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WKGE On The Block

I Understand the Antenna Array is in "Bad Shape" due to lack of Maintance. It Might be better to Drop Power Maybe 2500 or 1000 watts day ND, 500 250 watts Nights ND. Thoughts, Idea's?
 
The antenna system has sucked since the first time I saw it back in the early 70s. I took a look at the transmitter site for Denny Bixler when he was running the station back in the WJAC days. He could never get the station's audio to sound as good as he would like. As it turned out, the system is inherently bad by design and cannot be corrected without almost starting from scratch.

Without getting too technical, when dealing with towers there is something called "the J factor." It dictates the limits of frequency fluctuation from center frequency. With AM that critically affects the bandwidth of the audio in the RF signal being emitted from the tower(s). In the case of then-WJAC, it was so bad the engineering staff could barely pass a legal audio proof.

Assuming the towers themselves aren't ready to fall over, the phaser is still in decent shape and the coax isn't rotten, the situation could easily be corrected by dropping center-fed folded dipole lines down each tower.

That's a far better solution that dropping power. The noise on the AM band is so bad these days that a station needs every watt it can produce.
 
How that station has survived for 90 years is truly amazing. The shift to 850 and a directional pattern resembling flat line on a heart monitor is equally amazing. I don't have the engineering knowledge or the first hand experience as Sarasota Jim, but I am familiar with the audio problems you face with an antenna array of that kind.

If you look at the map surrounding the coordinates of the stick farm, and then check out competition and population figures for the area, you have to wonder why this thing didn't go dark decades ago.

$250,000? Too much. I wonder what they would really take. And I wonder how much more it would cost to put the thing into decent shape. And I wonder how long it would take to recoup the investment. Oh... and how to program it to woo a couple of thousand people away from the local Froggy, the religious stations and the station owned by the local high school.
 
I am not an engineer and I was surprised to read about this station with a 9 tower array. I understand the need for directionally, but why 9 towers? That seems overly complex. Is there an advantage, in theory, for doing this; why did the original owners set it up that way? I would think 9 Towers must be one of if not the most for any US station.
 
Why not use the Lou Murray/Rod Wolf solution to trying "tower troubles"...an old ship's mask. It worked for years & it was like a nautical adventure taking a trip to the transmitter.
 
MHVRadiofan said:
I am not an engineer and I was surprised to read about this station with a 9 tower array. I understand the need for directionally, but why 9 towers? That seems overly complex. Is there an advantage, in theory, for doing this; why did the original owners set it up that way? I would think 9 Towers must be one of if not the most for any US station.
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It's the only way they could get bragging rights to 10,000 watts.

I worked in Detroit for a long time and we had a station there that bought expensive suburban land and had to erect a 12-tower array just to say they had increased their power to 50,000 watts. The signal was terrible, though, because most of it went east over Lake Erie instead of over land. Some years ago, new owners sold off a bunch of the land, removed several towers, reduced power to 10,000 watts and have as good a signal as before. It was rumored they made enough off the land when thy sold it to pay for the station.
 
fryman said:
Why not use the Lou Murray/Rod Wolf solution to trying "tower troubles"...an old ship's mask. It worked for years & it was like a nautical adventure taking a trip to the transmitter.
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That'll work. I saw a transmitter loaded into chicken wire once after a storm that blew down the station's tower. And, for decades, Cary Simpson ran WTRN in Tyrone on a Rohn 25 2-way communications tower. The flashing beacon on top was about twice the width of the tower. Really looked funny. It might still be that way, for all I know.
 
I believe Easy Ed Giller did the same thing with the land (sold it) in Richmond, Virginia for the old WLEE.
 
Fifty years ago when AM was "radio" and FM was a rumor, building elaborate DA rigs like WJAC-AM's made some sense. It allowed them to jump from a 250-watt Class IV (1400 or 1490?) to a big-signal "clear channel"--a huge competitive advantage in those days. At the same time, WJAC-TV was spitting out incredible amounts of profit, so money was no problem. Johnstown was a decent-sized market and 850/WJAC was a big player. Then, in 1970, the FCC gave the "stereo effect" exclusively to FM in order to spur interest in The Dead Band, and the world changed. And now its being sold for scrap metal.

SarasotaJim, the Detroit rig you recall was that of 1500/WDEE--"The Big D"--Detroit's Country station at the time, and from that 12-tower Christmas Tree Farm along I-75 south of town, the primary lobe actually did shoot straight north into the city (which then had about 2 million residents, nearly 3 times the current population). And WDEE was a Top 5 station in a Top 5 market for years, racking up mega-bucks. I don't deny it was a weird configuration--one of only two 12-tower DA systems in the country, along with 1190/KLIF in Dallas, but don't kid yourself. Back then, before FM killed the AM band, those babies more than paid for themselves.
 
