Re: OTB radio

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

At 03:00 AM 6/6/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Scott:
>
>Oops. :)
>
>There *is* an antenna atop the OTB building, though (you can see it on
>I-890). Must be used for other purposes.
>
>Now... you had to mention Whitehall, PA! Scene of a *bad* moment for me,
>many years ago, right by the mall. The state highway that passes the
>mall has a center divider and traffic lights. At an intersection with a
>Dunkin Donuts on the left, there was a sign saying No U Turn. I made a
>left turn into the Dunkin Donuts, and a police officer in the lot having
>his munchies gave me a ticket. When I asked why, because the left turn
>was legal, he said that I was going to make a U-turn but he was *sure* I
>had suddenly changed it into a left turn when I saw him! (The officer
>thus thought he was the Amazing Kreskin -- plus he was wrong in his mind
>reading, since I was desperate for a light, no sugar.)
>
>And no, I didn't go back to fight the ticket. Too long a drive. :(
>
>Scott D Fybush wrote:
>
>> A minor correction to Doug...
>>
>> The 1240 transmitter is actually right along the entrance road
>> to the Rotterdam Square Mall off Campbell Road.
>>
>> I'd say it's the closest transmitter to a shopping mall anywhere
>> in the country...if I didn't know that 1470 in Allentown PA has
>> its towers right in the parking lot of a mall along PA 145 in
>> Whitehall -- and that WSB Atlanta and one of the Los Angeles
>> powerhouses (I want to say KFI) actually have towers *surrounded*
>> by shopping malls.  Yikes!
>>
>> -s
>
Well, we kind of have such a situation here. The 411 Waverley Oaks Rd
Industrial Park on the Waltham-Belmont line is, because its owners chose to
call it that, an industrial park. But there still are some retail businesses
there, and at the time the WITS (now WNRB) TX was built there, there was a
very large hardware store on the property. A year or so after the four-tower
DA went up, the owners of the park constructed a three-story office building
over part of the ground system and hot-topped over a good portion of the
remainder of the gound system. Then a health club on the property built a
swimming pool over the fringes of the ground system. And people wonder why
WNRB has such a pitiful signal for a 50 kW full-time station transmitting
from towers over half a wavelength high!

And part of the ground system for little WXKS (AM) is covered with hot-top.
It was or is the parking lot for a sub shop (a De Angelo's, I think).

There was a thread a month or so ago at Airwaves about AM TXs in parking
lots (and on rooftops). The most interesting one, I think, is the AM 1510
licensed to San Rafael CA. It's Classical KKHI; the calls used to be on the
AM 1550 in San Francisco. KKHI holds an unbuilt CP to increase to 8 kW-D DA
from a rooftop-mounted four-tower DA (not quite a parallelogram) across the
Bay in Oakland. Far as I know, if it is ever built, this antenna system will
be the only rooftop AM DA in the US. My assumption is that the building is a
large one-story warehouse. The FCC database doesn't indicate the tower
height. The towers are top-loaded, and the information on top-loaded towers
is often missing.

- -------------------------------
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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