WPEN files to augment new night pattern

[DanStrassberg]

Today's (8/17) Media Bureau applications report indicates that WPEN has tendered for filing an application to slightly augment its new 21kW night pattern. Only one augmentation was requested--to 217 mV/m (the equivalent of approximately 500W ND)--in the minimum at an azimuth of 34 degrees (that's north-northeast). I forget the span of the augmentation but it isn't huge. The suspected cause of the departure from the theoretical pattern is a high-tension line about 1/4 mile from the site. The Commission is not likely to get around to accepting and granting this application until after Labor Day, but I suspect that WPEN will be on the air with its new night facilities in about a month. Then we can wait for the other shoe to drop--an application from WWDB to add night service at low power from WPEN's West Philly site using WPEN's three towers.

 

[NIGHT21]

> Today's (8/17) Media Bureau applications report indicates
> that WPEN has tendered for filing an application to slightly
> augment its new 21kW night pattern. Only one augmentation
> was requested--to 217 mV/m (the equivalent of approximately
> 500W ND)--in the minimum at an azimuth of 34 degrees (that's
> north-northeast). I forget the span of the augmentation but
> it isn't huge. The suspected cause of the departure from the
> theoretical pattern is a high-tension line about 1/4 mile
> from the site. The Commission is not likely to get around to
> accepting and granting this application until after Labor
> Day, but I suspect that WPEN will be on the air with its new
> night facilities in about a month. Then we can wait for the
> other shoe to drop--an application from WWDB to add night
> service at low power from WPEN's West Philly site using
> WPEN's three towers.
>




that will be good for night time but what aboult day time they still sound like (BLEEP) in the day time any word aboult day time power going up any

 

[billjacobs]

Great. WWDB will be able to have an audience that's too small to measure during ALL dayparts. They have a killer daytime signal that's going almost completely to waste with those money-talk blabbers.

Maybe they'd like to donate the station to a nonprofit.

Bill

 

[DanStrassberg]

>
> that will be good for night time but what aboult day time
> they still sound like (BLEEP) in the day time any word
> aboult day time power going up any
>
As I've posted before, WPEN holds a CP for 50 kW-D using a six-tower array a few miles west of the new night site in an area that someone told me is called Collegeville. I still believe that this day CP will eventually expire unbuilt, because the combination of land acquisition costs, environmental approvals, local building permits, and construction costs a) keep it from making economic sense and b) most likely would keep it tied up in court well into the 22nd century (or the end of medium-wave broadcasting in the US), whichever occurs first.

As for audio quality of the present 5-kW D signal, someone else posted quite authoritatively in an early thread. I think that if an appropriate audio processor were available, WPEN could slightly improve its audio quality while maintaining compatibility between its analog and digital (HD Radio) transmissions, but I also suspect that whatever improvements they could make would be a) difficult to pull off because of unavailablilty of a stock audio processor with rolloff optimized for compatibility with HD Radio and b) only marginal room to play (at most, 1/4 octave--and maybe less).