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in Anderson ive gotten WSTO and WGBF-FM up here a few times but more likely its because of Tropo skips because WSTO went over WQLK, and the times ive gotten WGBF. they have to squeeze the bleed over of WRZX out of Indy and WDHT over on 102,9 out of Dayton, Which we dont get except on skip now due to a Translator for Klove on 102.9 out of muncie which just slaughters any hope we use to have out of 102,9
Daytons we got regularly in Anderson was 99.1, 102.9 and 106.5. Now with an LP at 99.1 and the Klove translator on 102.9. the only dayton strong hold left here now is 106.5
There used to be one that simply went nowhere, but they fixed it long ago...and that was Booneville,IN on 107.1. No idea where the RF from that one was going, but it wasn't being radiated.
If we're talking Kentucky, WANY-FM in Albany is in an area surrounded by hills taller than 150' or so tower...20 miles & it's toast on a good car radio. The horizontal only signal didn't help much at the time either The AM on 1390 runs circles around the FM.
IMHO, the undisputed prize goes to WLBH, 96.9 Mattoon,IL. This 50KW/500' full class B on 96.9 regularly gets trounced at 25 miles by Paris, Ky from over 200 miles away. It's been this way for years & years...there's a story here...wish I knew it.
106.5 is Dayton in name only, with a tower north of COL Greenville.
Very occasionally WLBH would show itself in Lafayette, IN under the right conditions. A good signal from southern IL into the lafayette atea used to be the Olney station on 92.9, which could be heard fairly often with Country music and Cardinals baseball. Of course a new 92.9 opened up near Danville, IL. When i was in Terre Haute last year I could barely get it. Once I heard the Olney station in Jacksonville, IL, under KGRC. I was heading to KGRC for an on-air job then (1985).
106.5 is Dayton in name only, with a tower north of COL Greenville.
Very occasionally WLBH would show itself in Lafayette, IN under the right conditions. A good signal from southern IL into the lafayette atea used to be the Olney station on 92.9, which could be heard fairly often with Country music and Cardinals baseball. Of course a new 92.9 opened up near Danville, IL. When i was in Terre Haute last year I could barely get it. Once I heard the Olney station in Jacksonville, IL, under KGRC. I was heading to KGRC for an on-air job then (1985).
What year did you hear WLBH in Lafayette? At one time, I heard WLBH pretty often here 30 miles south of Indy, but it's been a lot of years ago. Now, WLBH is DX at 25 miles.
Sort of surprised that no one has mentioned the Continental stations 107.1 & 810AM. The FMs tower is practically in Crawfordsville, yet they play as an Indy station, and the low-power 810. I think they now serve a needed niche, but when it comes to power..well....
Sort of surprised that no one has mentioned the Continental stations 107.1 & 810AM. The FMs tower is practically in Crawfordsville, yet they play as an Indy station, and the low-power 810. I think they now serve a needed niche, but when it comes to power..well....
Actually, their FM tower is closer to downtown Indy than Crawfordsville and when it comes to class A signals, that one is above average. The AM 810 only has 250 watts, but has a tall tower & low dial position. Not many 250 watters carry 100 miles during the day, but this one does...
I have heard WFBQ many many times north of Warsaw, and just this week on the south side of Ft. Wayne but when you get close to the tower farm on the north side of Ft. Where second adjacent 95.1 beats it up, and then north of there is the 94.7 in Michigan. So the claim that WFBQ does not go north is incorrect. For sure to the south WTTS is strong but remember the transmitter is half way between Indy and Bloomington, to bad the audio is very very boring on WTTS much like the college student sounding format they have.
Sort of surprised that no one has mentioned the Continental stations 107.1 & 810AM. The FMs tower is practically in Crawfordsville, yet they play as an Indy station, and the low-power 810. I think they now serve a needed niche, but when it comes to power..well....
Actually, their FM tower is closer to downtown Indy than Crawfordsville and when it comes to class A signals, that one is above average. The AM 810 only has 250 watts, but has a tall tower & low dial position. Not many 250 watters carry 100 miles during the day, but this one does...
I know exactly where the FM tower is..I spent way too much time up there waiting for any number of various companies to come up and fix this thing or that. I once offered to drive the farmer's tractor up there while they were baling hay and help him out while I was waiting for Max Turner to come up. And the AM carries like a rocket at night when you forgot to turn it off at sunset!! Although for a very short time they had a special nightime CP which they dropped. We could use about 6 watts. I bought the LPB xmtr for it, and Mike Rabey & Max put it in.
I know the place as well...spent a short time (a year?) there in the mid 2000's...IIRC a guy named Isenhart brought me in for some ambitious planning that never panned out. Main things I recall about the FM site : there was a generator transfer panel, but no generator. The blower went out in the main transmitter, the backup didn't work. After fixing the backup (it had arc'd & shorted out the low pass filter), I found the backup antenna didn't work. It was a chore, but the main antenna could be wrestled onto the backup transmitter. After Isenhart left, they never called me again...and that's fine with me. Not sure why they ever involved me in the first place...the previous engineer (again IIRC) was Phil Thomas...and if he wired the FM site, he does beautiful work. From what I understand, Phil is back there now. There's probably a story here...
