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WBCB'S NIGHTIME POWER

T

towernews

Someone on this board wanted to know why WBCB AM 1490 cannot be picked up after sundown in areas outside of the Bucks County area. This is because after sundown WBCB drops their power down to either 500watts or 250 watts. They just drop the power, since this is a non-directional station. This is what their engineer told me, when I asked him why I can't receive their signal after sundown in Northeast Philadelphia. He was not sure whether it was 500 watts or 250 watts. But this is why you can't receive their signal after sundown if you are outside of the Bucks County area.
 
I always thought that was J.R. "The Web Thriller" Miller, RJ's webmaster, behind the "towernews" account...
 
Even in Buckx County (Bensalem), night time signal is not really listenable. though Bensalem isn't the city of lisence for WBCB either, so not much that can be done about it.
 
From WBCB's own web site:

WBCB Radio is a 1,000 watt, 24 hour, AM radio station in Levittown, Pennsylvania.
 
The problem with WBCB's nighttime signal, like other graveyard channel stations, is not a change in power at night, but an increase in skywave interference. During the day most stations can be heard out to their 0.5 mV/m contour (apart from local noise and interference). For a graveyard station running 1kw non-directional, that may be a radius of about 20 miles. At night, even though the station's power is the same, that skywave interference can raise the station's usable signal to 20 or more mV/m. Of course, this is generally speaking. Location, and other conditions like adjacent channel nighttime interference can effect the coverage. But, on average, that graveyard station that covers 20 or more miles during the day, may only cover 5 miles at night (if they are lucky). Under the FCC Rules there is really no protection of coverage at night on graveyard channels. It's a free for all.

For the unitiated, the graveyard channels are: 1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, 1450, and 1490.
 
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