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WMVP AM 1000 to diplex with WCPT

CADXER

CADXER

CADXER said:
WMVP AM 1000 has filed an application to move their transmitter from Downers Grove, IL to Joliet, IL, where it will be diplexed with the nighttime facilities of WCPT AM 820. There they will use 50 kW during day using two of the towers and 37 kW at night using 4 of the towers.

The FCC application: https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/d...&id=25076f918974ea2901898ec7cb7f0745&goBack=N
Click to expand...


and before anyone cries.. boohoo, downgrading 13kw, losing skywave.

A listener 500 miles out doesnt matter and if you look through the maps and data.. it looks like, the signal where it matters.. locally.. improves at night
 
All of this goes back to the sale of WMVP to Good Karma. The antenna site was not included in the sale, so they were obligated to find a solution.

radioinsight.com

More Details On Good Karma’s ESPN New York, Los Angeles & Chicago Purchase - RadioInsight

Craig Karmazin's Good Karma Brands will acquire ESPN's local radio properties in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Update 12/20: The deal has been filed with the FCC showing that Good Karma Brands will pay $15 million for 1050 WEPN New York, 710 KSPN Los Angeles, and 1000 WMVP Chicago. Good...
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com

Once they move, the land will likely get sold and current buildings demolished.
 
SomeRadioGuy said:
and before anyone cries.. boohoo, downgrading 13kw, losing skywave.

A listener 500 miles out doesnt matter and if you look through the maps and data.. it looks like, the signal where it matters.. locally.. improves at night
Click to expand...
A DA with a sharp null to the west-southwest now. There were many complaints in the northwestern suburbs (really anywhere NW of Des Plaines) about the poor signal at night when WSCR moved over there in 1997, even though WSCR had been a daytimer before that (at 820).

I haven't seen the proposed pattern but this might actually be an opportunity to improve local nighttime coverage.
 
Mark Roberts said:
A DA with a sharp null to the west-southwest now. There were many complaints in the northwestern suburbs (really anywhere NW of Des Plaines) about the poor signal at night when WSCR moved over there in 1997, even though WSCR had been a daytimer before that (at 820).

I haven't seen the proposed pattern but this might actually be an opportunity to improve local nighttime coverage.
Click to expand...

I'm sure some of my family in Naperville will be happy with this. One of my cousins lives directly in their null to the west-southwest now, and has mentioned their much poorer night signal several times. He's almost due north of Joliet, so this should be an improvement.
I don't expect to hear much of a decline in signal here in Ohio. 37K on 1000 should easily make it here at night, and with that directional boost should sound pretty good.
 
Mark Roberts said:
A DA with a sharp null to the west-southwest now. There were many complaints in the northwestern suburbs (really anywhere NW of Des Plaines) about the poor signal at night when WSCR moved over there in 1997, even though WSCR had been a daytimer before that (at 820).

I haven't seen the proposed pattern but this might actually be an opportunity to improve local nighttime coverage.
Click to expand...
WSCR moved from 820 to 1160 to 670, but WMVP is all sports as well, and sometimes it's hard to tell them apart.
 
schmave said:
Anyone know why there's that null to the south-southeast in the proposed pattern from the new site?
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1000 is a mexican clear and when you move, you lose grandfathered status you mightve not had to protect or offer less protection to
 
SomeRadioGuy said:
1000 is a mexican clear and when you move, you lose grandfathered status you mightve not had to protect or offer less protection to
Click to expand...

That's not what's going on here, though. Yes, WMVP has to show continued protection to XEOY - because XEOY is the Mexican class A signal on the channel, its 0.5 mV/m skywave signal at night is supposed to be completely protected from WMVP's 0.025 mV/m signal (which is very very little signal). In reality, there's existing grandfathered interference there for whatever reason - the 0.025 from the existing WMVP actually gets within a hundred miles of Mexico City and covers a lot of the Mexican Gulf Coast. The new night signal will reduce that overlap but not eliminate it. There are maps near the end of the tech packet in the app if you're really curious.

The major protection WMVP has to provide at night isn't XEOY, though - it's Seattle. So the new four-tower pattern is designed primarily to create that deep null at 292 degrees to protect KNWN. And the "south-southeast null" at 180 degrees opposite? It has nothing to do with Mexico (and isn't aimed anywhere toward Mexico). It's just the mirror image of the 292 degree null, a result of the compromises in creating this pattern with existing towers and existing tower spacing.

If GKB really wanted to invest in building new towers and a bigger phasor, it could put an augmentation in to fill that null, at least partially. But why bother? It's a lot of money to invest in throwing some signal at areas that are outside the Chicago market.

Cynthia Jacobson at CTJC did really good work with this application. It's not the signal or pattern you'd create if you had a blank page and could build a new site from scratch - the null to Seattle is deeper and sharper than it actually needs to be, for instance - but given the circumstances, it's a very good compromise using the existing WCPT site. GKB and WMVP got lucky that it was available.
 
I have reviewed many of Cynthia Jacobson's applications, and I am extremely impressed with her work. I agree that she did the best she could with what she had to work with.

