Your favorite AM directional array patterns

semoochie said:

Hueneme? Hue not a different place?

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Very nice play, semoochie. Obviously you know how "Hueneme" is pronounced.

The name derives from the Spanish spelling of the Chumash word "wene me", meaning "resting place", in case you cared.

DavidEduardo said:

There might be a challenger to the "strongest beam" in the Americas... maybe two.

TWR in Bonaire broadcast a morning show in Portuguese towards Brazil. The single lobe was very narrow. In my location in Quito, Ecuador, there was nearly no signal... but it was apparently very listenable in much of the targeted part of Brazil where they took advantage of the post-sunrise critical hours in Brazil to broadcast via the mostly darkness path from Bonaire. I'm guessing the lobe was no more than 60º wide, making the power in the beam 3,000,000 watts or more.

Another similar one was the short lived Radio Free Dixie on 625 from Costa Rica aimed at the Gulf South using a directional array and a 500 kw transmitter. That one did not last long as when the transmitter was operating, it brought down the phone system over a wide area and overloaded the electrical system leaving no safety margin.

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I figured that PJB would be a likely challenger. I heard them one night circa 1980 when CKLW was in a silent period (a rare event, indeed). They ended a program with music in English, followed with a talk program in Portuguese with a Brazil address. I had wondered why the PT program was quieter than the English, and now assume they were quieter because they changed pattern as well. Recently, I heard them under CKLW at night, while CK was still on the air (though now I'm in a different place where CK shuts down one of their three lobes to protect México).

Was Radio Free Dixie in the distant past? I never heard them, and never heard a 5 kHz het on local CFCO 630, either. I bet Radio Free Dixie made WSUN very happy /sarcasm.

Canton and Kent on 1520 are legendary. Lots of Internet pages have been written about it.

The Toledo station was famous for transmitting from Michigan during the daytime and from Ohio at night (for about the last ten years, it's been licensed to Rossford, using a five-tower array that was truly new, a few miles southeast of their former night site. They get out surprisingly well for 400 watts on 1520.

The Toledo and Bryan Stations do duke it out between them. Even though their sites are more than twice as far from each other than Canton and Kent. However, Bryan is ND and the soil conductivity between Bryan and Toledo is far superior to that found between Canton and Kent.

Some of those short spaced Kent to Canton situations resulted from mutually exclusive contemporaneous applications. If the MX could be resolved by the use of directional antennas and/or interference agreements, both applications were often granted. It was explained to me that the WELW 1330 Willoughby and WHOT 1330 Campbell situation resulted from that. On paper anyway, the 0.5 mV/m service contours of those overlap. In the run up from 100 or 250 watt Class IVs to 1000 watts in the early 1960s, many 0.5 mV/m cochannel Class IV contours nearly overlap or overlap somewhat. In that case, they did not need to fully protect each other to upgrade, only to protect adjacent channel Class II and Class III stations.

In the late 1960s, there were seven Class IVs listed in WRTH listed as 1/0.25 U5, or 1000-LS, 250-N, DA-D if you prefer. I don't know if other Class IVs/Class Cs are still directional days other than the ones in Michigan. There are many others still licensed as 1000 watts that used SLRs to reduce "efficiency" and still use reduced input. Even a Class IV with a 1/4 wave monopole can have substantially reduced input while maintaining the minimum efficiency for Class IV/Class C of 241 mV/m @ 1 km @ 1 kW. If they were to relocate or otherwise relicense, they may have to reduce licensed power. They could use a very short tower and be 1000 watts from a new location, but that starts to have feed loss (Rich can address that if he wants) and fading problems. Still others have done conductivity measurements to increase input power or go to nondirectional days. Some actually increase input power to 1000 watts at night from the licensed reduced day input power. Some have to be less than 1000 watts night due to treaty provisions near the borders.

WEEX in Easton, PA is 840 watts with a 2 tower DA day and 1KW ND at night. They could probably get about 250 watts ND day if they wanted to drop the DA.

Another interesting Class C is WAMM in Woodstock, VA, in the FCC data base they are listed as 1KW day And 250 watts night with different antenna efficiency, but they only have one tower and transmitter site and as far as I have observed they do not reduce power at night, at least when they were on the air. (they filed a silent STA in December)

It looks like WOLF 1490 Syracuse, NY has a CP to go from DA-D to nondirectional day with a 224.7 degree antenna. So that's one less Class IV DA. The station that used to be WINK 1240 in FL is also nondirectional days now. It looks like the new call letters are WFWN. Maybe Scott Fybush knows whether WOLF has completed construction.

Continuing our discussion of Class IVs that were U5 or DA-D in the late 1960s, WKRZ 1340 Oil City, PA is now WYCK Plains, PA with 810 watts nondirectional Unlimited. WFTL 1400 Fort Lauderdale is now WFLL 1400, but is now 1000 watts nondirectional Unlimited. It looks like a pattern, or a lack of one! Most seem to have reduced power or measured conductivities to go nondirectional. Let me know if Scott Fybush has already explored this somewhere.

