WUML TIS?

[Laurence Glavin]

TIS is an abbreviation for a Travelers' Information radio Station, usually AM, often in the expanded band, although I heard one on 88.1 near Mount Wachusett (the only mountain named after a brand of potato chips). It's possible that the FM there was operated by the company that runs the ski area and not the Highway Department. They're VERY limited in coverage area, which is why I bring up my experience with WUML-FM 91.5 today. My travels took me to Lowell, and so I ventured up Wilder Street to Pawtucket Blvd, hung a left at the bridge to route 110, just below the WUML transmitter. When I earlier posted that WUML was off-the-air, some Lowellites (is that a mineral?) said nay, nay (people who say "nay" no doubt) it actually WAS broadcasting, but at reduced power. I was receiving absolutely no signal from WUML or any other 91.5 at home, so "reduced power" must be very reduced indeed. The station sounded ok and the stereo indicator on my car radio was on, but by the time I reached the water treatment plant near the Lowell/Dracut line, WUML was kaput. It's hard to believe they could be broadcasting with more than one or two watts! The antenna pattern plot of its directional antenna shows a fair drop-off to the east (must have been designed to protect WPAA-FM 91.7 in Andover; now if must protect WNEF 91.7 transmitting from Amesbury, MA) so I can understand some signal weakness in that area, but THREE MILES!

 

[4CX1000A]

Does anyone know what's keeping WUML more or less off the air?

 

[necrat123]

The antenna pattern plot of its directional antenna shows a fair drop-off to the east (must have been designed to protect WPAA-FM 91.7 in Andover; now if must protect WNEF 91.7 transmitting from Amesbury, MA) so I can understand some signal weakness in that area, but THREE MILES!

If memory serves me correctly, WPAA was a class D station and got no protection. WUML's pattern protects primarily WMWM in Salem.
As it happens to be, it also does protect WNEF, but it's primary is WMWM. It MAY also be protecting WMFO and WMLN as well, but I can't say for certain on those two.

 

[Deleted User]

When I was CE there I had to protect WMFO, to the point of having MFO shut down so Clarence Cheney at Cambridge Crystals could do our monthly freq test, and WPAA Andover on 91.7 was protected by a huge null towards Andover

We went way up into NH and to the west no problemo, but getting heard in Tewksbury was an issue.

Right now WUML is from what I am told, running an exciter at 10 watts. I can get them in Pelham NH, but not much more. It is going to be at least another 2 months before they get back up to full power.

When there is not local programming UML does take Ed Perry & Company's Talking Information Service and runs it.

Nothing against Ed and the fine folk at TIC, but WUML should not be filled with ethnic programming on the weekends and TIC as a good part of it's broadcast day. Where the heck are the students?

I know I have ranted against U MAss Boston grabbing up every frequency knoown to man, but when PAA went dark someone in the U Mass Presidents office should have been leaned on to get UMB to stop their quest to grab 91.7 and the resources should have been used to get UML a better pattern

 

[4CX1000A]

Nothing against Ed and the fine folk at TIC, but WUML should not be filled with ethnic programming on the weekends and TIC as a good part of it's broadcast day. Where the heck are the students?

Maybe they aren't as interested in radio as they used to be.

I wonder if that's why they're taking so long to get back to full power.

 

[LA_Guy]

WPAA was considered and protected as a class A station by the FCC thanks to the work of Ed Perry.

As a publicly supported station, WUMB does not have to follow all the fiscal restrictions the other college stations in the UMass system do. This essentially gives them a donation fueled 'slush fund' that they can use to quickly jump on something like WPAA going off the air-something that WUML was unable to do. This gave them a six months head start on WUML. Legal? Yes. Moral?
I won't comment on that....but as a former CE at WUML........

 

[aaronread]

If memory serves me correctly, WPAA was a class D station and got no protection. WUML's pattern protects primarily WMWM in Salem. As it happens to be, it also does protect WNEF, but it's primary is WMWM. It MAY also be protecting WMFO and WMLN as well, but I can't say for certain on those two.

