It seems to me that all of them will require some adjustment to the power because of the distance to the west of the original site.
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WFME STA
- Thread starter JJSPC
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It seems to me that all of them will require some adjustment to the power because of the distance to the west of the original site.
Did they mention the Statue of Liberty? They can spitball any site they want, pre-existing or not, but the sad reality is that any rebuild of 1560 is a very expensive fool's errand. As I mentioned somewhere upthread, their best option is to try acquiring a couple of suburban Class A FMs to supplement their 92.7 signal: one in northern Westchester (or Bergen County, NJ, or even far east Rockland County), and another in mid-Jersey, like New Brunswick or Perth Amboy. (WOBM/92.7 might be an excellent choice, not only for location but...) A "Y107"-style trimulcast could make way more economical and technical sense than trying to revive the corpse of 1560.
There is no significant reason why they can't keep the 50 kw power level assuming that they find a site with towers in the right configuration to make the pattern work. The night signal "goes east" so being out in New Jersey gives them much better coverage opportunities for the Jersey suburbs as well as better coverage of Manhattan.
The only other restrictions, beyond Bakersfield, are adjacent channels stations that require protection.d
Another issue might be the insulation on the towers built for lower power stations. That, too, can be resolved... but not inexpensively.
Keep in mind that the "old site" was not optimum. It sent most of the night power to the East, giving less than the best signal to most of Manhattan and a relatively poor signal to the NJ suburbs.
The Essex County, NJ, public record has finally been updated and its shows the sale price of the Family Radio property in West Orange to GBSJ Properties (Goddard School) was $250,000.
From West Orange NJ public records, the application is actually to renovate the existing structure to provide for an annex of the Goddard School on the adjacent property. The renovations shall consist of "removing radio towers" (plural)'
If I have this right, and they want to demolish the West Orange site, what happens to WFMU which is also up there? Plus isn't there some TV at West Orange, too?
If I have this right, and they want to demolish the West Orange site, what happens to WFMU which is also up there? Plus isn't there some TV at West Orange, too?
But isn't the proposal to take down all of the towers at the site? Or just the old WFME main tower and leave the others up?
There are three separate sites. WFMU is on its own short tower on the opposite side of the school. The old WFME site has two towers that will come down. There are a couple of LPTVs and some miscellaneous two-way tenants that will have to move if they haven't already. Across the driveway from the WFME site is the old WVNJ-FM tower, now an aux site for several NYC FMs.
Only the WFME site is being sold and dismantled.
Here’s Google’s view of the towers at The Goddard School. I see at least 6 towers in this image, or 7 if you count what’s coming out of the top of the white tank next to the unmarked building. Which are the towers facing removal?
The tower in the middle with the 5-bay FM antenna is the old 94.7. It is going away, as is the flat-topped self-supporter to the right of it, which is mounted on the roof of the old WFME building. That's all.
WFMU is on the left, the FM aux site is on the right, the other stuff is off behind these properties and equally unaffected.
Aha! Thanks for this. I recall that this site goes back many years, not only as WFME's original 94.7 site, but -- I believe -- the original channel 13 (WATV) was up here as well. When 9/11 hit, I believe that this site was one of the sites used to get the NYC TV stations (and maybe some FMs) back on the air.
I wonder if the solution is to diplex on one of the WWRU towers. WWRU is on 1660, not too far off from 1560. Go 50K non-D daytime and get whatever you can get non-D at night.
FCC update. Family Radio has filed for an engineering STA to return to the air at low power from the WPAT tower site in N.J.
An STA to triplex from the WPAT/WNSW site was also the last gasp for 1530 WJDM (the original one in Elizabeth, NJ) before they gave up and turned in the license.
WJDM had planned to transmit a permanent 10 kW signal from the WPAT/WNSW site. If the tower height was apparently OK for 1530 kHz, why would it be unsuitable for 1560 kHz?
Oh great. Right in my hometown. That will ruin my DXing on 1550 and 1570 even at 10,000 watts.
As indicated in a post above, the owner of WJDM had to turn in its license, due to being given authorization to broadcast at 1660 AM (now WWRU). So they also probably only intended the diplex from the WPAT?WNSW to be a temporary arrangement.