Thought I'd bring this over from the Washington/Baltimore board...
http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,48396.0.html
Enjoy! 8)
http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,48396.0.html
Enjoy! 8)
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WASTED 50KW AM SIGNALS
- Thread starter Hmmm101
- Start date
The Wolfman was on XERF, near Del Rio TX, not XERB near San Diego CA.
That said, a wasted 50kw AM? Wasted is a rough term. How about strugging for audience? In that light, former rock legend (WIBG) WNTP 990Kc & (former WCAU) WPHT 1210 Kc Phila, WWKB Buffalo NY. Then there are those that have been shown respect and have tended the garden well over the years, like WBT, WABC, WFAN, WINS, KYW, KDKA, WBZ....
That said, a wasted 50kw AM? Wasted is a rough term. How about strugging for audience? In that light, former rock legend (WIBG) WNTP 990Kc & (former WCAU) WPHT 1210 Kc Phila, WWKB Buffalo NY. Then there are those that have been shown respect and have tended the garden well over the years, like WBT, WABC, WFAN, WINS, KYW, KDKA, WBZ....
amfmsw said:
I beg to differ. He was on both of those stations.
"Thanks to XERF and later XERB-AM, the Wolfman reached most of the southwestern United States while selling everything from coffins to inspirational literature."
See www.radiohof.org/discjockey/wolfmanjack.html or listen to an aircheck at: http://airchexx.com/markets/mexico/wolfman-jack-on-xerb-tijuana-mexico-1971
WTRU Kernersville (Greensboro) NC. 50 kW days. The night signal is less but still can be heard throughout the Carolinas and the South Atlantic region.
Check out the satellite photo of that xmttr site for a great pine tree buzz cut and close encounter between a bizjet and blue UFO. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=36.19944,+-80.20694+(WTRU-AM)&om=1
YIKES!
Check out the satellite photo of that xmttr site for a great pine tree buzz cut and close encounter between a bizjet and blue UFO. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=36.19944,+-80.20694+(WTRU-AM)&om=1
YIKES!
jd..thanks for not letting me rewrite history. I truly don't ever recall him there. But I distintcly remember in his autobiography "Have Mercy" he retells the hilarious antics in Del Rio. How he paid the station "owner" and Mexican officials to let him do his thing. He then resold much of the time to preachers selling vials of holy sweat, glow-in-the-dark Jesus', bibles from the Holy Land and such nonsense, meeting them at a border phone booth, getting the taped show and throwing bundles of money in his trunk.
When in a Del Rio motel, he had the station on in the background while "entertaining" a young woman. He heard his engineer/groundskeeper at the station interrupt a "religious" broadcast while screaming into the mic "bandelaros! bandelaros!" It was Mexican soldiers taking over the station. It seemed he failed to make a payment to a new official who took office in the region. The book is a must-read.
When in a Del Rio motel, he had the station on in the background while "entertaining" a young woman. He heard his engineer/groundskeeper at the station interrupt a "religious" broadcast while screaming into the mic "bandelaros! bandelaros!" It was Mexican soldiers taking over the station. It seemed he failed to make a payment to a new official who took office in the region. The book is a must-read.
WALE-990, Greenville, RI
This one is by far the biggest dog of all. I used to work there and it can't get out of its own way! The built it using M3 conductivity and found after it was built that the conductivity was below a .1 there on the rock pile they built it on. It was proofed in winter during a snowstorm and could only put 10 mv/M over downtown Providence (RI).
They got an FCC waiver to operate.
When I was there they had a six tower array and a BTA 50G Ampliphase transmitter. It ran well enough...but no one could hear it. The nulls were so tight that at one monitor point you could see the towers < 2 miles away and you read under .5 mV/m!
Whan they added 5 kW at night and went DA-1, there was no way they could possibly cover Providence at night, so they changed the COL to Greenville, a small village a few miles from the TX.