I know the place as well...spent a short time (a year?) there in the mid 2000's...IIRC a guy named Isenhart brought me in for some ambitious planning that never panned out. Main things I recall about the FM site : there was a generator transfer panel, but no generator. The blower went out in the main transmitter, the backup didn't work. After fixing the backup (it had arc'd & shorted out the low pass filter), I found the backup antenna didn't work. It was a chore, but the main antenna could be wrestled onto the backup transmitter. After Isenhart left, they never called me again...and that's fine with me. Not sure why they ever involved me in the first place...the previous engineer (again IIRC) was Phil Thomas...and if he wired the FM site, he does beautiful work. From what I understand, Phil is back there now. There's probably a story here...
I was their Ops Manager from 1998-1999. At that time we bought our engineering services from Susquehanna. Max Turner & Jeff Goode did our work for us. Sometimes Mike Rabey would get involved as well. I think the world of Max & Mike. We used to have a lot of trouble with the air conditioning up there. When it was working it could have been a great place to hang meat and cool milk..but more often than not it would shut down, the XMTR would overheat and I'd be up there to see what happend before calling Max. Another time TELCO had mistakenly unhooked our phone lines up the hill, and we were off for 2 days. It was always something up there. Dwight Barnett was GM, Tom Posz was sales manager, and of course Martha & Edna came with the building!! ;D Marvin the owner had never seen the station he owned..as I'm sure you can attest..it was a MOST interesting operation!!
I could hear Q-95 regularly in Ft Wayne when I lived there. Q-95 was present when I lived in Logansport but fuzzy, but I don't know what kind of boosters people had up there but I'd hear Q95 blasting out of people's cars all the time up there.
Worst rf from any station has to be WXCH in Hope. 500 w vertical. Worse than boonville.
Boonville had a 150 foot AM "windcharger" tower. (Ala linton Indiana and WJCF Seymour) The old Horizontal fm bays were probably an original Harris Gates Fm antenna like the transmitter, an FM 1 c. I think these are 4-400's the thing used. You had to start it and tune it at low power, 1 tube. If you tuned at both tubes for max out it burned a pinhole in the tubes. Big picture window to the tubes just like AM transmitters of the time.
Norman, the owner, helped start the place. Always wondered why the signal was sooo bad until I worked on the place and found the horizontal antenna....
I don't think they ever threw away anything. The big innovation whle I was there was "digital" audio. We added a cheap aftermarket CD player to the tube board (pre executive model). (1992-1994) Cd player to tube input preamp. Jock "Big Larry" (and guess how he gotthat monicker? Big as the studio) spoke highly of the ability to play 3 fat dutchmen from CD rather than vinyl. 3 fat dutchmen were "hot" at WBNL btw.
I visited a dollar general store in illinois (town started with a B - Benton?- but don't remember the name.) and they had a similar looking rca Fm that was in the Armstrong band with a"multiplier" to reach on frequency. Even though I was young and my back was stronger I declined to be interested in the "free" transmitter on the second floor....
Worst rf from any station has to be WXCH in Hope. 500 w vertical. Worse than boonville.
Boonville had a 150 foot AM "windcharger" tower. (Ala linton Indiana and WJCF Seymour) The old Horizontal fm bays were probably an original Harris Gates Fm antenna like the transmitter, an FM 1 c. I think these are 4-400's the thing used. You had to start it and tune it at low power, 1 tube. If you tuned at both tubes for max out it burned a pinhole in the tubes. Big picture window to the tubes just like AM transmitters of the time.
Norman, the owner, helped start the place. Always wondered why the signal was sooo bad until I worked on the place and found the horizontal antenna....
I don't think they ever threw away anything. The big innovation whle I was there was "digital" audio. We added a cheap aftermarket CD player to the tube board (pre executive model). (1992-1994) Cd player to tube input preamp. Jock "Big Larry" (and guess how he gotthat monicker? Big as the studio) spoke highly of the ability to play 3 fat dutchmen from CD rather than vinyl. 3 fat dutchmen were "hot" at WBNL btw.
I visited a dollar general store in illinois (town started with a B - Benton?- but don't remember the name.) and they had a similar looking rca Fm that was in the Armstrong band with a"multiplier" to reach on frequency. Even though I was young and my back was stronger I declined to be interested in the "free" transmitter on the second floor....
Boonville was the closest Class A that I could not hear.
I wish you had taken that RCA! The 1KW RCA transmitter at WAKW when I started there in 1967 went to Benton,IL!!!! My 14 year old eyes gazed into those 4-125A driver tubes many times...and I remember the motorized AFC and the 1" screen you used to tune the exciter. Mike York has one of those exciters in storage at Knightstown.
I know the place as well...spent a short time (a year?) there in the mid 2000's...IIRC a guy named Isenhart brought me in for some ambitious planning that never panned out. Main things I recall about the FM site : there was a generator transfer panel, but no generator. The blower went out in the main transmitter, the backup didn't work. After fixing the backup (it had arc'd & shorted out the low pass filter), I found the backup antenna didn't work. It was a chore, but the main antenna could be wrestled onto the backup transmitter. After Isenhart left, they never called me again...and that's fine with me. Not sure why they ever involved me in the first place...the previous engineer (again IIRC) was Phil Thomas...and if he wired the FM site, he does beautiful work. From what I understand, Phil is back there now. There's probably a story here...
