KWKH

[romer979fm]

booming into Nashville like a local at 5:00am central...normally nothing...
TOH legal ID mentioning LSU and Saints...WX Channel forecast. again...like a local

 

[jd]

Your reception sounds much better than mine, romer. At my place about 80 miles southeast of Dallas I'm much closer but in their cancellation zone, and the last I heard KWKH was still operating non-directional at night with 12.5kW under an engineering STA. When things were normal the signal would come and go but for now it's basically "gone."

 

[1st of 5]

KWKH usually sounds like a local during the summer, here in San Antonio,TX. But now that its fall, it has weakened and been overtaken by some mexican station.

 

[ddsparxx]

I'm in northern VA and tonight at 1:35 AM EST I can hear KWKH underneath NY's WBBR 1130 . (I do see on the RL map that KWKH sends a wide null to the northeast.) I can hear the faint country music. WBBR owns this frequency here at nights.

 

[jd]

I'm in northern VA and tonight at 1:35 AM EST I can hear KWKH underneath NY's WBBR 1130 . (I do see on the RL map that KWKH sends a wide null to the northeast.)

I couldn't say for sure without contacting the station but I think you were hearing the nighttime non-directional KWKH signal and if it weren't for WBBR you'd probably be getting a very good signal from Shreveport.

This problem with fixing the directional system has been going on for quite some time: http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/getimportletter_exh.cgi?import_letter_id=20626

 

[ddsparxx]

I listened to KWKH online and an ID and that proved I heard KWKH. I read on the IRCA forums that a guy up in Newfoundland also heard KWKH.

 

[radiorob2.0]

They were booming in Thursday night around eight o'clock here in Western Kentucky. I was commuting so the classic country was something to pass time.

 

[cyberdad]

KWKH was blasting in Thursday night around 9-10pm when I was driving from O'Hare airport to my home about 30 miles northwest of there. Absolutely wiped out everything else on the channel. I just presumed they were ND for whatever reason.

 

[jd]

From what you're saying I'm surprised that there haven't been complaints about the KWKH operation from other stations (like Milwaukee's WISN, for starters). Or maybe there have been. The STA for KWKH allowed them to operate with 25% of their authorized power but it also says they would have to decrease it if interference was a problem.

 

[cyberdad]

I'm about 35 miles southwest of WISN's stick, and they're usually invisible here at night. OTH, they aim all their nighttime juice opposite me and right at Milwaukee & suburbs at night, with the result being a pretty potent signal there. I doubt that KWKH...even if they were running at full daytime power....would be able to cause much of a problem in the areas that WISN would care most about.

 

[BRNout]

I'm about 35 miles southwest of WISN's stick, and they're usually invisible here at night. OTH, they aim all their nighttime juice opposite me and right at Milwaukee & suburbs at night, with the result being a pretty potent signal there. I doubt that KWKH...even if they were running at full daytime power....would be able to cause much of a problem in the areas that WISN would care most about.

Agreed! I am about the same distance to the south of WISN's stick and once it gets dark, they disappear almost completely. It's an amazing thing to hear, in fact, as the signal goes from being strong and local to almost being gone at sunset. The switch sounds like someone turned off the power! This time of the year, we also pick up WDFN just before sunset but it's easily nulled. 1130 is a mess in this part of the US. Anyhow, I digress....

KWKH is the prevailing signal here after dark. It outpowers WBBR and everyone else during most nights. Judging from the FCC database, it wouldn't appear that this should be the case. Far from it. Yet, they are in here almost nightly and have been for at least a year - often with a blockbuster signal.

I have to take issue with one portion of cyberdad's comment about KWKH not causing interference where WISN would care because areas south of their transmitter, such as in the city of Racine and Kenosha County probably do suffer from the intrusion of KWKH. Likewise, the tight nighttime pattern of WISN doesn't do great around much of Waukesha County either - again allowing for interference from the southern interloper.

This really shouldn't be allowed to occur, though it is abundantly clear that the FCC is running low on people who know anything about signal propagation.

 

[jd]

This really shouldn't be allowed to occur, though it is abundantly clear that the FCC is running low on people who know anything about signal propagation.

That's hard to say for sure. What's clear, however, is that the reduction of power down to 25% is the standard amount in such situations. Couple that with the lack of people in the enforcement division and you have the potential for problems. As discussed here and elsewhere that part of today's FCC operates almost exclusively on a complaint basis, so if no valid complaints are received nothing will happen.

