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What third tower is used for WFIL??

O

oasisrulz

Guest
Passing the old WIBG site today, I noticed where the five towers used to be, there are now four, in the same straight array, but newer, and there are two towers along side of the four. I would imagine the four are for WNTP and the other two are for WFIL, but which one of the four WNTP towres are used for WFIL's third direction pattern tower, just curious...I also seem to remember WFIL having three large stand alone towers on the opposite side of Germantown Pike in the 60's and 70's, close to KYW's two, why, how did they wind up on the WIBG property....
 
Rene' Tetro, the chief engineer of WNTP and WFIL, often posts here. He'll give you the straight skinny. My guess is that the tower that the two stations share is the most southeasterly of the six towers at the site. I'm guessing, though; I've never seen the site itself or checked out the areal view that you will probably find a Google Earth. Whichever tower is shared is essentially in line with both lines of towers.

As for why the stations share a site--they are co-owned. I assume that the WFIL site was sold for a decent price. It was good economics for the stations to share a site.
 
Thanks Sam! Now I know why that land was not developed. I think the old WFIL Transmitter building is still there. I also recall that when Jerry Lee owned WFIL he tore down and built 3 new towers with guy wires and all. They probably were there for less than 2 years?
 
The four in-in line towers are indeed the WNTP array. The fifth tower was dropped in 1986 when we let the day and night patterns out. The day pattern was let out even further in 2007.

WFIL, as you surmised, uses the two towers to the south of the WNTP towers and diplexes on WNTP tower 4 - the tower closest to the studio/office building. Because the township would not allow us to put towers up that were taller than what already existed on the property, the two WFIL towers are quite short for the frequency (about 51 degrees). To overcome that, 40 degrees of top loading was installed on the two WFIL towers to increase the overall electrical length to 91 degrees. Even with that, the system is very inefficient compared to the old WFIL system. Therefore, the FCC authorized us to operate at 7.1kw day and 8.3kw at night to meet signal standards. With the increased power, the difference in coverage between the old and new WFIL systems is negligible.

FYI...the old 990 towers were replaced in 1997 when WFIL moved to Ridge Pike. Six new towers were installed at that time.

The old WFIL building still stands. The last time I was in there was in 2004 (doing some "investigating" for treasures left behind) and it was pretty much the same as when WFIL moved out in 1998. Unless the locks have been changed I've still got the keys. I should check it out someday.
 
Sam Lit said:
Rene, Three questions:

1) When the 990 towers were replaced what was the Day/Night wattage and did they use a DA at all during the rebuild?

2) Why does Radio-Info still put WFIL at 5000/day/night.

3) Doesn't the common tower need a top load for WFIL? And how does that work, 2 top loads and one not.
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Can't answer 1 or 2 but 3 is easy. The use of towers of different heights is not especially uncommon in DAs. It does affect the vertical radiation pattern, but with modern DA-design software, it is easy to predict the vertical pattern and document it to the FCC's satisfaction. If power input to the non-top-loaded tower is low (and it should be in this case because it is an end tower in the three-tower end-fire array and the power in the end towers of many such arrays is low) the effect on the vertical pattern and the radiation efficiency is not huge. An array that consists of two 91-degree towers and one 51-degree tower should easily meet the Class B minimum radiation efficiency of 281.7 mV/m/kW @ 1 km if the short tower is a low-power tower. Putting the requisite signal strength over the CoL when the station moved from a more efficient array is another matter, however, and probably is what motivated the FCC to allow the higher powers.

The most interesting issue in this case is 40 degrees of top loading on 51-degree towers. That is an unusually high degree of top loading. Guy-wire loading is not usually used to add more than about 30% to the electrical height of AM towers. The WFIL top loads add almost 80%. Such a high degree of top loading usually requires top-hat-style loads. Rene' knows these well because he worked at the old WNEW, which had self-supporting towers with top-hat loads. It would be interesting to know more about the mechanical configuration of WFIL's top loads.
 
