ON FOR 24 HOURS NOW??

[DG02816]

Laurence,
The swinging of your S-meter was the result of the Waltham and Squantum transmitters beating against each other. They were proabably
diiferent in frequency by a few Hertz. I get the same thing here in Philly when WNYH on Long Island and CFZM Toronto start pounding WVCH during afternoon Critical Hours; you can hear the whooshing easily on a car radio.

 

[JIBGUY]

Hi, Bob: But WJIB isn't using the 250W two-hours in-all-months PSSA, right? That would be because it was part of Media Bureau Engineering's big PSRA/PSSA fiasco of what? five years ago? All stations that had PSRAs and/or PSSAs (and there were hundreds--maybe more than a thousand--of them, and the stations were, for the most part, using those old PSR/PSS facilities) were given new authorizations, nearly all with facilities that were radically different from the ones they had been granted originally and were using. A few stations (WJIB was one and I think WJTO may have been another) were granted better (in some cases significantly better) pre-sunrise and/or post-sunset facilities than they had previously been using. Most stations got considerably worse facilities, though. In a few cases, stations that had been running more than 100W were now told that they had to reduce pre-sunrise or post-sunset power to as little as 1W. It was a disaster and the FCC very soon notified all affected stations that the formulas used to determine the new facilities were in error, so the stations were to disregard the new facilities that the FCC had announced and were to revert to the old facilities. These stations were to be notified of revised new facilities "shortly." That was about five years ago and, AFAIK, no station had heard a peep on this subject from the FCC. As they say in government, "Oops!"

Correct, Dan, WJIB is not using that February 2006 authorization. I don't recall the FCC notifying each station that the authorization was no good, but there was a general press release to all stations to that effect. But one wonders WHY those authorizations are STILL in each AM-daytimer station's "mailbox" on the FCC's site. One would assume they're still valid.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

Broadcasting a dead air signal or as we say unmodulated carrier? Kind of like the 103.7 in Saugus, formerly in Salem which HAD been //WSMA 90.5 back when they broadcast from a site nr an alarm company on Rt 107 in Salem, but now they just have...dead air, as observed last night on 128 in Lynnfield.

I'm hearing (or not hearing) that here in Somerville. A carrier with the stereo indicator lit on 103.7, but no audio.

 

[secondchoice]

When I was working in Kansas it was a common practice for a lot of stations to turn on the transmitter once the jock got to the station and run dead carrier until sign on. I asked why and the answer was if the transmitter did not come on, you called the engineer so he could drive out to the transmitter site and fix it!