WPAA was a Class A, fully protected. I'm not clear on the history, but remembering how long it took WMFO to "upgrade" from Class D to Class A (and considering WMFO's VERY tight directional pattern) I suspect the null was mostly to protect WMWM. But the broad sweep of the null would imply it's also to include protection of WPAA. Check out the polar field plot.

As a publicly supported station, WUMB does not have to follow all the fiscal restrictions the other college stations in the UMass system do. This essentially gives them a donation fueled 'slush fund' that they can use to quickly jump on something like WPAA going off the air-something that WUML was unable to do. This gave them a six months head start on WUML. Legal? Yes. Moral? I won't comment on that....but as a former CE at WUML........

That's a load of hogwash. WUML doesn't have any special "fiscal restrictions" that WUMB doesn't. The difference is twofold: one, each UMass campus has its own rules about how various departments are funded and how that funding is spent. But two, and more important, is that WUMB earns its own budget, whereas WUML relies on student activity fee money. If WUML had its act together as well as WUMB does, they'd be running successful fundraisers, selling underwriting, and they, too, could have their own budget that they could spend as they see fit.

There was no "six months head start" when it came to WPAA. Everyone knew WPAA was gonna get deleted eventually; it'd be broadcasting dead air (or more commonly, dead carrier) for YEARS before the FCC finally pulled the plug. WUMB wisely had a plan ready to go and implemented it immediately. WUML sat around and bitched about the administration refusing to help them...and this was soon after the students at the station waged a very public war against the administration regarding the Lowell Sun morning show. Is it any real surprise that the administration was not keen on giving them an even bigger platform to attack their parent college?

Frankly, I was always amazed the UMass Lowell administration didn't sweep everyone out, lock the door, and sell the license...just to get rid of the hassle. Give the suits credit for not letting the students cut off their noses to spite their faces.

As for what's the delay to get WUML back up to full power, their filed STA application doesn't say when they'll get back to full power, or why exactly the transmitter failed. It does say it's operating at "approximately 10 percent power" (usually the FCC doesn't like "approximations" when it comes to things like ERP, but I digress) which would be about 100-140 watts, but I would guess the problem is more like that the power amp failed and, as was mentioned, they're running exciter-only at about 10 watts TPO. I don't know if their 2 bay antenna is half-wave or full-wave, but either way it can't be more than about 10 watts ERP.

I would make an educated guess that part of the delay is that the fiscal year for the college is ending relatively soon, so the administration is waiting until the budget resets before allocating the substantial chunk of funding they'll need for a new transmitter.

 

[uncamark]

There was no "six months head start" when it came to WPAA. Everyone knew WPAA was gonna get deleted eventually; it'd be broadcasting dead air (or more commonly, dead carrier) for YEARS before the FCC finally pulled the plug. WUMB wisely had a plan ready to go and implemented it immediately. WUML sat around and bitched about the administration refusing to help them...and this was soon after the students at the station waged a very public war against the administration regarding the Lowell Sun morning show. Is it any real surprise that the administration was not keen on giving them an even bigger platform to attack their parent college?

Frankly, I was always amazed the UMass Lowell administration didn't sweep everyone out, lock the door, and sell the license...just to get rid of the hassle. Give the suits credit for not letting the students cut off their noses to spite their faces.I would make an educated guess that part of the delay is that the fiscal year for the college is ending relatively soon, so the administration is waiting until the budget resets before allocating the substantial chunk of funding they'll need for a new transmitter.

The kids, IIRC, also bitched about the possibility of Christopher Lydon's show originating at UML and having to carry college sports PBP.

One would hope that kids in college radio would notice from KTRU and KUSF that you have to play some ball with the administration if you want to stay on the air. And they're going to have to do pledge drives and underwriting if they want any hope of independence, because if they're being funded off of activity fees, it ain't going to happen these days and the school will be very happy to talk to Public Radio Capital or a religious broadcaster. And they should learn that Radio Survivor, Keeping Public Radio Public, other blogs and alt-weeklies aren't going to save them one bit.

