Bauerle Silenced

[fybush]

"Bob1370," I would love to see you go toe-to-toe with Scott Fybush in an all-out radio history challenge.

Stop by the second floor of 280 State Street any afternoon that we're both working...

If we did that you guys would never get any work done and we'd keep you there far too late. I'm amazed at the depth of knowledge you guys have. I thought I was a radio history junkie!

Probably the first thing I'd ask Scott would be since he's seen so many transmitter sites which one is his favorite if he has one.

Believe me, there's plenty of radio talk going on even while Bob and I are both diligently getting all of our work done...and we do frequently end up staying there all too late

Favorite tower site? That would have to be WLW, for all the history. But there are plenty of runners-up, too!

 

[Play Freebird]

Thanks for the info, Junkie. I've gotta say: that's odd, with the audio distortion at reduced power. WYSL has a 25,000 watt Nautel AMPFET-25, with 24 PWM modules, total power capability = 31kw. It loafs along all day at 21kw TPO with no distortion whatsoever. I've also had module failures (blown fuses from transients) on both the Nautel and the BE AM-2.5 former main/now nighttime Tx forcing temporary reduced power with no audio consequences. Can't help but wonder whether WBEN has some antenna load issues which are masked when the station's at full power?

The DX-10 uses 12-bit "direct digital synthesis", rather than PWM. So instead of varying the duty cycle of the amplifier modules, they are gradually switched on in steps to form positive peaks, and then gradually turned off during the negative peaks. The clock rate is tied to the carrier frequency to reduce PA output filtering requirements.

Pages 4-6 of this Harris blurb discuss the theory of operation:

http://www.broadcast.harris.com/product_portfolio/prod_media/DX-10 Virtual Tour.pdf

There's some reserve capacity built in, but if too many modules fail, steps are eliminated and audible distortion will increase. But it probably won't sound as bad as losing just one of the glass 833 "modules" in the modulator of a BC-1T!

 

[Bob1370]

"Bob1370," I would love to see you go toe-to-toe with Scott Fybush in an all-out radio history challenge. "

Naw...Scott and I like to talk about these things whenever we get a spare moment (which isn't often) but he's the true scholar and researcher, I'm just a buff who dabbles in radio history when he's not doing radio shows. If I'm knowledgable about the arcane details of some of Rochester's, Syracuse's and Buffalo's station histories, it's because I've worked a whole bunch of these stations over the last 30 years, got to know some of the old-timers who were around when the history was being made and were still on staff when I got there, and asked them to tell their stories.

You know what worries me? Most of those old-timers who carried the institutional memory of the days when quality radio was the norm, have either retired and moved away, or passed away. And there aren't as many of my generation who knew them and remembered what they did, still working in the business either...a lot of us have either moved to greener pastures or given up as well. When we're gone, the tie to the years when radio people were consistently given the tools to do their best will be broken...what then?

 

[Mike Sheridan]

When we're gone, the tie to the years when radio people were consistently given the tools to do their best will be broken...what then?


Amen, I wonder about that too. It's probably already to late. Lots of people saw that before I did.

Mike

 

[MrVacuumTube]

"Knowledgeable sources familiar with the WBEN, WGR and WWKB transmitter operations say any thought of moving the WWKB transmitter plant to Grand Island would be very difficult and might even make KB vulnerable to facilities changes for other stations operating on 1520 kHz. KB's 50 kW pattern needs 3 towers to protect other stations on 1520, most notably KOMA."

That may or may not be an issue depending on how you configure the pattern and who you have to protect. If KOMA is the one station you have to worry about, then all you need to do is throw a deep null to the west-southwest in the direction of Oklahoma City, beginning at Oklahoma City local sunset. You could conceivably do that on two, three or however many towers you want in order to get both the sharp narrow null you need, and the gain in field strength in other directions you want. If other stations enter into the equation that may be a different story, but I don't know how stations that started up on 1520 AFTER KB and KOMA established priority on the channel back in 1941 rate in terms of protection.

"As to WGR, it most likely would not be able to run its 5 kW night pattern off two towers. However, WGR could operate with 1 kW on two towers, as it did many, many years ago when TransAmerica owned WGR AM-FM-TV. At that time, WGR was 5 kW-D, ND and 1 kW-N off two towers. The 1 kW night pattern was far less restricted than the current 5 kW night pattern."

Probably couldn't do much to change GR's night pattern at least to the west, where both WKRC and KTRS need protection. There might be a little room to let it out to the east. That pattern, I've been told, was drawn a lot tighter than it needed to be when the plant was built in 1941 because the eastern 'burbs that are being nulled out now were very thinly populated in the 1940s...and they wanted to shoot as much field strength north toward Toronto as they could, because they were Toronto's de facto CBS network source and American stations could make significant money selling ads to Canadian accounts back then. WKBW was made a DA-1 rather than a DA-N facility back then for similar reasons...KB threw more power than absolutely necessary to the east, in order to grab listeners in the western half of the Rochester market at a time when Rochester didn't have a full complement of network affiliate stations (it had only NBC Red from WHAM, CBS from WHEC, and local independent WSAY. missing NBC Blue/ABC, which KB provided until Rochester's WARC/950 signed on as an ABC affiliate in 1947).

