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WALE NOT LOWERING POWER AT NIGHT

T

Team America

I'm not a engineer, but what actually happens when an AM station does not drop power at night? Does the FCC issue fines?
How can this be checked out?
 
Wow... this is the first time I've ever seen someone complain about WALE's signal being to Strong! Everybody mark down this date in history. This complaint will never happen again.
 
Unless your outside the "local" grade signal, you probably wouldn't notice. You may want to reference where you are geographically to these coverage maps:

Daytime WALE
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WALE&service=AM&status=L&hours=D

Nighttime WALE
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WALE&service=AM&status=L&hours=N

If you're listening at night, and located outside the local coverage area, and you here no difference between nighttime and daytime coverage, you might want to send a note to the FCC to investigate. However, most likely they wouldn't do anything until a station they are supposed to be protecting at night complains.
 
If WALE is not dropping power at night, it certainly would not surprise me. During the Battaglia ownership, that sort of thing happened all the time......to the point where they were fined by the FCC on at least one occasion, if not more.

If it's happening during one of the Spanish language programs, then it would seem logical that the people buying the time have complained to management/ownership that "nobody can hear us at night"......and this is ownership/management's way of "fixing" the problem.

Got to keep whatever ca$h there is coming in, right?... ;)
 
Team America said:
I'm not a engineer, but what actually happens when an AM station does not drop power at night? Does the FCC issue fines?
Click to expand...

Usually, nothing happens.....

The FCC can, and occasionally does, issue fines. Compared to the number of stations violating this rule, it doesn't happen very often.

How can this be checked out?
Click to expand...

Reading the Notices of Apparent Liability, it looks like what the FCC engineers do is to take a field-strength meter to the offending station's transmitter site and measure their signal during the day. They then return after sunset and measure it again. Obviously, it should change! If it doesn't -- well, it doesn't take an engineer to know what's going on!

The only reason you can't do that yourself is that you probably don't have a field-strength meter... (any decent contract engineer should be able to get his hands on one & know how to make the same measurements the FCC engineers make)
 
Ya know it doesn't take rocket science for a radio station to run descent programming.If its true WALE isn't lowering power at night. Give Runrigger the keys. And he will have that station running right once and for all!!
 
Thanks. I might have accepted the keys before they outlawed indoor prostitution, but now I don't know what I'd do with that place. Besides, programming a station that Skynet & Dighton Rockead intend to monitor and post about might give me a breakdown.
 
Runrigger:

I can't speak for Sky. But, as for myself....If YOU had the keys to the indoor prostitution....OOPS!!!....I mean WALE, you would get a free pass from me! ;D

It's only dirt-bag ownerships like the Battaglias in the 90's, or the crew there now that really merit keeping an eye on. ;)
 
Aren't they/didn't they used to be located in the same building as one of those places where you get your muscles relaxed?
 
It looks as though they're not running 50 kW during the day either ; more like 15 kW, becaue of the power bill....
 
DG02816 said:
It looks as though they're not running 50 kW during the day either ; more like 15 kW, becaue of the power bill....
Click to expand...

Dave:

Is it really a matter of the power bill?.....OR is it more likely that poor Nautel probably can't handle much more than 15 KW in its current condition?
 
Anyone ever see the actual transmitter inside the station? I picture it looking like something from 1930 that is one vacuum tube away from blowing up.
 
Skynet74 said:
Anyone ever see the actual transmitter inside the station? I picture it looking like something from 1930 that is one vacuum tube away from blowing up.
Click to expand...

Photos that have appeared on other websites show they are using a Nautel transmitter whose age is not certain. However Nautel has been making AM (broadcast) transmitters only since around the 1980s and never made a single model with vacuum tubes.

That said, a properly maintained Nautel will far outlast almost any other brand but a poorly maintained one has a capability of self-total destruction that is impressive. Still, there can be many steps toward (totally unmaintained) failure that will reduce output power while allowing the poor beast to labor on and on and on!

The ND25 which I maintain has been on-air since 1996 with zero transmitter-caused downtime. It has been off the air only for annual (and serious) maintenance. Even serious weather-caused antenna (tower) damage did not take it off the air entirely; merely caused it to protect itself by cutting back output.

At some point somebody who owned WALE cared enough to buy the very best. Now the "Belchfire-50" which preceded their Nautel.....well, that was a pig of a different odor and when Kenny Prior no longer kept it in good health the demise was sudden and awful.
 
OK, a Nautel Ampfet 50, first of which was built in 1985. There have been at least two further generations, each successively smaller and increasingly efficient. Next in the series was the ND series. I believe the efficiency of the current 50-kW Nautel is such that I could replace the current ND25 with a new 50 with no appreciable increase in power cost. While the 50kW would be permissible for daylight hours, the nighttime limit would remain right where it is so the exercise would be pointless. Not to mention expensive. Mind you, I speak of a station other than WALE.
 
DG02816 said:
It looks as though they're not running 50 kW during the day either ; more like 15 kW, becaue of the power bill....
Click to expand...

Is it true that if a station runs less than its authorized power (without permission
from the commission) for an extended period of time--say 15 kw instead of 50 kw,
in order to "save on the power bill"--Uncle Charlie can decree the station is now
stuck at 15 kw forever?
 
I'm guessing that the reason they're not powering down is simple neglect. I doubt it's intentional, but what do I know?

Nobody's listening and they know it. Not even the Commission gives a damn about WALE in this day and age.
 
jeffryan said:
I'm guessing that the reason they're not powering down is simple neglect. I doubt it's intentional, but what do I know?

Nobody's listening and they know it. Not even the Commission gives a damn about WALE in this day and age.
Click to expand...

I did notice the remote control unit in some of the pictures. It's a brand with which I have some experience. There is an option for the unit that allows a computer to do the power change automatically (if everything is properly wired). Updates to the software in recent years were intended to make it more reliable unfortunately they made it far more difficult to program and everything still remains at the mercy of the time-base in the computer running the software. I quickly discovered it was necessary to add a precision time-base card and, later, to hook it up to the Internet so the clock in the CPU was automatically corrected. That, of course, introduced an element of risk that somebody might find a way to hack in though it would take a far better hacker than am I.

Still, one must wonder what level of automation has been applied in this instance and how well said automation might be being maintained.
 
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