WONX-1590

[T2909]

I read a longtime ago that WONX will boost their daytime power to 20kw, and was wondering if they are still planning to do so.

 

[JeremyAndrews]

I read a longtime ago that WONX will boost their daytime power to 20kw, and was wondering if they are still planning to do so.

The reason Kovas bought WMCW and WKKD was to upgrade 1590 to 20kw by shutting both of those stations down. The FCC denyed it.

 

[dave73]

I see a new application for 10kw day/3kw night for the same Carol Stream location. I doubt it'll go through as well. But either way, the station wouldn't cover the entire market, based on the estimated pattern. It would mainly cover the northern suburbs. If it could be pulled off, I wonder if the towers should be in the south suburbs, and shoot the signal north. But it's highly doubtful the new app. will get approved. But based on all the other communities that Kovas is trying to silence stations have other stations in their communities. WKKD Aurora already has WERV on 95.9, Evanston has WOJO on 105.1 (though the station actually targets Chicago instead) & WKTA 1330 (though the station doesn't even cover their COL at night), & Chicago Heights would still have 1470 WCFJ. As for WCGO, I believe they're running their daytime power at night because I shouldn't be hearing the station at night loud & clear in Gary, nor near the Jays Potato Chip plan on the far south side of Chicago.
To Jeremy, you don't have to remind me of WNOV becuase I've been through southern Wisconsin on a couple of occasions when they were still heard loud & clear around Racine & Kenosha, and 1 or 2 times the signal managed to make it down into Griffith Indiana.

 

[VideoPaul]

Read deeper into the applications. The 20kW / 5kW 6 tower was 1.8 miles due north of the more recent application. That is still an application. Never got a CP. I imagine that they couldn't get the land for that near I-88 as this is hot development property. The coordinates for the 10kW/3kW is 1.1 miles away from the coordinated for the WBIG site off Eola Road in Aurora. If that's actually AT the WBIG site that would be interesting for two reasons--first one tower is substantially taller than the others, second, you would have to diplex 1590 into 1280 that WBIG is on. Not impossible, but very very expensive with a new phasor, 4 new ATUs, 4 sets of pass/reject flters? The ATUs and phasor alone would run tinto 6 figures. This too is still an application, no CP issued. The last thing in the public notice / comment folder is a request for "expedited processing" of something in March of 2006. An STA for something has expired and a request for an extension of that STA dismissed. As far as sound goes, the Q of those antennas would probably be so high to get everything loaded into the towers that the sound would be awful unless someone paid a TON of money for some high dollar AM guys to try to design a low-Q feed system.

If the WONX application site really is a different site, that site would be 1.1 miles to the due west of WBIG, and the reradiation of 1590 by 1280, and also the reradiation of 1280 by 1590 would horribly distort both patterns and as tight as the WBIG night pattern is, they would never make a proof without serious detuning. More money to the consultants. It would take me a month or more to rock those in! At a minimum they would have to detune those 8 structures (WBIG has 4 towers in the farm) and probably a bunch of water towers and microwave stuff nearby. There is a huge self-supporter that looks like an Andrew Microwave antenna showroom over by Forces Electric on Diehl road that would have to be detuned, it's almost dead inline with the proposed WONX array, for WBIG it's on the back side of the major lobe for day, with a minor lobe headed right at it at night.

And whither the resdents of Aurora looking at another 4 towers! That's not going to go over well. More money to consultans and lawyers. Would he ever be able to gt a building permit to erect those towers? I may take a drive over there --it's only 10 minutes away from me--to see what's due west of WBIG.

The WONX applications have three of the four towers listed as exactly 90 degrees high. That's a high current at the base, not sure how that will work with all the residential around it. I'm not sure what the 220 degree tower in the middle would do to all that, but a 5/8 wave tower has a massive vertical takeoff angle and very poor horizontal performance. The 6 tower array was close to .3 wavelength tall, that would have propagated much better into Chicago. The day pattern is centered around 60 degrees, the Hancock from there is around 70 degrees for reference. The day pattern is centered on around 25 degrees, so the coverage into Chicago's downtown and anything south would be severely curtailed. Add that to the already bad propagation that high on the dial, and I can't help but wonder if they will even be able to sell it for what they will have put into it.

If it ever DOES get built I doubt there will ever be anything but brokered programming on it. The lobe is aimed generally at Chicago but the patters is so directional that it would only be good for the sad brokered progtraming that they run on WONX now.

 

[Link]

Directly west of the WBIG tower site is the KKD tower site & also the 95.9 site. I was assuming they were going to reuse that site which already has 4 towers. However the app to move WMCW in harvard was denied so it seems likely nothing is ever going to happen. You've got to wonder what they are going to do now. The brokered health shows on KKD suck so bad, it really makes you hate radio.

 

[VideoPaul]

Well they made it clear in the applications that they had no problem at al folding up the licenses for the other stations whose townd would lose a local voice. I'm stll not sure how just killing a local radio statoin in vafor of another serves the public interest, need and convenicnce but that's just me. S they want to put it on a tower with an isocoupled FM? I'll tell you one thing, if this ever happens I'd love to see the Q of the feed circuit! That's got the potential to be 20 or worse!