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BRW: WQOM 1060 set to debut at full power

It sounds like every few seconds there's a buzz, as if a bug just hit a zapper...bzzt! As for 1060's
history, enough format and call changes for you? WGTR, WSTD, WBIV, WBIX, WBPS, WTTP,
WMEX...
 
Don Juannn said:
I tuned in for a short bit...and noticed the signal bouncing up and down (between high and low power?).
Anyone know if they are having difficulties this first day keeping the sitgnal on at full power?
Click to expand...

I don't think it's difficulties; I think it's the completion of planned work. The carrier has been going off for--by now--hundreds of periods of about four seconds each. Why they didn't schedule this work a few days earlier so it would not have interfered with programming, or scheduled the sign-on for a few days later is a mystery to me.

I am guessing, but I could believe that they are running the night pattern by day at a power greater than the normal 2500W and also higher than the 5kW D that I had forecast. I would guess that the power is at least 10 kW, which suggests that the night phasor was designed for higher power than the station expected to use. Such an overdesign would have been costly, so it is unclear why--if that's what's going on--the phasor would have been built that way when, at the time it was built, it was believed that a power of much more than 10 kW would have caused prohibited overlap with WBZ. It was only when WAMG was rebuilt, that measurements revealed that a large area to the northeast of the site had exceptionally low soil conductivity (~0.1 mS/m), thus making the 50 kW power possible.

Anyhow, I suspect that carrier will be going on and off rapidly for quite a few more days, if not weeks, while measurements and adjustments are made.
 
Don Juannn said:
I tuned in for a short bit...and noticed the signal bouncing up and down (between high and low power?).

Anyone know if they are having difficulties this first day keeping the signal on at full power?
Click to expand...

Sounds like something may have become intermittent... :eek:

Even the Lord can't always help when things become intermittent... :eek:

Intermittency is the all-powerful force of the New Millennium.
 
Eli Polonsky said:
Sounds like something may have become intermittent... :eek: Even the Lord can't always help when things become intermittent... :eek: Intermittency is the all-powerful force of the New Millennium.
Click to expand...

Could be, but I still think it's intentional. They have a bunch of things to adjust and measurements to make. And due to their bizarre decision not to do any on-air testing of a quite complicated setup during their silent period from 9/15 to 11/1 and the fact that they are promoting their 24/7 format, the only time they can do it is while they are on the air broadcasting regular programming. That, of course, turns the regular programming into highly irregular programming.
 
DanStrassberg said:
Eli Polonsky said:
Sounds like something may have become intermittent... :eek: Even the Lord can't always help when things become intermittent... :eek: Intermittency is the all-powerful force of the New Millennium.
Click to expand...

Could be, but I still think it's intentional. They have a bunch of things to adjust and measurements to make. And due to their bizarre decision not to do any on-air testing of a quite complicated setup during their silent period from 9/15 to 11/1....
Click to expand...

Well the manner that they were popping up and down in signal (every few seconds) doesn't sound like "adjustments and measurements". Sounds like a problem. And a problem that popped up only when they went on the air full-time...for hour on end with the new system, phasors, tx or whatever.

I think they DID do some testing between 9/15 & 11/1. I heard some of it. But the completed system wasn't fully in place.
 
Wbzfm2010 said:
well at night here in Franklin theirs no reception at all i heard kyw bleeding through big time.
Click to expand...

Franklin is southwest of Boston, near 495, right? It's pretty much due south of the WQOM transmitter site off Route 126 in Ashland. In that location, using the night pattern at the licensed night power of 2.5 kW, the signal you are getting should be equivalent to ~25W ND. If WQOM were running the same pattern but at 50 kW (the facilities authorized in its granted CP for daytime operation from the night site), the signal in your direction would be equivalent to ~500W ND. You ought to receive the station, maybe not especially well, but not really poorly either. With the not-yet-granted three-tower day pattern at 50 kW, you'd get a very strong signal--equivalent to ~50 kW ND, which would to make WQOM one of the strongest, if not _the_ strongest Boston-area AM signal where you live. With that power and pattern, the daytime signal should be a bit stronger than WEEI's.

You live in a good location for figuring out which pattern and power WQOM is using at various times.
 
yes Franklin is sw of Boston the first day during the day it came in well but yesterday i could tell, the carrier was fading in and out!! haven't listened today however!!
 
