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RadioPhillyFan
Guest
Looks like WWSW - is that right? (http://radio-locator.com/info/WWSW-FM)
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WLTJ, WWSW and WDVE are all grandfathered and above powered Class B stations
93.7the fan on that list.
On the AM side, KDKA has a modified Franklin antenna which, in theory, should give it about 18 per cent more signal than a 180 degree base-fed tower. WWNL is also a 65 horsepower station, but they use 4 towers and have rather potent signal toward the south.
But, watt for watt, the Canonsburg station probably has the best signal of all.
But, watt for watt, the Canonsburg station probably has the best signal of all.
NoTimeForSleep said:
As is 105.9, though none of those super-Bs are particularly super-powered compared to a standard B.
As a result, there's very little significant difference in the real-world coverage of any of the major Bs (89.3, 90.5, 92.9, 93.7, 94.5, 96.1, 96.9, 99.7, 100.7, 101.5, 102.5, 104.7, 105.9, 107.9). 98.3 is a respectable center-city A.
Of the suburban rimshots, only 104.3 and 106.7 cover any significant portion of the metro Pittsburgh population with a city-grade signal.
Of the AMs, only 1020 is plausibly a full-market day and night signal, if its antenna is working properly, which it isn't. 1250 and 1320 come close. 970 and 1410 were well engineered for the Pittsburgh market as it existed in the 1940s, but they have significant nulls over today's population distribution. 540, as noted earlier, is a whopper of a day signal but not of much use at night. 730, 860 and 1080 are also decent daytime players but of little to no use after dark.
Does KDKA-FM run in mono or stereo? Mono signals on FM travel further than stereo, I thinkPandoraRocks730 said:
danikayser84 said:Does KDKA-FM run in mono or stereo? Mono signals on FM travel further than stereo, I thinkPandoraRocks730 said:
The signals go exactly the same distance. The old reason for running a spoken-word format in mono was that stereo reception has a "noise penalty" to it - a weaker signal may be perfectly listenable in mono but noisy in stereo.
Back in the day, receivers had to be manually switched from stereo to mono, and the assumption was that listeners in weaker-signal areas might not know that they could get a cleaner signal by making that switch. By running in mono, you essentially made the switch for them.
Newer radios (pretty much any car radio since the 1980s and most portable and home receivers these days, too) have auto-blend circuits that will reduce stereo separation and eventually go all the way to mono as signals become weaker, so the need to force listeners' hands has gone away.
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FreddyE1977
Guest
If we're talking daytime, 620 has to be in the conversation. Also 730, which I've actually picked-up on the
shores of Lake Erie.
1020 on the other hand has terrible holes in their signal, given their horsepower. I have family about
an hour to the east, and KD is virtually unlistenable from their place.
On FM, 102.5 and 105.9 come to mind. And I used to live close enough to the 93.7 tower
that I think I could get it on my toaster.
shores of Lake Erie.
1020 on the other hand has terrible holes in their signal, given their horsepower. I have family about
an hour to the east, and KD is virtually unlistenable from their place.
On FM, 102.5 and 105.9 come to mind. And I used to live close enough to the 93.7 tower
that I think I could get it on my toaster.
When you're dealing with a bunch of basically identical class B signals like the Pittsburgh metro Bs, the "tie-breaker," if you will, can sometimes be the existence (or lack thereof) of co- and adjacent-channel interference.
Back in the days when there were only a handful of FM stations on the air, the only thing that limited the reach of a signal was the signal itself running out of steam. If you had a big signal like KDKA-FM on 92.9, and nothing else on the same channel for hundreds of miles, you could be 100 miles or more away and often get usable reception, if you had a decent antenna and a good high reception site.
The advent of all those class A drop-ins and translators and IBOC has taken most of that away...and now it makes a big difference what else is on your channel and where. For instance, there are now class A signals on 93.7, 94.5, 105.9 and 107.9 in and around State College, limiting reception up that way for the Pittsburgh signals on those channels but leaving others (92.9, 96.1, 101.5, 102.5) somewhat cleaner.
92.9 is, as noted, an especially clear channel - you have to go all the way over the mountains to Scranton to find the nearest co-channel to the northeast, and down to Berkeley Springs WV to find the nearest co-channel to the southeast.
Back in the days when there were only a handful of FM stations on the air, the only thing that limited the reach of a signal was the signal itself running out of steam. If you had a big signal like KDKA-FM on 92.9, and nothing else on the same channel for hundreds of miles, you could be 100 miles or more away and often get usable reception, if you had a decent antenna and a good high reception site.
The advent of all those class A drop-ins and translators and IBOC has taken most of that away...and now it makes a big difference what else is on your channel and where. For instance, there are now class A signals on 93.7, 94.5, 105.9 and 107.9 in and around State College, limiting reception up that way for the Pittsburgh signals on those channels but leaving others (92.9, 96.1, 101.5, 102.5) somewhat cleaner.
92.9 is, as noted, an especially clear channel - you have to go all the way over the mountains to Scranton to find the nearest co-channel to the northeast, and down to Berkeley Springs WV to find the nearest co-channel to the southeast.
