It must be six months since Principle Group's ethnic WJDA 1300 (Quincy) lost its (poorly mantained) tower and returned using a long-wire antenna at greatly reduced power. Where I live in Arlington Heights, the signal, which, because of a favorable transmitter location nearly surrounded by salt water, had always been impressive for 1 kW on 1300, became essentially impossible to hear. Over the past weekend, I caught WJDA with a signal that I could believe was back to its old strength. Anyone who reads this and has any further info, please post! (I had meant to post this message a couple of days ago, but didn't get around to it.) Has the tower finally been replaced? Is WJDA really once again running at full power from a vertical antenna?
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WJDA 1300: Back at full power?
- Thread starter DanStrassberg
- Start date
Shortly after the old tower came down, I heard that Alex Langer had offered to lend or rent to WJDA a 74' Valcom Fibreglass whip antenna, which he owns. He used it as the old WSRO 1470. Seems like the whip would be easier to install than a conventional guyed antenna because the whip does not require guy wires. OTOH, the efficiency of the 74' version might be marginal at 1300. The newer 94' version of the Valcom whip might be a better choice. Since Langer has one of the 94-footers running at WFYL 1180, a 94-footer would more than meet the Class D AM radiation-efficiency requirements at 1300.
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Laurence Glavin
Guest
On a couple of occasions, I tuned to 1300 using my best radio in terms of reception (the one I sued when LTAR was on) and I was amazed to be getting WGDJ-AM near Albany, NY at noon eastern time. It wasn't particularly loud-and-clear but it WAS listenable to a certain extent. I got nothing from WJDA or even WPNH-AM in Plymouth, NH. My radio was turned "sideways" to NH to get WGDJ. I should try to get WPNH one of these days.
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Laurence Glavin
Guest
Laurence Glavin said:
I tried it today (Wednesday, 03/07) and it was coming in 27 miles north of Boston with a usable signal if I positioned my radio carefully. I don't have the time right now, but over the weekend, I may use my radio that displays relative signal strength to get some idea of the signal level. It used to come in a skosh better than WORC-AM 1310.
Laurence Glavin said:
WGDJ recently raised their daytime power to 10kw from 5kw...and night time power to 8kw from 5kw...although the night time signal is still nulled toward Boston....
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Laurence Glavin
Guest
Time Traveler said:
I checked AM 1300 at NECRAT.US, where previous call-letters are listed. There are six towers on the property. Then I checked WGDJ at radio-locator.com, and four of them are in use during the day. It appears that they send a pretty good signal due east.
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necrat123
Guest
Laurence Glavin said:
Curse that NECRAT guy. He better get those call letters fixed soon. ;D
Call signs will be updated when portions of the site are transitioned over to the newer WIKI format, that I recently moved Mass to.
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Laurence Glavin
Guest
Necrat said:
I mentioned in Scott's NERW the other day that people should FREQUENTLY go to necrat.us for NEW pictures because you've been fairly busy in this snow-free winter.
Laurence Glavin said:
As I suspected might be the case and so indicated in a couple of postings, WJDA is apparently using a Valcom Fibreglass whip at 1 kW. At least that's what Scott Fybush reported in yesterday's (3/26/2012) NERW. As I said, my impression of the signal where I live in Arlington Heights is that it is OK but not quite as strong as it used to be with the old guyed tower. Of course, a lot of subjectivity goes into such reception reports. Still, a Valcom whip--especially if it's the 74' version--has got to be marginal for efficiency at 1300 (inverse-distance field of 281.7 mV/m @ 1km with 1 kW), whereas the old guyed tower probably pumped out a little over 300 mV/m. IOW, the effect of going from the guyed 1/4-wavelength tower to the whip is similar to reducing power into the old tower by ~15%. Not a significant power reduction, but maybe enough to be noticeable. Then, there's also the possibility that WJDA is running at reduced power (250W would be typical for a 1-kW station) until the license to cover is granted. However, according to what Scott wrote, that's not supposed to be the case.
Couldn't resist that one, eh? No, WESX for one is in different hands now and is doing Spanish
language religion and serving that part of the community (now licensed to the 3,900-pop.,
no street lights, only one way in-and-out town of Nahant where I grew up). They probably
do have some local content though.
http://www.wesx1230am.com/
language religion and serving that part of the community (now licensed to the 3,900-pop.,
no street lights, only one way in-and-out town of Nahant where I grew up). They probably
do have some local content though.
http://www.wesx1230am.com/
Here's a listener report on WJDA! I was listening in my car in the parking lot of the Belmont Shaw's supermarket in Waverly Sq Belmont this afternoon (Saturday 3/31), just after 5:00PM EDT. WWZN's sunset pattern change comes at 7:00PM in March once daylight saving time goes into effect, so they were presumably on CH pattern. At least with the stock radio in my 2002 Chevrolet Prizm, WWZN totally owns the AM band from 1340 to 1700 at that location; it comes in regardless of what frequency you tune to. The only exceptions being frequencies occupied by strong-ish signals. Before 5:00PM, that would have meant WKOX 1430 (which doesn't switch to 1 kW DA until 7:00PM), WNTN 1550, and WUNR 1600. But WNTN had apparently signed off at 5:00PM--from what I've heard, not unusual for them, at least on weekends; I've been told that they've been doing it for years.
Anyhow, WJDA was on and--on 1300--was winning the battle with WWZN. IOW, when I tuned to 1300, I heard WJDA and not WWZN. Same was true with WRCA on 1330. On 1430, WKOX was listenable but WWZN was noticeable underneath. Surprisingly, WUNR was pretty clean. Naturally, there was no trace of WNSH 1570. Even with 30 kW, WNSH's signal is very poor northwest of Boston.
Anyhow, WJDA was on and--on 1300--was winning the battle with WWZN. IOW, when I tuned to 1300, I heard WJDA and not WWZN. Same was true with WRCA on 1330. On 1430, WKOX was listenable but WWZN was noticeable underneath. Surprisingly, WUNR was pretty clean. Naturally, there was no trace of WNSH 1570. Even with 30 kW, WNSH's signal is very poor northwest of Boston.
ned said:
Was it or wasn't it a Fibreglass whip? Presumably you could tell because the whip would be self-supporting; that is, no guy wires. Also a whip would be noticeably shorter than the old tower (no more than half the height--and possibly significantly less).
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