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WSMN 1590 granted CP to replace its old facilities

D

DanStrassberg

I believe that Nashua and Hillsborough County are part of the Boston radio market. If that's correct, this posting is not out of place here.

Nashua's WSMN 1590, which has been operating at very low power since its three-tower array was taken for (IIRC) an apartment complex (what? four years ago?--that's a guess) may, in the not-too-distant future, finally be back at full 5-kW-U power from a new three-tower array at a new site, which is, I believe, ~2.4 miles southwest of the old site. The new array will have somewhat greater tower-to-tower spacing than the old one and will use towers of unequal height, but all three towers will be less than 200', so they won't be illuminated. Unlike the old setup, which was DA-1, the new one will be DA-2. The new night pattern closely resembles the old DA-1 pattern. The new day pattern will have a minor lobe to the west, southwest, and south, providing daytime coverage of suburban areas.

Now we'll see whether the owner, Absolute Broadcasting--I believe it's owned by a gentleman named Tom Monahan--will want to spend the $$$ to build out an AM CP that took years to secure in an era in which almost everyone who posts here has already played taps for AM.

If WSMN does build out its CP, will Monahan flip the progressive talk from 1590 to 900, which he also owns, and move the sports talk from 900 to 1590? WSMN's 5 kW directional signal will probably be better than 900's lower power ND signal--especially at night, when 900 runs something like 60W.
 
I mentioned that WSMN seems to have received FCC ok to build out this CP at the Northern New England Board, provided they do so by next February. A reader of that post actually went to the locale of this potential new transmitter site and SAW NOTHING a la Sgt. Schultz. I don't know how long it would take to install grounding, erect towers and do the testing required before the snow flies, and incidentally after hurricane season. And by "progressive talk", do you mean the Jeff Santos Show? After that, from my experience, WSMN has no other such programming. I've read that some stations on the Red Flops radio network are chafing at the mentions of WEEI during games, but the Jeff Santos show takes the cake in that regard. WSMN merely rebroadcasts the Santos show intact with all the WWZN promos, Boston traffic, and even station IDs (I don't even know if that's legal).
 
Laurence Glavin said:
I mentioned that WSMN seems to have received FCC ok to build out this CP at the Northern New England Board, provided they do so by next February.
Click to expand...

I did not catch the reference to February 2012 in the paperwork, but maybe that was because the PDF I downloaded from the FCC site would not open in either of two PDF readers, both of which told me that the file was improperly formatted or corrupted. I finally went to the FCC's AM Query page and looked up the records for WSMN, which do show the new day and night patterns and list them as construction permits. Had the FCC not granted the CP, those records would have appeared as applications. But since the FCC was at least partially at fault for the long processing delay, it does not seem correct for WSMN to be given a mere six months to construct. OTOH, the quirk in the rules that, in effect, granted 18-month extensions to stations that had failed to construct during the statutory three-year period has now been revoked--maybe by a court decision--I can't recall the details.
 
(The Other) Big John said:
This may help providing of course, the link works. http://licensing.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/pubacc/Auth_Files/1438313.pdf
Click to expand...

Thanks. I followed the link you provided and it opened with no problem in the Foxit PDF Reader. Once the file was open, I did a text search for 2012. Nada. I then searched for Feb and got, I think, three hits, but none referred to a February 29, 2012 expiration date, which would be exactly six months after the 8/31/2011 date of the grant. In fact, I did not notice the expiration date in the grant--but it must be there--somewhere. Maybe I missed something, but it's also possible that Mr Glavin or his friend, who Glavin says looked up the permit, is confused.
 
Dan. Look to the right on the first page of PDF. It states as follows.

Grant Date: August 31, 2011
This permit expires 3:00 a.m.
local time, 36 months after the
grant date specified above.
[/quote]

Thanks. I followed the link you provided and it opened with no problem in the Foxit PDF Reader. Once the file was open, I did a text search for 2012. Nada. I then searched for Feb and got, I think, three hits, but none referred to a February 29, 2012 expiration date, which would be exactly six months after the 8/31/2011 date of the grant. In fact, I did not notice the expiration date in the grant--but it must be there--somewhere. Maybe I missed something, but it's also possible that Mr Glavin or his friend, who Glavin says looked up the permit, is confused.
[/quote]
 
(The Other) Big John said:
Dan. Look to the right on the first page of PDF. It states as follows.

Grant Date: August 31, 2011
This permit expires 3:00 a.m.
local time, 36 months after the
grant date specified above.
Click to expand...

Thanks again. Thirty-six months is what I had expected; it's the standard expiration time for broadcast-station CPs. However, Glavin reported that his friend found the expiration date to be next February. The end of February 2012 would be just six months from the date of the grant. Building a directional AM in New Hampshire in the winter may not be impossible, but it's close! Doing it in six months starting from scratch may well be impossible. I don't have a good understanding of the FCC's new optional Method of Moments procedure for proofing AM DAs. I understand that it cuts down significantly on the field-strength measurements but requires some significant computer horsepower. (An engineer who helped develop the procedure owns a super-computer with 32 parallel processors--really!) Certainly seems to be something that WSMN's consulting engineer should consider even if he has to sub-contract the computations.
 
Laurence Glavin said:
Here's where I got the Feb 2012 expiration date:

http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/app_det.pl?Application_id=1434633
Click to expand...

That's just the expiration date of the current STA extension. They've been getting extensions since the initial STA on August 3, 2005. They'll continue to get extensions because they're making progress toward returning to fully licensed operation. That date's just a formality. They'll get the full 3 years to build out the site per the CP.
 
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