WAZX 1550

What is the status of this dark station?
Has this allocation been deleted by the FCC yet?

They have a new STA that will allow then to stay silent until Nov 5 or 6th this year.

https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/w...xt=25&appn=101545192&formid=910&fac_num=22983

They claim to the FCC:

"THE LICENSEE'S PROGRAMMING SOURCE REMAINS UNAVAILABLE. THE STATION IS OFF THE AIR UNTIL THAT IS RESOLVED".

Thanks. Sounds like a load of BS to me.

So THATS why I haven't heard them in forever.

They used to make mince meat out of CBE 1550 here (southeast MI) before sunset when they were 50kw day.

Is MI Michigan or Mississippi?
I used to hear Huntsville ALA. ocassionally here in GA. since WAZX has been off.
What I don't understand is how a 50KW daytimer CAN'T make it in a major market like Atlanta.
Georgia Power has some of the lowest electric rates out there.
Other 50KW daytimers in this market are making it.
Must be due to totally incompetent management.

What an ignoble end! 1550 AM, once WSMA (Smyrna), then the AM side of WYNX when it was operated by Bob Lenihan and Vic Aderholt, then WBAD. If they can't do any better than that, I say lock the xmitter.

It was in that trailer/office/studio in 1964 I got to first put my hands on a board, wear a pair of "professional" headphones, was taught how to clip cue, and practiced reading PSA's into a mike.

My apologies in advance for any name misspellings. It's been so long …

kf4rca said:

Is MI Michigan or Mississippi?
I used to hear Huntsville ALA. ocassionally here in GA. since WAZX has been off.
What I don't understand is how a 50KW daytimer CAN'T make it in a major market like Atlanta.
Georgia Power has some of the lowest electric rates out there.
Other 50KW daytimers in this market are making it.
Must be due to totally incompetent management.

Click to expand...

IIRC MS is Mississippi. With their pattern going mainly northeast, I doubt they get into MS except for a small lope to the southwest:

http://transition.fcc.gov/ftp/Bureaus/MB/Databases/AM_DA_patterns/1357774-110590.pdf

Of course I picked up 1010 WINS for 5 minutes right before sunset one winter evening last year on 575 north of Canton GA.

MI is MIchigan (Minnesota, Missouri and Mississippi also start with Mi, but I guess Michigan got to be MI as at the time the two-letter state codes were introduced, circa 1970, Michigan had more population than MN, MO or MS).

Interesting to see that WAZX (is that what their calls were when they were "La Que Buena"?) could be so strong here - virtually dead north of Atlanta, since their pattern beamed northeast.

WAZX's pattern was more north-south before they lost the lease on the old site. Maybe around 2006-2007 they moved to this new site with the pattern beamed northwest, and they deleted the old 500watt night signal. The old pattern would have ran right up thru MI, almost perfectly. (Hitting the border around COldwater)

Its Nov 12 and no WAZX

They must be having troubles. I bet the Mexicans, who had it last, scrapped out the transmitter and hauled it to recycling.
Or either the FCC cancelled the license.

I am not sad one bit. Makes AM DX alot easier for me. their old Belmont Hills array was about 1.5 miles line of site from my house, and during the day, they wiped out the front end on most of my radios.

kf4rca said:

They must be having troubles. I bet the Mexicans, who had it last, scrapped out the transmitter and hauled it to recycling.
Or either the FCC cancelled the license.

Click to expand...

IIRC they are located on the same set of towers that WDWD uses so I doubt "the Mexicans" have scraped anything.

BTW there are a lot of "Mexican" operators that have taken marginal AM properties and made them viable again.

IMHO: drug users are a greater danger of stealing medal that any minority.

If you're saying WAZX used the same towers as WDWD, they did not.

RoddyFreeman said:

If you're saying WAZX used the same towers as WDWD, they did not.

Click to expand...

I stand corrected. They do have different coordinates. I was in a hurry and didn't check. I guess that was a IIRUC (If I recall Un Correctly). That seems like a lot of engineering for a high frequency commercial AM 1550 that with north GA's poor ground conductivity isn't going to carry that well, but 1550 is a busy channel:

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bi...mat=&dx=3&radius=200&freq=1550&sort=freq&sid=

with 2 stations WLOR Huntsville AL and WTHB Augusta with in 200 miles.

BTW there use to be a 1550 in Soddy Daisy TN (Chattanooga) in the 1970's too. I worked there a couple of months when I got out of the service.

I wonder if its up for sale.

How much do you think they'd want?
Technically, its a station off the air.
The probably had $0.00 revenue in the last year.
Maybe, assumption of liabilities.
I find it hard to believe that a 50KW in a major market cannot be profitable.
Even if its only a daytimer.

WAZX is not really a "major market " 50 KW. If you look at the coverage map:

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WAZX&service=AM&status=L&hours=D

it misses most of the east side of the market. Also on that high of a frequency the purple lines are about it signal wise, thanks to the lousy ground conductivity. So what it really is a Cobb - north Fulton station. Cobb, has of the 2010 census, the population was 688,078. and the old Milton County (now north Fulton County) I would hate to try to guess the population in the daytime signal but over 1 million of the market's 4.4 million would surprise me. So what this station really is a daytimer in a market about the size of Louisville KY. #54.

They came in well in the Doraville area the last time they were on the air. In fact they did better than WGST and WGUN.
Those Mexican small AMs operate on a different playing level. They operate under the table. They don't pay minimum wage, etc.
If you recall, when WAZX was Mexican format, they were fined a hefty amount for indecency on their morning drive show.
So, apparantly, what you can say on the radio in Mexico is completely different than what you can say in the USA.