KGO is the best. KCBS's night pattern misses much of the northern third of the market, so it is not as adequate.
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AM Frequency of the Week: 810
- Thread starter cyberdad
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From Mountain View, Hawaii -
Nothing in the daytime and KGO at night but it's usually weaker than KNBR and KFI.
And speaking of KCBS, I've never heard that here even though the station in Maui can be nulled out much of the time.
I have heard another station in the background that I could not ID but I know it's not KCBS because it's not a news format.
It's still a mystery as to what station it was.
Nothing in the daytime and KGO at night but it's usually weaker than KNBR and KFI.
And speaking of KCBS, I've never heard that here even though the station in Maui can be nulled out much of the time.
I have heard another station in the background that I could not ID but I know it's not KCBS because it's not a news format.
It's still a mystery as to what station it was.
KCBS has to protect Edmonton.
I spent part of last week in Sonoma, about 15 miles NNE of Novato, where the KCBS transmitting site is located. At night, there was phase cancellation of a type I had never heard before. There was very little fading or any kind of "rotating speaker" effect. Instead, it sounded like the station was in SSB mode and the carrier couldn't quite be recovered. Of course, it wasn't in SSB mode, and the radios I were using aren't capable of that. I was in the null for sure. It was weird.
I've never heard that with the KCBS-AM transmission, but I know near-exactly where KGO's nulls are on the peninsula. One hits at the Redwood City-Atherton border along Alameda de las Pulgas, a little south of Woodside Road. The other hits by the southbound entrance to Hwy 101 in San Carlos, at Brittan Ave. and Industrial Road. Those spots are where the main lobes of KGO's pattern overlap with the western side lobe. (There's undoubtedly an equivalent nulling in the East Bay around Union City, Newark, Fremont, but I don't know that area well enough to say exactly where.)
I agree that KGO has a better pattern for the Metro than KCBS. In the lobe KCBS packs quite a punch.
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A 5 kW side lobe is interesting. I read in one of the technical journals (possibly Radio World) few years ago that after the 1989 earthquake when KGO's directional system was so badly damaged that it took the station off the air, the engineering dept got in touch with the FCC as soon as possible to ask what the maximum non-directional power they could use in the interim with a wire antenna or a single tower, and according to the article, they were told 20 kW, which is apparently what they did !
KGO is predominately aimed North, and KCBS is predominately aimed South. KCBS at night in Los Angeles is for all intents and purposes Local. KGO in LA at night is strong Suburban. In the other direction at night KGO is Local in Portland, but on the other hand KCBS is generally just barely audible in Oregon at night. Both stations in their major lobes have at least 200 kW ERP.
I was never much of a KGO listener, so I don't know, even though there were a few years in the 2010s when I had the commute from hell along Interstate 880.
KGOs in the South Bay aimed North, and KCBS is in the North Bay aimed South. Kind of funny as KCBS was originally licensed as KQW San Jose !
KGO is almost symmetrical with a north and a south lobe. Most of any difference is due to conductivity, and not the pattern. It's a tiny bit more to the NNW than SSE, but not much. Nulls look like Schenectady and Kansas City, I am guessing.
The sale of KQW and the move to San Francisco in the late 1940s is a rather complicated story, judging by the history cards - and CBS was forced to dispose of its interest in WTOP Washington before the transaction could be completed. The CP to move the transmitter site from Alviso (itself not a bad site, I would think) to Novato appears to have been pursued by the Bruntons before they sold to CBS.
That null would be toward Schenectady. 810 in Kansas City is a relative latecomer, not on the air until 1947, and had to protect both KGO and WGY. As a consequence, when KCMO had 10 kw at night, its north-south figure-8 was tight. Of course the Kansas City metro area grew into the nulls - particularly Johnson County, Kansas. Around 1979, KCMO cut night power to 5 kw to try to loosen that tight pattern. But the Kansas City metro kept growing westward! This ultimately was the impetus for the WHB-KCMO swap in 1997. While 710 had similar nulls, they weren't as sharp as 810; thus KCMO could improve its coverage in the western suburbs by switching to 710.
Referring back to my comment about KCBS's nighttime reception just 15 miles from the transmitter in the "wrong" direction, I will say that I haven't observed anything similar with KGO but I'll admit to not listening to KGO very much, even before adopting the sports-betting format that I couldn't care less about.
(edited to add a minor clarification about the WHB-KCMO swap)
So was the second null just a sympathetic null (they just had three towers at KGO) or was there something else I missed?
In Annapolis-
Day- WYRE
Night- WGY is present in some form about 80 percent of the time but not always listenable. Varies between listenable to any reasonable person and weaker with the usual electrical noise of summer. Occasionally hear what I think is WEDO during the time before they sign off. I don't think I've heard WPIN. Sometimes I hear another station with voice programming in the background of WGY, don't know what it is.
In LA-
KGO coming in like you would expect a clear channel station with antenna gain. Sometimes with a dial presence "almost" like a local.
KCBS was good too. I generally did not have much of an impression of KNBR, perhaps because antenna gain of KGO and KCBS overshadowed KNBR, and the local 710 may have been a distraction.
Day- WYRE
Night- WGY is present in some form about 80 percent of the time but not always listenable. Varies between listenable to any reasonable person and weaker with the usual electrical noise of summer. Occasionally hear what I think is WEDO during the time before they sign off. I don't think I've heard WPIN. Sometimes I hear another station with voice programming in the background of WGY, don't know what it is.
In LA-
KGO coming in like you would expect a clear channel station with antenna gain. Sometimes with a dial presence "almost" like a local.
KCBS was good too. I generally did not have much of an impression of KNBR, perhaps because antenna gain of KGO and KCBS overshadowed KNBR, and the local 710 may have been a distraction.
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If by sympathetic, you mean symmetric, yes.
Latitudes for the relevant locations:
KGO: 37° 31' 34.8" N (DA-1)
WHB: 39° 18' 21.0" N (DA-N)
WGY: 42° 74' 32.3" N (ND)
Longitudes:
KGO: 122° 06' 05.9" W
WHB: 94° 34' 30.8" W
WGY: 74° 0' 42.5" W
So both WHB and WGY are ENE of KGO.
(Edit to add longitudes. It's still early here and moving chaos started early today.)
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I always thought that the null was to protect WGY. 810 was fairly empty nighttime at my college location in southeast Iowa after then-KCMO powered sown. WGY was weak...if even there at all. Bottom line, IMHO is that the Kansas City 810 simply benefits from being in the middle void created by being in the middle of two "priority" stations. Not unlike the Kansas City 710, which benefits from being situated between KIRO and 'WOR. 710 was also nearly empty nighttime at the site of my college misadventures.
Sorry, eastern Iowa.
The KGO null, yes. The KCMO pattern had to protect both WGY and KGO.
WGY was not a frequent visitor to mid-Missouri (in particular, Columbia) but it did show up on occasion.
St. Joseph also benefited from 680 being east of San Francisco and west of Boston - with the added feature of not having to change frequency when KFEQ added its DA. So...quite a few north-south figure-8s at night in northwestern and western Missouri.
I had a major customer in Northern Minnesota. Whenever I went up there. I always expected to hear KFEQ. But I never did. It was always CJOB 24/7. They had an interesting format....Talk until Midnight, then automated oldies overnight.
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