I was their Ops Manager from 1998-1999. At that time we bought our engineering services from Susquehanna. Max Turner & Jeff Goode did our work for us. Sometimes Mike Rabey would get involved as well. I think the world of Max & Mike. We used to have a lot of trouble with the air conditioning up there. When it was working it could have been a great place to hang meat and cool milk..but more often than not it would shut down, the XMTR would overheat and I'd be up there to see what happend before calling Max. Another time TELCO had mistakenly unhooked our phone lines up the hill, and we were off for 2 days. It was always something up there. Dwight Barnett was GM, Tom Posz was sales manager, and of course Martha & Edna came with the building!! ;D Marvin the owner had never seen the station he owned..as I'm sure you can attest..it was a MOST interesting operation!!
Tom, Jeff & Mike are all top tier engineers...you chose well. I worked with Tom Posz at WTRE/Greensburg in the late 80's or early 90's. And yes, that air conditioning was downright cold....probably a waste of electricity...not much need in keeping a transmitter at 60 degrees.
I know the place as well...spent a short time (a year?) there in the mid 2000's...IIRC a guy named Isenhart brought me in for some ambitious planning that never panned out. Main things I recall about the FM site : there was a generator transfer panel, but no generator. The blower went out in the main transmitter, the backup didn't work. After fixing the backup (it had arc'd & shorted out the low pass filter), I found the backup antenna didn't work. It was a chore, but the main antenna could be wrestled onto the backup transmitter. After Isenhart left, they never called me again...and that's fine with me. Not sure why they ever involved me in the first place...the previous engineer (again IIRC) was Phil Thomas...and if he wired the FM site, he does beautiful work. From what I understand, Phil is back there now. There's probably a story here...
I was their Ops Manager from 1998-1999. At that time we bought our engineering services from Susquehanna. Max Turner & Jeff Goode did our work for us. Sometimes Mike Rabey would get involved as well. I think the world of Max & Mike. We used to have a lot of trouble with the air conditioning up there. When it was working it could have been a great place to hang meat and cool milk..but more often than not it would shut down, the XMTR would overheat and I'd be up there to see what happend before calling Max. Another time TELCO had mistakenly unhooked our phone lines up the hill, and we were off for 2 days. It was always something up there. Dwight Barnett was GM, Tom Posz was sales manager, and of course Martha & Edna came with the building!! ;D Marvin the owner had never seen the station he owned..as I'm sure you can attest..it was a MOST interesting operation!!
I was there in 1999 during the live "Smooth Jazz" period...I did mid-days, Larry Leggett was on mornings and Simone Enoch was on in the afternoons. Tom Posz was the PD, and Mike Rabey did the engineering of the "basement" studios there on North Meridian after our move from the west side. What are Larry and Tom doing these days? I heard Tom was out of radio, and never heard what happened to Larry.
I know the place as well...spent a short time (a year?) there in the mid 2000's...IIRC a guy named Isenhart brought me in for some ambitious planning that never panned out. Main things I recall about the FM site : there was a generator transfer panel, but no generator. The blower went out in the main transmitter, the backup didn't work. After fixing the backup (it had arc'd & shorted out the low pass filter), I found the backup antenna didn't work. It was a chore, but the main antenna could be wrestled onto the backup transmitter. After Isenhart left, they never called me again...and that's fine with me. Not sure why they ever involved me in the first place...the previous engineer (again IIRC) was Phil Thomas...and if he wired the FM site, he does beautiful work. From what I understand, Phil is back there now. There's probably a story here...
I was their Ops Manager from 1998-1999. At that time we bought our engineering services from Susquehanna. Max Turner & Jeff Goode did our work for us. Sometimes Mike Rabey would get involved as well. I think the world of Max & Mike. We used to have a lot of trouble with the air conditioning up there. When it was working it could have been a great place to hang meat and cool milk..but more often than not it would shut down, the XMTR would overheat and I'd be up there to see what happend before calling Max. Another time TELCO had mistakenly unhooked our phone lines up the hill, and we were off for 2 days. It was always something up there. Dwight Barnett was GM, Tom Posz was sales manager, and of course Martha & Edna came with the building!! ;D Marvin the owner had never seen the station he owned..as I'm sure you can attest..it was a MOST interesting operation!!
I was there in 1999 during the live "Smooth Jazz" period...I did mid-days, Larry Leggett was on mornings and Simone Enoch was on in the afternoons. Tom Posz was the PD, and Mike Rabey did the engineering of the "basement" studios there on North Meridian after our move from the west side. What are Larry and Tom doing these days? I heard Tom was out of radio, and never heard what happened to Larry.
You must have come along right after I left. I never made the move over to North Meridian. I was the PD who made the switch from classical to smooth jazz and moved the AM over to hispanic. I had heard that Tom Posz went on to sell for the Indy Star.
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