WQMS Quitman

[Jonathan]

Does anyone have any idea what's going on with WQMS in Quitman? At one time, I could swear they sent a notification of return to operation to the FCC (which has since disappered from the FCC's database). Yesterday I saw that they have filed for another silent STA citing technical difficulties as the reason (those difficultiies being a lack of a transmitter location). I drove through Quitman yesterday and they are, indeed, silent. I drove by the tower site/old radio station building and there is not even an antenna on the tower anymore. I know they have been struggling to find a new location but I never imagined it would be so difficult for them. I would think a town like Quitman would want their own radio station and would do what they could to bring that about (even if it is a 1,000 watt daytimer).

I'm just stumped. It breaks my heart to see these signals disappearing.

 

[rfburns]

WQMS has been off the air since 2013. The STA filings for the past several years have been... ummm... rather untruthful. All AM equipment and the AM antenna were removed in 2013, so there is no way for them to broadcast from the licensed site. There isn't enough business in Clarke county to support a local AM station - WQMS had been a money pit for several years before it shut down.

 

[davideduardo]

I drove by the tower site/old radio station building and there is not even an antenna on the tower anymore.

WQMS is an AM station. The tower is the antenna.

 

[Jonathan]

WQMS is an AM station. The tower is the antenna.

AM transmitters have wire antennas attached to towers. I have never heard of an AM signal transmitted only using the tower structure.

The wire antenna used to be there. It is no longer there. I worked for that station as a board op many years ago.

 

[Jonathan]

WQMS has been off the air since 2013. The STA filings for the past several years have been... ummm... rather untruthful. All AM equipment and the AM antenna were removed in 2013, so there is no way for them to broadcast from the licensed site. There isn't enough business in Clarke county to support a local AM station - WQMS had been a money pit for several years before it shut down.

This doesn't surprise me, unfortunately. I don't get why the owner doesn't just cut their losses and surrender the license if they have no intention of bringing the station back on the air.

 

[davideduardo]

AM transmitters have wire antennas attached to towers. I have never heard of an AM signal transmitted only using the tower structure.

The wire antenna used to be there. It is no longer there. I worked for that station as a board op many years ago.

When wires are "hung" to the outside of a tower and separated from it by non-conductive spacers except at the tuning point, that is called a "folded unipole". The tower is part of the antenna and the outrigger wires are also part of it. Unipoles are useful where a good ground system is not possible or where it is desired to have the tower grounded at the base, or where a shorter tower is used and to increase the radiation efficiency in some cases.

Folded unipole Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folded_unipole_antenna

However, over 90% of AM installations use just the tower(s) as the radiating element. In other words, the tower is the antenna.

I've worked for or owned about 45 AM stations (with more than 70 towers) in my career. Only one had a unipole system, WDSR-1340 in Lake City, FL. In that case, the tower base sat in a lake, and when the station added an FM long ago, they decided a grounded tower was easier to set up an FM on. None of the rest of the stations I was with had "wires" hung on the towers.

(Note: in the early days of radio, in the 1920's, many stations had a ¨Flat Top" antenna hung between two towers. The signal was fed to a center wire and the horizontal wires above it (thus the name) and the towers were merely support structures. This type of system was not efficient and was quite directional, and was abandoned by the early 30's)

(Note 2: A few AMs, mostly non-directional ones of higher power, are shunt fed by a diagonal wire attached to a tuning point part way up the tower. The tower itself is grounded, but is the antenna; the feed wire is not the principal radiating element as it's the feed-tuned vertical tower that is the antenna.

(Note 3: I was a licensed PE in another country and built many AM stations from the ground up including directional AMs and diplexed AMs. Here is a picture of me as a teenager next to the diplexer for a single tower which was the antenna for two AM stations, 570 kHz and 805 kHz, which I owned. https://www.davidgleason.com/1964-1970-Adding-More-Stations.htm)

 

[tomservo]

It's worth clicking on that link just to hear Sonia López' "La Pollera Colorá". 😉

 

[Oldie919]

Mentioning Quitman, MS........About a year ago i purchased a Monroe OneNet EAS endec from an Ebay vendor......When the unit arrived I noticed it was set up for the Quitman cable TV facility!!
The endec has a digital voice recorder built in - a local message can be loaded via an EPROM - and the included announcement mentioned Clarke County!