Is that what the nets are on top of the WIP two tower array, top loaded, never saw AM towers with the nets, also I passed the QEW 4 tower array last week and the tops are plain, like normal AM towers no nets etc. It always amazed me that WNEW-A was a 50kw in the heart of a neighborhood in a big city, how did that ever happen, is that Brooklyn or Queens, its on the borderline I think...
 
oasisrulz said:
It always amazed me that WNEW-A was a 50kw in the heart of a neighborhood in a big city, how did that ever happen, is that Brooklyn or Queens, its on the borderline I think...
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You are confused! WNEW (AM) 1130 never transmitted from the heart of Queens. The station you are talking about is WQEW 1560, which took the standards/nostalgia format (and some of the air personalities) from WNEW 1130 when Bloomberg purchased WNEW in (I think) 1992 and flipped it to business news/talk as WBBR. Until the flip to nostalgia, WQEW had been classical WQXR (AM) and, back then, was owned by the NY Times. More recently, WQEW flipped to Radio Disney under an LMA with option to buy. The mouse then exercised the option maybe five years ago and still owns 1560, which is still broadcasting Radio Disney.

I agree--the WQEW site in Maspeth or Long Island City is a HORRENDOUS site for AM. I can't imagine why the station didn't move when it increased to 50 kW and added towers back in the '50s. The right place for the station appears to me to be the WABC site in Lodi with a pattern that favors the southeast. This would not be a diplex; it would be a co-location. For the brief period when WQEW and WABC were co-owned a couple of years ago, such a deal might have been relatively easy to pull off. But those days ended when Citadel aquired the ABC O&O stations (not including the RD and ESPN affiliates).

The station that had the two top-hat-loaded self-supporting towers was WNEW (AM) 1130, which, in those days, transmitted from S Kearney near both WMCA and what was then WAAT 970 Newark (now WNYM Hackensack). Maybe 40 years ago by now, the NJ Turnpike took the WNEW site and WNEW (it had not yet flipped to WBBR) moved north to a different town (Secaucus? dunno--that's a guess) and built the current four tower array, of self-supporting non-top-loaded towers, one of which is substantially taller than the other three.
 
I think Dan covered the top-hat question quite well, so I will only add that in our case, the mechanics are simply that the top set of guys are connected directly to the towers without insulators. The guy wires are uninsulated the 40 degrees of electrical length. This was done when it was realized by our consulting engineers that the system design with 250 foot towers was going to be incredibly inefficient and would not meet the minimum standards. As I think I noted before we would, of course, have preferred installing to standard quarter-wave towers for WFIL, but was prevented from doing so restraints place on us by the township. Speaking of top-hats, the most interesting looking top-hat arrangement at any station I have worked for is at WPAT-AM. These are bery similar to the top-hats at the old Kearny, NJ WNEW site.

As Dan noted, many stations have DA's comprised of towers of varying heights. At WNEW/WBBR our nighttime DA had one half-wave tower and three quarter wave towers. When I worked at WNDE in Indianapolis in the early 80s our DA consisted of two half-wave towers and one quarter-wave tower. Dan calls it correctly when he says that it can be computed how the short tower will effect the array's nighttime propagation. In many instances one or more short towers are preferred in nighttime DAs because they provide a better "take-off angle" to prevent interference on co-channel stations.

In our case, there is very little power in the third WFIL during the day. It contributes very little to the overall pattern comparatively. The field from that tower is about 30% compared to 100% from Tower 1 and 95% from Tower 2. At night, however, it is a different story. The field of the third tower is about 80% of tower 2 (100%), the night reference tower, while Tower 1 is about 60%.

