Old WJJD Site And Present Day Day WYLL Site

[Schroedingers Cat]

A relative of mine lived near the WJJD/WYLL day site, and in the 1960s, he said there was a big tower between Dempster and Ballard Rd. near Greenwood Ave., a mile or so east of the present day day (two days intended) site of WYLL. Someone, possibly the late engineer, Charles Gustafson, formerly of WTAQ, WCFL, and WIND, told me that this tower had been the WJJD tower at one time.

On another thread that I couldn't find on the Chicago discussion boards, there were questions about WJJD operations.

I have seen old information that had the power of WJJD as 20000 watts.

I know that W9WI has speculated about how WISN on 1150 was protected with WJJD on 1160 in the past. Perhaps with the reduced power before moving to Ballard Rd.

By the late 1950s, I believe WJJD was 50000 watts, so perhaps this tower was abandoned when they moved to Ballard Rd. and went directional.

Oldtimers always used to talk about the station being in Mooseheart, home of the Loyal Order Of Moose who owned it at that time. I currently have no information about when they moved to Park Ridge before Des Plaines.

Anyone else know more about this?

 

[radiotower40]

Here is a sight that describes the transmitter timeline at WJJD. It also has some excellent
history of the stations format and ownership changes over the years.

I hope it's what you were looking for.

http://67.162.73.47/public/zecom/museum/Chiradhist/wjjd.htm

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Thanks TR1992 for the link. The question I still have is if the site near Dempster and Greenwood was only one tower or two. It looks like they were operating limited time before the move. Since the Ballard daytime array seems to protect WISN on 1150 and KSL during the limited time operation, it would seem that there would have been more than one tower before 1963. Some of the links say WJJD was 50000 watts beginning in 1948. I guess they could have had suspended wire like WTAM had for a while, if indeed that was the WJJD array. Sadly, so many people I used to ask these questions have passed away. I suppose you could go to the FCC archives if you had that kind of time to spend.

 

[DanStrassberg]

Thanks TR1992 for the link. The question I still have is if the site near Dempster and Greenwood was only one tower or two. It looks like they were operating limited time before the move. Since the Ballard daytime array seems to protect WISN on 1150 and KSL during the limited time operation, it would seem that there would have been more than one tower before 1963. Some of the links say WJJD was 50000 watts beginning in 1948. I guess they could have had suspended wire like WTAM had for a while, if indeed that was the WJJD array. Sadly, so many people I used to ask these questions have passed away. I suppose you could go to the FCC archives if you had that kind of time to spend.

Well, WTAM's setup, which, I believe was designed by the legendary Carl Smith, was not terribly directional. The technology more or less forces close spacing between the two radiators. (Relatively speaking, the suspended wire has to be physically close to the tower--45 degrees seems to be about the practical maximum.) Also, the suspended wire has to be shorter than the tower. (There are many arrays built of two real towers of unequal heights, so that limitation does not seem serious.) The question is, though, given WJJD's relatively high power (20 kW at the time) and the good conductivity along the Lake Michigan shoreline, could WJJD, using a single tower plus a drop-wire, have been directional enough to adequately protect (then, first-adjacent) WISN? I don't doubt that the single-tower plus drop-wire setup could be considerably more directional than WTAM was, but could it have been directional enough for WJJD's purposes?

 

[fybush]

The 1961-62 Broadcasting Yearbook lists WJJD as 50 kw, DA-1, L-KSL. So we know that it was some sort of directional array at the old site, and it seems much more likely to me that it would have been a two-tower directional rather than the unusual one-tower-plus-drop-wire configuration.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

My relative described the tower at Greenwood and Dempster as "huge". There's a shopping center on that site now. He didn't say that there were two towers, though one could have been already taken down, or much shorter. He got there in 1962, and the history says they moved to Ballard Rd. in 1963.

From the Rand McNally Atlas, the Greenwood and Dempster intersection is in Park Ridge, at least the same color as Park Ridge on the map. It probably moved there when The Loyal Order Of Moose sold it. Maybe I can find a better map with borders shown better.