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RadioPhillyFan
Guest
102.5 shows as the farthest reach on Radio-Locater, but that's not always the most accurate reading.
What R-L does (for FM stations) is to take a station's power and antenna height and a VERY coarse approximation of terrain to calculate how far that station's signal will travel...
...IF there's nothing else on the same channel or an adjacent channel interfering with it, and
...IF there's not localized terrain to get in the way of reception, and
...IF there aren't other localized sources of interference to get in the way.
If you compare the WDVE map on R-L to the maps for WLTJ or WWSW or KDKA-FM, you'll see they're all very similar.
Whatever theoretical differences you might see between those maps are far outweighed in the real world by other factors that R-L doesn't take into account. R-L doesn't show you what kind of interference comes in from other stations, nor does it account for the vagaries of antenna mounting. Believe it or not, just moving an FM station's transmitting antenna from one side of the tower to another can create what amounts to a different directional pattern for the signal, even though the FCC still officially considers the station "non-directional." Really good engineering consultants and antenna companies can sometimes eke out 3-6 dB of extra effective power in a desired direction just by tweaking the antenna mounting and/or upgrading to a better antenna.
The gold standard - and you won't find this for free on R-L - is a "Longley-Rice map." Here's an example of what one of those looks like for TV:
http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.php?appid=1050326&map=Y
What you're seeing here is what real-world VHF (FM) and UHF coverage looks like. It's not just a circle where you can hear the station if you're inside and you can't hear it if you're outside. It's a very strong signal (the bright green) close in to the transmitter, then a progressively weaker signal (yellow, then orange, then red) that comes and goes as you go up and down the hills at greater distances, and no signal at all in areas that may be within the "predicted contour" but are blocked by terrain.
Be sure to zoom in on the map to see how terrain can even make a strong signal almost unusable at points very close to the transmitter - look at how the bottoms of the Allegheny and Mon river valleys around New Kensington and McKeesport get almost no signal. By contrast, you can be up on the ridge over Johnstown, much farther away, and get a perfectly usable signal.
This gets even more fun when you're doing it in the Mountain West!
...IF there's nothing else on the same channel or an adjacent channel interfering with it, and
...IF there's not localized terrain to get in the way of reception, and
...IF there aren't other localized sources of interference to get in the way.
If you compare the WDVE map on R-L to the maps for WLTJ or WWSW or KDKA-FM, you'll see they're all very similar.
Whatever theoretical differences you might see between those maps are far outweighed in the real world by other factors that R-L doesn't take into account. R-L doesn't show you what kind of interference comes in from other stations, nor does it account for the vagaries of antenna mounting. Believe it or not, just moving an FM station's transmitting antenna from one side of the tower to another can create what amounts to a different directional pattern for the signal, even though the FCC still officially considers the station "non-directional." Really good engineering consultants and antenna companies can sometimes eke out 3-6 dB of extra effective power in a desired direction just by tweaking the antenna mounting and/or upgrading to a better antenna.
The gold standard - and you won't find this for free on R-L - is a "Longley-Rice map." Here's an example of what one of those looks like for TV:
http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.php?appid=1050326&map=Y
What you're seeing here is what real-world VHF (FM) and UHF coverage looks like. It's not just a circle where you can hear the station if you're inside and you can't hear it if you're outside. It's a very strong signal (the bright green) close in to the transmitter, then a progressively weaker signal (yellow, then orange, then red) that comes and goes as you go up and down the hills at greater distances, and no signal at all in areas that may be within the "predicted contour" but are blocked by terrain.
Be sure to zoom in on the map to see how terrain can even make a strong signal almost unusable at points very close to the transmitter - look at how the bottoms of the Allegheny and Mon river valleys around New Kensington and McKeesport get almost no signal. By contrast, you can be up on the ridge over Johnstown, much farther away, and get a perfectly usable signal.
This gets even more fun when you're doing it in the Mountain West!
Allow me a few assessments, AM and FM, from my listening post near McKeesport ... I suspect none of this will be particularly surprising:
AM: 540 - formerly a very clean, very good signal. Often I no longer can pick it up on scan.
620 - I'm actually just a few miles from its tower. Good at night as far north as the Kiskiminetas.
730 - Good daytime signal, sometimes scannable at night.
770 - See 620.
810 - Similar to 620, 770. In fact, however, I'm less than one mile from that tower.
860 - Similar to 730. St. Joseph Missions has done a good job with that signal.
970 - Fair daytime signal, receptable at night.
1020 - This one won't reach 38 states and half of Canada. In fact, it won't even reach Harrisburg day or night. It is hard to scan (to scan!) in parts of Westmoreland County.
1080 - Wilkins could do something with its daytime signal.
1150 - Good daytime signal east of Pittsburgh, very clean in its Kiski Valley backyard at night.
1250 - Good daytime signal. Decent at night east of the city. Been a while since I tried it in central Pennsylvania but I recall getting it, albeit faintly, on the Turnpike around the Allegheny Mountain tunnel.
1320 - Good daytime signal, scannable at night east of the city but it always had strong listenership in such communities as Irwin.
1360 - Good daytime signal close to the city, hard to get even in its city of license (McKeesport) at night.