 

[rfburns]

AM transmitters have wire antennas attached to towers. I have never heard of an AM signal transmitted only using the tower structure.

The wire antenna used to be there. It is no longer there. I worked for that station as a board op many years ago.

David is right - the tower is the AM antenna, or part of it in this case. WQMS went to a folded unipole when the co-owned FM upgraded and built a new tower years ago. The skirt wires and ATU were removed in 2013 when the strobe lighting on the tower was redone. The unipole at WQMS never performed well - I worked on it and the Harris transmitter when Terry Bonner owned it and could never get the base impedance stable. A daytime only AM on 1500 khz with a poorly performing antenna system didn't have much of a chance.

 

[Groove1670]

So the question is ..... is WQMS AM on the air or not. They have also applied for an FM translator in Meridian in the latest revitalization window.

 

[Jonathan]

So the question is ..... is WQMS AM on the air or not. They have also applied for an FM translator in Meridian in the latest revitalization window.

They are off the air.

And thanks for the tutorial about AM transmitter physics but that was really a bunch of unnecessary "look at how much I know." I'm well aware of how this works. I'm no expert but I learned a thing or two in nearly a decade in broadcasting. My point was that they used a wire system on the tower and this had been removed and there was no evidence of repairs being done at their listed site. Sheesh.

 

[davideduardo]

They are off the air.

And thanks for the tutorial about AM transmitter physics but that was really a bunch of unnecessary "look at how much I know." I'm well aware of how this works. I'm no expert but I learned a thing or two in nearly a decade in broadcasting. My point was that they used a wire system on the tower and this had been removed and there was no evidence of repairs being done at their listed site. Sheesh.

You said, "AM transmitters have wire antennas attached to towers. I have never heard of an AM signal transmitted only using the tower structure.".

That statement was patently untrue. It needed correction.

You now say "I'm well aware of how this works.". It's obvious from the prior statement that this is not true, either.

The most revealing post, though, is from rfburns (do you get the humor there?) who obviously was the engineer on a tower project there. What he says is that the "outrigger" wires were removed five years ago as the unipole was not working and they had to make lighting changes on the tower. So the removal of the wires may have had nothing to do with the station being silent.

 

[Jonathan]

You said, "AM transmitters have wire antennas attached to towers. I have never heard of an AM signal transmitted only using the tower structure.".

That statement was patently untrue. It needed correction.

You now say "I'm well aware of how this works.". It's obvious from the prior statement that this is not true, either.

The most revealing post, though, is from rfburns (do you get the humor there?) who obviously was the engineer on a tower project there. What he says is that the "outrigger" wires were removed five years ago as the unipole was not working and they had to make lighting changes on the tower. So the removal of the wires may have had nothing to do with the station being silent.

Well, excuse me. Somebody is having a bad day. If you want a pissing match, look elsewhere.

 

[davideduardo]

Well, excuse me. Somebody is having a bad day. If you want a pissing match, look elsewhere.

Wouldn't it be simpler to say, "I learned something new" from several of the posters and accept that you were mistaken?

As a friend was told when he was let go from a major market radio station by John Kluge himself, "son, you don't learn from your successes."

 

[rfburns]

You said, "AM transmitters have wire antennas attached to towers. I have never heard of an AM signal transmitted only using the tower structure.".

That statement was patently untrue. It needed correction.

You now say "I'm well aware of how this works.". It's obvious from the prior statement that this is not true, either.

The most revealing post, though, is from rfburns (do you get the humor there?) who obviously was the engineer on a tower project there. What he says is that the "outrigger" wires were removed five years ago as the unipole was not working and they had to make lighting changes on the tower. So the removal of the wires may have had nothing to do with the station being silent.