You are correct to a point. WDEE was successful up until the early to mid 70s, then fell apart economically. Don't forget, I worked Detroit for 20 years beginning in 1971 at CKLW and WWJ. I drove by that array regularly. WDEE had slipped to the point that even morning icon Deano Day couldn't grab ratings anymore and jumped ship.

The primary lobe shoots north now, but was over the lake in those days. A terrible signal. They have since spent some money, re-worked the operation and went back to 50,000 days (10k nights) with fewer towers.

There was also a third 12-tower array for awhile somewhere in, like, MN or WI. I have no idea what happened to that one. Don't follow AM much anymore.
 
The 12 tower array, is still in active use in Dallas Texas (Rockwall, Texas) for what was once the legendary KLIF 1190 in Dallas now KFXR.

It was built to allow KLIF night-time power of 5KW to cover both the Dallas and Fort Worth markets in the early 70's when the markets were combined for ratings measurements. KLIF runs 50KW daytime from Irving Texas and as mentioned nights at 5KW from Rockwall Texas.

I was briefly Chief Engineer of that facility when it passed through the companies hands. It is a very impressive site, two parallel rows of six towers. Unfortunately the population growth was to the north well outside the western directed night-time pattern.

Jay Walker
 
SarasotaJim said:
You are correct to a point. WDEE was successful up until the early to mid 70s, then fell apart economically. Don't forget, I worked Detroit for 20 years beginning in 1971 at CKLW and WWJ. I drove by that array regularly. WDEE had slipped to the point that even morning icon Deano Day couldn't grab ratings anymore and jumped ship.

The primary lobe shoots north now, but was over the lake in those days. A terrible signal. They have since spent some money, re-worked the operation and went back to 50,000 days (10k nights) with fewer towers.

There was also a third 12-tower array for awhile somewhere in, like, MN or WI. I have no idea what happened to that one. Don't follow AM much anymore.
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Yeah, I was a jock in lovely, picturesque & historic Toledo back then. And, of course, you're right. Like many major markets, Detroit's conversion to FM played-out during the seventies. I recall RIF and WNIC being big players from the start. Big D went down in the early-to-mid-seventies, and CK held on until around 1980, didn't it? I'll have to crack out Jim Duncan's old ratings history and verify dates.

The point is, while AM was still alive and kicking, these crazy-ass directional rigs made sense--and stations like WDEE, KLIF and even WJAC-AM (the subject of this thread) made tons-o-money in their hey-day. Then, when FM came along and killed nearly every station on the AM dial--everything in Johnstown, and I guess everything but WJR and WWJ in Detroit, the shoe-horned DA rigs became instant anachronisms (?) and have been rusting away ever since...
 
amfmxm said:
Big D went down in the early-to-mid-seventies, and CK held on until around 1980, didn't it?
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A 1980-ish demise for CKLW might be a bit of a stretch. Overall, at least. What kept them afloat was Dick Purtan in AM drive. Other dayparts weren't as successful.

The station, however, has regained some financial success by re-orienting its programming and being a genuine Windsor radio station.

Back to WKGE, I can't see any way to be successful with that plant other than time brokerage. Even then, I'm not sure the price, even at $250k, isn't too high to cover the debt service in addition to operating expenses. And, yes, there would be debt service. No one in their right mind would shell out that kind of money in cash. We're getting back to old-school seller financing. It seems to be the only way owners can get rid of their AM turkeys.

(Although I'd love to try a Classic Country format with that one. 60s, 70s and 80s stuff.)
 
One possible option might be to operate non-DA at a lower power--say, 1-kw, assuming it fits. But on 850--protecting Cleveland, Raleigh, Boston and others--that might be tough. You might normally assume that it could be done with a simpler/looser directional, but that would still require some pricey engineering work--representing money that you'd never see again.

I wouldn't pay $250,000 for it. Hell, I wouldn't pay anything for it. There are FMs billing nothing in J-town, so why pay money for an AM billing nothing. If the SOB was in Philly or DC, maybe. Marginal foreign-language formats can make a buck in major markets. Korean and Chinese, and the like. But not in Johnstown.

Then again, I still know guys who made millions selling the family farm to Wal-Mart and would love to play radio...
 
amfmxm said:
One possible option might be to operate non-DA at a lower power--say, 1-kw, assuming it fits. But on 850--protecting Cleveland, Raleigh, Boston and others--that might be tough. You might normally assume that it could be done with a simpler/looser directional, but that would still require some pricey engineering work--representing money that you'd never see again.
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Take a look at the pattern. Take a close look at the nulls. As a rule of thumb, that's as far as your signal would be allowed to go in all directions as a non-DA. In other words, just another worthless AM.
 
Birach is asking 250,000 for WKGE, In 2007 he got it and WCND Shellby KY. for 300,000. He Just sold WCND for 226,000.
 
Keep in mind that one of the stations that WKGE 'protected' was WEEU in Reading who has since moved to 830, so this station might be able to be re-engineered to adjust the pattern to the east.
 
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