WNNW on late (Was Re: WMVU AM 900 Nashua NHon late)

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

>Dan Strassberg wrote:
At 11:40 AM 5/6/98 -0400, you wrote:
<snip>
>Last night I heard what I presume to be WNNW (I don't think it was WPMZ) on
>with what I imagine to be 5 kW-ND until 9:00 PM. The signal was certainly
>_way_ stronger than their normal daytime signal here, and it was completely
>fade-free for an hour. At 9:00 they unceremoniously dumped the program with
>no legal (not even one in SS, as far I could tell) and killed the carrier a
>few minutes later. Until the carrier went away, WBT was once again nothing
>but a memory. I doubt that WNNW's PSSA extends until 9:00 in May. (It
>probably goes to 8:30 or 8:45--roughly Charlotte sunset.) In any event, the
>PSSA is certainly not for full power, nor is it likely to be for ND
>operation (though that is certainly a possibility). My guess is that instead
>of cutting power at sunset, they are switching to ND. That way, if somebody
>complains and the FCC says something to them, Costa can say "Oh my, did WE
>do that? I'm terribly sorry. The engineer responsible for the setup
>obviously got confused."
<snip>

        My sunset chart shows Charlotte sunset for May 15 should be about
2022 EDT, so take your pick of 8:15 or 8:30 as WBT's sunset time this
month. That's when WNNW is supposed to get off the air. I believe local
sunset for WNNW would be calculated this month to 2000 EDT. So, it should
be on low power (someone once posted that it's 500 watts, the maximum
allowed in any case; that would make it a signal about one-third as strong
as its daytime signal) for those last 15 or 30 minutes. In the past, I have
heard what appeared to be its change to lower power over here in Conn. and
it still comes in OK, but I'm getting skywave. Your observation about maybe
switching to non-DA is interesting, though. I doubt it would have an
authorization to do that at the PSSA power. I believe the PSSAs are
virtually always lower power on the day or CH pattern--continuing the
operation in the antenna mode the station was using at sunset, at a lower
power. Some of the former daytimers with nighttime light-bulb
authorizations, I believe, are allowed to operate non-DA at night even
though they're DA in the daytime, but that's something else.

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