WOR Booming In The Last Few Days

[Schroedingers Cat]

WOR 710 has been booming in to SE Michigan the last few days, starting shortly before Sunset. It's seems as strong as WABC. It should be protecting the phantom CHYR 710.

WINS 1010 has also come in inexplicably well for the last several years.

Anybody know what's going on?

 

[davideduardo]

WOR 710 has been booming in to SE Michigan the last few days, starting shortly before Sunset. It's seems as strong as WABC. It should be protecting the phantom CHYR 710.

WINS 1010 has also come in inexplicably well for the last several years.

Anybody know what's going on?

WABC is, right now, on an aux antenna at lower power while the main tower is totally redone for obstruction lighting as part of the pending sale. So comparing with WABC is on a different scale now.

I thought CHYR had required protection towards everyone... WOR and KIRO, the two dominants on 710. Didn't "Cheer Radio" begin as only a daytimer one of its channels, and then add nights on another? (710 and 730, if I recall).

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

I have discovered since my initial post that WFNR 710 Blacksburg, VA is on Silent STA. It has 10 kW with a 3 tower array which is maximum to NW. Since it came on the air, it had been a CH regular. That is probably another factor in WOR being more clear in Michigan than in decades.

Since CHYR got Nighttime authoirization on 710, with 1 kW minimum efficiency or 700 watts actual power, a few years before moving to FM, it is required by treaty to be protected as if it was sill operating, and stations can't increase toward it. I'd have to look at the WOR applicaion for why they reduced instead of just maintaining, but the domestic provision for involuntary loss of site doesn't apply in such treaty cases.

 

[CTListener]

Since CHYR got Nighttime authoirization on 710, with 1 kW minimum efficiency or 700 watts actual power, a few years before moving to FM, it is required by treaty to be protected as if it was sill operating, and stations can't increase toward it.

I assume this is because the treaty was written and signed before FM, or at least before FM was on the radar of anyone by experimenters. If this is so, why hasn't the treaty been revisited and modified? Is it because if, somehow, defying logic, AM on the current medium wave frequencies becomes desirable to listeners and advertisers again and FM on VHF frequencies goes into an inexplicably sharp decline, that the stations that have deserted AM over the past couple of decades reserve the right to move back and don't want to surrender that right?

 

[PTBoardOp94]

The NARBA treaty and its successors in later decades did not contemplate medium-wave stations ever ceasing to exist. Many allocations are literally written into the text of the treaty, and cannot be changed without a new treaty.

 

[davideduardo]

The NARBA treaty and its successors in later decades did not contemplate medium-wave stations ever ceasing to exist. Many allocations are literally written into the text of the treaty, and cannot be changed without a new treaty.

Yes, and that is particularly true of the "clear channels" both the former A and B ones. A nation that is allocated a clear is essentially protected along its border for any interference on that channel.

So, using the example of CBA 1070 in Moncton, NB, which went silent some years back, were WIBC in Indianapolis to desire to let out its pattern to the north or notheast, it could not as doing so would put more signal over the Canadian border and that "B" somewhere in the Maritimes is still protected.

XEDM in Hermosillo, Mexico, left 1580 in the more recent migration of commercial stations to FM in Mexico. It was not replaced, and Mexico is not using 1580 for a high power station at all. Yet stations like the one in the Phoenix market and the one in the LA market can't improve coverage because those stations protect Mexico, not just the theoretical station in Hermosillo, Sonora.

 

[davideduardo]

I assume this is because the treaty was written and signed before FM, or at least before FM was on the radar of anyone by experimenters. If this is so, why hasn't the treaty been revisited and modified? Is it because if, somehow, defying logic, AM on the current medium wave frequencies becomes desirable to listeners and advertisers again and FM on VHF frequencies goes into an inexplicably sharp decline, that the stations that have deserted AM over the past couple of decades reserve the right to move back and don't want to surrender that right?

In many cases, the rights don't belong to stations, but to nations. Mexico has rights, either alone or shared with Canada, to 540, 690, 730, 800, 900, 940, 990, 1050, 1220, 1570, 1580 and those allocations are, to some extent, movable within the nations. So US stations must avoid putting certain degrees of signal over the other two nations on those channels.

NARBA was abrogated by Cuba, Haiti is non-observant, the Dominican Republic does not notify of changes or usage. The US has signed a "Joint Commission" (Comision Mixta) agreement with Mexico, particularly defining border areas and including lots of FM rules but also extended AM ones. I'm not familiar with the particulars, but I believe the US and Canada have a similar coordinated and agreed upon set of procedures.

In my mind, this is now being handled by administrative law proceedings as opposed to actual treaties.

 

[cyberdad]

I thought CHYR had required protection towards everyone... WOR and KIRO, the two dominants on 710. Didn't "Cheer Radio" begin as only a daytimer one of its channels, and then add nights on another? (710 and 730, if I recall).

"Cheer Radio" operated on 710 daytime. It protected "everyone" on 710 at night by switching to 730. Daytime on 710, it put a solid signal into northwest Ohio and adjacent parts of Southeast Michigan and a small corner of Northeast Indiana. I think the night pattern was much tighter in order to protect Mexico (and possibly also CKAC).

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Toward the end of its AM days, CHYR got authorization to operate on 710 at Night with 700 watts input and six towers. The way I heard it, Radio Archivist Art Vuolo convinced WLW 700 to complain to the FCC about adjacent channel interference in the Detroit region from CHYR on 710 at Night, and the FCC got the Canadian international allotment agency to order them to return to 730 at Night. When I called CHYR about why they were back on 730 at Night, the disk jockey told me that they were having "big problems", but it actually helped them convince the Canadian regulatory authority to move to an FM frequency that violated some aspects of the treaty with at least one DA null that was deeper than allowed under the agreement. The FCC international bureau eventually dropped its objection to the CHYR FM pattern.