Do you think it would be wise to put WBEN's signal at 50K and let WWKB's signal be at 5K since NO ONE listens to WWKB and Entercrum can show the whole eastern seaboard what Buffalo radio is REALLY like?

 

[Steven21]

Do you think it would be wise to put WBEN's signal at 50K and let WWKB's signal be at 5K since NO ONE listens to WWKB and Entercrum can show the whole eastern seaboard what Buffalo radio is REALLY like?

I've wondered that myself. Seems like a no-brainer. 50kw for that
slapped-together nonsense is sad.

 

[Bob1370]

"Do you think it would be wise to put WBEN's signal at 50K and let WWKB's signal be at 5K since NO ONE listens to WWKB and Entercrum can show the whole eastern seaboard what Buffalo radio is REALLY like?"

If they were to do that, I think they'd want to do a major rebuild of the KB transmitter plant, maybe even find a way to physically remove it from the WGR site assuming they could find a place to put it. Any time you diplex two signals, even two that are as far apart on the dial as GR and KB, you are making some technical compromises on both signals. You'd want a major rebuild of 1520 if you were to put a big-money programming schedule on that signal.

Even then, I wonder what you'd gain. WBEN has one of the best 5,000 watt signals, in terms of reach, in the whole country--unless it's been screwed up since Algonquin sold it, it had an incredibly efficient antenna, ground system and transmitter plant that generated enough field strength to match a lot of 10 kW middle-of-the-band signals in other markets. And when you took into account the way signals attenuate more the higher you go up the band, its ground wave signal on either day or night pattern was nearly equivalent to KB's 50 kW signal in terms of effective coverage. I'm sure WBEN could stay on 930, get a CP to run that DX-10 at full power (even if they had to do a DA-2 to pull the signal in a little to the west during the day), and match any coverage KB can provide...they're not far off even at 5 kW.

 

[Savage]

There's been a bit of back-and-forth here about "moving" KB 1520 to another site. It's hard to see what this would accomplish. And given WWKB's high power and the fact that the facility is 65 years old, any site move would almost certainly entail a considerable reduction in the facility.

First, KB would move to the bottom of the allocation heirarchy, meaning they would have to now protect a huge number of co- and adjacent-channel stations that didn't exist when WKBW moved from 1480 to 1520.
They would also be subject to the 25% interference ratcheting requirements.

A full skywave study would have to be done but it would be easy to see a relocation of the TX site producing some highly undesirable result like 50kw DA-D, 5kw DA-N, 6 towers. Or more. Or less, powerwise.

I'd opt for fixing what needs fixed on Big Tree Road. I know that there has been a relatively recent history of low main-lobe field measurements. The cause should be investigated and corrected if there is sufficient interest in restoring 1520's once-legendary signal. While this could get pricey, it would still be cheaper than relocating the entire site and rebuilding from scratch.

 

[Bob1370]

"I'd opt for fixing what needs fixed on Big Tree Road. I know that there has been a relatively recent history of low main-lobe field measurements. The cause should be investigated and corrected if there is sufficient interest in restoring 1520's once-legendary signal"

Even with its current troubles, KB's coverage isn't too bad. But you're likely on to something about digging in and seeing what's really wrong (deteriorated ground system? Faulty transmission lines? Rusting 67-year-old towers that need refurbishing or replacing? All of the above?). The fact that they don't do it now...when they wouldn't have let a problem rest for even a day back when CapCities/ABC owned the place...tells me they just don't consider it a high priority, because its only importance is to run interference for WGR and WBEN and keep them format competition-free. One of the dubious anti-competitive effects of allowing one company to build such a big market cluster. (Although I don't blame Entercom for taking advantage of the rules when the rules are written to allow it, I'd do it too if I were in David Field's shoes...)

The location is still a good one for KB. Which makes me wonder--would they benefit if WGR moved its transmitter to a different location, maybe a little further south with taller (and maybe toploaded) towers to get that groundwave signal out further while suppressing skywave interference? Separating the two would solve all the nasty problems that come from diplexing two strong signals at one site, with all the hassles of the filtering networks, etc. that can't be doing either signal much good...got a tour of Big Tree Road while I was working at KB. Pete Burk, the CE at the time, told me all about all the stuff they had to go through on all the towers to keep KB and GR from playing hell with each other's signal, even though they only shared one tower in common out of the six total on the site (and that one tower, KB's westernmost one, was only shared on GR's night pattern operation).

 

[Mike Sheridan]

Bob is the situation at Big Tree really that bad? Ground system is one thing but rusting towers are serious. Most will last a long time if they are properly painted and repainted as needed.

As someone who grew up not far from the site in the '50's and '60's we had problems with KB coming in all over the AM dial. I haven't seen this quite so bad with any other station.

I am reminded of this by an aircheck made in Hamburg near the fairgrounds of WYSL 1400. You can clearly hear KB bleeding through under WYSL.