On the way back home early evening I noticed WLAP had a nice signal driving towards Etown on the Bluegrass Parkway. Their signal was on par with WVLK and lost them when skywave took over 630 just east of Etown. I checked the FCC site for some kinda of STA but didn't see anything. Anyone else in a null able to hear the station recently?
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WLAP has a signal west of Lexington
- Thread starter radiorob2.0
- Start date
I think they might be having problems with their pattern lately. While listening the last few days I have noticed them dropping the carrier and obviously switching to different power levels/patterns. At times, there have been many of these switching incidents within a minute or two. I normally am right in the "meat" of both their day and night patterns. This afternoon, just after 5 PM, they were very weak in the Rosemont Garden area of Lexington on my car radio which indicates to me that "something ain't right".
I knew something was up arriving the evening before and WLAP had a strong signal west of Man O War on Versailles Road.
WVLK's signal is another pattern out of whack. The "Atlanta" null normally is heard at Versailles and New Circle but it doesn't drop out. My parents, who live near Gardenside have had problem the last year hearing WVLK at night so obviously the null has moved.
WVLK's signal is another pattern out of whack. The "Atlanta" null normally is heard at Versailles and New Circle but it doesn't drop out. My parents, who live near Gardenside have had problem the last year hearing WVLK at night so obviously the null has moved.
WVLK is definitely "different" on their night pattern. I live on the Eastern edge of what should be their "Atlanta Null" but, in reality, their signal here (Near Man-O-War & Clays Mill) has been much stronger at night for the last several years. The deepest depth of the null is normally in the area between Harrodsburg Road to just West of Dunbar High School along Man-O-War Blvd. In the past, there was virtually no night signal in that area. However, it is now fully "listenable", though not incredibly strong, through there at night.
Funny story on this....About a year ago, WVLK must have found the right settings for a week or two and were virtually not listenable in my neighborhood at night, just like it used to be many years ago. One of my neighbors accused me of causing his sudden "loss" of WVLK reception at night due to my ham radio activity, which is infrequent, at best!!! I showed him the WVLK night pattern trying to explain what was going on. He couldn't believe a station could "deprive their signal to our area" in such a manner. Anyway, when I told him to listen to WVLK on 101.5 FM, he stopped complaining....
Funny story on this....About a year ago, WVLK must have found the right settings for a week or two and were virtually not listenable in my neighborhood at night, just like it used to be many years ago. One of my neighbors accused me of causing his sudden "loss" of WVLK reception at night due to my ham radio activity, which is infrequent, at best!!! I showed him the WVLK night pattern trying to explain what was going on. He couldn't believe a station could "deprive their signal to our area" in such a manner. Anyway, when I told him to listen to WVLK on 101.5 FM, he stopped complaining....
Or...they fixed it and the GM lived in the nulled area & ordered engineering to put it back the way it was. One directional station's antenna (not in KY)KR4BD said:
was screwed up for so long that they bought advertising space on a phone book cover in a city that had no listenable signal when the DA was working correctly!
Did they ever hire a chief engineer after Tom retired? If not, it may be a case of they have gone so long without an engineer that it's beginning to catch up with them....or already has.
radiorob2.0 said:
We suffered lightning damage to components in the antenna tuning unit for the number 1 tower in the four-tower array. We were limping along at reduced power and a somewhat messed up antenna pattern for the past week or so. We replaced all the damaged components yesterday (Thursday), and brought everything back to licensed parameters.
Chief Engineer / WLAP
Interesting.CCLEXENG said:
Wonder if tower number 1 is the tower with the main FM antenna (the high power one). If so, do you know if the extra height and the differing feed system is more attractive for lightning?
Haven't seen those towers since the mid-1970s (at that time they were all the same height). The big spark gaps (two large metal balls separated on arms) at the base of each tower would start to glow (draining atmospheric charge) long before a thunderstorm approached.
In those days, the FCC required that the base current at each antenna had to be read and recorded in the log every day (maybe twice a day?). Some evenings, it was interesting to be close enough to read the meters located inside the shelter that housed the tuning units.
It must have been after 80 /90 took effect. The meter readings were done (some times copied from the previous operator) either hourly or every half hour when I started (I am starting to feel old!). I did really read the meters unlike a few guys I worked with. Does anybody the "Broadcast Endorsement" and the test you had to take.
CCLEXENG said:
This has been an above average bad year for lighting damage, glad everything is back to normal.
Welcome to our forum. By the way let me stray from the topic and bring up 1580, love that processing. It sounds wonderful on an above average AM tuner
secondchoice said:
I remember it well. You took a test for FCC Element 1 and 2 to get a Third Class Radiotelephone Operators Permit. That wasn't worth much unless you also passed Element 9, which gave you the "Broadcast Endorsement", which was a stamp that went in a special area on the front of the license.
Additionally passing Element 3 gave you a Second Class Radio Telephone Operators Permit, and negated the need for the Broadcast Endorsement.
But of course, everybody really wanted to add Element 4 to that to bump it up to First Class.
Meter readings were required every 30 minutes until around 1973 or maybe 1974. It was ultimately relaxed to every 3 hours.
B
BleuLou
Guest
A little off topic, but this thread reminded me of my first on-air job. Jocks took meter readings, but we're not allowed to enter anything except the "correct" reading. Both the AM and FM had "identical perfect" readings hour after hour for years. Amazing! The FCC could have made a little profit had they ever decided to drop by for a visit.
