WLLH-AM Lawrence Transmitter Down Again

[Laurence Glavin]

As of 1:00 pm today (Thursday 07/10) the WLLH-AM 1400 transmitter in downtown Lawrence was off-the-air. The Lowell facility seemed to be functioning normally.

 

[rapking]

With a ratings of 0. Whatever, was it really off-the-air? Who care's. Bring back the Spanish format !

 

[Laurence Glavin]

With a ratings of 0. Whatever, was it really off-the-air? Who care's. Bring back the Spanish format !

The Lowell transmitter WAS operating normally...a word I can't apply to your spelling. I realize that a high percentage of people use 'it's' when they really mean 'its' and pluralize with an apostrophe-s. But an apostrophe-s in a verb? That's off-the-charts weird.

 

[NHRadio]

Why don't you lease the thing and put an Urban AC format on? I bet Ms. Tang and company could use the money and you'll finally stop complaining about the lack of Urban AC radio. Bet it would sound great in HD. Maybe you could round up some investors/bankers/friends to help you.
Please consider a spell-check program.

With a ratings of 0. Whatever, was it really off-the-air? Who care's. Bring back the Spanish format !

 

[WLYNWAZNgm]

There you go making sense! The 3 stooges will never do that.
It would require actual cash money, work and effort on their
parts. They would rather whine...so much more productive...

 

[DanStrassberg]

There you go making sense! The 3 stooges will never do that.
It would require actual cash money, work and effort on their
parts. They would rather whine...so much more productive...

Do you know whether Chris Hall lives in a place where WLLH's Lawrence signal is a) audible and b) distinguishable from the Lowell signal? If not, without Mr Glavin's warnings, wouldn't he be unlikely to know that the Lawrence Tx was off the air? And if Chris didn't find out, how would the problem get fixed? Mr Glavin apparently would like to see the problem fixed and he is very likely doing Chris a favor by posting his message. This time, I don't think his posting justifies your sarcasm.

 

[WLYNWAZNgm]

This post was not directed at Mr. Glavin...not
even close...

 

[NHRadio]

Wouldn't a silence sensor (if there is one) alert someone either at the studio or by phone/pager? No one's taking transmitter readings? No one called Chris? Mr. Hall is a very talented engineer, but it seems the people he works for don't take their stations very seriously. It's a damn shame.

[/quote]Do you know whether Chris Hall lives in a place where WLLH's Lawrence signal is a) audible and b) distinguishable from the Lowell signal? If not, without Mr Glavin's warnings, wouldn't he be unlikely to know that the Lawrence Tx was off the air? And if Chris didn't find out, how would the problem get fixed? Mr Glavin apparently would like to see the problem fixed and he is very likely doing Chris a favor by posting his message. This time, I don't think his posting justifies your sarcasm.[/quote]

 

[WLYNWAZNgm]

NHR - my post was referring to your suggestion as to
disgruntled individuals buying brokered time...

 

[NHRadio]

WLYNgm-I know-and thanks for thinking I make sense! My wife rarely thinks so. I'm just kind of surprised at WLLH's management to seemingly not care if they're on the air or not. I doubt this kind of thing would happen at WLYN/WAZN.

NHR - my post was referring to your suggestion as to
disgruntled individuals buying brokered time...

 

[aaronread]

I'm just kind of surprised at WLLH's management to seemingly not care if they're on the air or not.

Of COURSE they care a LOT about being on the air or not! Chris Hall himself posted to the Boston Radio Interest Group about this earlier this year:

http://lists.bostonradio.org/pipermail/boston-radio-interest/2008-March/015286.html

Update on the situation, in the 1930's 46 Amebury St (Ed Note: that's where the Lawrence xmitter is) was a first class office building with a Drug Store, Shoe shine parlor and cigar store in the lobby. Move foward to 2008 it is now a third rate Spanish flop house - crack den where some of the residents use the stairwells as toilets. The city of Lawrence came in and shut down the elevator and parts of the electrical system, with roof leak problems the ground system and open copper pipe feed from ATU to the shunt point feed point have been constantly disturbed. I am now trying to work with the 7th managment company in the past few years to get this resolved