KVEN 1450 Ventura, CA is now 1000 watts Unlimited nondirectional or U1. WKIP 1450 Poughkeepsie, NY is 1000 watts, DA-D or U5, and uses a top loaded 1/2 wave height tower in the DA-D pattern, and at night during nondirectional operation. Finally, WTXL 1490 West Springfield, MA is now WACM 1490, using 470 watts nondirectional Unlimited U1, with a near 5/8 wavelength tower, and a shorter top loaded tower with 1000/830 nondirectional Unlimited U1 as an auxiliary. It is not clear from the coordinates whether the auxiliary is one of the old directional towers. They are quite close to the same site from what was researched, but too far for a typical DA tower distance, as it looks like well over a wavelength.

It should also be noted or repeated that some of the Class IV/Class C stations continue to operate with close to minimum facilities for their class, 241 mV/m @ 1 km, with 1000 watts licensed power. Given the efficiency at their tower height, they have to be using less than 1000 watts input. Some of these might actually benefit from a DA. However, most Class Cs are limited by more than one station, and in various directions.

Correction. The stations which most recently were WOYL Oil City, PA and WYCK Plains, PA are not the same station. The confusion resulted because both were/are Class IV/Class C on 1340 and both once used the call letters WKRZ. It also gets confusing if a CDP is used as a COL, as township names are often duplicated in a state. CDPs are not well established town names.

Maybe our poster from NE PA can offer some input on this.

DavidEduardo said:

Radio Free Dixie was a late-60's thing. When I visited TIRICA-625 in San Jose in 1963, they had just been sold and the 1 megawatt station was in the planning stage... it was 2 500 kw AMs in parallel and was an ugly concept based on opposition to federal intervention in schools in the South and related issues.

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I have never heard of the Costa Rican "Radio Free Dixie." The Radio Free Dixie I know of was the Cuban operation from around 1961 to 1965 run by American civil rights activist Robert F. Williams, who had gone into exile. Broadcast Soul/R&B plus political talk to African-Americans in the southern U.S. Never heard it myself, as that was at the very beginnings of my interest in AM band DX. Sounds like the Costa Rica station had a completely opposite political viewpoint.

When the station failed, the two transmitters went to Venezuela where the were put on 1240 with and east-west pattern from Miranda state (east of Caracas) and the intent to cover the whole country for the government radio station. One of the side effects was the grant of an STA to WALO in Humacao, PR, to be a Class IV with 1 kw day and 5 kw night to overcome the Venezuelan interference.

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Did the high power Venezuelan actually make it on the air? I recall a lot of chatter about it in DX media at the time, but don't recall anyone actually reporting it as active.

They would have had a hard time beating WLAC for the R & B market at night in the South. Many Rock and Roll artists report listening to R & B on WLAC at night in the North also except for New England where they had to protect 1510 in Boston, which came on before NARBA and had to be accommodated. It had a huge effect on their style.

1L6E6VHF said:

But the falloff in the 12-tower pattern when one was not right in the center of the lobe (17° true) was drastic. At night where I used to live (EN82mj), WDEE was weaker than WLAC 1510 at night most of the time, with all those 1490s running on the channel below squeezing "Big D" from both sides (the 1490s would become four times the trouble in the mid-1980s). WSM actually had the best country signal at night! In Grosse Pte. Farms, right where Jefferson Ave met Lake St. Clair and became Lakeshore Drive, the signal would drop in in the daytime!, while it absolutely boomed along parts of I-69 in St. Clair County about 80 air miles out! It was stronger up there than in the Amy Joy Donut Shop on the other side of Dix.

I forgot the name of the broadcasting pundit who said (about 1500): "You can hear it in Norway, but not in Ann Arbor".

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I grew up , and my parents still live, EXACTLY where Jefferson Ave. meets lake shore drive in GPF, I have done a lot of DXing from that exact point.

1L6E6VHF said:

I'm asking all those out here who follow AM radio to post their "favorite" AM radio directional patterns, those that provide highly effective whilst doing their important task of protecting other stations from interference.


**contrary to what you may have read, CHYR did not move from 710 to 96.7, where the CHYR call is currently heard. CHYR moved from 710 to 92.7, still with an AC format, but switched to country later. Today's CHYR (96.7) came on many years after CHYR 92.7 went country. Its call changed to CJSP around the same time 96.7 CHYR was lit.

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I disagree with you 710/730's successor was 96.7, and it's how I remembered it at the time.

This Canadian historical link also paints a different picture than what you described with 92.7

http://www.broadcasting-history.ca/...ries/radio/histories.php?id=345&historyID=135

I think it was Art Vuolo who said you could hear WJBK/WLQV in Norway but not Ann Arbor at Night. Not strictly true, because you could hear it occasionally at Night during Auroral events.

Art also was famous for commenting on WOHO/WLQR 1470 sending their signal from their four tower parallelogram into Lake Erie at Night, as "The fish love it".

Also famous for commenting on the old four tower parallelogram pattern of WTAC/WSNL 600, as "North to The Bridge (alternately Sault Sainte Marie), East to Buffalo, South to Toledo (alternately "The Line"), West to Bishop Airport".

In other news, it has recently been announced that Art Vuolo's collection of video tape airchecks, audio tape airchecks, and other radio memorabilia will be housed at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. Reportedly, a "new wing is being added to the museum" to house it.