Re: WINS

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

I don't know where Cambridge ON is with respect to Toronto, but if it's west
of Toronto, that could easily be possible. You can go 40 miles north of the
WINS TX and, on some nights, you can hear CFRB.

Go to www.radiostation.com and click on John Kodis' Broadcast Station
Location Page. Unless the massive screwup in the FCC's AM database is still
affecting that site, you can examine both stations' day and night
directional patterns. (The site is _not_ run by the FCC, but does depend on
FCC data, which is still screwed up. The last time I checked the Kodis page,
the data I looked at appeared to be OK. The webmaster had apparently managed
to reset the data back to late January, just before the FCC bolluxed up
everything.) Use the call letters as the location. Be sure to select AM. And
for each station, ask to see data on eight of the nearest stations on 1010.
(Eight is an arbitrary number that gets all records for most stations. If
you get fewer than eight records on the menu, you know that you got all of
them. For WINS, the newer records show separate day and night patterns, and
may still show that they apply to a construction permit.)

WINS sends almost all of its signal due east in an arc somewhat wider than
90 degrees. CFRB has a narrower beam centered on the northeast. Officially,
CFRB is a Class A station and, in theory, should be entitled, within
Canadian borders, to protection of its 0.5 mV/m 50%-skywave nighttime
contour. However, I think that WINS occupies 1010 by virtue of a US-Canadian
treaty that permits greater interference to CFRB. WINS is a Class B and so
is not entitled to any protection of its nighttime-skywave signal.
Protection is limited to groundwave service and to nothing less than 2.5
mV/m--and probably significantly more. Given CFRB's patterns, you could live
40 miles west of Toronto and be outside of CFRB's nominally protected
contour, however.

WINS has new facilities since 1988. I don't know whether the FCC has yet
granted a license to cover. After 17 extensions of time to complete, the
engineers apparently gave up on trying to adjust the nighttime pattern
within specifications and applied for permission to use older, and looser,
criteria. The station used to be DA-1 from short towers in an in-line array.
The new facitities are DA-2, from the same site, using much taller towers
(400'--approximately 148 degrees) in a parallelogram array. The new night
pattern is very similar to the old one. The day pattern is a bit looser; it
provides slightly increased radiation to the west and south for improved
coverage to the north-Jersey suburbs.

--

Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net
Phone: 1-617-558-4205, eFax: 1-707-215-6367

-----Original Message-----
From: George Sousa <george_sousa@hotmail.com>
To: boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org
<boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Date: Monday, May 15, 2000 11:07 AM
Subject: WINS


>Does anyone have information about the CFRB Toronto - WINS New York
signals.
>Perhaps I should clarify... A number of years ago (1988 I believe) I
>vacationed in Cape Cod. During the day, WINS was clearly heard in Hyannis
>but in the evening CFRB was clear. A number of years later, back in
>Cambridge, Ontario (home to a station that could not have picked a worst
>dial position... but I digress) occasionally while listening to CFRB in the
>evening, I can pick out the familiar WINS promos. By the way, I Live less
>than 40 miles from the CFRB transmitter.
>
>I'm curious as to what happened...
>