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WEEI-AM Application

L

Laurence Glavin

Guest
According to today's (05/19) FCC Applications list, WEEI-AM wants to make changes to its daytime pattern. The data for both the licensed facilities and the application facilities seem to be the same, maxing out at about 4,280 mv at 130 degrees. As someone once said to Adlai Stevenson, "translation please".
 
Its actually a change in the augmentations to the night pattern. That's all it is.
 
Necrat said:
Its actually a change in the augmentations to the night pattern. That's all it is.
Click to expand...

Yes, but it's a bit more. WEEI's towers are of unequal height, which is far from unique, but is unusual. At the time the WEEI (then WHDH) array was built, the use of unequal-height towers was even more unusual than it is today. As a result, the CDBS record has never gotten the tower heights right. It says that the towers BEHAVE as if they were equal in height even though they actually are not. The application seems to make a stab at fixing that problem (making the record somewhat more confusing for those who are unfamiliar with the array; it shows the electrical height of some towers as being greater then their physical height--a situation that had been considered impossible for non-segmented towers without top loading) and also fixes a stupid problem common to many AMs that operate DA-2: WEEI uses the same towers for both patterns but the original license numbers them differently. Anyhow, this is a minor change that, unlike quite a few minor changes these days, really IS minor. Oh, and the reason the application was necessary was the construction of an unrelated tower at the WEEI site. The additional tower had just enough effect on the night pattern that it was necessary to change the augmentations.
 
I'm fuzzy on this, but isn't one of the WEEI towers taller because it was originally going to hold an FM (or maybe TV?) antenna array...but never did?
 
DanStrassberg said:
... and the reason the application was necessary was the construction of an unrelated tower at the WEEI site. The additional tower had just enough effect on the night pattern that it was necessary to change the augmentations.
Click to expand...

What's on the unrelated tower?
 
I've read somewhere on this forum that the reason WEEI's towers are electrically longer than their physical length, is that the tower facings are very wide.
 
aaronread said:
I'm fuzzy on this, but isn't one of the WEEI towers taller because it was originally going to hold an FM (or maybe TV?) antenna array...but never did?
Click to expand...

One tower--I believe it's the middle one--is indeed designed with a removable section at the top for top-mounting of an FM antenna. However, the intent was, if an FM antenna was ever installed, for the tower with the FM antenna mounted at the top to be the same height as the same tower with the removable section in place. Perhaps WLAW's experience deterred WHDH from replacing the removable section with an FM antenna. WLAW 680 had WLAW-FM's (93.7 Lawrence) antenna mounted on the center tower at its Burlington site, which is roughly the same vintage as WHDH's Needham site. The antenna came down in an ice-storm apparently missing the TX building and doing little damage to the self-supporting tower, but it was never replaced.
 
and nothing enhances an AM stations signal like a cell tower close by! You might as well ground the coax center conductor. Sucks the signal right out of the air, which is another reason AM signals are not what they used to be before all these extra towers popped up IMHO YMMV
 
DG02816 said:
I've read somewhere on this forum that the reason WEEI's towers are electrically longer than their physical length, is that the tower facings are very wide.
Click to expand...

The tower faces do indeed appear more than normally wide, but the excerpt from the original 1947-era application that is contained within the current application mentions only the height differences as accounting for the effective height of 207 degrees. I believe, though, that wide-faced towers would exhibit wave-propagation velocity lower than that in free space, which would increase all three towers' electrical height. Read the application at CDBS. If I'm not mistaken (and I might be), even the tallest of the three towers (the one at the west end of the array) is not quite 207 degrees, although it is very close to 207 degrees. The difference in height between the west tower and the center tower is the same as the difference in height between the center tower and the east tower. Now, you might expect the effect of the end towers on the electrical height of the center tower to be greater than the effect of the center tower on the electrical height of either of the end towers. After all, TWO towers are 120 degrees from the center tower, whereas only one tower is 120 degrees from either of the end towers; the other tower is 240 degrees away. I can't believe that the math was too daunting for the engineers of 1947, but it does seem to me that, if the goal was to have mutual coupling even out the height of the towers, the physical heights might not have varied in the linear manner that was used. Anyhow, the design did not achieve the desired effect--moving the self-interference zone (where skywave and groundwave interract) farther from the array. This problem exists within about 40 miles of Needham.
 
Could the station have ever chosen another site to transmit from? Does WEEI-AM have the signal problems to the west like in Framingham and Worcester at night? I've heard the stories about WRKO-AM 680 before. Here in New Britain, CT, I'll get a little bit of WRKO-AM at night, with little or nothing of WEEI-AM. In the daytime, WRKO-AM is extremely weak, but it's sometimes enough to where I can hear the "WRKO" calls. WEEI-AM here won't happen, since we have WRYM-AM 840, licensed to New Britain, with a transmitter along Willard Avenue in Newington, CT to the east.
 
KML-224 said:
Could the station have ever chosen another site to transmit from? Does WEEI-AM have the signal problems to the west like in Framingham and Worcester at night?
Click to expand...

Like WRKO, WEEI has signal problems to the west at night. Because WEEI is closer to MetroWest than WRKO is, WEEI's signal is stronger until you get to the middle of Framingham or thereabouts. West of Framingham, WRKO's signal is stronger. However, Framingham lies well outside both stations' NIF contours. I believe that WRKO has the lower NIF, but I am guessing; I have not seen the numbers.

Could WEEI have been sited surther west? Maybe, but not much. The issue is the signal in downtown Boston. WEEI delivers ~35 mV/m to the main post office. Back in 1947, when the current facilities of both WRKO and WEEI were built, an AM was supposed to deliver 25 mV/m day and night to the main post office of the CoL, though the FCC did sometimes grant waivers. 25 mV/m is no longer a requirement, however; the current requirement is to deliver 5 mV/m to the entire CoL by day and the greater of 5 mV/m or an NIF signal (more than 5 mV/m for most stations, but not all) to at least 80% of the CoL population at night.

Because WRKO was built as a station licensed to Lawrence (although its owners really wanted to cover Boston), the station was constrained to a transmitter site roughly midway between Lawrence and downtown Boston. WRKO's Burlington site is better than WEEI's Needham site. Partially (but not entirely) because of the lower 680 frequency, WRKO's signal in downtown Boston is stronger than WEEI's. WRKO also covers the Merrmack Valley, southern New Hampshire, and Cape Cod like a local, which WEEI does not. When WRKO management belatedly changed from DA-1 to DA-2 operation (I think that was in the '60s, but I'm not sure), they were able to get a day pattern that covers the area west of Route 128 a bit better than WEEI's signal does. WRKO has the second-best AM signal in the market (after WBZ and ahead of WEEI).

A previous owner of WRKO and what is now WEEI had contemplated moving WEEI to a diplex with WRKO. However, the dreaded "ratchet rule" put an end to that plan, because WEEI would have had to give up too much in coverage in order to satisfy the ratchet requirements. The FCC is currently supposed to be considering a repeal of the ratchet rule, but I don't know whether the FCC can repeal the rule on its own or would have to get Congress to pass a law repealing it.
 
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