You are correct - the skirt wires were removed 5 years ago when the rest of the AM equipment (transmitter, ATU, remote control, etc.) was removed - I'm 99% certain that WQMS has not been back on since then, as I would have known if someone had tried to even temporarily rig an antenna and reinstall a transmitter. There is no way they could have done it with just the tower, since it is not sitting on an insulator, and a shunt feed direct to the tower would have been nearly impossible.

David, I've had that screen name since I joined in 2003 - makes it obvious what I do for a living

 

[davideduardo]

David, I've had that screen name since I joined in 2003 - makes it obvious what I do for a living

After 54 years, I still have a nice round scar marking on the palm of my hand from my first and only serious RF burn. One is enough to teach that lesson... don't try to clean the dust and crud off the base insulator when the station is still on the air.

I'm curious, having only met one unipole face-to-face: why did the WQMS one not have a stable base impedance? Seasonal ground moisture?

 

[Jonathan]

Wouldn't it be simpler to say, "I learned something new" from several of the posters and accept that you were mistaken?

As a friend was told when he was let go from a major market radio station by John Kluge himself, "son, you don't learn from your successes."

My whole intent was to state that WQMS had this system in place and no longer did. Why you would assume that meant they were simply using the tower as the transmitter and then feel the need to give me a physics lesson - which had absolutely nothing to do with my original post, I might add - was not needed. Why you would feel the need to do this other than to say, "I've been doing this for over fifty years and blah blah blah" is beyond me. Thanks for your service but there is no need to flaunt your experience to me, especially when it had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH MY ORIGINAL POST.

 

[davideduardo]

My whole intent was to state that WQMS had this system in place and no longer did. Why you would assume that meant they were simply using the tower as the transmitter and then feel the need to give me a physics lesson - which had absolutely nothing to do with my original post, I might add - was not needed. Why you would feel the need to do this other than to say, "I've been doing this for over fifty years and blah blah blah" is beyond me. Thanks for your service but there is no need to flaunt your experience to me, especially when it had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH MY ORIGINAL POST.

You were the one who said that towers themselves were never used as an AM station antenna. Nearly all AM stations use a tower as the antenna.

 

[rfburns]

After 54 years, I still have a nice round scar marking on the palm of my hand from my first and only serious RF burn. One is enough to teach that lesson... don't try to clean the dust and crud off the base insulator when the station is still on the air.

I'm curious, having only met one unipole face-to-face: why did the WQMS one not have a stable base impedance? Seasonal ground moisture?

The folded unipole wasn't installed correctly to begin with, but no one knew it until it was removed in 2013. The skirt wires were not properly bonded to the tower at the top of the unipole, so any time there was any rain, corrosion, etc., the base impedance would wander. The Harris SX-1 didn't like it, and would constantly trip out on VSWR alarms. I suspect the tower crew had not installed a unipole antenna before.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

WQMS has been a raging flaming dumpster fire for more then a decade. I dont think it's made anyone any more in at least a decade. I think one time it was even up for sale on Ebay... i wanna say the middle part of the last decade.. the owner lived in Indiana or something, Conquer Communications? It's been through a succession of owners I don't think this station has even been on the air consistently since the early 2000's most likely.

Joe Dunagan (Conquerer) sold it in 2006 to Stephen Hellinger, a jewish radio show host named Stephen Hellinger from Miami.... Hellinger sold it about a year later in mid 2007 to Randolph Johnston of Fresno, CA who sold itm Randolph sold about 18 months later to ACME BRoadcasting of Florida. They sold it in 2010 to Matadors, the current owner who did at one time have it on the air with country music.

As best I can tell from what I know, only Matadors ever had it on the air at any point. Joe Dunagan, Stephen Hellinger, Randolph Johnston, and ACME only had it on to keep the license.

It's a giant turd. It probably deserves to get deleted.

The only thing that would stand any chance of surviving in Quitman is a non comm FM you could get grants and donations for. .and it would even be sketchy at that.