When I was quite young, I remember hearing WBAL 1090 in the car in SE Michigan, when it was almost dark. I didn't know much about directional patterns then, except most of them in my area went North. It would soon disappear, now I know about their pattern. My area was squeezed in between WBAL and KAAY, and eventually, what is now WCAR 1090 Livonia, MI squeezed in with 500 watts Nighttime and 6 more towers around their Daytime 250 watt 4 tower array. Similar situation for WTOP 1500, KSTP 1500, and WJBK 1500, which squeezed in eventually with 10000 watts with 9 towers. It was George Storer's dream to have a 50000 watt full-time station in Detroit, which was never quite realized. Today it is WLQV.
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WMVP New CP
- Thread starter JJSPC
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Decades ago, when KOMO/KNWN 1000 went off the air every week to replace tubes or something, it was possible to catch a very faint WCFL. And I've probably heard WMVP 1000 a while ago (I was listening to KNWN in Sedro-Woolley one night and I heard an ESPN show under KNWN. Since WMVP is the only station on 1000 kHz with ESPN 24/7, it had to have been them.
And since CKMX went off, I've caught KYW too in the low level mush of other co-channel stations in north Puget Sound.
If you're away from the city noise and love to DX AM, the next five or so years are going to be Christmas with more AM signals going dark each year.....
A caller called Jack Stockton once in the late 1970s and claimed they were hearing WCFL in California. Jack didn't believe it. I thought that if so, it was probably on Day pattern. Charlie Gustafson told me they were very strict about changing the pattern every Night, and it couldn't have happened. The minor lobe to the WSW of the old two tower Day pattern was the equivalent of about a 50000 watt Class II facility though, over 2000 mV/m at 1 km inverse field.
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I knew about thee CP, but not the STA, I'm still hearing them here in the Chicago area, but somewhat weaker than "normal". The STA would probably explain that.
In 2020, one of their three towers collapsed, and they decided not to rebuild it. I guess it also wasn't feasible to use the remaining two towers in a directional pattern to give them something better than 80 watts at night.
They had just rebuilt things and thats why they decided not to rebuild again
i think they might have been able to use the two remaining adjacent towers and get substantial power at Night. Same type of figure 8, but wider lobes, with less power. But way better than 80 watts.
would cost way more than its worth for the ewngineering and the phasor work and etc
Where one of my best friends used to live in Gaithersburg, WBAL was one of the best AM signals daytime but it was completely gone at pattern change. This certainly shows why. Thanks for this demonstration of their pattern.
Regarding KAAY, I suspect there are people who could do this inexpensively. They probably could sell off part of the land. They could probably reconfigure the phasor with the components already there. Perhaps a consulting engineer could buy it for a song.
The late Harold Munn could have done it for sure, and a radio family I am thinking of but will not reveal their name.
The real issue is not the facility but the local ad market.
There's no money in coverage outside the metro, And the market's radio billing is about 20% below the average of the 2015-2019 years with no projected growth. The station has not billed above an average of $20,000 a month for the last 5 or 6 years (And where the top 3 stations alone take almost exactly 50% of the market revenue).
What was the KAAY signal like in the Yucatan Peninsula? Could it be heard nearly every night?
Encyclopedia of Arkansas
Map detailing nighttime coverage of radio station KAAY in 1967. ...
encyclopediaofarkansas.net
This is a station that runs brokered religion though.
If this was during the Major Change Window, they might try to move it near a larger market like WWVA did, to Bath, OH, or the third adjacent 30 kHz away from a local market station, like Birach Broadcasting has done in several cases, notably WMFN Peotone, IL.
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I am having trouble with the FCC history cards again. When did WWVA relocate their towers. IIRC didn't they have freestanding towers at this site that a tornado took out not that long ago? With most of their nighttime signal going east north east, it looks like Pittsburgh as a logical target but they have their towers on the wrong side of their COL in Ohio for Pittsburgh. What city were they trying serve? When was the "major Change Window"?
All I know is that the towers taken out by the tornado were rebuilt on the same site. Clear Channel had proposed moving WWVA into a Cleveland suburb at one point.
Since they're literally "a little past Little Rock", they ought to be a Country music station.
You won't find those applications in the history cards, because the cards end in 1980 and the AM major change window was in 2003.
WWVA applied to relocate to Stow, Ohio, which would have put it in the Akron market for FCC purposes but would have given it a Cleveland signal.
The move was never built out, and at the time I was told it was because local market management in Cleveland didn't see a value to making the move. So WWVA stayed put at the same site it's used in St. Clairsville, Ohio, where it's been since the 1940s. (As noted, though, the towers were replaced after the windstorm took them down.)
Where would they move it closer to? Memphis? (Obviously not possible due to WDIA.) Tulsa? West Plains, Missouri?
I don't think the return would've justified the expenditure.
Cumulus already went out on a limb once to rebuild the facility. Then one of the towers collapsed (do we know why?). It's understandable that they'd say, "[bleeeep] it".
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