I suspect it went directional when they increased the power to 50000 watts in 1948 as reported, to protect WISN and KSL to the same level or less as it was when it was 20000 watts.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

The daytime radiation in the two minima/nulls of the day standard pattern is 1237.01 mV/m @ 1 km, at 275 and 355 degrees true, corresponding to a power of 19,240 watts referenced to the Class B minimum efficiency of 282 mV/m @ 1 km @ 1 kW.

WHBY 1150 Kimberly probably just fit in to the pattern already established, as did WFDL 1170 in Waupun, WI.

Depending on exactly where the tower(s) was/were, it could have been in Niles or Des Plaines. All three (with Park Ridge) are close to this intersection (Dempster and Greenwood).

 

[Prais]

Scott said;The 1961-62 Broadcasting Yearbook lists WJJD as 50 kw, DA-1, L-KSL. So we know that it was some sort of directional array at the old site, and it seems much more likely to me that it would have been a two-tower directional rather than the unusual one-tower-plus-drop-wire configuration.

Yes, it was a 2 tower directional. Old pictures I have seen even have the wires between the towers.

PRIOR to top 40,, WJJD was VERY hillbilly country, with announcer Randy Blake.

As a top 40, the station was in a small bungalow house on Ballard road (then in Des Plaines). This was when it was a daytimer,

The 50kw transmitter was in the basement of the bungaloww. It was two hundred degreesin in the building in the Summer!

I stood in the control room, which had a door to the outside. The studio had 2 microphones. The engineer spun the top 40 records, and played Coppertone and St. Joseph Asprin and othetr Plough Inc. product ads, along with "regular" ads. A Drive-in movie was a big sponsor, always advertising "$2 a carload."

After WLS KILLED them, WJJD went beautiful music,THEN country, "the JD Brand." Allen Mcall may have more about those years.

WJJD ALWAYS had GREAT jingles, top 40, beaut and country. They also had great contests, and "the housewives jackpot" They called a phone number hourly and if you could tell them how much was in the jackpot, you won, usually LOTS of cash.

Their news was also always good, VERY Chicago, VERY "Police Scanner info" - accidents, fires, murders, etc. I remember "Reese Rickards son
does the news on a radio station in Grand Rapids, MI, today.

WJJD had Ernie Simon, Jim Lounsbury and Del Clark as dj's. I can't remember the late aft jocks name. I was listening to wjjd the afternoon Buddy Holly's plane crashed.

I was there to visit in the early 60's, shortly after they moved the studio from Michigan Ave, to downtown. There, wjjd occupied the same first floor suite that WAS AC Gilbert. The suite had many Erector Set projects built and displayed. I was THERE when I was about 8 or 9 years old.

 

[Prais]

The drive in was "The Starlight Drive in Theatre" located somewhere on the South side. "$2 a carload."

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

The pictures you describe, if I'm reading it correctly, describe a generally pre 1940 configuration described as a "T" antenna. If R. Fry reads this, he can tell you more about it. Although I assume the wires you are talking about between the towers are horizontal, the Physics of the design make the polarization vertical.

 

[DanStrassberg]

The pictures you describe, if I'm reading it correctly, describe a generally pre 1940 configuration described as a "T" antenna. If R. Fry reads this, he can tell you more about it. Although I assume the wires you are talking about between the towers are horizontal, the Physics of the design make the polarization vertical.

If the horizontal wire of a T antenna was insulated from the two supporting towers, you had a single top-loaded vertical radiator, comprising what most people think of as the feed wire as the vertical element (drop wire) and the horizontal wire between the tops of the two supporting towers as the top load. The ground system for such a T may have been different from the 120 buried radials that would be standard today as the ground system, however.

A couple of antennas of this type are still operating as verticals. Actually, they are part of directional arrays. IOW, the antennas were probably originally built as nondirectional longwires and then later converted to DAs. The two I am thinking of are at 870 and 1260 in the Los Angeles area. Directional operation required shunt feeding of the supporting towers and modifying the ground system. It could have worked only if the supporting towers were in the correct locations and at the proper spacing from the drop wire to produce a usable pattern.

