BUFFALO AMS

[JohnW]

A few Saturdays ago, I passed thru Buffalo on my way to Pittsburgh and got a chance to listen to AMs that I can't hear at home in Rochester. Some observations from that morning:

WBTA - local live show about the Batavia pro baseball team, network news, followed by live local news & weather, then a live local computer show (with callers). Note all the local stuff on a Saturday morning. Nice to hear live & local.

WJJL - oldies followed by a block of 4 recorded ads. No announcer. Someone must be selling, is anyone listening?

WXRL - I've always liked Ramblin' Lou. He did a live spot for a family restaurant in Tonawanda that was very believable, so much so that if I hadn't already been too far past, I would have gone there. I was hungry and he sold me on the place.

WECK - Bob Costas off a satellite. Very good sound quality, though.

WWWS - the other extreme of sound quality - as if it was playing thru a telephone.

WBBF - Wow! Loud, overmodulated, distorted.

WNED - phase cancellation starts not too far south on the Thruway. Lobe must go north only?

To summarize, live and local is good. Was glad to hear it.

 

[Play Freebird]

WNED - phase cancellation starts not too far south on the Thruway. Lobe must go north only?

Yep, here's the relative field pattern, which was designed to protect 970 in Ashtabula, OH during the day and several other co-channels at night:

http://www.fcc.gov/ftp/Bureaus/MB/Databases/AM_DA_patterns/305777-4070.pdf

I did a mathematical analysis of this array and WKBW's while I was a college senior (independent study to complete a minor in Physics) and I still have the schematics of the phasor, tower layout, etc. This was a few years before PCs were commonplace, but our department did have an HP programmable calculator with pen plotter, so I wrote a program that would draw the resulting pattern for a given set of fields, phases, and tower spacings. It was a good excuse to get off campus and visit some AM sites.

 

[Yeziknoradio]

WJJL - oldies followed by a block of 4 recorded ads. No announcer. Someone must be selling, is anyone listening?

Yep.
A coffee Shop in Niagara falls Canada, along with a store or two in the same area. At least one of those stores used to have it locked into the old "Oldies 104".
??? Does that actually count as listening?...or is it just their choice for *best* background noise?

 

[Savage]

Yeow - 5 towers, EIGHTEEN augmentations. I see consulting engineers making lazy circles in the sky.

Another 970 is one of my faces - the former WWSW, whatever their calls are these days, in Pittsburgh. EIGHT towers, all free-standing.

 

[Bob1370]

"Another 970 is one of my faces - the former WWSW, whatever their calls are these days, in Pittsburgh. EIGHT towers, all free-standing."

Owww. Probably the nastiest array I've ever seen is one I spotted back in the 80s while I was out of radio and doing industrial sales. The 1500 station in Detroit (formerly WJBK, later WLQV) is a 50 kW-day, 10 kW-night rig with a 9-tower array in the downriver area south of town. Used to pass by it frequently during my travels, and it seemed every time I'd drive by, day or night, there was a car parked at the main transmitter shack, the door was open, the lights on, and people could be seen milling around inside--damn thing must have been constantly in need of tweaking or repair. That's not the only ungainly array in Motown (WXYT's also got 9 towers, and WCHB has 10) but I haven't seen those, they're more recently-built projects and I don't know if they're rockstable or squirrely. LQV's plant dates back to about 1959 or 1960 and the state of the art in transmitters and phasing equipment was a lot less advanced back then.

Never worked at a place with more than a three or four tower array (WHEN, WAXC, WKBW, WXXI) myself, and my job never required me to play with 'em...but the tech mavens tell me even they require some occasional TLC...

 

[Savage]

Typo alert - meant to say WWSW was one my my FAVES, not "faces." That WLQV array - originally Storer's WJBK 1500, which had moved from graveyard 1490 "so they could go 50kw" - was actually designed as a TWELVE tower array back in the late 50s/early 60s. It was the subject of endless FCC proceedings and near-litigation with WTOP and KSTP and was never licensed with its 5kw 12-tower DA-N, just a succession of STAs. Eventually a settlement was reached among the three stations and that, along with some relaxation of nighttime protection rules, permitted 1500 Detroit to dismantle 3 of the towers. I guess the land had appreciated considerably in value during the pendency of decades of tinkering with the DA so the new post-Storer owners were only too glad to give up a few acres and 3 towers for a Home Depot or something.

Back in the 70s when WBBF was operating with its original 1947 open-rack phasor and LTUs we had to have an engineer drive out to South Clinton Avenue twice a day after each pattern change to bridge the reactance out of the system and try to get every teaspoon of coverage out of that blasted array. That was twice a day - evening and morning - 7 days, winter, summer, fall, spring.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Northern Exposure

Hey, you directional mavens can always take a short trip toward Hamilton, Ontario. While you're driving along the QEW, you can check out the 8-tower array for CFTR (680AM) that blasts almost all of its power due north into Toronto. If you continue a few miles further, you'll come across a 9-tower array for CJCL (Fan 580), also blasting toward TO. Both are 50KW, and guaranteed to keep an engineering staff employed.

Spurious backside radiation does get into Buffalo, but not a lot further...

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Hell, take a short hike over to Fort Erie and size up those ten sticks blasting out 10 kW of RF for 710 CJRN which must protect 710 WOR NYC, 700 WLW Cincinatti and 720 WGN Chicago day and night. All in the name of traffic and tourism.

