Wnmt 650

[Schroedingers Cat]

WNMT 650 is booming in in Southeast Michigan tonight with the Bill Cunningham Show. WSM is fading in and out in the receiver null.

 

[KR4BD]

I listen to WSM almost every night here in Central KY. WNMT is frequently heard tearing up WSM in the evening clearly indicating:

A. They are using their 10 kw ND pattern, or
B. Their night pattern, with 1 kw is SEVERELY out of its licensed parameters.

I recently heard a station on 630 totally messing up local WLAP over night. It went on for days. I contacted the offending station informing them of my findings. A couple days later, it stopped and I even got an email from the station's owner THANKING me for letting them know! He said a timer to change power/pattern was not working! Maybe if the Commission still required meter readings by a LIVE Person when a power/pattern change is done, these problems would not be so common....

 

[Icangelp]

Thanks for the heads up. Missed your thread till this morning, but I'll try tonight.

Forgive me for veering off topic.

KR48D. Lately, 590/WVLK's signal seems much worse here in Cincinnati, both day and night. Has anything changed with them?

 

[KR4BD]

Thanks for the heads up. Missed your thread till this morning, but I'll try tonight.

Forgive me for veering off topic.

KR48D. Lately, 590/WVLK's signal seems much worse here in Cincinnati, both day and night. Has anything changed with them?

Funny you should ask about WVLK-590. I have lived in the same house for 30 years. I am located on the SW side of Lexington, RIGHT in THE DEEPEST PART OF THEIR NIGHTTIME NULL toward Atlanta. Normally, 590 is a mess at my home at night. Jack Pattie, their morning announcer calls this null, "The Abyss" as it is widely known their signal stinks (or should) at night in SW Lexington from just east of the airport to Clays Mill Road. But.... For at least 6 months now, their night signal at my location has been BETTER than the DAYTIME signal, which we both know "ain't right". Their Day power is 5KW with a fairly mild pattern favoring the South and Southwest, but no nulls. At night, they are supposed to be 1KW with all sorts of lobes and nulls. I was in Cincinnati a week or two ago and noticed that WVLK really starts to get soft a little north of Georgetown during the day. That's not right. I will ask some "insiders" in the business what is going on and will report back if I find out the answer. I only have a couple of local contacts since getting out of radio over 10 years ago.

 

[Same Pattern All Hours]

WVLK applied for an extension of an STA for an emergency antenna in 2007, but it expired in 2008. I suspect that a LOT of AM DAs are in major disrepair, some on STA and some not. That often explains better or worse signals than normal. Nondirectional STAs are the biggest reason you get a lot better reception in the null directions, and noticeably worse in the maximum directions. Out of whack patterns you will get inexplicably weak or strong in the nulls and minor lobes. This may be due to new rereadiating structures which have never been detuned, or detuned structures whose wires are broken or the tuning box out of the circuit or not properly tuned. You'll see these off the sides of nearby high tension wires and other nearby short towers. I saw what looked like a TV antenna tower with what looked like detuning wires in the null of a nearby DA in Michigan.