WXKW Post From 2007

[Schroedingers Cat]

Bob Savage Posted in 2007:

Greetings Capital District radio history buffs, Bob Savage (WYSL) here from Rochester.

I'm very interested in the ill-fated 10kw 850 kHz iteration of WXKW that operated from a site in Selkirk approximately 1947-1953, after which the troubled station signed off for the last time. Dan Strassberg and others relate that the station had perpetual problems with its DA-1 array and was under nonstop attack from GE's sister station to WGY, co-channel KOA Denver, for its entire life. Contemporary accounts relate that WXKW actually had permanently-installed monitor station buildings at monitor points and was actually required to log field intensity several times DAILY!

WXKW had what must have been an incredibly impressive array consisting of 6 free-standing 300-foot Blaw-Knox towers, an in-line configuration (just THAT fact gives AM engineers a clue as to what could have contributed to the station's reputed antenna stability problems) in Selkirk.

My question: does anyone there in the original WXKW's home turf have any photos of this array or of WXKW's studios in Albany? It must have been quite a site...and sight! Reports are that the studios were very impressive as well.

Best wishes to all for a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2008!

______


The FCC claims that endfire arrays are more unstable than broadside arrays which they determine by the RSS/RMS ratio, and the Standard Pattern values are higher due to the RSS value. However, according to one FCC AM DA official I received an email from, with a properly tuned array, measured field strength is closest to the THEORETICAL value regardless of design, which toward KOA would probably have been close to zero. I would imagine there could have been a lot of reradiation problems. With detuning nearby reradiators, and computer control of the array, perhaps the array would have worked today. And the Blaw Knox towers also would deviate significantly from the behavior of an infinitely thin wire discussed in Electricity and Magnetism texts. That wouldn't be a problem for nondirectional stations, but could affect directional performance. However, a typical broadside array has more fading problems, unless combined with an endifire array component that reduces high angle skywave radiation.

I think the single biggest factor in the complaints is that Clear Channel I-As and I-Bs were very protective of their coverage back then, before accountants, marketers, and other mangagement became convinced that skywave service was not useful economically to the station. Whether the complaints were valid or not, they were probably taken seriously at the time.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

Cat,

I've been a DXer, mostly on AM, for fifty years. Although some of my fellow DXers got very much into the technical end, I did not.

Fill me in a bit here .... and go slow, lol?

Is an end-fire array a lobe? And is a broadside array a null?

And did WJW Cleveland, WEEU Reading, WJAC Johnstown PA and WKIX Raleigh, et al, get the same harrassment from KOA? Or was the WKXW situation separate?

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

A typical endfire array has near quarter wave spacing, one big lobe in the line of the towers, and one small but significant lobe 180 degrees to the major lobe in the line of towers. Phases are such to support the front to back ratio. It may also have small side lobes. A broadside array typically has near half wave spacing and equal lobes perpendicular to the line of towers. The phases are close to equal.

I think I read that the Muskegon, MI station on 850, heritage call letters WKBZ, had similar problems with KOA.

 

[jd]

And did WJW Cleveland, WEEU Reading, WJAC Johnstown PA and WKIX Raleigh, et al, get the same harrassment from KOA? Or was the WKXW situation separate?

I'm wondering if 850 in Boston (then WHDH) complained about WXKW, too. It seems like that would have been a problem as well.

 

[fybush]

And did WJW Cleveland, WEEU Reading, WJAC Johnstown PA and WKIX Raleigh, et al, get the same harrassment from KOA? Or was the WKXW situation separate?

It is widely believed that KOA's "difficulties" with WXKW didn't really have much to do with interference to KOA from 2000 miles out, but rather with the station 40 kHz down the dial and just a few miles away: at the time, GE owned both KOA and WGY, and it wasn't eager for WGY to have a high-powered competitor just a short nudge away.

This sort of tactic is not uncommon, historically - for decades, KYW made it very, very difficult for a new 1060 to get licensed in the Boston suburbs. Did Westinghouse care about people in Sudbury, Massachusetts being able to hear traffic reports for King of Prussia...or was the issue really potential interference (and competition) to co-owned WBZ?

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

The two defunct stations named WXKW have a Wikipedia article.

The 850 is one of two stations whose call letters indicated the station power level. The other was WLKW, 50 kW on 990 in Providence, RI.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

WXKW was also Country, on 104.1 in Allentown, iIrc, into the early 80's. It's now WAEB-FM -- B-104.

One of the bedroom radios, a stock zenith AM-FM job from maybe the early 60's, is always tuned to KYW. One sunrise not too long ago, I woke up to the 1060 from Natick (WBIS?) stomping KYW for about fifteen minutes. Radio-Locator has them now as WQOM, with a CP, religious, with two patterns, one for day and one for night. But I recall seeing a critical-hours pattern not too long back, and I probably heard them on that.

The Fybush Postulate seems the most likely probability. 810 vs 850 and 1030 vs 1060. But where would a Muskegon Michigan station be a bother to KOA? (Unless Norfolk, West Palm Beach, Johnstown, Boston, Raleigh, Reading, Cleveland, etc, had been under similar scrutiny all along, too .....)

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

I think WKBZ 850 (now WGVS) is the closest fulltime cochannel station tp KOA as I recall. WCLR...WAIT Crystal Lake, IL is only 100 miles or so closer and has never been able to be fulltime.

 

[fybush]

The Fybush Postulate seems the most likely probability. 810 vs 850 and 1030 vs 1060. But where would a Muskegon Michigan station be a bother to KOA? (Unless Norfolk, West Palm Beach, Johnstown, Boston, Raleigh, Reading, Cleveland, etc, had been under similar scrutiny all along, too .....)

I don't believe they had been; there were no GE-owned stations in any of those markets to go after.

As for 1060 Boston, it's been through many, many technical incarnations over the years. It started out circa 1972 (some sources say 1969) as a kilowatt non-directional daytimer from a site in South Natick, then upgraded in the 1980s to a five-tower DA from a site in Ashland, still as a daytimer. Later owners tried to upgrade it to full-time, then gave up, trading that license in for a construction permit for full-time operation on 890 (now Dedham-licensed WAMG). Yet another operator bought the silent license for a song and brought it back from the dead, using the two towers of what was then WKOX 1200 in Framingham (which had been trying to leave that site for years and years, and eventually did.) If memory serves, 1060 in that incarnation (WBIX) was a 40 kW daytimer with lower critical-hours power (22 kW?), and that's probably when you heard them, Steve. It was in the WBIX incarnation that 1060 finally went full-time for good, building out a fairly expensive diplexed operation at the Ashland site (now shared with WAMG 890) for night operation with 2500 watts. (The money for that buildout ended up coming from a scam that ended with the owner's suicide, but that's another story.)

Long story short, everything has now come full circle: as WQOM, 1060 is once again operating full-time from the Ashland five-tower array. I'm not sure if it's running 40 or 50 kW days, but it's somewhat more directional from that site and thus unlikely to be heard in the Greener parts of northeast PA than it would have been when it was running from Framingham.