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WWZN-AM Off-the air

L

Laurence Glavin

Guest
As most of you know, ther WWZN-AM 1510 transmitter and array are located in Waltham, where there is considerable flooding due to global warming. As a result, WWZN is off-the-air today at least, meaning no Stephanie Miller on the radio, just her web site.
 
Didn't know it was Waltham, thought it was Lexington. But yes a lookup of the stats via bostonradio.org says the transmitter is at '411 Waverley Oaks Rd. Waltham, MA'
Waltham was one place the TV news said has really gotten the flooding (along with usual trouble spots
like Peabody Sq., or Canal St in Salem, again living up to its name)

http://bostonradio.org/stations/12789

A map lookup shows it isn't far from Beaver Brook reservation

>>In 1981, new ownership decided to increase night power to 50 kW, by building a new transmitter plant in Waltham, west of Boston. Although the new signal had more power, it is very directional, and the owners had to spend millions... In short, they would have done better staying with the 5-kW at the old site

Some prog talk fans may try WWKB 1520 Buffalo though we do have later sunsets now w/ Daylight Saving Time
 
try WWKB 1520 Buffalo
Click to expand...
They have the best distant-station daytime signal I've ever heard (Nov. - Feb). But when I tried today they were barely audible with WIZZ Greenfield giving them problems.
 
raccoonradio said:
Didn't know it was Waltham, thought it was Lexington. But yes a lookup of the stats via bostonradio.org says the transmitter is at '411 Waverley Oaks Rd. Waltham, MA'
Click to expand...

WWZN is in the Waverley Oaks Industrial Park on Route 60 in Waltham just west of Waverley Sq, Belmont. This is not the first time that flooding has taken the station off the air. I'm more sure of the month than the year of the last such event but I believe it was in October of 1993 or 1994. I live about two miles north of WWZN in Arlington Heights. I have lived here for more than 45 years. In that time, my basement has had serious water in it three times, the current time being #3. For me, this event, though quite unpleasant, is not quite as bad as the previous time, which, as I said, I believe was October of 1993 or 1994. At that time, IIRC, the station that is currently WWZN (I don't remember what the calls were then) was off the air for five days. There was major damage to the equipment. I believe that a 50 kW transmitter was totaled.

A small stream (probably Beaver Brook) adjoins the Industrial Park parking lot. The WWZN Tx building is between the lot and the stream. The ATU buildings, two or three of which are IN the parking lot (with the ground systems beneath the asphalt) are on concrete piers, which elevate them I'd guess four feet above the lot. Because of those piers, I suspect that the ATUs may have escaped damage. Why the Tx building, whose main bay must be at least 20' high, isn't similarly elevated, I don't understand. Seems as though it would have been possible to build an elevated platform for the equipment inside the building, although some major equipment, like a huge power transformer, may have had to stay on the ground outside. Although there is a backup Diesel generator, if the water took out that huge transformer, the station would likely be forced off the air. And you don't get replacements for transformers that large overnight.
 
Ironically if 1510 were back at their old site in Quincy flooding probably would have improved their signal! The ground field was a big marshy bog that abutted the Neponset River. More ground water would have probably meant better conductivity. The transmitter building was built up high with the actual transmitter on the second floor. I grew up listening to WMEX and got to see inside that building once. They really had a great signal in Boston. They'd gotten their daytime power up to 50KW before they shut down that site. Problem was when the metro expanded to the north and west the signal didn't go with it. But I've never been one to feel the Waltham transmitter was much of an improvement.
 
cheapman said:
More ground water would have probably meant better conductivity.
Click to expand...

I don't know if it was due to increased conductivity from the rain, but this weekend, a taxicab company in West Newton located about a mile from Rumford Ave. had WNTN coming through on their two-way radio base station loudly in the background whenever the dispatcher spoke.
 
Has anyone driven by WROL's tower site in Revere on the Marsh Rd? That tower base has to be underwater.

I was chatting with our GM today, our ground radials are inches above sea level, we were joking our 76 watts would be getting out there tonight CQ CQ CQ DX!
 
>>the site for 1150 and 1470 off of Route 2 in Lexington.

Right, plus I thought I read somewhere that the orig WMEX calls had the "EX" somehow being a reference to L_EX_ington? Prob the former.
 
>>barely audible with WIZZ Greenfield giving them problems.

right, got WIZZ at 3:45 pm. At another time of the year, with a much earlier sunset,
WWKB may have been a possibility...
 
raccoonradio said:
>>the site for 1150 and 1470 off of Route 2 in Lexington.
Right, plus I thought I read somewhere that the orig WMEX calls had the "EX" somehow being a reference to L_EX_ington? Prob the former.
Click to expand...