Chris also made several subsequent posts to the B.R.I.G. with updates, including when WLLH was fixed earlier this year.

http://lists.bostonradio.org/pipermail/boston-radio-interest/2008-April/015988.html
http://lists.bostonradio.org/pipermail/boston-radio-interest/2008-April/015968.html
http://lists.bostonradio.org/pipermail/boston-radio-interest/2008-April/015899.html

 

[WLYNWAZNgm]

I keep very odd hours, and I spot check WLYN/WAZN on a random basis.
We put in a back-up STL for WAZN yesterday - it took several tries before it
worked properly...

I know Chris Hall, and I know for a fact that he is always concerned with putting
a quality signal on the air.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

I'm just kind of surprised at WLLH's management to seemingly not care if they're on the air or not.

Well, in this case, it's neither one. It's more like they're half on the air.

 

[NHRadio]

Agreed. My pevious post said just that, the dig was for WLLH's current management. Not Chris
This is a question maybe Mr. Strassberg can answer...is there any other place that WLLH could relocate the Lawrence stick? Having it on top of a crack house maybe isn't the best solution given the downtime there. Maybe WCCM's site in Andover? If they could city-grade Lawrence with the old 1kw from there LLH could, right?

I know Chris Hall, and I know for a fact that he is always concerned with putting
a quality signal on the air.

 

[chrish]

I was notified early afternoon on Wednesday and by the time I knew parts were needed from Harris it was too late to get them shipped overnight.
The parts (including a $54.00 small special 10 amp rectifier type cartridge fuse) are being sent out Fedex overnight.
If these are the only problem WLLH Lawrence will be back on sometime Friday.

Chris Hall

 

[DanStrassberg]

This is a question maybe Mr. Strassberg can answer...is there any other place that WLLH could relocate the Lawrence stick? Having it on top of a crack house maybe isn't the best solution given the downtime there. Maybe WCCM's site in Andover? If they could city-grade Lawrence with the old 1kw from there LLH could, right?

I can't answer your question and I suspect that it would be costly to get a valid answer from a real consulting engineer. In the old days, when getting the frequencies of the two transmitters locked together was a problem, there were multiple issues--including putting the requisite signal over Lawrence AND keeping the "hash zone" out of the more populous areas in the Merrimac Valley. From one of Chris's earlier posts, I gather that GPS has enabled him to solve the hash-zone problem. What I did not and do not understand is how a standing-wave problem can be avoided. If there are, indeed, standing waves, it may be difficult or impossible to predict the signal strength well enough to say whether or not the signal in Lawrence exceeds the NIF level over the lesser of 80% of the city area or 80% of the population--a requirement that exists today for Class C AMs but did not exist back when they were known as Class IVs.

 

[NHRadio]

Thanks for the answer. Here's another question: Can anyone explain how GPS is used to sync WLLH's 2 signals? Thanks.

 

[chrish]

At each transmitter site there is an Odetics commercial grade GPS receiver that
has an internal 1.4 mhz oscillator output (choice of sine or square wave) this
signal is plugged into the Harris external oscillator port in place of the transmitters
internal oscillator. The only other requirement is that the injected audio on each transmitter must be from the same processor and the audio path delay must be the same or controlled with an audio delay system.......thats all there is to it.

Chris Hall

 

[chrish]

WLLH Lawrence returned to the air about 6:15 PM Friday night and all is normal.

Sometime Saturday or Sunday I have to shut down again for a short period to install a new air conditioner, the A/C unit sits in the window just above the wall where the open frame ATU is mounted, Two weeks ago Broadcast Signal Labs Dave Peabody did the non ionizing measurements along with the RF proofs on both new Lawrence and Lowell
transmitters. He had me put a red taped line on the floor in front of the A/C unit
where in addition to a receiving a few small RF burns in years past its quite unsafe radiation wise.