1410 - Fair daytime signal, fair to poor at night but this is another one that shoots out for long distances, particularly south and east of Pittsburgh.
1510 - Good daytime signal.
1550 - Good daytime signal. Nonexistent at night but no surprise at only 4 watts, even if there's no longer a Windsor, Ont., CBC signal to protect.
FM: 88.3 - College station. Struggles to get beyond Pittsburgh city limits.
89.3 - Good signal east of Pittsburgh. Warrants its being the second option for EAS.
90.5 - Good signal east of Pittsburgh.
91.3 - Can be caught on scan east of the city.
92.9 - Good signal east of Pittsburgh.
93.7 - Strongest signal in most areas.
94.1 - Carries 20 miles north of its Clairton tower.
94.5 - Still strong even if it can't reach State College as in the old days when it was on cable systems there.
96.1 - Scannable east of Pittsburgh.
96.9 - Still a strong signal.
98.3 - Almost doesn't need the 98.5 simulcast in Confluence.
99.7 - Still a good signal.
100.1 - Used to be pretty good in parts of Westmoreland. Move to Baldwin could bring that back.
100.7 - Good signal especially north and east of the city. (It's COL is New Kensington.)
101.5 - Decent signal around the clock east of Pittsburgh.
102.5 - Scannable east of the city around the clock.
103.5 - Good signal across the metropolitan area. Its tower is west of Pittsburgh but I can scan for it to the east.
104.7 - Good signal around the clock.
105.5 - Not bad for a translator in eastern Allegheny and much of Westmoreland.
106.7 - Good carriage across the metropolitan area.
107.9 - Decent signal around the clock.
AM: 540 - formerly a very clean, very good signal. Often I no longer can pick it up on scan.
620 - I'm actually just a few miles from its tower. Good at night as far north as the Kiskiminetas.
730 - Good daytime signal, sometimes scannable at night.
770 - See 620.
810 - Similar to 620, 770. In fact, however, I'm less than one mile from that tower.
860 - Similar to 730. St. Joseph Missions has done a good job with that signal.
970 - Fair daytime signal, receptable at night.
1020 - This one won't reach 38 states and half of Canada. In fact, it won't even reach Harrisburg day or night. It is hard to scan (to scan!) in parts of Westmoreland County.
1080 - Wilkins could do something with its daytime signal.
1150 - Good daytime signal east of Pittsburgh, very clean in its Kiski Valley backyard at night.
1250 - Good daytime signal. Decent at night east of the city. Been a while since I tried it in central Pennsylvania but I recall getting it, albeit faintly, on the Turnpike around the Allegheny Mountain tunnel.
1320 - Good daytime signal, scannable at night east of the city but it always had strong listenership in such communities as Irwin.
1360 - Good daytime signal close to the city, hard to get even in its city of license (McKeesport) at night.
1410 - Fair daytime signal, fair to poor at night but this is another one that shoots out for long distances, particularly south and east of Pittsburgh.
1510 - Good daytime signal.
1550 - Good daytime signal. Nonexistent at night but no surprise at only 4 watts, even if there's no longer a Windsor, Ont., CBC signal to protect.
FM: 88.3 - College station. Struggles to get beyond Pittsburgh city limits.
89.3 - Good signal east of Pittsburgh. Warrants its being the second option for EAS.
90.5 - Good signal east of Pittsburgh.
91.3 - Can be caught on scan east of the city.
92.9 - Good signal east of Pittsburgh.
93.7 - Strongest signal in most areas.
94.1 - Carries 20 miles north of its Clairton tower.
94.5 - Still strong even if it can't reach State College as in the old days when it was on cable systems there.
96.1 - Scannable east of Pittsburgh.
96.9 - Still a strong signal.
98.3 - Almost doesn't need the 98.5 simulcast in Confluence.
99.7 - Still a good signal.
100.1 - Used to be pretty good in parts of Westmoreland. Move to Baldwin could bring that back.
100.7 - Good signal especially north and east of the city. (It's COL is New Kensington.)
101.5 - Decent signal around the clock east of Pittsburgh.
102.5 - Scannable east of the city around the clock.
103.5 - Good signal across the metropolitan area. Its tower is west of Pittsburgh but I can scan for it to the east.
104.7 - Good signal around the clock.
105.5 - Not bad for a translator in eastern Allegheny and much of Westmoreland.
106.7 - Good carriage across the metropolitan area.
107.9 - Decent signal around the clock.
You can be looking right at 970's towers on McKnight Road and the station sounds like it's underwater on a lot of car radios. Unlistenable to the north as close as Cranberry. On the other hand it comes in fine in Uniontown.
DVE dies out around I-80 to the north because of 102.5 in Buffalo and 102.3 in Erie. 92.9 and 3WS probably go the furthest north.
DVE dies out around I-80 to the north because of 102.5 in Buffalo and 102.3 in Erie. 92.9 and 3WS probably go the furthest north.
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RadioPhillyFan
Guest
1020 is an easy catch at night in the Philly area.
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MsMusicRadio
Guest
Used to get 1320 in Richmond Va at night when it was 13Q. Nothing at all from Pittsburgh in Tampa
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