Memories...The 3rd w/Broadcast Endorsement took about 15 minutes of study on the way downtown (Cincinnati) to take the test since I was already a General Class ham at the time (1967). Then came the hard part...starting at age 15, I attempted the Element 3 4 times before getting it at age 16 and the element 4 (notably easier than 3...go figure) 2 times snagging it in 1970 at age 17. No radio school for this boy!greg.hahn said:
Not sure when the 30 minute requirement was dropped but I was on the staff that manned WKRC 550 Cincinnati when the "new" (well, it was new in 1975) Cold Spring,KY transmitter site was commissioned. Not sure if the 30 minutes was still legally required at the time, but the protocol was to type (with an old mechanical typewriter) the readings in every 30 minutes 24 hours a day for 15 months until FCC approval was granted to allow remote control operation around September 1976.
BobOnTheJob said:
Did you also have to walk the base currents every 30 minutes? If you think about it, that was a lot of walking to take the base readings.
Bengalsfan said:
When KLIF Dallas signed on the 12 tower night time site a jeep was purchased so it would be easier to fulfill the requirements.
WKRC required base current readings once on day pattern & once on night--base current readings with their associated audio cuts every 30 minutes would have driven the audience away--multiply that to the mentioned 12 tower array? Might as well have signed off....they would have needed several engineers around the clock just to read base currents! WKRC also had a Jeep, but I've always enjoyed walking so I rarely used it.Bengalsfan said:
radiorob2.0 said:
Driving west on I-64 yesterday, I listened to the Bengals game on 630 all the way to western Franklin County. I might have been able to carry it even further west into Shelby County, but I turned the game off and changed the station. When I changed stations, 630 was still clear as a bell. Maybe they were running some more tests, but 630 is usually lost on I-64 by Midway, or certainly by Frankfort.
WLAP Antenna Radiation Pattern (simulation)
Many of you probably know what WLAP's radiation pattern normally looks like. It has a cloverleaf appearance formed from overlapping patterns of four unequally fed towers.
This ascii image was derived from an image available at the FCC website.
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Many of you probably know what WLAP's radiation pattern normally looks like. It has a cloverleaf appearance formed from overlapping patterns of four unequally fed towers.
This ascii image was derived from an image available at the FCC website.
Code:
North is at the top.`` ``.
`` `.
. .`
- ``
-` :
. .
`` | `` ``
`.` - `.`` `.
`` : ` .` ``
`. `.`` ``
``` `-.` ```
``` `` .- ```` `
`... ` `..`. `` .
`````` .- ``` .
``.`` --` ``
```` -`` ``.`
``` `` ``` ``
``` . `.` :
``` - ``. -
`` . ``` `-
`. . ` ``. . . . `.`
. .`
. `-
`: `.
.+ ``
`. ``
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`.` ```
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Here is radio-locators maps not professional and sometimes a little out of date, but a good starting point for non engineering types.
day:
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WLAP&service=AM&status=L&hours=D
night:
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WLAP&service=AM&status=L&hours=N
I never could get cool images in text boxes like tripelo!
day:
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WLAP&service=AM&status=L&hours=D
night:
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WLAP&service=AM&status=L&hours=N
I never could get cool images in text boxes like tripelo!
Secondchoice, thanks for the Radio-locators links.
The link below has a version of the WLAP antenna pattern:
http://transition.fcc.gov/ftp/Bureaus/MB/Databases/AM_DA_patterns/26360-24631.pdf
Actually, I wanted to put an image in the post, but discovered that was no.
Happened to think of the first time I ever saw that antenna pattern plotted with text characters.
--------------------------------------------------
I was a student at UK in 1973, working at WLAP at night and weekends. Some of you may recall, there were no .jpg files or graphical displays in 1973.
The computer science dept. had a big IBM 360 (Mainframe computer). Input was via punched cards. Output was via a page printer (ascii, I guess). I put the math equations for WLAPs antenna pattern into the computer and plotted a pattern that looked similar to the previous post.
And, secondchoice, it was cool
When I realized I couldn't post a image in this forum. Ah ha!
--------------------------------------------------
If anyone wants ascii graphs:
First make a line graph.
I used an program called Micrografx to convert the FCC image (above) to a line image. I suppose other image editing programs could do the job.
Then, there are websites that convert line to ascii:
I used this one:
http://www.text-image.com/convert/ascii.html
The link below has a version of the WLAP antenna pattern:
http://transition.fcc.gov/ftp/Bureaus/MB/Databases/AM_DA_patterns/26360-24631.pdf
Actually, I wanted to put an image in the post, but discovered that was no.
Happened to think of the first time I ever saw that antenna pattern plotted with text characters.
--------------------------------------------------
Code:
Short story:I was a student at UK in 1973, working at WLAP at night and weekends. Some of you may recall, there were no .jpg files or graphical displays in 1973.
The computer science dept. had a big IBM 360 (Mainframe computer). Input was via punched cards. Output was via a page printer (ascii, I guess). I put the math equations for WLAPs antenna pattern into the computer and plotted a pattern that looked similar to the previous post.
And, secondchoice, it was cool
When I realized I couldn't post a image in this forum. Ah ha!
--------------------------------------------------
If anyone wants ascii graphs:
First make a line graph.
I used an program called Micrografx to convert the FCC image (above) to a line image. I suppose other image editing programs could do the job.
Then, there are websites that convert line to ascii:
I used this one:
http://www.text-image.com/convert/ascii.html
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