Re: WNRB wins Pats show from WEEI

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

>Date: Tue, 02 Mar 1999 08:08:08
>To: "Douglas J. Broda" <dougbroda@mindspring.com>
>From: Dan Strassberg <dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net>
>Subject: Re: WNRB wins Pats show from WEEI
>
>At 12:06 PM 3/1/99 -0500, you wrote:
>>Dan, how's WJWR's signal in the various parts of North and north-central
>>Jersey? (I haven't been down there since it flipped to sports, so I haven't
>>done an ear-ball.)
>>
>WJWR has a very narrow pattern (five towers) beamed southeast from a site
immediately west of WLIB (probably in Lyndhurst, but who knows where the
town lines run down there). The day power is lower than the night power (3
kW-D/7.6 kW-N DA-2). The old site in Livingston was maybe 15 miles further
west and somewhat south of the new site. From the old site, the facilities
were 5 kW-U DA-2. The patterns were similar to the new ones but the axis of
the array was much closer to east-west than is the axis of the new array.
The station was supposed to change its COL from Newark to Jersey City after
the move because the signal clearly cannot meet COL requirements for Newark
from the new site. However, I'm told that WJWR still IDs as a Newark station
and the FCC database carries an unfortunately truncated note about the
licensee not...
>
>I've only heard WJWR on the New York side of the Hudson, but several people
who have tried listening in northern New Jersey report that the signal there
is completely unlistenable because of severe phasing. This condition
probably exists around an arc of more than 180 degrees centered on the axis
of the towers. The phenomenon is a result of the deep nulls "in back" of the
patterns.
>
>I suspect that the rotation of the patterns and the reduced day power were
consequences of the new site's closer proximity to Long Island Sound. I
imagine that the first problem was WPRO. From WJWR's new site, once you
cross Manhattan, there is a virtually unobstructed salt-water path to places
like Block Island, which is clearly within WPRO's daytime primary service
area (but probably not within the nighttime primary service area). The
solution to this problem was to rotate the array clockwise by about 30
degrees. But that created a new problem, WIP. So the solution was to reduce
the daytime power. Can you say "shoehorned?"
>
>I fail to understand, though, why WJWR can't increase its daytime radiation
to the northwest. The stations to be protected in that direction are
co-channel WHEN and adjacent WEJL. However, the soil conductivity through
the Catskills to WHEN and through the Pocanoes to WEJL is terrible, so it
would seem possible to send the equivalent of 500W or so to the northwest.
This would ameliorate the phasing problem in much of northern New Jersey and
would allow a slight increase in the day power, bringing it closer to the
original 5 kW.
>
>I wonder if the designers of the new array weren't too slavishly wedded to
the old design. Both arrays are basically in-line designs with a tall center
tower and four shorter ones. Both used about the same spacing between
towers. I no longer have access to the phasing and power-division info for
the old patterns, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that these were about
the same as those of the new ones. The reason that phasing was less of a
problem from the old site was its location. Most of the population of
northern New Jersey lived "in front" of the patterns, whereas, now, the
population behind the patterns represents an appreciable portion of the
population of the New York market.  
>

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