Re: WNNW/WCCM

[mwaters@wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Bump Martin wrote:
>Why doesn't someone give a call to Pat Costa (or find out who the chief
>is), and ask them some questions?
>
>1.)  Do you have pre-sunrise authority?  If so, at what power?
>
>2.)  Does WNNW have post-sunset authority?  If so, at what power?
>
>3.)  How do you calculate your sign-off times?
>
>4.)  When was your last 'proof of performance'?  and what was the result
>?
>       (I still wonder how a station lisenced to Salem NH, with a sharp
>null to the south       to protect what was once WHIM, can come in so well
>in Lawrence...)
>
>They are well within WBT's contour.  WBT is in the same time zone, right
>?  It was my understanding that they don't have pre- or post- authority.
> And even with minimal wattage, their null is still to the south....
>
>There are a lot of unanswered questions here.
<snip>

        Good questions, too. Who volunteers to give him a call? Does he
have e-mail? On question 3, the correct answer is by looking at a clock set
accurately to Eastern time and consulting the instructions from the FCC.
The FCC instruments of authorization tell them when to sign on, sign off
and use PSRA/PSSA. As they say in my favorite sport, you can look it up. In
fact, wouldn't they have to show it to you if you appeared at their main
studio location, and the POP also?

        About the time-zone comment: Being in the same time zone as the
Class A station is not the factor that is used. Within a time zone, the
actual local sunrise and sunset set varies a lot, because you have east to
west and north to south (the farther south you go, the less extreme is the
seasonal change in sunrise and sunset times). The FCC calculates actual
local sunrise and sunset exactly for each transmitter location, then rounds
to the nearest 15 minutes.

        On the null, I can report that WNNW sometimes comes in surprisingly
well in the New Haven area as sunset approaches. Perhaps the deep part of
its null does not extend around into the southwest very far since
protecting WBT in the daytime should not be much of a, or maybe any,
concern. WNNW sometimes puts up a surprisingly strong signal here starting
as much as 30-60 minutes before sunset.
        Also, if, as everyone seems to say, WNNW's PSRA/PSSA power is the
maximum of 500 watts (down from its daytime 5 kW), I think of that as
something a bit more than minimal, especially in this era of flea-power
authorizations. 500 would give them something around 30 percent of the
signal strength of 5 kW, if I have my primitive ability to figure such
things in gear at the moment.

Martin J. Waters

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