But as David Eduardo referred us to the source, you need 15 mV/m for adequate service in large markets. They lose a large part of the Northern Metropolitan area 15 mV/m service contour with this facility. The 5 mV/m contour reduction gives the impression of less real service loss than there potentially will be.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I have reviewed many of Cynthia Jacobson's applications, and I am extremely impressed with her work. I agree that she did the best she could with what she had to work with.

But as David Eduardo referred us to the source, you need 15 mV/m for adequate service in large markets. They lose a large part of the Northern Metropolitan area 15 mV/m service contour with this facility. The 5 mV/m contour reduction gives the impression of less real service loss than there potentially will be.
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Agreed. You only give the FCC the maps it wants to see, but I'm certain that internally GKB has looked at mapping with 10 and 15 mV/m contours and knows exactly what it's losing. At least they have the HD2 on 100.3 that still covers those areas.

I was not privy to any of the relocation process, but the options had to be fairly limited. You can't go north beyond Downers Grove or that Seattle null will start to really cut into important western suburban coverage. The 950 night site is too close in frequency for a diplex on 1000. I would assume they looked at the 1300 site and probably the 1160 night site, and can only guess at why they might not have worked - could have been anything from rent negotiations to the tower orientation not being right to the towers not being beefy enough to handle more power.
 
tvnut said:
WSCR moved from 820 to 1160 to 670, but WMVP is all sports as well, and sometimes it's hard to tell them apart.
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Yes, you are absolutely correct! I should have known better, since I lived in Chicago when that happened. I even taped the switch and digitized that tape earlier this year...want 15 minutes of Personal Achievement Radio? I have it!

Both 1000 and 1160 have similar issues with having to protect dominant class A stations in the West, resulting in coverage deficiencies for the Chicago stations in the northwest suburbs. I recall that the old WJJD at 1160 actually had a limited-time license before it got a nighttime DA and, in that status, could stay on in the evening until local sunset at Salt Lake City, which gave them an extra hour or so. I remember picking it up in the St. Louis area, too, in that window between our local sunset and SLC sunset.

So now I feel like an idiot. Want two Starbucks gift cards? I don't drink coffee, so they're really not doing me any good. Let me know. (I am serious about this.)

And, it's true, I can't tell sports-talk stations apart, just like it's hard to tell right-wing talkers apart. It's like going to a paint store and having to distinguish among different shades of white.
 
Mark Roberts said:
I recall that the old WJJD at 1160 actually had a limited-time license before it got a nighttime DA and, in that status, could stay on in the evening until local sunset at Salt Lake City, which gave them an extra hour or so. I remember picking it up in the St. Louis area, too, in that window between our local sunset and SLC sunset.
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Back in the day that “twilight” WJJD limited hours signal could get out quite well. I recall hearing it in Austin, Texas with the same decent strength as 670, 720, 780, and 890 from Chicago.
 
The 1300 array is six towers in a line almost straight north, so that would have been a new pattern for 1000. And there’s little room to build on the site, which is narrow itself.

At least WMVP didn’t suffer the fate of WFNI 1070 Indianapolis. The site is condos now. Only the WIBC billboard remains.
 
WJJD 1160 had usable de facto skywave service for much of the Eastern US for that limited time 2 hours before the KSL Sunset. Close in, with it's just over quarter wave towers in Des Plaines, the skywave was stronger than the half wave plus towers of the Class A stations at distances of 100-300 miles more or less. It blasted in, as it was the only station on 1160 besides KSL. For some years, until some point in the 1960s, they were allowed to sign on at 4:00 AM. I know that was allowed when David did his show on WCCW, which was 1000 watts at the time. On the History Card, it shows that by a couple years later, they were only allowed 500 watts PSA. WJJD was then allowed no PSA power, except the year they were allowed 50 watts before sunrise after 6:00 AM because of all year Daylight Savings Time.
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
WJJD 1160 had usable de facto skywave service for much of the Eastern US for that limited time 2 hours before the KSL Sunset. Close in, with it's just over quarter wave towers in Des Plaines, the skywave was stronger than the half wave plus towers of the Class A stations at distances of 100-300 miles more or less. It blasted in, as it was the only station on 1160 besides KSL. For some years, until some point in the 1960s, they were allowed to sign on at 4:00 AM. I know that was allowed when David did his show on WCCW, which was 1000 watts at the time. On the History Card, it shows that by a couple years later, they were only allowed 500 watts PSA. WJJD was then allowed no PSA power, except the year they were allowed 50 watts before sunrise after 6:00 AM because of all year Daylight Savings Time.
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I addressed some of the history of pre-sunrise authority in this thread a couple of months ago: https://www.radiodiscussions.com/threads/psa-pre-sunrise-authority.762090/page-2#post-6606687

When doing that research, I also found indications of several full-time stations that were allowed to go to daytime pattern early, generally at 5 am, for the purposes of serving agricultural audiences. It appears that the WBEN protest ended that practice.
 
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