According to New England's pre-eminent radio historian, Prof. Donna Halper, a long-ago station in Lexington with the WLEX calls was indeed one of the predecessors of today's WWZN. But, besides W_M_EX, which we all remember and WITS (the calls at the time of the move to Waverley Oaks), there were others as well. One of them was WLOE, apparently licensed to Medford Hillside. I think WLOE was the result of an attempt by WMEX's then owner, a Mr Pote', to get around WMEX's loss of its license for some infraction of FCC rules. (ISTR that this took place in the '30s.) Only after WLOE had secured a license, replacing WMEX, did the FCC learn that WLOE was secretly controlled by Pote'. I believe that WLOE then lost ITS license.

In any event, I think it is pure coincidence that WWZN is only a mile or so from the current Lexington site of WWDJ and WAZN. I would be amazed to learn that the WWDJ/WAZN site has any connection with WLEX, except that WLEX apparently also transmitted from Lexington. I wonder whether Donna or anyone else knows where in Lexington the WLEX transmitter was located. Even a rumor about the location of WLEX could be interesting. After the water level goes down and landmarks again become visible, the place might even be worth trying to visit.
 
In N Reading WWKB was known to splash over 1510 and last night certainly (sounded like Colmes had a fill
in? tuned in for a moment) it had no trouble at all booming in

I think there have been other stations knocked off due to flooding, with transmitters near rivers or other
bodies of water. Maybe the 550 and/or the 990 in Providence...?
 
raccoonradio said:
I think there have been other stations knocked off due to flooding, with transmitters near rivers or other bodies of water. Maybe the 550 and/or the 990 in Providence...?
Click to expand...

1.090-WILD has been with a dead carrier since some time yesterday.
 
raccoonradio said:
>>the site for 1150 and 1470 off of Route 2 in Lexington.

Right, plus I thought I read somewhere that the orig WMEX calls had the "EX" somehow being a reference to L_EX_ington? Prob the former.
Click to expand...


The first station in Lexington was WBET. It was located in a large house not far from the Burlington town line on the road that connects Lexington center with Middlesex Turnpike. I know this as my father tap-danced on that station when he was a child in the 1920's and he has pointed out the house to me. (Yes, I did say he tap-danced on the radio!) The house is still standing and has been a residence for many years. The tower is long gone. WBET became WLEY before it moved to Lowell and became WLLH. WLEX was in Worcester and was owned by the same company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLLH
 
or anyone else knows where in Lexington the WLEX transmitter was located. Even a rumor about the location of WLEX could be interesting. After the water level goes down and landmarks again become visible, the place might even be worth trying to visit.
[/quote]

Here's more about WLEX. A little conflicting info on when the call letters changed to WLEY. But if my Dad's memory is good if you do a google street view of 146 Adams Street in Lexington and look back beyond the trees and the Halloween ghosts you're looking at it. Any more accurate info would be great.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WVEI
 
Heard WILD's dead carrier--sounded like WBAL underneath it (the 5 pm hour). Turned up volume and tried
to listen...it said something like "come visit the ____ center of Maryland..."
 
cheapman said:
raccoonradio said:
>>the site for 1150 and 1470 off of Route 2 in Lexington.

Right, plus I thought I read somewhere that the orig WMEX calls had the "EX" somehow being a reference to L_EX_ington? Prob the former.
Click to expand...


The first station in Lexington was WBET. It was located in a large house not far from the Burlington town line on the road that connects Lexington center with Middlesex Turnpike. I know this as my father tap-danced on that station when he was a child in the 1920's and he has pointed out the house to me. (Yes, I did say he tap-danced on the radio!) The house is still standing and has been a residence for many years. The tower is long gone. WBET became WLEY before it moved to Lowell and became WLLH. WLEX was in Worcester and was owned by the same company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLLH
Click to expand...

Betcha it was not one tower, but two. I don't know when the first vertical medium-wave transmitting antenna was put into service in the US, but it may not have been until the very late 1920s at the earliest. Prior to that, horizontal antennas were apparently the norm. Typically, those consisted of two self-supporting towers, which did not radiate (or weren't supposed to radiate), a horizontal wire that joined the tops of the two towers but was electrically insulated from the towers, and a vertical feed line from the transmitter building to the center of the horizontal wire. I don't know whether it was just a matter of how you thought about such an antenna or whether converting it from a horizontal to a vertical radiator required some actual work. However, many setups that looked the same as what I just described were either built as vertical antennas or converted into vertical antennas. The horizontal wire became a top load and was often widened into a "bed spring," which consisted of multiple parallel horizontal wires kept apart by insulating spreaders near the towers. The antenna (the former feed line) was suspended from the center of the bed spring and was connected to all of the horizontal wires, making the vertical member resemble a rake with its tines pointed upward. The ground system of a vertical antenna normally consists of wires radiating from the base and buried a few inches deep in the earth. I do not know what the ground system of a horizontal MW antenna looks like. It is possible, though, that the biggest change in converting one of those horizontal antennas into a top-loaded vertical antenna was replacement of the ground system.
 
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