 

[schmave]

I'm about 35 miles southwest of WISN's stick, and they're usually invisible here at night. OTH, they aim all their nighttime juice opposite me and right at Milwaukee & suburbs at night, with the result being a pretty potent signal there. I doubt that KWKH...even if they were running at full daytime power....would be able to cause much of a problem in the areas that WISN would care most about.

Agreed! I am about the same distance to the south of WISN's stick and once it gets dark, they disappear almost completely. It's an amazing thing to hear, in fact, as the signal goes from being strong and local to almost being gone at sunset. The switch sounds like someone turned off the power! This time of the year, we also pick up WDFN just before sunset but it's easily nulled. 1130 is a mess in this part of the US. Anyhow, I digress....

KWKH is the prevailing signal here after dark. It outpowers WBBR and everyone else during most nights. Judging from the FCC database, it wouldn't appear that this should be the case. Far from it. Yet, they are in here almost nightly and have been for at least a year - often with a blockbuster signal.

I have to take issue with one portion of cyberdad's comment about KWKH not causing interference where WISN would care because areas south of their transmitter, such as in the city of Racine and Kenosha County probably do suffer from the intrusion of KWKH. Likewise, the tight nighttime pattern of WISN doesn't do great around much of Waukesha County either - again allowing for interference from the southern interloper.

This really shouldn't be allowed to occur, though it is abundantly clear that the FCC is running low on people who know anything about signal propagation.

That would seem to me to be partly WISN's fault, too. If they really want to serve those southern areas, I'm sure they could find some way to do it, maybe by moving their tower south and throwing more power over Milwaukee and beyond. But I wouldn't entirely absolve them from blame if they don't serve their area with a good signal.
I also heard KWKH Thursday night in western Ohio and again Sunday night as I was driving from Chicago's west suburbs back toward Lima, Ohio. Was doing a lot of observing of signals on that clear night, both distant and making notes of the Chicago 50K stations cancellation zones.

 

[davideduardo]

[That would seem to me to be partly WISN's fault, too. If they really want to serve those southern areas, I'm sure they could find some way to do it, maybe by moving their tower south and throwing more power over Milwaukee and beyond. But I wouldn't entirely absolve them from blame if they don't serve their area with a good signal.

The WISN move from 1150 to 1130 is one of the most interesting cases of directional antenna design and implementation that exist.

First, to move to 1130, WISN had to protect co-channel stations including very high power facilities in Detroit (WCAR at that time) and St. Paul (WDGY). Further, they had to protect other stations on 1130 such as Shreeveport, New York, etc. And then the adjacents on 1140 and 1120, and the second adjacents.

They designed what was among the three or four most complex directional systems even done, and got a construction permit for, I believe 50 kw and 25 kw nights with separate day and night patterns, and found a huge piece of land to put all the towers on. After half a decade of STA's and extensions, they got the daytime pattern into enough compliance to continue operating, after detuning electric towers, water towers and such. They could not get nights to work, and redesigned the pattern for 10 kw at night instead of the higher power. The facility was so hard to tune that they did not get it licensed until well into the 70's.

Suggesting that the station could do better is really not realistic. Some of the best engineers in the world worked on this one, and it likely can not move... if it did, the cost would be many times what the station is worth. They use 6 towers daytime and 9 towers at night; they have 19 critical radials days and 27 at night.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

My wife's sister lives near WISN's array. You can see the tower lights out the window of her house, but the ~10 watt equivalent night signal (standard pattern anyway) in that direction is just about gone at 4:30 PM and 4:15 PM in November and December. WTMJ is much better, being somewhat further south.

 

[BRNout]

The WISN move from 1150 to 1130 is one of the most interesting cases of directional antenna design and implementation that exist.

First, to move to 1130, WISN had to protect co-channel stations including very high power facilities in Detroit (WCAR at that time) and St. Paul (WDGY). Further, they had to protect other stations on 1130 such as Shreeveport, New York, etc. And then the adjacents on 1140 and 1120, and the second adjacents.

They designed what was among the three or four most complex directional systems even done, and got a construction permit for, I believe 50 kw and 25 kw nights with separate day and night patterns, and found a huge piece of land to put all the towers on. After half a decade of STA's and extensions, they got the daytime pattern into enough compliance to continue operating, after detuning electric towers, water towers and such. They could not get nights to work, and redesigned the pattern for 10 kw at night instead of the higher power. The facility was so hard to tune that they did not get it licensed until well into the 70's.

