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WLLH-AM Lawrence Off-The-Air

  • Thread starter Laurence Glavin
  • Start date

L

Laurence Glavin

Guest
I don't know if it's the heat affecting the Cregg Building in downtown Lawrence, but as of Tuesday midday (07/05), WLLH-AM 1400 is off-the-air; "synchronized" WLLH-AM 1400 in Lowell is still broadcasting as well as WAMG-AM 890 Dedham.
 
The way I can tell whether the WLLH-AM 1400 transmitter is working or not is by listening at night because the Lowell facility comes in like a local which it almost is, or risking my life and going into downtown Lawrence. I did the latter a couple of days ago and the output there was very strong. I surmised that because it has been reported here that security in the Cregg Building is deficient, perhaps somebody had broken in to make off with any copper, etc. Since it was again broadcasting, this was not the case. I first noticed it was off-the-air when it was a hot day. Today (Sunday) it's 95 degrees and WLLH/Lawrence appears to be off-the-air again but I won't be able to be sure until tonight. I don't know if WLLH Lowell/Lawrence is the only synchronized AM operation left in the US, but it's interesting that the reasonably efficient tower in Lowell does a good job of getting into Lawrence during the day.
 
Laurence Glavin said:
I don't know if WLLH Lowell/Lawrence is the only synchronized AM operation left in the US, but it's interesting that the reasonably efficient tower in Lowell does a good job of getting into Lawrence during the day.
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There never were more than a handful or synchronized AMs, but the number has declined. I think WLLH is the only one (or should that read "are the only two") that do/does not have a special experimental license. They/it have/has a regular license because it's/they're the only synchronized AM/s that predate/s the rule that says that the "booster" must have an experimental license (and the weird alphanumeric calls that go with it). One synchro AM operation (in Hawaii), all or part of which may now be dark, involved/s two boosters, at least one of which was/is more powerful than the main transmitter (IIRC, 5 kW main and 10 kW for at least one of the two boosters).

Aside from WLLH, probably the best-known synchronous booster in the US is the nighttime-only Sante Fe (NM) booster of KKOB in Albuquerque. AFAIK, it is still in operation. It came into existence when the FCC finally required what was then KOB to operate directionally at night (770 kHz 50 kW-U DA/N) to protect WABC. KKOB added the (1 kW-N ND-N) booster to fill in the hole the directional operation of its main Tx created in its coverage of the area around Santa Fe, the state capital. Santa Fe is about 70 miles east of Albuquerque. The booster is diplexed with another Santa Fe AM. So presumably if you lived in New Mexico and were writing about KKOB's booster being off the air, you could listen to the other station for clues. Some failures would take both the booster and its diplex partner off the air. But of course, not all failures would affect both stations.
 
Corrections to my post about KKOB

KKOB's synchronous Tx in Santa Fe is only about 50 miles from KKOB's main Tx, not 70 miles as I stated. The booster runs 230W-U, not 1 kW-N as I stated. It's a triplex, not a diplex as I stated. The two stations with which the booster shares a tower are on 1260 (5 kW-D/1 kW-N ND-U) and 1400 (1 kW-U). It would be interesting to see whether the booster's 0.5 mV/m contour overlaps the main's 0.5 mV/m daytime contour. It may be that the booster was once 1 kW-N (only) but GPS technology may have made it possible to eliminate hash between the main and aux signals making it advantageous to keep the booster on 24/7 at lower power than it had been running. I could probably find out by re-posting this on the r-i.com Engineering board.
 
Aside from WLLH, probably the best-known synchronous booster in the US is the nighttime-only Sante Fe (NM) booster of KKOB in Albuquerque. AFAIK, it is still in operation. It came into existence when the FCC finally required what was then KOB to operate directionally at night (770 kHz 50 kW-U DA/N) to protect WABC. KKOB added the (1 kW-N ND-N) booster to fill in the hole the directional operation of its main Tx created in its coverage of the area around Santa Fe, the state capital. Santa Fe is about 70 miles east of Albuquerque. The booster is diplexed with another Santa Fe AM. So presumably if you lived in New Mexico and were writing about KKOB's booster being off the air, you could listen to the other station for clues. Some failures would take both the booster and its diplex partner off the air. But of course, not all failures would affect both stations.
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There's some interesting "history" on the KKOB web site (http://www.770kkob.com/Article.asp?id=1505289). According to one page there, in 1937 KOB moved to 1030 kHz, with 50 kW daytime, and immediately suffered interference problems with WBZ. ;D
 
aerie said:
There's some interesting "history" on the KKOB web site (http://www.770kkob.com/Article.asp?id=1505289). According to one page there, in 1937 KOB moved to 1030 kHz, with 50 kW daytime, and immediately suffered interference problems with WBZ. ;D
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The 1030 situation is interesting. I'm not sure that KOB was ever granted 50 kW-D on 1030. I could be wrong, but I thought it was 10 kW-U. WBZ was a Class IA AM. As such, it was supposed to be (with the exception of WBZA) the only station on the frequency at night in all of North America. But I think it was around that time that Mexico allowed a full-time station on 1030 in Mexico City. IIRC, the Mexico City station was 50 kW-D and either 10 kW or 50 kW at night. AFAIK, the Mexico City AM 1030 still exists and still runs 50 kW by day. Regardless of KOB's power on 1030, I think Westinghouse was more likely to have objected to KOB's being allowed to use the frequency at night than because of any real interference from KOB to WBZ. Sure there would have been some interference, but I believe the issue was that WBZ's license implicitly allowed it to be the sole nighttime occupant of the channel and the FCC in effect modified the license without even holding a hearing.

