• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

WHVN-Charlotte Revised Article Now on Wikipedia

M

Matt

Folks,

I have put together a full article on wikipedia for the 1240 frequency in Charlotte, currently WHVN, but formerly with calls WIST, WSOC and WRBU.

Please look over the article, and as always if you know any better information please let me know or become a wikipedian and add what you can directly to the article.

[url]http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHVN [/url]

Later,
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV
 
Interesting, I never knew about WRBU.

A side note: The tower that was in the front of the WSOC building till it came crashing down due to hurricane Hugo was the old self supporting 1240 WSOC tower. It was used for microwave antennas and other communications needs.

After the storm WSOC-TV built a new tower at the rear of the station.

The current 1240 WHVN broadcast tower is between Randolph and Monroe Roads just east of downtown a good central location. WHVN now broadcasts with 1,000 watts 24 hours after the FCC let Class IV stations use their daytime power at night. Prior to this most Class IV's were 1,000 watts day / 250 watts nights.
 
Interesting, I never knew about WRBU.
Click to expand...

Here's a link to the 1930 FRC source material... Interesting, I never knew about WRBU.

The tower that was in the front of the WSOC building till it came crashing down due to hurricane Hugo was the old self supporting 1240 WSOC tower.
Click to expand...

Mike, do you know if that is the original 1930's era tower, or did they build that one sometime later? Since the station was at 250 watts day and night when they moved from Gastonia, it would have made sense to have the site as close to the center of the city as possible to make the then-existing city-grade contour requirements for signal strength. 1901 North Tryon Street makes sense for that.

WHVN now broadcasts with 1,000 watts 24 hours after the FCC let Class IV stations use their daytime power at night. Prior to this most Class IV's were 1,000 watts day / 250 watts nights.
Click to expand...

I would have put that in the article, but I didn't have a firm handle on when the FCC allowed the Class IV's to do 1000 watts at night. The last Class IV I worked for was WSIC back in 1981, and they were still 1000/250 then.

Originally that class was 250 day and night, and allowed the 1000 watts daytime for most of them in the late 1950's.

Later....
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV
 
I wouldn't want to speculate if the tower out in from of WSOC was the origional tower. i was just told that it was used on 1240 back when it was WSOC.

I would think it was right after 1981 when the class IV's got the approval to stay at 1,000 watts but like you I'm unsure of what year it was. If I find anything on that I'll get back to you.

Mike
 
Matt Smith said:
Originally that class was 250 day and night, and allowed the 1000 watts daytime for most of them in the late 1950's.
Click to expand...

The 1934 list on http://members.aol.com/jeff99500/1934am.html shows most Class IV stations running 100 watts day & night, with a significant fraction allowed 250 watts daytime. I don't have any earlier lists to show when 250-watters started showing up. A 1951 list shows most were running 250 watts fulltime. I *believe* they were still 250/100 at the end of WW2 so the change would have happened between 1946 and 1951.

Early 1980s sounds right for the move from 250 night to 1000.
 
A couple of things.

I've known this since I started editing Wikipedia articles but I did it the wrong way anyway. We're supposed to have sources other than our own memories for everything we put there, and yet I felt it was important to get the information out there that I could remember. Where I can find sources using NCLive or whatever, I put them in later.

And I read somewhere that 250 watts was enough to carry a long way back in the 50s. There were fewer sources of interference. On some frequencies under the right conditions (no other station on that dial position, for example) I read that 1000 watts could go several hundred miles even during the day.
 
Saw that and changed it.

Thanks for the information.

Matt
 
vchimpanzee said:
And I read somewhere that 250 watts was enough to carry a long way back in the 50s. There were fewer sources of interference. On some frequencies under the right conditions (no other station on that dial position, for example) I read that 1000 watts could go several hundred miles even during the day.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. I've heard stories of a 250-watt station in Honolulu being heard regularly on the East Coast in the 1960s. The dominant 50,000-watt station on their frequency, in Minneapolis, was going off the air sometime after midnight (as most stations did back then) and there was no other station allowed to operate at night on that channel.

No computer noise, few stations operating 24 hours (and even fewer operating 24 hours on weekends), and many clear channels truly clear with only one station operating at night. Must have been a fun time to DX! On the other hand, WHVN's 1240 channel has always been a kind of "interference dump", even well before WW2.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom