WIBG's changing footprints

[rtetro]

...is the current WNTP/WIBG night pattern actually 10,000 watts now (more or less, with phasing system allowances) or is it still at 6.5kw?

Yes, the currrent night pattern is a full 10,000 watts.

 

[rtetro]

The Midwest has some of the best ground conductivity in the country, New England and Long Island have some of the worst.

Amen to that. I remember, when driving cross-country in 1985 when moving from Philly to Colorado Springs, beginning to hear 630 KHOW in Denver listenably when I got around Hays, KS. Not bad for 5KW!

 

[rtetro]

Until WNYR moved from 680 kHz to 990 kHz in 1979-80 I could listen to WNOX clearly in Rochester at night while visiting family here.... WNOX's 10kw pattern was considerably different from WIBG's (and was nondirectional during the day.)

When I first arrived at 990 in Philly in 1981, WNOX was the only station that ever gave us occasional trouble at night. And, that was pretty rare. When WNYR signed on their 990 signal that became the major thorn in my flesh. Even today, they still cause some problems. Today, however, my biggest headache is CKGM in Montreal which regularly screws us over at night. I know that they have had a bad habit of not switching to their night pattern -- which supposedly protects us, Rochester, Knoxville, and Providence. But, even when they do think to change pattern, that protection is often a joke.

 

[fybush]

Today, however, my biggest headache is CKGM in Montreal which regularly screws us over at night.

They shouldn't be bothering you right at the moment, since they moved to 690 last fall and have shut down 990 completely.

But it won't last, of course - there's a new 990 that's been licensed using the same facilities, and it's due to sign on later this year. You'll get to know the folks from Evanov Broadcasting/Radio Fierte pretty quickly, I suspect!

 

[rtetro]

Scott,
When did they shut it down? It must have been within the past couple of weeks since I was still hearing "Team 990" under me before then. I knew they were moving to 690, and have been monitoring the simulcasts. My big hope is that the new operators of 990 in Montreal are a bit more responsible in running night pattern properly. (I can't tell you how many conversations I had with CKGM over the years about the issue).
Rene'

 

[DaveWilliams]

The CKGM story of not changing to night pattern goes back to the 80's when they were a Top 40 station on 980. When they stayed on day pattern, they were one of the loudest on the dial in Northern Delaware. And they would stay on day pattern for MONTHS! This seemed to be a pretty common thing with the Canadians as I can also remember Sudbury on 1110 eating up WBT at night.

 

[rtetro]

This seemed to be a pretty common thing with the Canadians as I can also remember Sudbury on 1110 eating up WBT at night.

I have similar problems with CFOS on 560. When I call them about it they apologize nicely, blame a technical glitch, and stay good for a couple of weeks. Then it starts again. There is also a Canadian on 920 that, from what I have been told haven't operated on their night pattern for ages. They regularly create havoc with WCHR in Trenton.

 

[deepstblu]

This seemed to be a pretty common thing with the Canadians as I can also remember Sudbury on 1110 eating up WBT at night.

I have similar problems with CFOS on 560. When I call them about it they apologize nicely, blame a technical glitch, and stay good for a couple of weeks. Then it starts again. There is also a Canadian on 920 that, from what I have been told haven't operated on their night pattern for ages. They regularly create havoc with WCHR in Trenton.

CKNX. When Phillies games were on 920 a few years ago I regularly used to have to switch from 920 to 1210 to hear the ends of night games, it was so bad. And this is maybe three miles outside the Trenton city limits!

 

[Bob1370]

Talking about Canadian stations and pattern changes...there was one big market station that at its peak would pull a really cute trick...kill the carrier for a split second at sunset and simply power back up again without changing patterns at all. Stayed on the less restrictive day pattern. Same thing next morning at sunrise, to further cover their tracks. Kill the carrier, mimic a flip to day pattern when you'd really stayed on day pattern all along. It sounded like a pattern change, came at the right time, so it took a long time for people to figure out what was really happening.

They shall remain nameless. I don't think they're doing it any more (the station has changed hands several times since those days) but let's just say it was a commonly told tale in the northeastern U.S. and I'm sure in Canada as well.

Some US stations later picked up that bad habit. Makes life miserable for co-channel stations that try to play it straight.

 

[Savage]

Now that a friend of mine is no longer with 990 in Rochester, I can write more freely. That array is a mess. It was built hurriedly in the late 1970s while the station operated temporarily from the original site WNYR used as a 250-watt daytimer on 680. There was a lot of pressure to get the new site on the air as quickly as possible because of overwhelming co-channel interference from the Toronto 8-tower 680, which had recently gone 50kw DA-2.

Among this 6-tower broadside's unhappy features are: QUARTER-INCH sample lines. Several of these tiny and fragile lines were damaged during installation, having to be manually dug up and repaired with connectors. IIRC (not bothering to look it up) there are/is negative tower(s). The daytime four-tower generally wasn't a problem, but the full-six 2500 DA-N was a chronic PITA. I recall one afternoon working with three others in the field with begged/borrowed FIMs out at monitor points. It took most of the day to get the DA-N in - barely - with no wiggle room. And as we all know, with northeast weather, snow cover, freezing rain, etc. "barely in" is a prescription for trouble calls and pages when the weather changes.

The unattended site is also in a rural area and has been the target of vandals on several occasions.

 

[cingram]

When I lived in Rochester, 990 frequently got clobbered at night IN ROCHESTER, either by CKGM or
other stations.

C.

 

[Savage]

The station couldn't be heard at night at its own studios, which at the time were - admittedly - a few feet outside the City of Rochester proper (Winton Road in Brighton or Henrietta, can't recall the precise border geography.) The air signal was remoted back to Winton Road via a phone line from the Ogden transmitter site.

Great in Providence, though.... :

 

[Don Niles]

Greetings from one Philly/Rochester region hybrid to another. It's astonishing you could ever get WIBG in Wayland. As the original Big 99 (see rtetro's post) had to protect the entire Canadian border, very little power was radiated north - I seem to remember one monitor point near Ambler, PA, and IIRC the power radiated on that radial was less than 50 watts. Back in '69 when I was first on-air at WIBBAGE, my parents in Livonia, NY, tried to catch WIBG (my dad was quite the DXer) and could only read WILK 980.

You never should have been able to get WBBF in Wayland since one of the stations they protect is WPEN. Their 1kw, DA-2 is very tight on both patterns, sucked in deeply east-west daytime to protect 950 in Utica, NY and 930 in Buffalo, 70 miles away. At night it's a cardioid 3-tower inline aimed almost due north right over Rochester into Lake Ontario, with very little southern radiation. You must have been getting BBF in Chester by the round-the-earth route!

I remember in 1971 picking up WBBF toward sunset in Clarksburg,WV,where I have lived since the late 60's...I can recall Larry White playing "Mr. Bojangles" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band...And the reception of WIBG in Wayland was indeed rare.....The craziest West Virginia 950 DX I can remember occured in the Winter of 1978 at about 2 A.M...I got WLOF Orlando,Fla. loud and clear for about 20 minutes......I can also recall picking up WAXC overnights in WV in the mid 70's but it was a struggle. The dominant 1460 was usually WCMB, Harrisburg,Pa.

 

[joshzz]

Speaking of WIBG, I enjoy listening to the music & famous jingles on WIBG-FM located in Ocean City, NJ. For me it brings back a lot of great memories. http://wibg.fm/

It's good to know that great music of the past is still being played on WIBG!

 

[Don Niles]

It is getting so there is less and less on terrestial radio that I really enjoy....For my Oldies fix and WIBG Jingles,I listen to Hy Lit radio.

 

[JerseyBee]

When I'm in the oldies mood WIBG is pretty good. Their talk tho - really bad. A shame.

 

[Savage]

You bet - resuscitating this thread! I just recalled another WIBG tech tale from the 5-tower Ampliphase days (contrary to an earlier post, Wibbage's 50kw rig was neither custom-built nor water-cooled. It was a stock BTA-50G dating to 1958, and one of RCA's earlier builds - certainly a state-of-the-art transmitter for the mid-1950s in that it didn't employ high-level plate modulation like almost all high-power transmitters then.)

Anyway: a problem arose for Paul Drew's skin-tight fast-paced fake-Drake format in '68/'69 because WIBG's array used old-fashioned loop sampling and thermocouple antenna current meters. For the uninitiated, these RF meters must be read without modulation to get an accurate indication. Not only that, the pause has to be several seconds long to allow the meter to subside to the accurate value. And with two patterns and five towers, that meant that twice daily there had to be six programming interruptions of at least three seconds (one for the common-point reading and one for each tower base current reading) - DEAD AIR, twice a day - to enable the transmitter engineer to read the meters. Horrors! What to do?

Of course, simply "fudging" by guesstimating the accurate RF value was strictly "out" with the unionized shop and perfectionist Archie Sichel, WIBG's CE. So the solution was twice daily, six stopsets were scheduled with at least one record in between each one. Each stopset began with a PSA with "built-in dead air" - starting with something like, "in just THREE SECONDS - a message from your US Army Recruiter." Or "in just THREE SECONDS - a reminder about drunk driving." And so forth. During the pause, the engineer read the meter - and he had one record to get his butt to the next tower to read the next meter in line.

Similarly, as was noted here before, WIBG was unique in having on-air announcements staging the twice-daily pattern changes. In the morning, the Drake announcer declared, over a tympani roll: "In THREE SECONDS....MOOORE POWER from WIBG, Philadelphia!" And similarly at night: "In THREE SECONDS....turn up your radio for MOOOORE POWER....." etc.

Paul Drew would simply not tolerate the interruptions imposed by either meter readings, or the pattern changes, which in truth took somewhat longer than three seconds. As jock you would fire the appropriate cart, listen to the air monitor and wait for a cue from the engineer to resume programming. Remember that WIBG not only had to change patterns but also transmitters, since the 50kw Ampliphase didn't load well into the nighttime phasing network. I was the jock on duty for many a morning pattern change, and on occasion an RF contactor would hang up out at one tower or another - or the Amplifuzz didn't want to come up. I recall one chilly morning where the change required several attempts and took almost 30 seconds. Drew was furious; memos flew.

 

[DanStrassberg]

This seemed to be a pretty common thing with the Canadians as I can also remember Sudbury on 1110 eating up WBT at night.

Sarnia (CKTY), not Sudbury, on 1110 (10 kW-D/1 kW-N DA-2 four towers in-line days, nine towers nights, but looking at the array layouts, I could believe a total of 12 towers). The day pattern was what you'd call a tight cardioid centered on the east-northeast. The night pattern was a teardrop centered just slightly east of due north. That Canadian 1110 was the bane of the existence of many stations in the northeast and eastern Canada. I rather doubt whether they EVER used the night array or night power! The 10-kW skywave from those four towers covered a big piece of North America like a local. Among the stations they clobbered was first-adjacent 1100 in Cleveland. Two US Class I's (Cleveland and Charlotte) couldn't get them to operate legally. If they couldn't do it, who could?

 

[rtetro]

Of course, simply "fudging" by guesstimating the accurate RF value was strictly "out" with the unionized shop and perfectionist Archie Sichel, WIBG's CE. So the solution was twice daily, six stopsets were scheduled with at least one record in between each one. Each stopset began with a PSA with "built-in dead air" - starting with something like, "in just THREE SECONDS - a message from your US Army Recruiter." Or "in just THREE SECONDS - a reminder about drunk driving." And so forth. During the pause, the engineer read the meter - and he had one record to get his butt to the next tower to read the next meter in line.

And Archie, whom I replaced upon his retirement, was correct in being a "perfectionist" with what amounted to a critical array - even though it was not licensed as such. It was a difficult array to keep wiitin parameters, so he was very adamant about knowing what the actual readings were. That being said, it was a pretty creative way to do it. When the format changed to religious programming in 1980 it was a much easier job to get the readings because there was a lot of silence in the talk programming. Eventually we replaced all of those thermocouple meters with Delta meters and installed a Delta antenna monitor and type approved sample system, which made things much more manageable.

Up at WNEW-AM in NYC some of the jocks actually would announce the pattern changes. It was a standard procedure to stop programming for five seconds for the pattern change. We used motorized RF switches rather than the standard Johnson type contactors, and the switches were much slower. It would take 3-4 seconds for the pattern to change. I can remember Bob Fitzsimmons doing mornings and usually saying something like, "We'll be back in about five seconds after we take care of some technical business." He and a couple of the other jocks would often work in jokes about it, occasionally taking swipes at the FCC.

When Bloomberg bought the station and we went to full automation of programming, we had a command triggered by the automation system that would tell the Moseley remote control system to change the pattern. When the command was triggered, the automation system would then play a five second audio cut of silence. Bloomberg was very particular about NOT interrupting an audio cut for pattern change.

 

[Savage]

I hasten to add here: I meant "perfectionist" as a compliment when referring to WIBG's longtime chief Archie Sichel. I liked Archie a lot, and WIBG under his watch was a scrupulously well-built and maintained facility. He was great at human engineering details, even to replacement of the pushbutton assemblies on the front panels of the ATC Criterion cart machines. Archie saw, correctly, no need for a front-panel power button, so the miserable Molex stop-power-start trio of buttons were retrofitted with dual green and yellow LICON switches resembling the later ITC units. Archie took the awkward union-mandated control-room/announce layout where the engineers had the console and the jocks had carts and turntables on the OTHER side of the glass, and made it work smoothly and comfortably. I think the idea to have built-in pauses programmed was an example of engineering and programming working creatively together. Truthfully, both Archie and Paul Drew were both perfectionists - Archie in demanding accurate base and common-point readings on a cranky old array, and Paul in nixing the idea of repeatedly interrupting hit music over and over, which certainly would have been a tuneout.

I actually liked the pattern-change announcements; I thought (and still think) they sounded cool. From a couple of the posts here I see I'm not alone.

I do recall one morning when the 50G was particularly uncooperative - apparently something to do with one or more of the EIGHTEEN mercury-vapor power supply rectifiers in that rig, so after multiple attempts and the passage of about 40 seconds after the power-up DA-D announcement, the 10H was put back on the air. The engineers tinkered with the Amplifuzz and got it running into the dummy load, and finally a pattern/power change occurred conventionally, punching an eight-second hole in the middle of "Honky Tonk Women." The Batphone instantly rang with Paul demanding to know, "what the hell was THAT??" As I said earlier: memos flew.