WESU Middletown and WMNR Monroe The Battle of The 88.1's in Connecticut

[MarcB]

Just curious as to how far west the signal of WESU 88.1 reaches before it gets overtaken by WMNR. I was in Waterbury (The New Shoprite Plaza to be exact. For those of you didn't know, Shoprite took over the Wolcott Street Price Chopper in June 2008) the other day and WMNR was the station I was getting on 88.1 FM on my car radio.

 

[RadioMan203]

WMNR is directional toward the Danbury area but I don't recall offhand how the pattern goes toward Middletown. Back in the 70's I know the folks at Cambridge Crystals in Massachusetts use to do our off-air frequency measurements even with WESU on at the same time - and that was back with WMNR was a mere 330 watts (and later 600 watts).

This WMNR web page shows the coverage of their various transmitters and translators.

 

[DJKraze]

WESU is 1.5 kw non-directional from the top of the Exley Science tower on the campus of Wesleyan University in Middletown Connecticut. This concludes our broadcast day, good night. Er, wait, I meant to say they have a CP to go directional at 6 kw with an old 60's era transmitter that I'm not sure if they are getting as a donation or if they are purchasing it from WSHU.

I recently heard that they are between techies there, so I'm not sure who's going to put this one in, I just wish I knew what was wrong with the one I had installed back in 1989, it should have lasted much longer without fail, it's not like it was running full power, I had a 5 kw rig put in and it had a device to limit it to 1 kw operation, not to mention the techies since I left should have attempted to work on the old Gates 1kw rig that was still up there (there's a dummy load up there for a reason!) Last time I toyed with it, it was still putting out more than 900 watts, and I think a little more tweaking would have gotten a full kw out of it.

 

[DJKraze]

Oh yeah, I was also going to mention WESU was on the air before WMNR and if they still have the same old public file at the station, there is a few reception reports from New Jersey and I think one from Virginia, must have been easier to DX back in the days when there were far fewer stations out there, so I can fully understand those folks in Cambridge tuning up to that thing, it was pretty darn close to being on frequency only being a few Hz off even towards the time I had it pulled from service (note: I did not do the actual install of the current unit, but did the ordering and signed off on all the paperwork, I won't take credit for it, wish I could have been there, but my real job at the time was a major conflict).

 

[nd2023]

Why does WMNR have 2 translators on the same tower on 91.9 and 105.3?
I used to be mad at the 105.3 translator for spewing its Fine Arts crap all over Party 105 where 91.9 and 88.1 cover the same area perfectly, but now PartyFM can be heard on 87.7 in that area.

 

[necrat123]

WMNR is directional toward the Danbury area but I don't recall offhand how the pattern goes toward Middletown. Back in the 70's I know the folks at Cambridge Crystals in Massachusetts use to do our off-air frequency measurements even with WESU on at the same time - and that was back with WMNR was a mere 330 watts (and later 600 watts).

This WMNR web page shows the coverage of their various transmitters and translators.

WMNR is basically one giant power lobe aimed north-west with two very deep nulls to the south and to the east.