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Signal range of WIVK 107.7

F

Flo_Germany

Hello @ all,

I'm new in this forum. My name is Florian. I'm almost 27 years old and I'm from Germany. So, please do not take it amiss that my English is not so good. Most of this text I have translated with the Google translator :D

I am interested in radio and radio DX since my childhood.

I have a tool called 'Radio Mobile'. With this tool, i can create reach maps. I'm not sure if this is the right word for what i mean. So I hope that you know what I mean. I have now dared to my first USA map and would like to know from you whether the calculation corresponds to the reality.
I am particularly interested in the signal strength in the Tri-Cities and in the west of North Carolina (around Asheville).


Please take a look at this map:

WIVK 107.7 - 91 kW



About the colors: Very strong signal / strong signal / good signal / weak signal / bad signal / white = no signal
You can also see an explanation of the signal strength in the upper right corner.

Thanks for your help and merry xmas :)

Greetings from Germany
 
Welcome to the board Florian.

Interesting looking "coverage" map. With FM and our Mountains coverage maps tend to over exaggerate the listenable signal a bit. Visit radio-locator.com and you can compare your map to theirs.

Welcome aboard.
 
knoxbob said:
Welcome to the board Florian.

Interesting looking "coverage" map. With FM and our Mountains coverage maps tend to over exaggerate the listenable signal a bit. Visit radio-locator.com and you can compare your map to theirs.

Welcome aboard.
Click to expand...

The posted map looks like some form of a Longly Rice projection, which is much better than the "predicted" contours of the radio-locator site.
 
Thanks for this link!
Their map looks very optimistic. The 'Radio Mobile' tool evaluates the height data and knows precisely where mountains are located.
 
Your map looks great and much more accurate than Radio Locator. Their WIVK map shows a "local" signal strength in Cherokee, NC while yours shows that it reaches Cherokee with barely a trace of a signal. Of course yours is correct. WIVK can barely be heard in Cherokee through the thick static.

Your maps remind me of what they use for the TV Fool website. I have always wanted to see FM patterns this way too.
 
This will take a few days. The program takes almost 45 minutes per map (in this high resolution of 4000x4000) and I have to create the network data manually.
 
I can't recall trying in the car but I don't think I ever picked up WIVK at the motel in Maggie Valley. Or Lake Junaluska when that motel was still standing.
 
I was in Maggie Valley for a couple of days and there wasn't much on the dial other than WKSC 99.9 and WMIT 106.9. WIVK is possible in Asheville but not all that listenable.


vchimpanzee said:
I can't recall trying in the car but I don't think I ever picked up WIVK at the motel in Maggie Valley. Or Lake Junaluska when that motel was still standing.
Click to expand...
 
Conversely, I can remember through the 1970s when many shops and restaurants along Parkway in Gatlinburg played the beautiful music of WLOS-FM Asheville -- today's WKSF.
 
KayJayJay said:
Conversely, I can remember through the 1970s when many shops and restaurants along Parkway in Gatlinburg played the beautiful music of WLOS-FM Asheville -- today's WKSF.
Click to expand...

More likely it was WSEV FM 102.1. It was beautiful music and 22kw with a tower near Pigeon Forge. Boomed through the county.
 
That wouldn't shock me. WKSF's signal in Sevierville can be stronger than WCYQ. B97.5 (which was the former Knoxville beautiful music station, WEZK) has a big dropout area in downtown Gatlinburg. I remember flipping over to the fill-in translator they used to have when we were listening to Christmas music one year.
I've seen old Knoxville radio listings that included WMIT.


KayJayJay said:
Conversely, I can remember through the 1970s when many shops and restaurants along Parkway in Gatlinburg played the beautiful music of WLOS-FM Asheville -- today's WKSF.
Click to expand...
 
gr8oldies said:
I was in Maggie Valley for a couple of days and there wasn't much on the dial other than WKSC 99.9 and WMIT 106.9. WIVK is possible in Asheville but not all that listenable.


Click to expand...
I'm surprised. Even in the motel in Maggie Valley I can pick up a bunch of stations other than WKSF and WMIT. There are the Mountain and The Planet, probably WESC, the translator for WCQS, and Mix 96.5, and I get a fuzzy signal from Magic, WSSL, WQUT, Rock 101, WRZK, Star, and Rewind. Strange how WQNS doesn't reach the area any more. It used to be one of the clearest stations.
 
Having lived in the Tri-Cities area for over 20 years before moving back to the area recently That in the Johnson City and Kingsport areas at least WIVK has a clear and lisenable signal.
 
ThomasFoolery said:
More likely it was WSEV FM 102.1. It was beautiful music and 22kw with a tower near Pigeon Forge. Boomed through the county.
Click to expand...

I'm well aware of the original WSEV-FM. In this case, I am certain that it was WLOS. Radio geek that I was, I remember asking the manager at a long gone pizza joint just east of Pancake Pantry why they played an Asheville radio station. He didn't have an answer. You also heard it in the old drug store (now Earthbound) across from Pancake Pantry, in McCutcheon's Brass Lantern, a candle and craft store that sat where All Sauced Up is today, even the legendary Rebel Corner. This is back in the day when Gatlinburg cable TV included WLOS-TV. Perhaps WLOS-FM was the background music to the old weather channel on cable (Not today's TWC. This one was an old B/W stationary camera shooting a thermometer, barometer and wind gauge.) Isn't the WLOS Mt. Pisgah tower site the highest in the eastern US?
 
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A great thread. Thanks to Florian. I loved visiting East Tennessee and the Smokies as a kid. But always hated how poor reception was.

Coming in from Indiana and 990 WNOX was always the first Knoxville station I'd capture after topping that ridge between Jellico and Caryville. That was until Pirkle launched the original WOKI 100.3. Usually first heard the Knoxville Sharp's Ridge FMs about Caryville. Most all Knoxville radio from Clinton or Norris until Sevierville. Back in those days you drove out Chapman Highway. By the time we hit the heart of Gatlinburg it was just WSEV AM-FM, WIVK AM-FM, a scratchy 990 WNOX and WLOS-FM. WSEV had a remote studio in the then new Mountain Mall in Gatlinburg. Don't recall ever seeing it used.

A lot depended on where you'd stay. Motels that backed up onto the ridge along Gatlinburg's north edge meant most every FM was gone. Stay along Airport Road and a few of the Knoxville FMs could be heard. Stayed one year at what was then a new hotel on a golf course out at Cobbly Nob. About all I heard there was WLOS-FM and TM's Stereo Rock on Greenville SC's WFBC-FM. Gatlinburg's cable system hadn't yet expanded out to Cobbly Nob. Money was tight and the hotel didn't want to pay for the build out. So the hotel room had a TV stand but no TV sitting on it.

My favorite part of the park itself was the parking lot at the bottom of Clingman's Dome Trail. Sitting at about 6,000 ft always meant about an hour tuning around on FM. Stations from Charlotte to Atlanta, Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville, Chattanooga, Knoxville and the Tri-Cities. Absolute radio geek heaven. Trees, nature, the beauty of God's majesty? What radio geek kid cared about that when there was Atlanta FM radio to hear?
 
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KayJayJay said:
I'm well aware of the original WSEV-FM. In this case, I am certain that it was WLOS. Radio geek that I was, I remember asking the manager at a long gone pizza joint just east of Pancake Pantry why they played an Asheville radio station. He didn't have an answer. You also heard it in the old drug store (now Earthbound) across from Pancake Pantry, in McCutcheon's Brass Lantern, a candle and craft store that sat where All Sauced Up is today, even the legendary Rebel Corner. This is back in the day when Gatlinburg cable TV included WLOS-TV. Perhaps WLOS-FM was the background music to the old weather channel on cable (Not today's TWC. This one was an old B/W stationary camera shooting a thermometer, barometer and wind gauge.) Isn't the WLOS Mt. Pisgah tower site the highest in the eastern US?
Click to expand...
No, actually, WMIT was one of the first FM stations in the 1940s and they put it on one of the peaks of Mt. Mitchell (that's what WMIT means), the highest mountain east of the Mississippi.

I was curious back in 1985, when WLOS was gone and stores had to find a replacement, why I was hearing what turned out to be WTFM 98.5 from Kingsport when I was in Waynesville. Some businesses had WSPA-FM from Spartanburg, though even that station had problems in bad weather.

On the subject of the "weather channel", Myrtle Beach SC had one in the 70s with a camera going back and forth across weather readings, and ads and the forecast on the side. The audio was the NOAA channel.
 
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