Re: more exciting Boston radio dates

[Dan Strassberg <dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net>]

At 04:35 AM 5/6/97 +0000, you wrote:
>
>Maybe someone else can answer about WBMS.  Maybe the owners simply weren't
>as persistent as WCRB, or maybe the time wasn't quite right yet.  Or maybe
>the WBMS signal wasn't as good as the WCRB AM signal.
>
Well, in those days, 1090 was 1 kW, but for a low-powered station, the
signal was pretty good. The area around Wellington Circle is a good one for
an ND station.

1330 began as a 500W daytimer. When I arrived in '56, they were fulltime
(either 1 kW DA-2 or 5 kw-D/1 kW-N DA-2). They were using an in-line array
of three 200' towers on an east-west line. The signal stank. And it still
stank after they increased to 5 kW DA-2. At some point, RPI converted
co-channel WHAZ, Troy from a sharetimer to a daytimer and then sold WHAZ.
Because Troy was no longer on at night, Waltham no longer had to protect
them. Thus, the local 1330 could alter its night pattern. They replaced the
three 200' sticks with the current pair of 300' guy-wire top-loaded sticks
that create a single null in the direction of the co-channel station in New
York City. This happened in 1976, when the station was already WHET.
Previously, they had installed some really agressive audio processing.

Concurrent with the construction of WHET's new array, the sharetimers on
1330 in New York City started to share the Staten Island TX of one of the
stations, WPOW. Previously, one of the two New York stations (the old WEVD)
had transmitted from Queens. The WPOW pattern put a much stronger skywave
into Boston at night than the WEVD pattern did. The stronger skywave, which
was now an interfering signal all night instead of for just a few hours,
really messed up reception of WHET. So WHET got a better day signal and a
worse night signal at about the same time. The nighttime interference was
mitigated sometime in the 80s when the New York stations (by then, merged as
WWRV) moved from the Staten Island site to diplex from the WWDJ site in
Hackensack. Hackensack is northwest of most of the New York metro, whereas
Staten Island is southwest. Thus, the pattern changed to put most signal to
the southeast, significantly reducing the interfering signal to what is now
WRCA. The result is the current 1330 signal, which is quite good, all things
considered.

Anyhow, I think the big thing that WCRB (AM) had over WBMS signal-wise was a
full-time signal, albeit not a very good one.

- -------------------------------
Dan Strassberg (Note: Address is CASE SENSITIVE!)
ALL _LOWER_ CASE!!!--> dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net
(617) 558-4205; Fax (617) 928-4205

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