Heard it cost 550k to get 550 kHz. El cheapo
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BRW: WQOM 1060 set to debut at full power
- Thread starter raccoonradio
- Start date
L
Laurence Glavin
Guest
Today (Friday, 11/12) is the first day that I've monitored WQOM that they have been at anything close to full power at around sunrise. Previously, they seemed to be running nighttime power and pattern until 10:00 or 11:00 am.
Laurence Glavin said:
But around 1:00PM they were running something that, if not full power, appeared to be and sounded as if it were more than the 2.5-kW night power. If today (Friday 11/12) turns out to be like the other weekdays this week, they will have dropped to what appears to be night power no later than 2:30PM.
Picked up on car radio about 25 mi NW of Concord NH (4 pm) on I-89 then again a bit later in Manchester though it was starting to get mixed stations (KYW?)...not bad considering where I was. Then tonight again in the car, in Beverly just before 3 am, faint/mixed with other signals but it was WQOM 1060
raccoonradio said:
Today, Saturday, 11/13/2010, was the first time since WQOM returned to the air on 11/1 that I heard a sunset pattern change at the correct time, 4:30PM EST. On previous days, this change was made several hours earlier--before the beginning of critical hours (two hours before local sunset). There is no question that the signal immediately before the 4:30 pattern change was a good bit stronger than afterward, but whether or not the signal immediately before the pattern change represents the 50-kW day power and three-tower day pattern specified in the modified CP, I cannot say. The pattern change was unusual--both long (I'd say about 10 sec) and the carrier was not cut or restored abruptly, as is the case at nearly all stations. Apparently, the power was reduced and restored gradually, which suggests that someone was concerned about the possibility that suddenly removing or restoring a high voltage could damage some part of the equipment. It would not surprise me to learn that WQOM is operating during daylight hours with more than the nighttime 2500W but less than the CP 50 kW and is using its five-tower nighttime phasor during the daytime. That is speculation, however, because I certainly do not know for certain. If my guess is correct, however, more work will have to be done when the manufacturer delivers the new phasor, diplex filters, and ATUs.
Sunday 11/14; I'd have to say it sounded like night power all day and evening. When the skywave from KYW isn't too strong, the night signal where I live (Arlington Heights) is quite listenable although it produces zero bars on the CC Radio+'s crude and unreliable signal-strength meter. OTOH, when KYW's skywave is strong, there is a considerable sub-audio beat frequency. The frequency difference between the two stations appears to be ~40 beats/minute (0.67 Hz--or is that really 0.33 Hz? Are there one or two minima per cycle? Seems as though there should be two.).
The announcement shortly before 4:30PM sunset today, Tuesday, 11/16, said that they were running at half power but that tomorrow, Wednesday, 11/17, they would be running at full power. Had the lady said that they were running at full power today, I would have been willing to believe it. Since the announcement was made during critical hours, the power might have been 22 kW, the old CH power from the Mt Wayte Ave site. After all, 22 is pretty close to 25 and the FCC might have specified that until program test authority was granted, the critical-hours power would be limited to the former CH value. Just a speculation, however. If they really are at the full 50 kW tomorrow, I doubt that I will notice a difference from today. Also, someone who lives where the pattern makes a difference (the person from Franklin who posted to this thread, for instance) will have to tell us how strong the signal is in his location, Without a reliable report from that area or an equivalent one, I won't have an indication of whether they are running five towers or three by day. I happen to live at one of the points roughly 45 degrees off of the pattern axis where the field strength from the five-tower pattern running 50 kW is almost exactly the same as the field strength from the three-tower pattern running 50 kW. And BTW, today's sunset pattern change took just 4 seconds and there was no slow fade down or fade up. IOW, unlike the unusual pattern change I reported a few days ago, today's pattern change sounded unremarkable.
Wbzfm2010 said:
Wed 11/17/2010, 8:20AM EST. I missed today's 6:30AM pattern change but the signal is now quite strong. As I predicted yesterday, I can't tell whether there is any difference between yesterday afternoon, when they announced that they were running half power, and now, when they are supposedly running the full 50-kW day power. But if I were to learn that they are not yet running 50 kW this morning, I would be very surprised. As I reported a few days ago, at night, if I can find a time when KYW isn't interfering (which is not a very high percentage of the time) the 2.5-kW signal is surprisingly good. But most of the time at night, KYW is rather annoying. Sometimes comes close to making it impossible to understand WQOM's program content. The sub-audio beat note between the two carriers is particularly noticeable--and bothersome--during periods of applause.
DG02816 said:
Well, last evening, I thought for a while that tuning the CC Radio+ slightly off of 1060 (it tunes in 1-kHz steps) improved the intelligibility. I thought that 1063 was the best for intelligibility. Didn't make a lot of sense to me but I decided that the radio must use some sort of exotic AM detector (a synchronous detector?) and that could explain the phenomenon. Eventually, though, I concluded that my observation was pure baloney. I had previously measured the frequency difference between KYW and WQOM as either 0.33 Hz or 0.67 Hz. The reason for my uncertainty about the difference is that I don't know whether I should hear one or two loudness peaks per beat-frequency cycle. I still haven't figured that part out.
Wbzfm2010 said:
As I said in an earlier post, I think they are. The fact that you, in Franklin. are getting a very strong signal by day suggests that they are, indeed, running the three-tower day pattern specified in the modified CP. They will drop the power to 2.5 kW and switch to the five-tower pattern at sunset (4:30PM EST in November) After 4:30, I think you will find that, unless you have a very sensitive receiver and have it turned (and also tuned) just right, the signal will essentially disappear. You should then pick up KYW quite nicely--assuming that the splatter from WEPN (and the other first-adjacents--WKOK and CHOK) is not too bad. Of course, on at least one night within the past few weeks, the sunset pattern change was WAY late--about two hours late. But I imagine that, as they tidy up from all of the work they did, they will get the automatic timer squared away and the pattern changes will occur on time.
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