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There is no substitute for altitude...

This was amazing to read about. I have never even thought about these kinds of heights in regards to FM. I appreciate this thread.

Someone offered to do a L/R pattern on this station. I would LOVE to see that.
 
The term "Yankee" refers to the old Yankee Network. The primary purpose of the very first FM located on Mount Washington was not to reach the general public; it was built to distribute Yankee Network programming to affiliates (mostly AM) all over New England. Tragic story about Parker Vincent - and, yes, I knew him through monthly chief engineer gatherings in/around Boston.... Parker's son (I forget his name) was to have succeeded him (Parker) upon his retirement. Sadly the son died before Parker was ready to retire so he stayed on a lot longer than he had intended.

Riccar House was originally built to house servants who traveled with their employers to the grand hotel and was a partial cause of the ultimate failure of the hotel. There was only one bathroom per floor and the servants were delayed in getting ready to go tend their employers needs to an extent that the very wealthy stopped coming. The building was disused for some time before becoming the WMTW studio. The whole operation was right there at Poland Springs when the station was owned by Jack Parr...remember him???
 
I wonder how far a 100,000 watt station would reach on top of the Freedom Tower at 1776 feet in New York City, if the FCC allowed it. Supposedly you could see the Comcast tower in Philadelphia from the top of the Freedom Tower. Would it have a bigger coverage area than WHOM?
 
Nick said:
I wonder how far a 100,000 watt station would reach on top of the Freedom Tower at 1776 feet in New York City, if the FCC allowed it. Supposedly you could see the Comcast tower in Philadelphia from the top of the Freedom Tower. Would it have a bigger coverage area than WHOM?
Click to expand...

Nope...

According to the FCC propagation curves, the 54dBu protected service contour of a grandfathered 100kw station at 1776' HAAT would extend 65 miles. WHOM delivers the same signal to a distance of 73 miles.
 
A surprisingly accurate formula to determine horizon from a given height is to take the square root of the antenna's height (in feet) and then double that number. Magically, that number is a good approximation of the distance to the horizon (in miles).

1776' sq. root = ~42 X 2 = 84

ymmv
 
TomZ said:
A surprisingly accurate formula to determine horizon from a given height is to take the square root of the antenna's height (in feet) and then double that number. Magically, that number is a good approximation of the distance to the horizon (in miles).

1776' sq. root = ~42 X 2 = 84

ymmv
Click to expand...
I forget where I got an equally simple formula. Line of sight to the eye was reportedly the square root of 1.5 x AGL. Therefore someone who's eyes were at 6' AGL could see 3 miles out into the ocean. Never have taken a boat out to test that formula. The 'radio horizon' version was the square root of 2 x AGL. That formula produces 52 miles of vision and 60 miles of radio line of sight. Of course, these are all to the ground on flat ground. Start adding receive height AGL, obstructions and hills/hollers and then your mileage really does vary! If someone is adept with the earth curve graph paper, it might be interesting to see what it shows 1776' to yield in LOS.
 
TomZ said:
I haven't exercised this, but.....

http://lrcov.crc.ca/main/
Click to expand...
I love that site Tom. And it's got uncanny accuracy. When siting a Class A, it predicted what part of a nearby big city the signal would be good in and which parts fall in the not so good zone. It nailed it. I ran several different height vs power charts using it and it quickly showed me the sweet spot above which added height/lowered power would not yield further improvements. Glad that one is a freebie. Thank you Canada!
 
Wasn't there a Class C in Arizona somewhere about 10 or 15 years ago that was something like 10,000 feet up run on solar and wind and I think was finally abandoned
 
Up on the Sandia Crest the Albuquerque TV & FM stations are at
1,265m or 4,150' Height Above Average Terrain
3,274m or 10,741 Above Mean Sea Level

FM's run around 20 kw ERP.
 
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