 

[Play Freebird]

Some of these arrays are a problem to maintain because there's not much land between the towers and the international border -- or worse yet, Lake Erie or Ontario.

When I visited WKBW to study the workings of their array, Peter Burk was still the CE and he mentioned that the 257 degree radial towards co-channel KOMA (Oklahoma City) falls into Lake Erie just a couple of miles from the site. It's possible to take close-in measurements on land, but nulls don't fully form until several wavelengths away from the towers, so it was a challenge to proof this array and find acceptable monitor points.

I'd expect CFRB has a similar problem with their DA near Oakville. The nighttime protection to WINS at about 120 degrees requires nulls towards Lake Ontario, which is less than 2 km away, so their engineers must spend a lot of time boating.

 

[Savage]

Freebird or Scott Fybush may be able to weigh in on this one. I've heard persistent legends of a 13 or 15-tower array which supposedly once existed in Toronto, maybe the former 1320 that was in Richmond Hill? I know that station used to give us a lot of co-channel grief when I was in Pittsburgh at 13Q. I remember Jim Quinn came in triumphantly with a cassette one morning labelled "GOTCHA!!" On the tape was a clear legal ID for the Canadian 1320. We had been having problems isolating the source of the skywave.

Other than the 13/15-tower T-O wonder the biggest arrays I had ever heard of were the 12-tower jobs at the former KLIF and WJBK. Seems like one would have long since exceeded the law of diminishing returns with systems that complex. Every time I de-weed, de-stinging insect, de-poison ivy and paint fences on my 4-tower system (with fifth short stick for RPU) I'm thankful that's ALL I've got.

Closed circuit for Scott: did you ever find the picture from your archive of the old WNLC 1510 New London, with its 8 or 9-tower RFscape??

 

[fybush]

Freebird or Scott Fybush may be able to weigh in on this one. I've heard persistent legends of a 13 or 15-tower array which supposedly once existed in Toronto, maybe the former 1320 that was in Richmond Hill? I know that station used to give us a lot of co-channel grief when I was in Pittsburgh at 13Q. I remember Jim Quinn came in triumphantly with a cassette one morning labelled "GOTCHA!!" On the tape was a clear legal ID for the Canadian 1320. We had been having problems isolating the source of the skywave.

Other than the 13/15-tower T-O wonder the biggest arrays I had ever heard of were the 12-tower jobs at the former KLIF and WJBK. Seems like one would have long since exceeded the law of diminishing returns with systems that complex. Every time I de-weed, de-stinging insect, de-poison ivy and paint fences on my 4-tower system (with fifth short stick for RPU) I'm thankful that's ALL I've got.

Closed circuit for Scott: did you ever find the picture from your archive of the old WNLC 1510 New London, with its 8 or 9-tower RFscape??

I have some very bad video of the place, shortly after 1510 signed off for the last time - no stills that I've been able to dig up, alas.

The 13-tower array was very, very real - it was CFTR's, built in Mississauga in the late sixties when the station moved from 1540 (with tx site on the island, IIRC) to 680. That monster had to protect WINR and WNYR on this side of the lake, among other signals, and never worked well, which is why it took Rogers very little time at all to begin the long process of international diplomacy that eventually (a decade later) moved WNYR to 990 and CFTR to the current 8-tower behemoth in Grimsby.

 

[Savage]

Very interesting - thanks, Scott. Was there not a 50kw DA-2 or DA-3 on 1320 up there, IIRC the call was CFGM? I remember when 13Q was having horrendous interference issues the CE came in one morning with a 3-inch thick copy of the Canadian station's antenna proof he had gotten through Nationwide's Washington consulting engineer. Freebird's comment about trying to find MPs out in Lake Erie reminded me of it, since there were many measurements made via helicopter out over Lake Ontario water. (They must have had some exotic aircraft-mounted external antenna for the FIM to prevent distortion of the readings.)

Somebody once related to me that there was a 15-tower array up there and that it might have been CFGM 1320's. The configuration was supposed to be 3 x 5 (or 5 x 3.) I can't find any more information about the 1320 station - did that migrate to 640?

 

[fybush]

Somebody once related to me that there was a 15-tower array up there and that it might have been CFGM 1320's. The configuration was supposed to be 3 x 5 (or 5 x 3.) I can't find any more information about the 1320 station - did that migrate to 640?

Yes indeed - CFGM bounced around from 1300 to 1310 to 1320, then to 640 in the late 80s. According to the comprehensive history at the Canadian Communications Foundation website (http://www.broadcasting-history.ca/listings_and_histories/radio/histories.php?id=400&historyID=182), its 50 kW incarnation on 1320 lasted from 1978-1988 and used 13 towers in Mississauga. It has 8 towers in its present incarnation as 640. The current array is 8 towers (4 x 2) on the south side of the QEW, a few miles east of CFTR.

 

[Savage]

So there was a total of TWO 13-tower Toronto arrays, CFTR and CFGM? Yikes. My head hurts.

"By the time you're done taking readings, it's time to take readings again."

 

[JakeLongwell]

Thanks for the history lesson about 1320, guys. I remember growing up in the southern tier in the 80s, and I was fascinated by the nightly battle between the standards on WJAS, and the country on CFGM once WHHO signed off.

Out of curiosity, when did CJMR sign on? When I first heard their religious programming on 1320, I assumed it was the evolution of CFGM. Obviously, that assumption was incorrect.