city with like 6 towers and boosted the power to 5kw and nulls all over the place and complaints out the wazzooo.
joewhlm said:
It was a mixed blessing, since it did at least give WNYR a night signal for the first time in its history. WNYR had been a 250-watt non-directional daytimer on 680, with a killer in-town signal from a tall tower on the west side of the city, but of course nothing before sunrise or after sunset, which is rough in the winter months when it's dark at 4:15.
Rogers up in Canada wanted WNYR off 680 so it could move CFTR in Toronto to a more favorable transmitter site (it was using a whopping 13 towers - talk about your directional nulls), and after some slick diplomatic work a deal was struck to allow WNYR to go fulltime on 990, which was (and is) a Canadian clear channel, with Rogers paying to build the new transmitter site.
The big problem, at least at first, was that the new site wasn't ready, so WNYR spent its first couple of years operating from a temporary directional array at its old site west of town, with 1 kW days and 250 watts at night. The signal was pretty rough; I have a tape that a friend recorded in Irondequoit the first night they had it on, and the signal just fell off the dial in the switch from 680 to 990 at sunset.
Once the new site in Clarkson was finished, it eventually was cranked up to 5000 watts day (4 towers) and 2500 at night (all 6 towers). It's an east-west beam from about 18 miles west of downtown Rochester. It's good in the city, and keeps going east all the way to New England at night - but it's a tight enough DA that it falls apart south of the city after dark. I hear some noise under the night signal here in Brighton, almost within sight of the city line. The day signal is less directional and has a bigger lobe to the west, making it the only Rochester AM other than WHAM that's audible in Buffalo.
In any event, WNYR actually did pretty well with the 990 signal into the mid-80s, even knocking its first FM country competitor (WZKC 98.9) out of the format in 1986. The next year, another FM country signal launched, and WBEE-FM 92.5 took WNYR out of the format within another couple of years. It's been wheel o'formats on 990 ever since...but the signal is only part of the reason for that.
Anyone else here remember the great signal that CHLO St. Thomas, Ontario had on 680 with 1 kW and a four tower array? This station was moved to 1570 with 10000 watts and a highly directional antenna (8 towers as I recall offhand). Before the US stations went on 1570 at night, you could hear the skywave all over the place, but the daytime signal was nothing. This was another aspect of the CHFI/CFTR upgrade.
CHLO had a great signal and a killer format at the time they were on 680. We got it daytimes in Northern Ohio. When they hit 1570 there was still a daytimer on in Mansfield Ohio that knocked out any chance of day signal. Night did skip in but only occasionally along the lake shore. Never understood why they jumped off 680
CHFI/CFTR was 1 kW daytime and 10 kW nighttime before they kept stepping up to 50 kW day and night.
After CHLO moved to 1570, I could get both CHFI/CFTR and WDBC Escanaba, MI from my location in Southeastern Michigan, by turning the radio and nulling the other one out in the daytime. Same with WGR and WKRC on 550, and WAIT and WOSU on 820, and WSAM and WJLB on 1400. With CHAM on 820, it's not that simple anymore.
After CHLO moved to 1570, I could get both CHFI/CFTR and WDBC Escanaba, MI from my location in Southeastern Michigan, by turning the radio and nulling the other one out in the daytime. Same with WGR and WKRC on 550, and WAIT and WOSU on 820, and WSAM and WJLB on 1400. With CHAM on 820, it's not that simple anymore.
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