The five-element night array of KPIG (1510) in the San Francisco area is a third example, but may no longer be on the air. The KPIG antenna is atop the flat roof of a warehouse near the waterfront in Oakland. It consists of (or consisted of) four real towers and a drop-wire suspended from a horizontal wire between the tops of two of them. The drop wire will be removed or was removed when KPIG's night upgrade, made possible by KGA's night downgrade, will be or was licensed.

 

[fybush]

A couple of antennas of this type are still operating as verticals. Actually, they are part of directional arrays. IOW, the antennas were probably originally built as nondirectional longwires and then later converted to DAs. The two I am thinking of are at 870 and 1260 in the Los Angeles area. Directional operation required shunt feeding of the supporting towers and modifying the ground system. It could have worked only if the supporting towers were in the correct locations and at the proper spacing from the drop wire to produce a usable pattern.

The five-element night array of KPIG (1510) in the San Francisco area is a third example, but may no longer be on the air. The KPIG antenna is atop the flat roof of a warehouse near the waterfront in Oakland. It consists of (or consisted of) four real towers and a drop-wire suspended from a horizontal wire between the tops of two of them. The drop wire will be removed or was removed when KPIG's night upgrade, made possible by KGA's night downgrade, will be or was licensed.

Neither the 870 nor 1260 in LA were built as ND longwires. Both were of much more recent vintage. The 870 wire is dropped from a guy wire from tower #2, and didn't go in until a power increase that may have been as recent as the early 1980s. (The site was originally a ND daytimer, and was once home to KHOF-TV 30 as well.)

I believe the 1260 wire dated only from the 1970s, and it has since been replaced by a real tower.

The 1510 wire is gone as well, since the upgrade is on the air, though not yet licensed.

 

[DanStrassberg]

Neither the 870 nor 1260 in LA were built as ND longwires. Both were of much more recent vintage. The 870 wire is dropped from a guy wire from tower #2, and didn't go in until a power increase that may have been as recent as the early 1980s. (The site was originally a ND daytimer, and was once home to KHOF-TV 30 as well.)

I believe the 1260 wire dated only from the 1970s, and it has since been replaced by a real tower.

The 1510 wire is gone as well, since the upgrade is on the air, though not yet licensed.

Scott: Especially if you have or can obtain before-and-after (replacement of the drop wires with towers) pictures, but even if you have or can get only pictures of the arrays in their current state, these would make a great edition of Tower Site of the Week!

An array whose origins are unclear is the old WOR array in Carteret (two arrays before the current one). This one had a drop wire for sure (I saw a photo of it in the '40s in the lobby of a theater near Times Square that WOR used for several years for audience-participation shows. I was in the audience for a quiz show there), but whether or not it was originally built as a T is unclear. A guy who says he grew up across the street from the site claims that, from day one, it was a three-element DA (with the center element being the drop wire), but I believe that day one would have been a long time before he was born. Another guy who, AFAIK, has always lived on the west coast but is a serious student of DAs, is positive that the WOR array was converted from a T. My understanding is that photos of the old Carteret site are now just about impossible (and maybe REALLY impossible) to obtain. In fact, I think that a decade or so ago, Tom Ray was trying to locate one to reproduce in a WOR anniversary book.

 

[fybush]

Scott: Especially if you have or can obtain before-and-after (replacement of the drop wires with towers) pictures, but even if you have or can get only pictures of the arrays in their current state, these would make a great edition of Tower Site of the Week!

I had a very nice, and very comprehensive, tour of the 870 array in April, and it will be featured as a Site of the Week sooner or later. I have "before" and "after" pictures of 1260, and "before" pictures of 1510. I have not been back to 1510 since they finished the power increase.

