I think Houston is the classic example of such a market. But I bet a lot of Central American DXers have fun with all the signals aimed their way from Houston.
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50,000 Watt AM Stations on Regional Channels
- Thread starter Gregg.
- Start date
Many West Coast stations that were authorized by the late 1930s to early 1940s were Nondirectional, many 1000 watts Night, and had more Central tower locations. The newer 50000 watt authorizations like KMJ, go into the Pacific. And Southern stations, like the above post mentions, go into the Gulf of Mexico.
I lived in the Bay Area most of my time in Houston, and pretty much all the AM patterns were pointed right at me. Probably the only place I've lived where that's been the case. Even then, you could hear interference way under some of those stations at night, most notably Radio Reloj tones on 790 and occasionally garble on 740 during rare moments of silence from KTRH.
OK.. name the two 50KW clear channels that are directional at night but don't have to be.
WBZ and WWL. Intended to avoid wasting power over water.
why wouldn't more stations have done this in coastal cities like NY/LA and others like philly
where 1-A ND clears operate
specifically thinking of 640/660/770/880/1070/1210
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Yeah...but I'll bet a lot of 22-year-old under-assistant ad agency time buyers would have been impressed!
What were the details WTAM/WKYC/WWWE/WTAM 1100 going directional and then going back to nondirectional?
It was 1410 AM and I did have a pretty good radio on those subsequent trips to Newaygo County. The map shows the current station barely in the blue. When it signed off, WING from Dayton, Ohio came in
Good question. I suspect that the gain in coverage of areas that were not int he rated market did not offset the costs, land usage, etc
I was with an AM that did not have to be directional but did so to improve coverage.
Radio 10 had 100,000 watts on 710 from a location just NW of central Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the central zone of the city which was filled with apartments and high density construction, the signal could be a bit noisy in places. So a tuned 1/4 wave tower was put on the far NW corner of the property to reflect power towards downtown, giving an ERP in the major lobe of about 160,000 watts.
What we lost was coverage of parts of Paraguay, which (in so many ways) is useless but we gained good downtown coverage and a much better signal on the Atlantic coast to the Southeast where "everyone" goes on the weekends.
You forgot KYW which lived in Cleveland on this frequency for a while. 🙂
I was trying to find the History Card for WTAM. With the Database changes, it's loading slow or not at all.
I recall reading that WTAM used a drop wire from a guy wire for the second tower of the directional array. David is a lot more familiar with the locations.
I recall reading that WTAM used a drop wire from a guy wire for the second tower of the directional array. David is a lot more familiar with the locations.
The WTAM History Card finally loaded. The dates on the call letter changes are partly illegible.
So putting all the information together, the WTAM directional signal went inland, and only far enough North to reach Lake Erie with a good solid signal. It couldn't have been very directional. I would like to see the actual DA Pattern on that. I can't find any source that has it. fccdata.org and fccinfo.com don't have it archived. We have a picture of Carl E. Smith, who had his offices at the Brecksville site, posing with a pitchfork in front of his onetime farmhouse in Eldon, IA though.
I met Carl at the CIE school offices near downtown. He gave me a copy of the big AM pattern book, and let me go in once a month to trace the updates from the master. A great tool for a DXer. He was fascinated by the stations I got, and asked me about ones he had designed the DA for.
I was wondering the same thing about WTAM, since the tower would have to be south of downtown Cleveland and throwing a null toward its city of license. That null would have to be shallow and really not even worth pursuing. If the tower farm were in, say, Mentor or another of the snow belt suburbs, much easier to throw a null out over Lake Erie and send a strong signal everywhere else. There wouldn't be all that many people in the null between the towers and the lake.
The WTAM drop-wire DA was at the WNBK TV tower in Parma. It's the same site WKYC-TV still uses, but a newer tower than the one that was shared with the AM.
It was indeed a shallow null - the idea was that there was already plenty of field strength between Parma and the lake, but the DA reduced wastage over the lake while pushing the usable signal further south into Ohio.
I think it was discontinued when NBC sold WKYC radio around 1970 and it became WWWE, leaving the TV site in Parma (no longer co-owned) and returning to the original site in Brecksville.
It was indeed a shallow null - the idea was that there was already plenty of field strength between Parma and the lake, but the DA reduced wastage over the lake while pushing the usable signal further south into Ohio.
I think it was discontinued when NBC sold WKYC radio around 1970 and it became WWWE, leaving the TV site in Parma (no longer co-owned) and returning to the original site in Brecksville.
Several did. 660 was a DA at its Sands Point, Long Island site from the 1940s until it moved to High Island in 1963. KNX tried a DA from its Torrance site for a while in the 50s and 60s, too.
Was that the original shorter tower on the site, pictured on its QSL card from the 60's?
The reduction to the North of WTAM may have opened up the opportunities for WERB/WCAR 1090 Garden City, MI and CKJD/CKTY 1110 Sarnia, ON. At the time of WTAM directional operation, the first adjacent overlap rules both sides of the border internationally were 0.5 mV/m to 0.5 mV/m contours. In the meantime, they may have changed the rules regarding overlap over Lake Erie internationally. Some have said that water overlap was not exempted internationally for many years. Also, first adjacent channel overlap of US stations over Canada has been permitted for quite awhile, this would be an FCC rule. Not sure about when this was allowed. As you can see, areas over Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair, and over Canada provide a lot of overlap exemptions.
There's another clue in on the History Card about a 25000 watt AUX that I will have to analyze as to how it might provide a clue about the DA Pattern.
Just one of the many stations I would like to see the old engineering files for. I assume some have been archived, since some appear on fccdata.org and/or fccinfo.com. The H designation on fccdata.org may indicated which ones are preserved. It may still be in progress, but delayed by all the database structure changes.
There's another clue in on the History Card about a 25000 watt AUX that I will have to analyze as to how it might provide a clue about the DA Pattern.
Just one of the many stations I would like to see the old engineering files for. I assume some have been archived, since some appear on fccdata.org and/or fccinfo.com. The H designation on fccdata.org may indicated which ones are preserved. It may still be in progress, but delayed by all the database structure changes.
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