If you hear it off again, thats the reason.


Chris Hall

 

[chrish]

NH, forgot to answer your question about relocating WLLH Lawrence to the WNNW
800 site in Andover, first there are major allocation problems. In recent years moving (what in my mind will always be a class IV) a local channel in any location
other than the smallest town is very problematic.
For example when WLLH Lowell moved just under one mile from the rooftop antenna
on top of the old WLLH / WSSH studio building at One Broadway they encountered
three problems that were eventually all resolved.
The first being there was no site in Lowell that covered the entire city with the
required signal level during the day....at night not even in the ballpark
All these old class IV's in large metropolitan cities such as WHAT 1340 in Philadelphia are grandfathered,

Moving the transmitter site just shy of one mile moved the 0.5 MV/M countour
just enough for there to be a problem

In addition the rooftop shunt fed radiator was only 100' and did not have the
normal efficiency of a standard 200' vertical radiator which is now required for a station at 1400 Khz.

For the first 10 years of operation from the new site on the banks of the Merrimack
river WLLH Lowell was restricted to 670 watts, ironically the main ran at
drastically lower power than the syncronous amplifier.
When Mega bought WLLH from the Lerner family they spent a significant amount of money to do actual field measurements on at least 8 radials to prove the conductivity was lower than expected and was granted an increase back to
full one kilowatt operation.

I'm sure the old WCCM 800 one kilowatt operation had no problem covering
Lawrence with the required daytime signal, when the Canadian clears in the US
were granted nightime operation with WCCM getting 234 watts there were
no interference free city of license requirements some stations were lucky
with the results and some were not. WCCM did very well, too bad it came
so late in the life of WCCM.....it would have been a tremendous help when the Rodgers and the Gowdys owned it.
WLLH Lawrence at 1400 with the very high local channel nightime interference
level that site would be out of the question.

This is only the allocation problems.... looking at the situation logically I think you
will see the the overwhelming negatives with an Andover move
Lowell and Lawrence are 10 miles apart with a strong signal from both WLLH transmitters solid for 6-7 miles night and even better during the day.
Moving the syncronous amplifier west toward the main puts an even stronger
in an area where strong signals from both transmitters are not only solid but
overlap and fill in each others weak points as each signal starts to weaken.

A little WLLH history will shed more light on this, WLLH was to be Lowell at 100 watts...Lawrence at 100 watts and Haverhill at 100 watts hence W L L H
The Haverhill amplifier was never built because the FCC granted class IV's an increase to 250 fulltime and in days of much lower electrical background noise
level and better AM radios...many with longwire outside antennas it was decided
that WLLH Lawrence covered Haverhill just fine.
Later day power was increased to 1000 with 250 at night and in 1986 I think night was given 1000 watts pretty much across the board.

A move west would decimate the coverage in communities WLLH served for decades including Haverhill, North Andover, Northern parts of Boxford and Middleton Plaistow, Atkinson, the east half of Salem and even parts of Methuen along the river in the vicinity of the Costa Eagle studios.
I think many of the WLLH long term loyal listeners and employees like Gary Francis
can confirm that long before the GPS equipment even during the worst of the
signals fading and beating with each other the areas northest of Lawrence
such as Haverhill and Southwest of Lowell such as Chelmsford were pretty solid.

The real trouble was an area of a mile or so along the river between Lowell and Lawrence and later alon Route 495 in Tewksbury,
which in earlier days these parts of Tewksbury were sparsely populated.
Any attempt to listen WLLH to the north and south brought nothing but what I
called rolling phasing of the audio when I listened as a kid. I finally drove my parents crazy until they gave in and bought me my first AM - FM GE radio for Christmas in time for the sign on of WLYN-FM (how ironic) and found 99.5 WLLH-FM

I may not be accurate to a fault on a few of the minor details but I think our
in house AM signal and allocation genius Dan Strassberg will agree with the gist of this.

Chris Hall