Now, to answer Sam's second question. The easiest way to think of it is in terms of FM transmission. An FM transmitter may, for example, have to put out 3.7kw from the transmitter to get 3.0kw ERP from it's antenna (assuming a two-bay antenna with a gain of about .9). The extra 700 watts is lost in the combined losses in the coaxial cable and antenna. WFIL's situation is not unsimilar. Because the antenna system is so inefficient, the commission authorized to station increase it's transmitter output to 7.1kw day and 8.3kw night to obtain the equivalent of 5kw power. By increasing the trasmitter output power we were able to obtained about the same coverage we did from the old Franklin Way site.

For Sam's first question, when the towers were replaced in 1997, 990 (then WZZD) used a single tower, non-directional at 12.5kw. This varied between tower 2 and tower 3, depending on the stage of the construction. We still have the capability of going non-directional from either of those towers in an emergency, or to meet OSHA requirements during tower work. WFIL can operate at 2.5kw non-directionally from either its tower 1 or tower 2.

Note to Dan: yes, it was December 1992 that WNEW became WBBR. (I had the ignimonious duty of pushing the button to turn WNEW off for the last time). For the first couple of weeks after the change, the NY Times bought out all of the air time and we simulcasted the new WQEW. Actually programming from Bloomberg news began in early January 1993. (I believe it may have been Jan 2 or 3).
 
A good example of towers that are top loaded is WPHE-690 Phoenixville, even as tall as those towers are! The old WXUR Media had 4 towers near Glen Mills, PA that were also top loaded. WPAT is one of the best examples that I know of also.
 
DaveWilliams said:
WPAT is one of the best examples that I know of also.
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The most remarkable thing about the WPAT towers, if we are to believe CDBS, is their efficiency. The towers are physically 118 degrees (346' at 930) and top loaded to 146 degrees--well below 1/2 wave. In one pattern, the efficiency is 382 mV/m/kW @ 1km, a value that, for a nondirectional radiator, would require a tower just about 180 degrees high. For the other pattern, the efficiency is even greater--392 mV/m/kW @ 1 km, a value that usually requires towers approximately 190 dgrees high--greater than half wave! Now, some directional arrays have higher efficiency than you would predict based on antenna height. That can happen when the horizontal pattern flattens the vertical-radiation pattern, sending more of the signal along the earth's surface than would an ND antenna. DA designers refer to this phenomenon as squishing. In WPAT's case, some of the efficiency is almost surely the result of squishing.

WPAT's array is soon supposed to be diplexed with co-owned WNSW 1430 Newark, which will run 10 kW-D/7 kW-N once construction is completed. (WNSW is already on the air at low power from the WPAT site.) At 1430, the WPAT towers are (electrically) just 225 degrees, the height that yields the maximum efficiency at the expense of creating a substantial high-angle lobe in the vertical pattern. Although CDBS shows the day pattern efficiency as 423 mV/m/kW @ 1 km, a value that should be achievable with towers a bit shorter than 225 degrees (~210 degrees should do it), the night pattern shows an efficiency of more than 440 mV/m/kW @ 1 km. That efficiency is consistent with 225 degrees. It should be interesting to see the final values for WNSW once the patterns have been proofed, but I have no timetable for completion of construction.
 
I remember listening to WIBG in the early-mid 60's, before they had the liner, "turn up your radio for more power"....I would notice a significant reduction in strength, to the point of being almost unlistenable, and this was in South Philadelphia, probably about 15 miles from 117 Ridge Pike as the crow flys....I never knew what happened, but I knew it always happened when it got dark....I was only 12 at the time and did not know power reduction etc.,...the question I have is, when they reduced power did they also change pattern direction, because 10kw beaming southeast should still put a decent signal in CC-SP....but the signal was bad....don't know how I listened to all the British Invasion and Surf music with all that interference at the time,,,,,,but would pick up the 50kw'ers to fill the gap.....Then when WFIL came on the scene it was just the opposite a better signal at night...same wattage at 560 D and N 5kw go figure....
 
It's easy.....5 kW at 560 will give a very strong groundwave, maybe stronger than 10 kW at 990. At 560, the signal's wavelength is much longer than at 990.There's also less tendency for fades at that end of the band.
Rene', can you elaborate???
 
