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Wasted signals

Schroedingers Cat said:
I was once told that Long Island was basically a big rock, and that was why the conductivity was 0.5 mmhos/m.

It's a rock with sand frosting. The worst of two worlds... solid rock and pulverized rock.
 
@ David :

Back when WWRL bought out adjacent WERA in NJ and co-channel WLNG AM, was that buyout done for the same reason? Overlapping contours would have resulted from any WWRL power increase? Opening up some of those nulls was not a priority ?

Was the background ambience/noise floor that bad in 1989 ?

Huntington Station, for example, was another growing Hispanic-population locale, since the 70's, which WADO now serves pretty well. WGLI's smallish back lobe, though, used to own that -- aimed directly at it, in fact (and even went across the Sound to reach Stamford CT). WGLI's back load had a lot of zip. I got them in the day in Nyack NY, in the backyard of a 1300 station in Rockland County.
You add that coverage to that of Brentwood and Bay Shore (also evolving into Hispanic populations in the early 70's). Still, it was WGLI who owned those places, not WADO.

You could hear WADO day and night in those two imploded WGLI nulls, by the way (Commack and Massapequa iIrc).

I just have a hard time believing that WADO did not have an eye on the potential Long Island audience that was being hogged and splashed on by WGLI. I knew the CE of WGLI, who had negotiated around and through a couple of four-tower directionals and contour conflicts himself with mutually agreeable results. WADO and its proposed four towers could have fired their new, louder signal over their main audience with minimal fuss all around. If WADO wanted just louder coverage of their existing NYC listeners, that's one thing. Agreements and waivers would have achieved that. I suspect that WADO also wanted a chunk of that suburban exodus that WGLI had in that greener-grass coverage for forty years.
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
I just have a hard time believing that WADO did not have an eye on the potential Long Island audience that was being hogged and splashed on by WGLI. I knew the CE of WGLI, who had negotiated around and through a couple of four-tower directionals and contour conflicts himself with mutually agreeable results. WADO and its proposed four towers could have fired their new, louder signal over their main audience with minimal fuss all around. If WADO wanted just louder coverage of their existing NYC listeners, that's one thing. Agreements and waivers would have achieved that. I suspect that WADO also wanted a chunk of that suburban exodus that WGLI had in that greener-grass coverage for forty years.

When the upgrade actually happened, it had been determined that the suburban (LI and NH) Hispanics were predominantly Puerto Rican, and, unless they were over about 65, did not listen to Spanish language radio much... or at all. Keeping in mind that the last inflow of Puerto Ricans to NY was in the late 60's, there is no Spanish dominant younger Puerto Rican demo to cater to.

So, with the focus on Dominicans, Colombians, Ecuadorians and Salvadorans... the newer under-60 Spanish speakers... the real issue was overcoming the noise and putting a good signal into the Boroughs, Upper Manhattan, etc., where by the mid-90's the noise level was horrible.
 
In the case of WOOD 1300 increasing to 20 kW, the measured conductivities of several applications on line related to WOOD are so bad that they would not have had to buy out WHGR 1290. Some rough calculations revealed at least 1 kW nondirectional and possibly 5 kW nondirectional would have been possible, and certainly 5 kW or more directional for WHGR 1290. The Quaternary Geological Survey Maps show this being likely from soil types, but only measured conductivities within 5 km of the new WOOD site were allowable by the FCC. I really don't know why site studies are not done much anymore. They did with KBRT 740 Avalon, but probably because they had no other choice.

Anyone know of comparable Quaternary Geological Survey Maps of New York and New Jersey?

Interesting how the Beck Ross Group (owned both WGLI and WKMF) figures into both areas. Did you know that George Ross of Beck Ross is the same George Ross who is Donald Trump's chief executive and who appeared on "The Apprentice"? How's that for "Six Degrees Of WGLI"?
 
Must not have looked hard enough.

Here's a start.

http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/nyc/moraines/quaternary.htm

That glacial outwash is pretty bad for conductivity, no more than 1-2. The lacustrine areas are usually at least 4, and 8 or more if clay or clay loam. More if a salt water swamp.

Glacial outwash sand and gravel is what that WOOD 1 mmho/m measured radial follows.

The ice contact stuff west of the NJ swamps is probably worse.
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
Back when WWRL bought out adjacent WERA in NJ and co-channel WLNG AM, was that buyout done for the same reason? Overlapping contours would have resulted from any WWRL power increase? Opening up some of those nulls was not a priority ?

