WLAN 1390 downgrade

[bl40modulimiter2]

I see WLAN 1390 has filed to go 1100 watts day/18 watts night, non-D. I'm guessing the land was sold. Don't know if it was CC's or the Altdoerfers? But it's near Long's Park, Park City, etc. Probably got a nice chunk o change. The new coordinates are the same as WLPA's stick near the Barnstormers stadium. I guess they made a deal w/Hall to duplex it onto that stick---which I *think* is a Unipole. You can string two Unipoles on one tower. Ugly but it works.

 

[RayThomas]

By the looks of their new app with the FCC and recent STA applications, it looks like they lost their lease on their 4-tower antenna farm and are indeed co-locating with WLPA. Its NOT a unipole, just a straight quarter-wave tower. 18 watts on 1390, with all the static and noise on AM these days, should give them about 6 blocks of coverage in Lancaster at night...what a shame for the state of the AM band....

 

[Radio Babe]

...This will have an INCREDIBLE impact on the 3 people who listen to that station!...as well as the 6 people who regularly post on this website!

 

[vetguy]

WLAN's tower site was owned by Franklin and Marshall College. They notified WLAN that the lease would not be renewed and they were going to have to leave the site. WLAN will be diplexed on the WLPA tower, which is not a unipole. If WLAN could have even found enough land where they could have built a new directional array, the land and construction costs could have hit a million dollars. Very few AM stations today, especially ones at 1 KW or 5 KW could command enough sales to even come close to paying that bill. CC chose to downgrade in power to a non-directional status versus turning it off.

 

[bossjock 56]

Their nightime signal was already bad. During it's heyday WLAN could be heard at night in Lititz and Manheim. No more....in fact...I had trouble getting it in the Dutch Wonderland parking lot.

 

[epmark]

I can't listen to 1390 (clobbered by 1400 in Harrisburg), but assume CC would put 1390 on 96.9 HD
if they cared for the goods. Alternatively, maybe it will be spun off to a non-profit (like WKBO Harrisburg)?

 

[bl40modulimiter2]

it's unlistenable right now because the STL signal is breaking up again, like it has been doing since the studio move. But now we understand why it hasn't been fixed--no need, new site coming.

 

[bossjock 56]

As far as the daytime signal is concerned, this could be a better situation. WLPA had to cut power to 600 watts to move to this sight. The signal improved in most areas. Not sure why the power had to be cut from 1kw. WKBO had to do the same when they to the city island site in the 70's. Anyway...WLPA comes in better during the day than WLAN's 5kw directional signal in many parts of the county. With 1100 watts at this tower site non-directional, ther could actually be improvement over most of the metro area. Nightime....that's a different story....but the current directional nightime signal has deteriorated so bad that it doesn't really matter. This is the most cost effective way of keeping it on the air.

 

[vetguy]

The WLPA tower was built higher than 1/4 wavelength to insure a clear STL path to when studios were located in downtown Lancaster along with the move of the studios elsewhere. At the time of construction, the new studio site had not been chosen. The tower at that height is more efficient so FCC regulations required the drop in transmitter power. WLPA puts a signal out equivalent to a 1 KW station with 1/4 wavelength antenna. Some people at WLAN are excited about the move. They always felt WLPA had a better signal at that power and tower than their 5 KW in many parts of the county.

 

[John-Summers]

Non-geeks can spin on. This won't interest you.

Vetguy, I'm sure you can answer this question. Even if WLAN was to find a new site, close to Lancaster with room for a few towers and which didn't get stopped by the NIMBYs, wouldn't the station lose its "grandfathered" status on the frequency and thus have to protect a bunch of other stations on 1390 that it didn't have to protect before?

If so, it might actually require several more towers than they are using right now to maintain the same power level. 1460 in Harrisburg might be an example. It had been 5KW day and night, non-directional day and 3 towers at night since the early 1950s. When they lost the transmitter site the station had to go to a 5-tower directional in the daytime and 6 towers at night, just to keep the 5KW. And they were lucky they had land near the WHP site to put it on.

Downgrading to this degree is an unfortunate solution but the alternative is giving up the license entirely. And realistically, WLAN probably has few listeners at night anyway.

 

[vetguy]

You are probably correct. I have not looked into their status to know for sure. Finding enough land in the right location, cost of construction, meeting current regulations of the FCC as well as all local zoning and the NIMBY groups, all come into play for an AM station that might only be billing several thousand dollars a month. It is a very expensive project.