An array whose origins are unclear is the old WOR array in Carteret (two arrays before the current one). This one had a drop wire for sure (I saw a photo of it in the '40s in the lobby of a theater near Times Square that WOR used for several years for audience-participation shows. I was in the audience for a quiz show there), but whether or not it was originally built as a T is unclear. A guy who says he grew up across the street from the site claims that, from day one, it was a three-element DA (with the center element being the drop wire), but I believe that day one would have been a long time before he was born. Another guy who, AFAIK, has always lived on the west coast but is a serious student of DAs, is positive that the WOR array was converted from a T. My understanding is that photos of the old Carteret site are now just about impossible (and maybe REALLY impossible) to obtain. In fact, I think that a decade or so ago, Tom Ray was trying to locate one to reproduce in a WOR anniversary book.

There is a photo of the Carteret site at Jim Hawkins' site:

http://www.j-hawkins.com/wor.html

It appears that the site was indeed designed as a directional in 1935, with the center element a dropped wire. The directional antenna was designed, as I understand it, not to protect any other stations but rather to maximize signal over both NYC and Philadelphia. At the time, there would have been no significant audience to the northwest of Carteret, and the null wouldn't have been that deep anyway.

That decision to go directional in 1935 was probably a bad one in retrospect, since it allowed other stations to come on at 710 in the nulls and thus forced WOR to use an even tighter DA when it was relocated from Carteret to the Meadowlands in 1967-68. By then, of course, there was population in the nulls, some of it fairly significant.

 

[DanStrassberg]

That decision to go directional in 1935 was probably a bad one in retrospect, since it allowed other stations to come on at 710 in the nulls and thus forced WOR to use an even tighter DA when it was relocated from Carteret to the Meadowlands in 1967-68. By then, of course, there was population in the nulls, some of it fairly significant.

I believe that, to get to 50 kW in 1935, WOR had to protect CKVD Val d'Or in Western QC, making 710 the home of not one but two Class IBs that had to protect Class IIs that predated them on their frequency. From the time it became a Class IB, KIRO protected KMPC. (And WLAC protected WMEX, dating back to the days when both were on 1470.)

Absolutely, WOR's Carteret pattern was directed over Philadelphia to the southwest and New York and Hartford to the northeast. But when I was a kid, WOR used to make a big deal out of the fact that it served the largest population at night of any station in North America (36 million people in 18 states--from ME to GA). Apparently, although WOR didn't come close to the obligatory 38 states, neither the nondirectional WJZ nor the directional (to the west) WEAF reached as many people. It was a credible claim for the station whose coverage was limited to the densely populated East coast and that wasted little coverage over the Atlantic or sparsely populated inland areas, like, say, KY.

 

[WL5891]

A relative of mine lived near the WJJD/WYLL day site, and in the 1960s, he said there was a big tower between Dempster and Ballard Rd. near Greenwood Ave., a mile or so east of the present day day (two days intended) site of WYLL. Someone, possibly the late engineer, Charles Gustafson, formerly of WTAQ, WCFL, and WIND, told me that this tower had been the WJJD tower at one time.

On another thread that I couldn't find on the Chicago discussion boards, there were questions about WJJD operations.

I have seen old information that had the power of WJJD as 20000 watts.

I know that W9WI has speculated about how WISN on 1150 was protected with WJJD on 1160 in the past. Perhaps with the reduced power before moving to Ballard Rd.

By the late 1950s, I believe WJJD was 50000 watts, so perhaps this tower was abandoned when they moved to Ballard Rd. and went directional.

Oldtimers always used to talk about the station being in Mooseheart, home of the Loyal Order Of Moose who owned it at that time. I currently have no information about when they moved to Park Ridge before Des Plaines.

Anyone else know more about this?

WJJD was sold by the Fraternal Order of Moose in 1937. At the time they were running 20 kW from Mooseheart into a "Flat-Top" supported by two 150 foot towers. The new owner remained at Mooseheart under lease until the early 1940's. After the war, a new 50 kW RCA BTA-50F was installed with a 2-tower Array to protect WISN (1150) at the Park Ridge site. It was an extremely tight pattern and there was interference. In 1966, the current daytime site was constructed in Des Plaines and a new RCA BTA-50H "Ampliphase" installed. I am unable to find out what happened to the BTA-50F, although I did find out the reason for the move. The property became so valuable, that the sale of the property paid for most of the new plant in Des Plaines. During 1961-62, W.F. Myers was the Chief Engineer.