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

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

Peter: The attached message from Scott tells most of the
WGTR|WSTD|WTTP|WBIV|WJLT|WMEX story. (Those are all calls used by 1060 in
Natick since it went on the air for the first time in 1972.) Scott erred,
however, when he called the present facilities 250W ND-D; they are 500W
ND-D, which from WKOX's tall sticks give the same RMS field as did 1 kW into
the original 140' tower on Kendall Ave in S Natick.

In any event, when WGTR first signed on it held--and very effectively
used--a PSRA for 1.6W into the short tower. Since the only other station
licensed to Natick-Framingham was WKOX, which was then on 1190 with 1 kW-D
and no PSRA, one of WGTR's original slogans during the winter of 1972-73 was
"WGTR, ON radio 1060, first on--every morning at 6:00."

In early fall of 1981, as I recall, WGTR put its full-time plant on the air.
The CP for full-time specified 25 kW-D/2.5 kW-N DA-2 from five 207-degree
sticks, in-line on a 90-degree azimuth, and spaced 100 degrees apart, at the
Sewell St, Ashland, site. The ground system consisted of 240 0.4-wavelenth
radials per tower. Because of protests from KYW (and probably also WBZ),
except maybe for a couple of weeks, the station was never allowed to operate
with more than about half power day or night. A license to cover was never
granted. Today, the array serves WBPS, which is licensed to Dedham and uses
25 kW-D/3.4 kW-N. It is also the proposed site of WRPT's 2 kW DA-D
operation. When John H Garabedian had that array designed, he pulled out all
of the stops, and very presciently had the towers arranged on a due
east-west line--perhaps in anticipation of the final breakdown of the Class
IA channels. Because of the engineering decisions that were made, the array
is well suited to both WBPS and WRPT.

Currrently, the PSRA for 1060's ND-D operation from WKOX's Mt Wayte Ave site
is for 3.3W. I believe the that higher power (vs the original 1.6W from
Kendall Ave) results from the tall stick's lower ratio of high-angle to
groundwave radiation. So by going from a minimum height tower to a half-wave
tower, the ratio of day to night power was increased from 625:1 to 167:1. In
other words, the pre-sunrise field increased from 1/25 of the day field to
about 1/13. BTW, under the new rules, the Natick station also operates post
sunset with low power--from local sunset in Natick to local sunset in
Philadelphia. Natick is outside of KYW's protected 0.5 mV/m 50% skywave
contour, so the station could operate full-time, with very low night power.
Since returning to ND operation, it has never done so, however. My estimate
of the night power the station might be authorized using its proposed
two-tower CH array is 131.7W. I obtained this number by dividing 167 into
the proposed 22-kW CH power. I presume that such low power would have no
impact on the "operation" of the long defunct, but still notified CJRP.

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott D Fybush <fybush@world.std.com>
To: A. Joseph Ross <lawyer@world.std.com>
Cc: bri@bostonradio.org <bri@bostonradio.org>
Date: Sunday, October 17, 1999 10:12 AM
Subject: Re: NERW 10/1/99--1060, 650


>Joe Ross wondered:
>>
>> Didn't 1060 once have a nighttime signal?
>>
>Yes, it did, but that was a long time ago at a transmitter site
>far, far away :-)
>
>Dan will no doubt chime in here with all the technical details, but
>the 24-hour 1060 operation began at some point in the early
>1980s when what was then WGTR moved from 1000 ND-D at its
>original site in South Natick to a new five-tower array on
>Sewell St. in Ashland.
>
>As we know, it later became WTTP and then WBIV.  When the WBIV
>folks bought the 890 Dedham CP (WBMA) from Family Radio, they decided
>to use the Ashland site for 890 and sell the 1060 license -- but
>not the transmitter facilities.  So after a brief period of
>890 days/1060 nights, 1060 went dark (for good, many of us thought).
>
>When Langer bought 1060, he revived it as a 250-watt ND-D diplexed
>off the WKOX sticks.
>
>So why not return 1060 to diplexing off the 890 array?  My understanding
>is that it's a very unstable array that's a nightmare to tune on
>just one frequency, never mind two as close together as 1060 and
>890 -- which isn't stopping Langer from proposing 2000 watts DA-D
>off that array for 650.
>
>Is there any suburban market that's gotten as screwed up over the
>last few years as MetroWest?  What a disaster area for AM!
>
>-s
>