Re: WTIC (AM) anniversary broadcast

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

>David W. Harris wrote:
>There has been some discussion here regarding the suitability of WTIC's
>transmitter site.  The New York Times had a number of items about the
>move to Avon Mountain in 1928 and 1929.
<snip>
>"Station WITC's [sic] new transmitting plant atop Avon Mountain, west of
>Hartford, Conn., is now operating on the 1,060-kilocycle channel,
>equivalent to 283 meters.

        Very interesting material. I had found WTIC on 660 kHz, synchronous
with WEAF, on a 1931 list by frequency, and I stopped looking. But WTIC
also is shown on that list as sharing time with WBAL on 1060. So it was a
very complicated arrangement. It must have been different frequencies on
different days.
        As far as how much effort went into choosing the site, I never
doubted that Travelers put in great effort. But perhaps one of the
engineers here can say something about whether the technical criteria used
then would have been fully developed in terms of what's taken into account
now--ground conductivity, etc. This was done even before vertical antennas
had been widely adopted.
        It sounds a little odd to read about them looking for a site to
avoid interference by putting it a little way off from the population
center. Sounds like early radio days thinking, IMO. Sounds like they were
trying to avoid blanketing interference that would interfere with receiving
distant signals on other channels, not trying to avoid interfering with
local stations on 2nd or 3rd adjacents, which is what you mainly would look
at now.