 

[necrat123]

As for what's the delay to get WUML back up to full power, their filed STA application doesn't say when they'll get back to full power, or why exactly the transmitter failed. It does say it's operating at "approximately 10 percent power" (usually the FCC doesn't like "approximations" when it comes to things like ERP, but I digress) which would be about 100-140 watts, but I would guess the problem is more like that the power amp failed and, as was mentioned, they're running exciter-only at about 10 watts TPO. I don't know if their 2 bay antenna is half-wave or full-wave, but either way it can't be more than about 10 watts ERP.

Their antenna is a 2 bay half wave spaced antenna.
(Shively 6810-2R-SS-DA)

1.05kW IN, 1.4kW Out.

 

[MickeyD]

As for what's the delay to get WUML back up to full power, their filed STA application doesn't say when they'll get back to full power, or why exactly the transmitter failed. It does say it's operating at "approximately 10 percent power" (usually the FCC doesn't like "approximations" when it comes to things like ERP, but I digress) which would be about 100-140 watts, but I would guess the problem is more like that the power amp failed and, as was mentioned, they're running exciter-only at about 10 watts TPO. I don't know if their 2 bay antenna is half-wave or full-wave, but either way it can't be more than about 10 watts ERP.

Their antenna is a 2 bay half wave spaced antenna.
(Shively 6810-2R-SS-DA)

1.05kW IN, 1.4kW Out.

It must be using one of those "magic antennas".

 

[mgpt6]

Its putting 10watts in .only getting 14watts ERP out. This was worst than ZBC last fall when water got into the antenna line and the transmitter would only put out 40 watts before shutting down ZBC got out to Somerville and Medford Right now MFO gets out to Wilmington.

 

[aaronread]

Their antenna is a 2 bay half wave spaced antenna. (Shively 6810-2R-SS-DA) 1.05kW IN, 1.4kW Out.

It must be using one of those "magic antennas".

It is magic! The magic of parasitic elements. Normally a half-wave 2-bay would have 0.7 gain, so it'd require about 2000 watts TPO to make 1400 watts ERP. (actually a little MORE than 2000 to overcome transmission line and connector losses) But with a directional antenna pattern, the energy that's NOT going into the nulled part has to go out through the rest. (that's a gross oversimplification of the physics, but it's the easiest way to explain it in one sentence)

We have the same thing at WEOS; our Shively 6810 is a 3 bay full wave so it would have 1.55 gain. But we achieve 4000 watts ERP from about 1800 watts TPO thanks to our DA pattern.

BTW, in WUML's case, many of the senior administrators who were pushing the whole Chris Lydon/Lowell Sun concept have since departed the University. I don't know if Marty Meehan is hot to do anything with WUML but he hasn't so far and that makes me think he won't. He already knows UMass Lowell caught a lot of bad press across the Merrimack Valley the last time so I think they're letting that sleeping dog lie for a while, especially considering Meehan's past history as a legislator. Of course, I have no inside info or anything; that's just a wild guess. For all I know they could be planning to sell it tomorrow. ???

That said, logically a sale won't make "sense" given the bad P.R. unless someone comes along and offers a boatload of cash to buy the license outright, and I don't see anyone doing that. WUML is a great signal for the Merrimack Valley but it's hemmed in and can't be heard anywhere near Boston (or even the suburbs) and it's a non-commercial station. It'd be damn hard for any group to financially justify the cash it'd take to pry it out of UMass Lowell's hands.

This was worst than ZBC last fall when water got into the antenna line and the transmitter would only put out 40 watts before shutting down

And that was only what that ancient Burk TC-8 meter was reading off the Marti PNP1000's telemetry output. IIRC the telemetry is just +/- 5VDC and when the normal reading is 880, at 40 that means the VDC out of the telemetry output is so low that it's easy for it to be mis-read by the Burk. And even if it was accurate, with water in the line you're losing a lot of output to a short to ground. It's quite possible a lot less than 40 watts' worth of RF was actually getting out of that antenna array. A major bummer, indeed. We had a similar problem with WHWS two years ago; the line was foam and it looks like water got in through a bad seal on the 2-bay splitter connector. We ended up having to replace EVERYTHING except the actual bays themselves. That sucked the big one. The line was soaked a good 20ft from the splitter so we couldn't hack off the end and put a new connector on; had to buy a whole new line. On the plus side, we have a lot of spare cable that we'll probably never use, but we have it. (shrug)

 

[mgpt6]

Pretty sure that ZBC was putting out moe than 17 watts when water was in the antenna line. It got out farther in stereo than ZBC in its Class D days did in mono.
On WUML, could UMB take over control of the station without selling lisense since they are both part of the UMass system?