BTW, in the 30s/40s, there was (and still is) a 50 kW ND-D station on 1030 in the Southwest--in Corpus Christie TX. Back in the day, its calls were KWBU. The calls have changed several times since and I don't know what they are now. I believe KWBU operated with 50 kW-D from Boston Sunrise to Corpus Christie sunset. At one time, I remember Westinghouse complaining of interference and trying to get KWBU's license changed so that the station would have to sign off at Boston sunset, which is mid-afternoon in Corpus Christie in December. This was years after KOB moved from 1030 to 770 and Westinghouse did not succeed in getting KWBU's license modified, notwithstanding that it could demonstrate that KWBU's daytime skywave was causing interference to WBZ in places as close to Boston as Missouri.
 
What I didn't understand was that they said that KOB moved to 1030 kHz in 1937, whereas I think WBZ was on 990 until 1941.

You wonder why, if KOB was causing interference to WBZ, they moved it to a frequency with another I-A station that was 200 miles closer.
 
aerie said:
What I didn't understand was that they said that KOB moved to 1030 kHz in 1937, whereas I think WBZ was on 990 until 1941. You wonder why, if KOB was causing interference to WBZ, they moved it to a frequency with another I-A station that was 200 miles closer.
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It's a long and exceedingly complicated story. I'm sure that if I try to tell it, I will mess it up. Then Scott Fybush will have to post with all of the corrections. Right now, I believe Scott is traveling but I don't imagine he would want to have to post the history of the KOB case upon his return.

To prove that the case was complex, I offer these facts: The case bounced around between the FCC and the courts for 38 years and was ultimately decided by the US Supreme Court. At one point, either a senator or an FCC commissioner gave a speech about the case, in which he referred to the 38 years and said something to this effect: "While this case has been under deliberation, elephants have given birth to baby elephants and the baby elephants have grown up and had little elephants of their own..."
 
When I was in the US Air Force (during which time we never lost a war), I was stationed at McChord AFB south of Tacoma, WA. The occupant of the 770 dial spot in Seattle was then called KXA, which was a daytimer. I was amazed that a three-letter-call could be a daytimer even on a lower-case clear channel frequency. (Others included WDZ in Decatur, IL, a commercial outlet, as well as as educational stations WHA in Madison, WI and WOI in Ames, IA. Seattle had a shared-time three-letter-call religious KTW 1250 that ran full-time on Sundays only; the radio station of Washington State University in Pullman way over in the southeastern corner of the state was the other outlet on that frequency). Anyhoo, when KXA signed off, KOB came in quite well, rivalling Salt Lake City's KSL.
 
Laurence Glavin said:
When I was in the US Air Force (during which time we never lost a war), I was stationed at McChord AFB south of Tacoma, WA. The occupant of the 770 dial spot in Seattle was then called KXA, which was a daytimer. I was amazed that a three-letter-call could be a daytimer even on a lower-case clear channel frequency. (Others included WDZ in Decatur, IL, a commercial outlet, as well as as educational stations WHA in Madison, WI and WOI in Ames, IA. Seattle had a shared-time three-letter-call religious KTW 1250 that ran full-time on Sundays only; the radio station of Washington State University in Pullman way over in the southeastern corner of the state was the other outlet on that frequency). Anyhoo, when KXA signed off, KOB came in quite well, rivalling Salt Lake City's KSL.
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770 was also home to a pair of stations in Minnesota that shared the daylight hours. Neither one operated at night. Both stations were owned by educational institutions--in one case, the University of Minnesota (KUOM--or was it WUOM? in--I think--Minneapolis); in the other, Carleton College in Northfield (WCAL). An FCC that could give some shared-time stations as little as six hours of air-time per week would obviously not think it odd to have a pair of stations whose combined air time in December was a mere 56 hours per week. If each station got half of the time, the stations could both operate for 28 hours per week--approximately five times the weekly air time of the station that was given a total of six hours per week.

AM time-shares created a lot of bizarre circumstances. For example, sometimes one station employed a directional antenna, allowing it to operate at night, whereas the other could not work out an arrangement to use the first station's transmitter site and so operated nondirectionally, forcing it to sign off at sunset. Did that mean that the station with the DA had all of the night hours? Nope. The station was allowed to operate at night only when its allotted time extended into post-sunset hours. The station without the DA still had to sign off at sunset.

And the stations constantly bickered over hours. In New York in the 1920s, WMCA shared time with City-owned WNYC. New York mayor Jimmy Walker refused to allow WNYC to sign off so that WMCA could go on the air. When WMCA refused to be cowed by Walker's intransigence, it signed on even though WNYC refused to sign off. The result was that both stations operated at the same time and listeners could not make out either program. The odd twist in this story is that, some 60 years after the FCC gave WMCA and WNYC separate frequencies, WNYC upgraded its facilities and began diplexing from WMCA's transmitter site.
 
Dan is quite correct - while I'm back from traveling, I don't have the hours needed to fully describe the bizarre twists and turns of the KOB/WABC case :D

I can say with certainty that the KKOB booster in Santa Fe is still operating. I was in SF in April (it's really more north, or at least northeast, than east of ABQ), and in the hotel where I was staying (south side of Santa Fe, not far at all from the booster site), it was quite obvious when the booster popped on the air at sunset. KKOB's null toward WABC runs almost directly through Santa Fe, and while the main signal over Santa Fe is excellent by day (V-Soft figures it at about 10 mV/m over zip 87501), the night signal from the ABQ site drops down to 0.86 mV/m over Santa Fe - audible, certainly, but far from easily usable.
 
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