Suggesting that the station could do better is really not realistic. Some of the best engineers in the world worked on this one, and it likely can not move... if it did, the cost would be many times what the station is worth. They use 6 towers daytime and 9 towers at night; they have 19 critical radials days and 27 at night.

Thanks for that history David, it's very interesting to read what they went through to build that facility. I'll tell you that, during the daylight hours, WISN is receivable down south into central IL and almost as far west as Moline. Though it doesn't quite have the groundwave signal of WTMJ, it's still pretty impressive. All of the RF in the Chicago metro area make its range seem less than in really is - if that's as far south as you sample. Once you get down past Joliet (headed south) it booms back in pretty nicely.

It's nighttime cutoff is (to me) an impressive thing for this AM geek to behold. It is almost as if the station pulls the plug for the night - my signal goes from strong (stronger than WLS by far) to non-existent at the flip of a switch. And it even does the same as close to their tower as Pleasant Prairie, WI.

My wife's sister lives near WISN's array. You can see the tower lights out the window of her house, but the ~10 watt equivalent night signal (standard pattern anyway) in that direction is just about gone at 4:30 PM and 4:15 PM in November and December. WTMJ is much better, being somewhat further south.

Again, the highly directional focus of the WISN signal is awesome from an engineering standpoint. And, given this, WTMJ is far better to hear at night. That's not because of its tower location, but because it's 10,000 watts have lobes to the N, S, E and W (i.e., the signal is far less directional). Thanks to that, it comes in just fine in northern IL at night too - quite unlike WISN, which is a difficult dx catch from as little as 35 or 40 miles away at night.

 

[cyberdad]

My thanks to David as well for the history. They flipped from 1150 to 1130 when I was in high school. Early 1965 IIRC. One "oddity" is that they were actually easier to hear at night in Lake & McHenry counties (north and northwest of Chicago respectively) when they were on 1150....especially after WJJD went off.

Also, point taken about WISN probably indeed does care about KWKH messing with their signal in Waukesha and a few other suburban locations...but I also agree there's probably not much they can do about it. I've long been aware of how "hemmed in" they are. My personal frame of reference for their nighttime signal has to do mostly with the city itself, and visits with friends/family/business colleagues directly north of the city. The nighttime signal up there is pretty impressive.

As for the daytime signal, I went to college in a small town in southeast Iowa, which now has a local 250-watt daytimer on 1130. In the late '60s when I was in school the local hadn't been built, and WISN was a regular all day every day on my Hallicrafters S-120 (with antenna wire attached to/wound around a water pipe).

Where I live in the far northwestern Chicago suburbs, for the last few years KWKH has been on top of the channel at night more often than not. Nothing spectacular, but still usually on top. This hadn't been the case in the not-all-that-distant past. My memory of KWKH on nighttime pattern at least up until the 80s or perhaps early 90s was "might take a little doing, but you can eventually snag it". Then there's the matter of the "Viagra signal" I encountered last Thursday night.

I checked out KWKH again this morning a couple of hours before dawn, and it was missing....or buried. So I presume they may have things sorted out.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Was WISN nondirectional days on 1150? W9WI could fill us in on the details of the old 1150 day and night array, if the paperwork was still in the files when he was there.

I remember hearing WISN at Crystal Lake in Benzie County, MI back in the 1960s. I had an analog transistor radio and didn't realize they were now at 1130 and was surprised when they said it was 50000 watts. It was shortly after they switched to 1130.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

David Eduardo's page that shows the entire channel plan under NARBA for frequency changes in 1941 shows WISN moving from 1120 to 1150 as 250-N 1000-LS (III-B) with 1000-N and 5000-LS (III-A) proposed. From this I would assume that these are omni powers and it became 5000 DA-N shortly thereafter. If you remember the old rules, III-Bs were supposed to be at least 500 watts night and as I recall 1000 day though, and III-As at least 1000 day and night. Only in the later years of those classes did we come to associate III-As as 5000 day and night and III-Bs as something less than 5000 night. Many 5000 watt nights were not III-As or even III-Bs, having NIFs much higher than 2.5 mV/m or even 4 mV/m.

 

[radioman148]

There was also an 1150 in Rockford, Il at the same time that WISN was on 1150.
So there were 2 stations on 1150 & a 50KW station on 1160 (WJJD) in a 90 mile triangle as late as the mid 60s.