WHYY on low power

[Interstate 78]

I was wondering why I was having so much trouble getting WHYY lately. Thought it was just the junky radio in my minivan. But there's an announcement on their website saying an antenna system component failure has caused them to be on low power and work on Friday revealed additional problems. Their HD is also off-the-air. Hope they get the problems fixed soon. I've pretty much given up on KYW and now use WHYY for all my Philly radio news.

 

[radioskeptic]

When I was driving home last night (Fri. 9/25) after 11 here in South Jersey, there was no WHYY. Instead, I was getting Beethoven's Sixth (The "Pastoral") on 90.9, but with lots of hiss and frequent dropouts at the bottoms of hills. I didn't hear an ID.

It was probably tropo from classical WETA-FM from Washington. That one's grandfathered at 75 kw, but with an HAAT of only 610 feet.

 

[geostudent]

I listen to WHYY almost every day, and noticed something was wrong about two weeks ago.

I travel between my home in Norristown and Lancaster a couple of times a week using 202 & 30, and usually have no problems receiving them until I get west of Coatesville, when WETA starts cutting in. On one of my trips (Sept 14, I think), WETA started walking all over them not far past the PA29 exit heading south on 202, and by the time I reached Thorndale WHYY became unlistenable. At that time I thought it was tropo--not only was WETA there, I picked up WFUV 90.7 with enough strength to get RDS data. But when WHYY's reception was no better a few days later, I checked their webpage and saw the notice about the antenna problems. They must have upped their power a bit last week, as the WETA problems in the Exton-Downingtown area went away sometime around Sept 22, but their signal west of Thorndale at that time was still noticably weaker than normal.

As radioskeptic noted, WETA is grandfathered with facilities above Class B limits, and that certainly isn't helping matters for WHYY west, south and southeast of Philly.