>
> Curiously, what kind of directional pattern are they
> proposing to implement when they go DA? Other than
> Claremont to the west, not much population density in any
> direction.
>
It's a cardioid (two towers, one of them new) beamed pretty much east protecting WINS and CFRB. 2 kW but the NIF is really high, 75 mV/m, IIRC. However, according to the application, the NIF covers more than 80% of Newport.
The only AM that I am aware of with a higher NIF is WADK (curiously, also in Newport--but the one in RI). This one is not yet on the air either. Predicted NIF is 95 mV/m, all form WDCD. I gather that the licensee was afraid of weird skywave if he used towers of unequal heights. That could screw up the protection to WDCD, which is only a little more than 200 miles away. WADK's existing tower is half wave and the two new towers will both be 1/4 wave. The existing tower is supposed to become the center (high-power) tower in the three-tower almost-in-line array. The application says that the center tower will be electrically shortened to 1/4 wave at night. The FCC asked how. The consulting engineer said "we'll figure it out when we get that far." I suspect that they will skirt the upper half of the tower and drive the skirt via an isocoupler to reduce the current to zero in the upper half of the tower, but I'm not sure that that approach is workable. CP was granted anyhow--5 kW-N. No change in the 1 kW ND day operation. Any change in the day operation would force a significant reduction in signal to the west; WADK must have significant prohibited overlap with the 1550 station in Bloomfield CT and, thanks to the salt water, with the 1530 station in Bridgeport.