After buying out and taking 1590 WERA and 1600 WLNG dark, and buying the license of the already-dark 1590 WQQW in Waterbury, CT, 1600 WWRL increased its daytime power from 5000 to 25,000 watts. WWRL's nighttime power level (5000 watts) and pattern remained unchanged, however.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
In the case of WOOD 1300 increasing to 20 kW, the measured conductivities of several applications on line related to WOOD are so bad that they would not have had to buy out WHGR 1290. Some rough calculations revealed at least 1 kW nondirectional and possibly 5 kW nondirectional would have been possible, and certainly 5 kW or more directional for WHGR 1290. The Quaternary Geological Survey Maps show this being likely from soil types, but only measured conductivities within 5 km of the new WOOD site were allowable by the FCC. I really don't know why site studies are not done much anymore. They did with KBRT 740 Avalon, but probably because they had no other choice.

Anyone know of comparable Quaternary Geological Survey Maps of New York and New Jersey?

Interesting how the Beck Ross Group (owned both WGLI and WKMF) figures into both areas. Did you know that George Ross of Beck Ross is the same George Ross who is Donald Trump's chief executive and who appeared on "The Apprentice"? How's that for "Six Degrees Of WGLI"?
Proof of this: WCHB runs 50kW day at 1200. WJNL, around 200 miles away on 1210, gets to run 50kW ND-D
 
I think that WJNL 1210 and WCHB 1200 clear with M-3 conductivities. To move to the old WKNX 1210 site, WXOX (WNEM) 1250 had to be quite directional to meet new overlap requirements with WJIM 1240, and had to further modify the pattern by adding a tower and measure contours to get to 5000 watts daytime. WWJ 950 had to measure conductivities to not overlap WHAK 960 with 50000 watts. Theoretically, it began to overlap with just 12000 watts. My somewhat crude measurements/observations years before put the conductivity in the WHAK area near 2 mmhos/m.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Schroedingers Cat said:
I was once told that Long Island was basically a big rock, and that was why the conductivity was 0.5 mmhos/m.

It's a rock with sand frosting. The worst of two worlds... solid rock and pulverized rock.

I finally did my Stone Mountain test a while back. Results were exactly as expected - with no ground conductivity reception sucks. I will never drag a loop antenna up Stone Mountain again. Besides the physical exertion, I was hassled by rangers - or whatever three times. A loop sure looks like a bomb.
 
In the age of Homeland Security, it would be interesting to start a thread over on the Engineering Section, about experiences with law enforcement when carrying a field strength meter. One guy made a card stating that he was maintaining federally licensed radio facilities in compliance with federal regulations, after being hassled a number of times.
 
Two instances about DXing in unlikely places come to mind, Cat.

One was maybe four months back, a chilly day. The wife and mother-in-law were inside a supermarket after I gave them a ride there. I stayed out in the parking lot with a new battery portable, DXing far from the neon and the other QRN from the store.
There was a gal employee doing a smoke break at a side door who spotted me. I kept walking around and twirling this black-cased device, and opening and closing the whip antenna for FM, thoroughly engrossed in the ecstacy of hobbyism.
Pretty soon there were two employees at the side door. Then three.
The bravest of the three was a young fellow, maybe mid-twenties, the biggest of them, who walked halfway to me and gave me the 'Excuse me, sir?' treatment from about fifty feet away. I walked toward him in friendly fashion -- and saw him visibly flinch in uncertainty. I can understand his hesitation.
Some goofball in a watchcap is near them with this bizarre, static-ky communications device. And it had a handle! -- like suspicious luggage.
In the middle of my explanation, out of the store with $160 worth of groceries came the wife and moms-in-law. We hustled off.

I was parked at a passenger train station one late tropo night I'd caught in the car on the way to somewhere. The station had a generous parking lot, empty, and a lot of overhead wires from some nearby power/relay station. The effect was great, even on the car radio. I'd pull ahead two feet and hear Philadelphia .... and back two feet and hear Long Island on the same channel.
For some reason, a cruising village policeman thought this was suspicious at that hour. So he proofed me, and my license was clean. I then tried explaining about tropo and skip and DX, and about the heightened effect of trope on hobbyists worldwide -- he listened for about thirty seconds and said, 'All right. I'll be off on other rounds for fifteen minutes. When I come back here, I don't want to see you.'
Yessir. I wrapped up the DX session.
THAT instance was just a few months before the supermarket parking lot 'caper'.
Only about 400 months before. It was over thirty years ago.

Some people never will understand DX.
 
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