WFIL actually puts more power toward Philly and Jersey at night than during the day. The WFIL night pattern has four nulls outside of the main lobe: at 40, 235, 280, and 340 degrees. All of the signal from those nulls is pushed to the southeast, directly toward Philly. The signal toward Philly at night is about 1300 mV/m while during the day its about 1000 mV/m. The day pattern is shaped sort of like a peanut with the major lobes going Southeast and Northwest.

990, while also beaming directly towards Philly at night and transmitting a hotter signal to the southeast than WFIL (about 2200 mV/m), does indeed drop off more quickly than WFIL because of the higher frequency. Although if one takes a quick look at the AMFMZIP predictions, WNTP's night signal is still about 38 mV/m in center city, as opposed to WFIL with 44 mV/m. Of course, the further away from the transmitter one gets, the greater the difference in signals will be.
 
I was coming out of the 30th street underpass in center city, going east the other night and was surprised to hear penetrating skywave coming in on 990. In fact during modulation luls, I could hear co channel audio. I was very surprised. In all my years being up in the suburbs I never realized that a drive through center city at night would bring signal fluctuation on 990.
 
Well now you know what us folk south and east of CC had to deal with, especially in 64-66 when WIBG wasly the only place to hear BI, Surf and Folk/pop top 40, Famous 56 was not in operation then, so all we had was WIBG, unless you wanted to tune to WABC/WCFL(at 1000 close to WIBG but stronger at times)/WLS/WKBW/WBT and CKLW, which were my 6 defaults...btw what ever happened to Rick Menapace(sp) who had probably the first Progressive show on AM.
 
Sam Lit said:
I was coming out of the 30th street underpass in center city, going east the other night and was surprised to hear penetrating skywave coming in on 990. In fact during modulation luls, I could hear co channel audio. I was very surprised. In all my years being up in the suburbs I never realized that a drive through center city at night would bring signal fluctuation on 990.
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The most likely offender is the Rochester NY 990--only 2.5 kW at night but with a very narrow (six-tower) main lobe to the east with a maximum equivalent power of something like 25 kW ND at the signal maximum. Philadelphia is a bit far south to receive that signal (after all, the Rochester station was designed to protect what is now WNTP), but if the Rochester array were a little out of adjustment, interference to WNTP could certainly occur. Rene' should probably put on his to-do list a call to his friends at Crawford.
 
DanStrassberg said:
The most likely offender is the Rochester NY 990--only 2.5 kW at night but with a very narrow (six-tower) main lobe to the east with a maximum equivalent power of something like 25 kW ND at the signal maximum.
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We have indeed had problems with Rochester over the years, dating back to the early 80s. I can remember being sent up there to do monitor point readings on them to see if they were in -- they weren't. While we still have problems with Rochester, our biggest co-channel headache is CKGM in Montreal. In theory, they are supposed to protect us with a rather deep null at night. The problem is that they have this bad habit of not switching to night pattern. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've had to call up there. Once I was told that they had lost an RF contactor in the day-night switcher and "they were expensive" to replace. So they decided to leave it on day pattern until they had the money to replace it. The problem was, in that situation, that they neve bothered to drop power to try and keep their night pattern within its limits. They just kept blasting 50kw. I guess the CRTC is just not as picky as the FCC about such things.
 
oasisrulz said:
Well now you know what us folk south and east of CC had to deal with, especially in 64-66 when WIBG wasly the only place to hear BI, Surf and Folk/pop top 40, Famous 56 was not in operation then, so all we had was WIBG, unless you wanted to tune to WABC/WCFL(at 1000 close to WIBG but stronger at times)/WLS/WKBW/WBT and CKLW, which were my 6 defaults...btw what ever happened to Rick Menapace(sp) who had probably the first Progressive show on AM.
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Just to keep things straight, WBT NEVER played any top 40 during the 60s. Maybe you were thinking of WBZ, which had more of AC type format then....
 
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