At noon Wednesday (11/3), I used my radio that displays relative signal strength to observe if WQOM was any stronger than on Monday and Tuesday. During those prior days, it was weaker than the signal I received from WILD-AM 1090 when the latter was at full power. Today, WQOM was slightly stronger, so some work is being done on Sewell Street. Whether it's at full 50K I can't tell. As I drove around the Merrimack Valley, the signal did not do a very good job of overcoming static source.
 
As of this morning, Thursday 11/4/2010 at ~9:30AM EDT, the fcc.gov Web site shows that, effective today, the FCC has granted WQOM's application for modification of its CP to increase its D/CH power to 50 kW and to move its daytime operation to what had previously been its night site on Sewell St in Ashland. The modified CP specifies the use of towers 2, 3, and 4 at the site for the 50 -kW D/CH pattern with no change to the five-tower 2.5-kW night operation.

The three-tower phasor described in the modified CP may already be on site and installed. If so, I might have heard the station using the modified facilities late yesterday afternoon. I can't say whether the station was running 50 kW, but I am quite sure that the power was greater than the licensed 2.5-kW night power. I caught the sunset pattern change at 5:30PM EDT yesterday and the carrier disappeared for 15 or 20 seconds--a long time for a pattern change--suggesting that a permanent setup for switching between the new three-tower day phasor and the existing five-tower night phasor may not yet have been in place at that time. I did not catch the sunrise pattern change at 7:30AM EDT this morning. Indeed, WQOM may be back on its night pattern/power as I write this (10:15AM EDT).
 
As of noon Thursday, 11/4, the signal I've been receiving all morning has been weaker than WILD-AM. As I mentioned above, yesterday it was stronger.
 
raccoonradio said:
A co-worker of mine who listens to WQOM says he heard them say they are due to go to full power this Friday
Click to expand...

I heard a woman say on the air yesterday that they would be running at full power "by the end of this week," but in the next breath she asked the listeners to pray for the station's engineers as they complete this "very important work." Remember also that, a week ago, they were saying the beginning of next week, which, at that time, meant the beginning of this week. However, by the most charitable definition, the beginning of this week ended yesterday and as far as I can tell, they have not been running what sounds to me like full power on any regular schedule. The last time I heard them at what I believe might have been full power was early yesterday afternoon but they switched back to lower power before critical hours kicked in, which would have been 2:30PM, now that a) it is November and b) we're back on standard time.

Anyhow, for it to have been completed on such an aggressive schedule suggests that much of the work had to be done even before Langer filed his first application to move the daytime operation to the night site. It was only last Thursday, 11/4, that the FCC granted the modification of CP to use three towers by day instead of five. Years ago, the FCC looked with great disfavor on stations that built facilities upgrades without benefit of a CP. I think that stations actually lost their licenses for doing such things. However I don't think the FCC cares any longer--as long as the new facilities don't go on the air until a CP (and probably program-test authority) have been granted. I will keep my eye on the FCC's CDBS site to see whether I can catch at least an application for--if not an actual grant of--program test authority. In the case of WQOM, however, there have been several applications for special temporary authority covering repairs to the antenna system necessitated, I believe, by lightning damage that occurred last spring. WQOM's engineers may take the position that those STAs obviate the need for separate program-test authority.
 
LA_Guy said:
From what I understand, they are running 12.5 kW during the day right now.
Click to expand...

I don't know what they are running at night...but I had the occasion of driving down the expressway (from the North to the South), and got off at South Station for a Dunkins run....and I had trouble getting them clearly all the way.

Even as I drove around South Station and downtown, I couldn't pick them up reliably....and I was trying. When I could pick them up while downtown...I could hear KYW(?) in the background.

Again, this was in the evening...8-9-10PM-ish.
 
LA_Guy said:
From what I understand, they are running 12.5 kW during the day right now.
Click to expand...

Very common for the FCC to allow AMs that are upgrading to test using a new DA pattern and the licensed power or 1/4 of the CP power, whichever is lower. 12.5 kW would be consistent with that practice. Do you know whether this is being done with the three-tower array or the five-tower array? My guess is three. I've heard that the three-tower array saved them from having to install new transmission lines (high-power coax) to the towers that, until now, were called 1 and 5 (and are still 1 and 5 of the night array). Besides permitting a better pattern, not using the end towers by day saved a lot of digging and repairs to the ground system. The daytime towers are the middle three but the modified CP that was granted on 11/4 renumbers them as 1, 2, and 3. Giving shared towers different numbers day and night is a common practice but it strikes me as unnecessarily confusing. I thought the FCC had figured out how to handle arrays in which there is no tower #1.
 
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