If I remember correctly, the directional AM that used to be in Ephrata, once off the air and the license turned into the FCC could never be brought back. It was grandfathered in and could never meet the current regulations for spacings and protections anywhere in Ephrata.

I know of another 10 KW directional AM in Connecticut that once shut down could never be brought back because they could never meet current regulations from the same site at any power. In that case someone tried several times to get a new AM approved I think at 1000 watts nondirectional and that did not even fit.

 

[bl40modulimiter2]

Actually, WTKT 1460 is only a 3-tower, not 5 or 6. I drive past it fairly often. They may have been diplexed into the 6-stick WHP array while the new site was constructed--I know they ran 2400 day/4200 night for a while, not sure if that was on WHP's sticks? Now they're back to 5kw non-D day and 4.2 kw directional at night.

 

[John-Summers]

Actually, WTKT 1460 is only a 3-tower, not 5 or 6. I drive past it fairly often. They may have been diplexed into the 6-stick WHP array while the new site was constructed--I know they ran 2400 day/4200 night for a while, not sure if that was on WHP's sticks? Now they're back to 5kw non-D day and 4.2 kw directional at night.

I was going on a construction permit I saw several years ago, so it must have been modified after that. They operated 1460 at something like 1200 watts non-directional from WKBO's tower for a long time before the array was built in Summerdale. Thanks for the clarification BL!

 

[theengineer]

After they lost the old site Clear Channel had filed to drop the 1460 array inside the 580 property, interspersing the shorter towers with the 400' 580 sticks, using Detuning skirts on all of the 580 towers. This plan was almost identical to what they had done in Youngstown, OH moving the night site for WNIO (1390) immediately adjacent to the big WKBN (570) array.

They may have never intended to build there but it bought them time while a permanent site could be found. I was told that at some point they learned the 580 towers would not support the detuning boxes and skirts that were needed to make the plan work. Once the new site was constructed they were able to bring the daytime power back up by taking field measurements proving the actual signal was not as strong as it was in theory.

 

[vetguy]

If that is true that the 580 towers could not support detuning skirts and the associated components, I would have serious concern about the integrity of the towers overall. There should be no real issue in turning an insulated AM tower into a monopole design by adding the skirting wires and shorting out the insulator. Stations have been doing that for years. The detuning network would be virtually the same as a monopole arrangement mounted on the tower. You would just have an additional box for the variable components of the detuning network. That would be much less weight than a tower guy changing bulbs or painting the tower. Weren't the WHP towers replaced sometime in the last 20 years?

 

[theengineer]

The 580 towers were put up in 1970 and replaced shorter towers at slightly different locations on the property. The old towers were top-loaded and more closely spaced. Like most AM Towers they were designed only to support themselves and as Clear Channel is a very large target for litigation I suspect that while they may not have collapsed under the load of the skirt/tuning box on the upper half of the sticks they were probably close enough that nobody with an executive title would sign off on the plan. I don't claim to be a PE so all of this is pure speculation.

At any rate there are clearly integrity issues with these towers since the SW tower was visibly reinforced several years ago. I'm sure the problems the reinforcement was installed to repair did not appear overnight.

 

[klutch00]

I see WLAN 1390 has filed to go 1100 watts day/18 watts night, non-D. I'm guessing the land was sold. Don't know if it was CC's or the Altdoerfers? But it's near Long's Park, Park City, etc. Probably got a nice chunk o change. The new coordinates are the same as WLPA's stick near the Barnstormers stadium. I guess they made a deal w/Hall to duplex it onto that stick---which I *think* is a Unipole. You can string two Unipoles on one tower. Ugly but it works.

Why don't they just go to one tower with 1 kilowatt non-directional unlimited hours? If necessary, place the transmitter just east of town if an area exists where it won't cause any havoc. Just some thoughts.

 

[vetguy]

You just cannot put a tower anywhere you want or run any power you feel like. They have to provide the minimum signal over the city of license, Lancaster, that the FCC requires. Beyond that there are spacings and protections to other stations in the northeast that must be figured in for the same channel they are on and channels on each side of 1390. For example, when WLPA moved their tower from the downtown rooftop location, their present site on the north side of the city was almost the farthest they could move north and still provide the required signal contour over Lancaster. If the tower was any farther north, as little as the intersection of routes 30 and 283, it would not meet FCC regulations. In fact they had looked at the piece of land just south of the KMart shopping center, where the new three story accountant offices are now. That piece was too far from the city to meet FCC regulations. WLAN did not have a lot of choices.