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WAIT Gone..Bu-bye....
- Thread starter Rex Radio
- Start date
Heard them play Good-Bye Yellow Brick Road and then shut down a little while ago. They be gone......
RR
Yup, just checked and they're gone.
Heard them play Good-Bye Yellow Brick Road and then shut down a little while ago. They be gone......
RR
Gone for good? Why?
For openers, their 27-acre transmitter site is worth a LOT more than the station, so the local junior college next door is buying it. Then there's WAIT's owner, Fred Eychaner, who's already worth a few hundred million....but he's now in his 70s, and would probably like some pocket change before he rides off into the sunset.
And no one wants to continue the station with a new site?
Apparently not.
It's a 2500 watt daytimer without a translator. Not much one can do with that.
and multiple towers.. costly to move and rebuild... they havent officially said WAIT is done and hinted they may look to move it elsewhere
I thought they had to protect Waterloo IA and Denver to the west, Cleveland to the east, and Milwaukee's 860 to the northeast. I would have to guess that any future operation on 850 in the far NW suburbs would be omnidirectional. How could they run more than 500 watts if that is the case, and unless they could get an FM translator, who would listen?
From the STA application for WAIT...
CHICAGO NEWSWEB CORPORATION (NEWSWEB), THE LICENSEE OF WAIT(AM), HAS SOLD THE LAND UPON WHICH THE WAIT TRANSMITTER SITE OPERATES. ACCORDINGLY, NEWSWEB HAS SHUT DOWN THE OPERATIONS OF WAIT WHILE IT CONSIDERS ITS OPPORTUNITIES TO RETURN THE STATION TO OPERATIONS IN THE FUTURE.
How many really believe this station will ever be back?
CHICAGO NEWSWEB CORPORATION (NEWSWEB), THE LICENSEE OF WAIT(AM), HAS SOLD THE LAND UPON WHICH THE WAIT TRANSMITTER SITE OPERATES. ACCORDINGLY, NEWSWEB HAS SHUT DOWN THE OPERATIONS OF WAIT WHILE IT CONSIDERS ITS OPPORTUNITIES TO RETURN THE STATION TO OPERATIONS IN THE FUTURE.
How many really believe this station will ever be back?
Let's put it this way. If WAIT was worth saving, Newsweb probably would have had a plan lined up before selling the TX site.
WAIT will be back...but on 820. That's the problem on meaningful relocation. The 25 mV/m contours of WAIT and WCPT can't overlap.
Not likely
Couple things... WCPT (820) primary limit to the NW is a little peanut whistle on 810 in SW Wisconsin. Beyond that, WCCO (which there is a fair amount of room with WCCO). The 25mV contours also had a quite a bit of room to move with 850.
850's pattern is far more complicated. As I mentioned, there is WNOV and KFUO, St. Louis which are the real squeezers. In fact, the 2mV of WAIT and WNOV meet. That's 6dB more than permitted. Then there is the 850 across the lake in Michigan as well as Waterloo. Denver isn't even in the picture during the day.
850 can't operate omni. It's that simple. I don't know what they're thinking by applying for a STA. FCC will not allow a permanent power reduction to 250W at the end. Non-grandfathered daytimers must operate with 1KW TPO. Even if it's into a coat hanger.
And worse, McHenry County is notorious for limiting towers and their siting. It makes no sense.
Call it a day...it's over. The fat lady is on stage and already inhaled.
RG
Couple things... WCPT (820) primary limit to the NW is a little peanut whistle on 810 in SW Wisconsin. Beyond that, WCCO (which there is a fair amount of room with WCCO). The 25mV contours also had a quite a bit of room to move with 850.
850's pattern is far more complicated. As I mentioned, there is WNOV and KFUO, St. Louis which are the real squeezers. In fact, the 2mV of WAIT and WNOV meet. That's 6dB more than permitted. Then there is the 850 across the lake in Michigan as well as Waterloo. Denver isn't even in the picture during the day.
850 can't operate omni. It's that simple. I don't know what they're thinking by applying for a STA. FCC will not allow a permanent power reduction to 250W at the end. Non-grandfathered daytimers must operate with 1KW TPO. Even if it's into a coat hanger.
And worse, McHenry County is notorious for limiting towers and their siting. It makes no sense.
Call it a day...it's over. The fat lady is on stage and already inhaled.
RG
Actually, I was thinking that it would be better to move the Day facility back out near Elmhurst and use a skirted existing tower. They did use measured conductivities for the WI station as I recall. They are also contemplating changing the overlap rules. Nevertheless, they could park the WAIT calls on 820.
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The Waterloo, Iowa 850 came on after the Crystal Lake 850 signed on in 1965, as WCLR. Fast forward to 1977, and I worked there in sales for about a year when Mal Belairs owned the station as WIVS. At that time it was 500 watts with a pattern similar to the current 2.5kw pattern....although not as tight. The reason for the DA at 500 watts was protection for the Milwaukee 860 to our northeast and possibly KFUO to the southwest. I think even 250 watts omni would've been problematic for Milwaukee's 860, which had been around since the 1940s IIRC.
At one point, we had our consulting engineer take a look at nighttime operation. (These, of course, were the days before translators). The bottom line, as I remember it, was that the requisite night pattern would've required at required too many modifications, too much expense, and too low power to make sense. On top of all that, KOA is still strong enough on most nights to be a significant pest in whatever real estate we thought we might be able to cover. So the matter never got beyond the talk stage.
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Was WCLR two towers or three when they were 500 watts? It looks like a 1:2:1 binomial broadside inline design, with the towers spaced somewhat less than 180 degrees. If it was a 1:1 design when it was 500 watts, the lobes would be relatively wider. WKBZ/WGVS had an application for 10000 watts at about the time that Crystal Lake was trying to increase to 2500 watts.
This was more than 40 years ago, so i'm not 100% sure. I remember it as three. But I could be wrong.
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I believe they originally had to protect Muskegon on 850...
At the very least, the call letters WAIT will likely return to 820.
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