 

[carmen]

Pretty sure that ZBC was putting out moe than 17 watts when water was in the antenna line. It got out farther in stereo than ZBC in its Class D days did in mono.
On WUML, could UMB take over control of the station without selling lisense since they are both part of the UMass system?

yeah it wasnt too bad on 17 watts tbh. why not stick a 20 watt HLLY and phone playng a FLAC stream on 802.11g in a weatherproof box right at antenna base and skip all the feedline stuff to begin with.

 

[aaronread]

On WUML, could UMB take over control of the station without selling lisense since they are both part of the UMass system?

I'm not a true expert on the UMass system but I am reasonably sure the answer is "no". Each of the five UMass campuses is quasi-independent financially of the others. For example, AFAIK tuition money goes into a general pool that is then doled back out to all the campuses (presumably equally, or according to some weighted system) but fees stay within a campus. That's a major reason why tuition has either dropped or stayed low in the UMass system; the fees have gone through the roof and there's incentive to raise fees at your campus because the dollars stay at your campus.

Similarly, AFAIK each campus has to justify capital campaigns and infrastructure improvements based on their own financials; not the financials of the entire system. How true that really is can be questionable, since I believe (I'm going off memory here, and it was a while ago) that was a major issue with the UMass Dartmouth Law School; proponents said at worst it would only impact UMass Dartmouth, cynics said that if UMass Dartmouth was going down the drain, the rest of the system would inevitably be tapped to save it.

More to the point: I think if WUMB could simply take over WUML via internal politics then they would've done so a long time ago; long before the Lowell Sunrise thing. Ditto for WUMD, for that matter...WUMD very nearly didn't happen; it took the sale of WSMU (now WTKL) to finance the construction of WUMD, and it ended up making it on-air without much time before the CP expired, IIRC.

why not stick a 20 watt HLLY and phone playng a FLAC stream on 802.11g in a weatherproof box right at antenna base and skip all the feedline stuff to begin with.

Because WZBC's tower is on top of a dorm and the RF exposure issues are not inconsiderable...both in real terms of RF physics and perceived terms of campus politics with nervous parents.

Actually if WZBC really wanted an aux site, they could do worse by just sticking a non-penetrating mount tripod and a one-bay Broadcast Warehouse antenna on the roof of McElroy Commons (where the studios are) and having a 30-odd watt exciter right in the studios. There's already a cable path to the roof for the EAS RX antenna. Obviously McElroy is lower than the actual hill of Chestnut Hill, but it has the advantage of not needing an STL. Longtime WZBC folks remember the unpleasant eight months when voltage suddenly was on the STL dry copper and it cooked part of the Omnia 3FM while causing an obnoxious ground hum on the air.

But realistically, WZBC doesn't really need that much backup. Their cost of being off the air is relatively low; they're not going to have issue make-goods to underwriters, and their listenership is used to WZBC going off the air most weeknights anyways. It's not like, say, a station like WBUR or WGBH where even 1 hour of being off the air can cost them, literally, tens of thousands of dollars. WZBC already has a fair amount of backup capability; they have two separate transmitters, one of which (the Marti PNP1000) can technically run without an outboard audio processor. (although it won't sound as good as the Omnia does)

Pretty sure that ZBC was putting out moe than 17 watts when water was in the antenna line. It got out farther in stereo than ZBC in its Class D days did in mono.

IIRC, when ZBC was a Class D it didn't have a four-bay/half-wave array that gives them 1.2 gain. It was either a one-bay or maybe a two-bay/full wave that was, at best, 1.0 gain...wasn't it? Either way, the difference between wattages when it's less than 100 is kinda negligible. Going from 100 to 10 watts is only -11dB or so. And don't forget, WFNX used to have that "dinky little" translator on 101.3 on top of the Hancock Tower that was audible way the heck out in Wellesley; height and clear frequencies matter a lot more on FM than wattage does.