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WGLI 1290 LIVES! In The Canadian Database! And As DWZZU!

The last engineering facility of WGLI Babylon, including Directional Antenna Parameters, is shown in the Canadian Engineering Database. The call letters WGLI (no FM extension) are currently used by a station in Hancock, Michigan, on 98.7.


The last US record, including DA parameters, is in the CDBS Database as DWZZU.


Does anyone know if they actually were ever on the air as WZZU? Or was that an FCC placeholder to make the WGLI call letters available?
 
Nope. It looks like just a ploy to park the WZZU call letters after what is now WNCB in North Carolina changed formats in 1996. WGLI was long dead by then; their license was finally cancelled in 1997.
 
I'd always thought WGLI 1290 had the same pattern at night as they had in the day, and that they just dropped to 1000 watts at night. Live and learn, Green ....

A pal of mine worked there for a while. Lol -- he was a DXer, too. Rodj would turn off the daytime switch and hear WNBF from Binghampton NY in the dead air.

He also said that they'd get phone calls (and requests) from Bermuda in the afternoon. That was where 99% of their signal went. The combination of WGLI and ZBM1 virtually next to each other on those Bermuda dials must've been all the radio that Pembroke ever needed.
Yet WGLI had permanent signal problems in Massapequa Park -- some eight miles west of their studios!
In the daytime, motoring along Sylvan Drive, one could hear the electromagnetic incest of their directional signal. I can't fathom how anyone who lived along that short 'service road' of the Southern State Parkway could listen to the hashing and clashing of a station maybe just 2 air miles away. The ear-popping racket was like that of 1010 WINS, in the daytime, a mile or so west of the Verrazano Bridge.
At night, on both sides of their corsetted nulls, in Commack and in Amityville, a driver could see their three blinking towers and hear WADO 1280 from NYC splashing onto them.

In the day, I once heard them in Nyack, up the Hudson River -- with Rockland County's own licensed WRRC Nanuet on the air at 1300.
And at night, WGLI and their 1000 watts put in a nice-enough signal along the Merritt Parkway near Stamford Connecticut. That 'back lobe' of WGLI's day and night pattern could be pretty impressive. Can't imagine how well they showed up in the Bermuda ratings, which was in their main lobe.

For YEARS, 1290 WGLI put out a weaker but credible signal / spur on 1160. Day and night. The aforementioned Roger could hear them on 1160 at his Huntington house. The 1160 (or thereabouts) WGLI signal curiously had the same directional properties peculiar to the main 1290 setup. We never knew why.

Great stuff, Schroed ! Thx !
 
I think some old tube radios used an intermediate frequency of 130 kHz, which could cause a strong signal on 1290 kHz to have an image at 1160 kHz. Later most radios switched to an IF of 450 or 455 kHz, to keep more of the images out of the broadcast band -- except for an annoying whistle at 900 or 910 kHz.
 
When the 455 kHz IF became the de facto standard, there were no stations or almost no stations in the US on 910 kHz. So no whistle in the US. It was a clear channel in Canada and Mexico (correct me if I'm wrong, David, otherwise, it's off to your site!) The clear channel moved to 940 under NARBA, and the 880 kHz "Regionals" moved to 910. Other stations moved from Class IV Local Frequencies to Regional Channels. Think. Delco and other car radios used a 262 kHz IF. There might have been an AM BC RITOIE type product between WGLI 1290 and WBAB 1440, which would be on 1140.
 
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