[Quote from: reelyreal on Yesterday at 04:42:59 PM]
As for the 50kw CP from the Ashland night site, the pattern is putting more signal south and west, with the conductivity studies and new pattern showing less signal toward WBZ. I'm sure if they were wrong about that, WBZ would have spoken up.
Wrong on most counts! WBZ is happy about having 1060 in Ashland by day--as opposed to Framingham. When the application for the daytime site change and power increase was filed, I talked with someone very definitely in the know at WBZ. Although Westinghouse had strongly fought WGTR's 1981 power increase/addition of night service, CBS did not fight WBIX/WQOM's 2010 daytime power increase. Even though the 50-kW day signal is a little stronger than was the old 40 kW day signal, they regard the 50-kW 1060 daytime signal as causing less interference to WBZ because of the lower population density in Ashland.
As for the difference in patterns, yes--compared with the 40-kW day pattern from the old WKOX site in Framingham, the signal to the south is stronger--a lot stronger. But coverage to the west (toward Central Mass) has been eliminated. Both the 40 kW (Framingham) day pattern and the new 50 kW (Ashland) day pattern were/are modified cardioids. The 40-kW pattern (actually patterns--WBIX had a separate critical-hours pattern and ran at reduced power--22 kW--during critical hours) used two closely-spaced towers (the towers were 80 degrees apart for WKOX; ~70 degrees for WBIX). The patterns were symmetrical about an axis with an azimuth of 36 degrees true (north-northeast). The CH pattern had a tighter null to the southwest than the non-CH pattern and had an augmentation at 180 degrees to account for the effect of re-radiation from the tall chimney at the Framingham incinerator across Mt Wayte Ave from the site. The new 50 kW day pattern uses three towers spaced 100 degrees apart along an azimuth of 90 degrees (due east). Like all theoretical patterns synthesized from in-line arrays, all of these patterns were, of necessity, symmetrical about the azimuth of the line of towers. Augmentation of the Framingham CH pattern spoiled the symmetry of the standard pattern. There was no need to augment the Framingham non-CH pattern because the non-CH protection to KYW was not that severe.
WBIX's original CP for 50 kW-D from Ashland used the five-tower night pattern without modification--an approach that required a minimum of design engineering. The 50 kW version of the night pattern was narrower than the three-tower day pattern now in use and had much tighter radiation suppression behind and to the sides of the pattern. The problem with that approach was that implementing it would have required much more construction. Even though the end towers of the five-tower array run at relatively low power, the transmission lines to them were not sized to handle 50 kW. A lot of digging would have been required to replace the transmission lines between towers 1 and 2 and between towers 4 and 5 as would repair to the ground system along the radials above those lines. Holy Family brought in a new consulting engineer, Charlie Hecht, who came up with the three-tower approach, which doesn't deliver quite as much of a signal to Boston proper as the five-tower day pattern would have but spreads out the pattern over a full 180 degrees. Hecht's measurements showed that, despite the increased radiation to the south, there would not be prohibited overlap with first-adjacent WEPN in the vicinity of the RI-CT border.
