Re: NERW 10/1/99--1060, 650

["Daniel Strassberg" <Dan.Strassberg@worldnet.att.net>]

Langer _does_ hold a CP to increase the power of what now is apparently
officially WMEX, BUT the 22 kW is for _CH_--NOT night. The CP still
specifies daytime-only operation. But if the DA for 1060 is ever installed
on the WKOX sticks, I suspect that nighttime operation with around 150W may
be possible.

Just what night power might actually be granted is an interesting question
involving the minutia of the FCC regs. Most stations that operate with less
than 250W nights are called Class Ds--except that stations that operate with
less than 250W at night can be class Bs if their antenna efficiency is high
enough that they achieve an RMS--root mean square--field strength of at
least 142 mV/m@1 km.  (That's the field of a 250W station operating with an
antenna of the minimum efficiency for classes B and D.)

But that's not the end of the story. No AM station qualifies for Class-B
status unless it provides 80% of the area of the COL with an
"interference-free signal" (26 dB above the RSS--square root of the sum of
the squares--of the interfering 10% skywaves). It seems that if the COL
signal criterion is not met, the antenna-input power must be reduced to less
than 250W. I believe that that's what happened with WCCM, which was
originally granted 330W-N based on protection of CJAD and other Canadians.
However, CKLW's HUGE night signal prevented WCCM from providing an
interference-free signal to 80% of Lawrence. So WCCM reverted to Class D
using 245W-N. Is that clear? I'll give a pop quiz at some point.

As for WRPT, as far as I know, its application for 2 kW-D DA-D from the WBPS
site is not yet a CP.