They have a nice 50 kW Nautel now, but it's in such disrepair that I doubt it'll ever be running at 50 kW again...
So sad...
This one is by far the biggest dog of all. I used to work there and it can't get out of its own way! The built it using M3 conductivity and found after it was built that the conductivity was below a .1 there on the rock pile they built it on. It was proofed in winter during a snowstorm and could only put 10 mv/M over downtown Providence (RI).
They got an FCC waiver to operate.
When I was there they had a six tower array and a BTA 50G Ampliphase transmitter. It ran well enough...but no one could hear it. The nulls were so tight that at one monitor point you could see the towers < 2 miles away and you read under .5 mV/m!
Whan they added 5 kW at night and went DA-1, there was no way they could possibly cover Providence at night, so they changed the COL to Greenville, a small village a few miles from the TX.
They have a nice 50 kW Nautel now, but it's in such disrepair that I doubt it'll ever be running at 50 kW again...
So sad...
LOL! So many AMs are in total disrepair it's not even actually funny. They are either the stepchild of a cluster of McRadio or just scraping by in most cases. Too bad the FCC doesn't seem to want to do the right thing and give AM the channel 6 TV band so pure iBiquity or DRM could be simulcasted there for AMs in their local market and make them viable services again.
OKCRadioGuy said:
Yup, even in Market #1. If you drive around Northern New Jersey and listen to WABC 77, you can actually HEAR where some of the ground radials are missing.
On Long Island, WABC sounds like you're picking up a distant 1 KW station. The bad ground conductivity here sure doesn't help matters. Another one with totally shot grounding system is WFTU in Riverhead. Last weekend I stopped to look at that site and while walking back to my car, almost tripped over a ground radial that had come out of the ground. The whole site is grown over with weeds, grass and lots of trees.
StephanieNYC said:OKCRadioGuy said:
Yup, even in Market #1. If you drive around Northern New Jersey and listen to WABC 77, you can actually HEAR where some of the ground radials are missing.
On Long Island, WABC sounds like you're picking up a distant 1 KW station. The bad ground conductivity here sure doesn't help matters. Another one with totally shot grounding system is WFTU in Riverhead. Last weekend I stopped to look at that site and while walking back to my car, almost tripped over a ground radial that had come out of the ground. The whole site is grown over with weeds, grass and lots of trees.
I applied for the C.E. job there when it was open a while back. 30 years experience and they couldn't even give me the courtesy of a phone call or email to tell me they received my stuff. What you saw there says that they WANT things the way they are at WABC! The WANT a crappy signal! They don't care about anything but saving money any more!
I lived in Huntington, Long Island in the late '70s and let me tell you, WABC came in like a ton of bricks there.
WWDJ will soon joing WADO (signal) and WBBR (programming wise) as wasted 50kw signals.
WQEW does a nice job over the five boroughs of NYC, and I have heard them as far south as Tampa FL at night.... but programming is a joke. WEPN isn't much better.
WABC does a great job sounding like a 5kw AM.
WRKO... Downtown Boston and nowhere else... horrible signal
WQEW does a nice job over the five boroughs of NYC, and I have heard them as far south as Tampa FL at night.... but programming is a joke. WEPN isn't much better.
WABC does a great job sounding like a 5kw AM.
WRKO... Downtown Boston and nowhere else... horrible signal
StephanieNYC said:
This seems intuitive, but actually any missing radials only mean that the displacement currents induced in the ground near those missing radials are not collected and returned via that low-loss path to the common point of the radial system at the tower base. This increases the net r-f ground resistance in series with the monopole radiator, which reduces the radiation efficiency of the antenna system. However it does not directionalize the radiation launched by the monopole.
The difference in ground conductivity from the tower base to the edge of the radial field resulting from a few missing radials would be a very small contributor to the groundwave field many miles away from the antenna site.
Probably some type of propagation issue is causing such field variations -- maybe parasitic radiation from other structures.
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