WCRN tower photo

["Strassberg, Dan (Cahners)" <ednstrassberg@cahners.com>]

I just checked out the tower photos as the Boston Radio Archives and did not
find a photo of the WCRN towers. I've seen the stats on them, though. If I
recall, they aren't a lot more than 200', though they are tall enough to
require illumination. I don't remember them being top loaded, although I
believe that the nearby WVNE tower _is_ top loaded and thus is short enough
to not require illumination. Anyhow, I find it hard to believe that Scott
and/or Garrett never got shots of the WCRN, WVNE, WTAG, WNEB, WORC, WWTM,
WCMX, WFGL, WSRS, WICN, WAAF, and WXLO towers. That's 12 stations, and I
haven't even listed some of the other Worcester-area FMs and the two AMs
southwest of Worcester: WGFP and WESO. If you don't have these dozen plus
sets of pictures, surely they represent enough unphotographed sites in a
fairly compact area to merit an expedition.

But I am really curious about the arrangment of WCRN's three towers. As you
know, two are used by day and two are used at night. One tower must be
common to the day and night arrays. The day pattern (old and new--they're
the same) protects WRYM. the night array protects WCCO, if I recall (makes
sense), though I don't think the null is aimed directly at the Twin Cities.
So are the three towers arranged in a more-or-less equilateral triangle,
with the east tower being the one shared by the day and night arrays, or are
the towers arranged in a much flatter triangle with the center tower shared?
If the towers are in such a "flat" triangle, is the arrangement (from west
to east) day, common, night or night, common, day?

It seems to me that, particularly if the common tower is east of the other
two, an increase in night power (perhaps to 10 kW or thereabouts) might also
be possible--provided that Mr Carberry wants to spend still more money on a
station that, at least at the moment, appears to be making none. BTW, I
estimate that in this neck of the woods, the annual power bill is exceeds
$100,000 for an AM that runs 50 kW-D/5 kW-N as WCRN is doing (or soon wil
be). That assumes that electricity costs $0.15/kWH and that the TX is a
highly efficient unit (my guess is a little more than 80%). Considering that
AMs are allowed 125% modulation on positive peaks, a 50-kW AM's average
_output_ power is approximately 50 kW X (1+1.25)^2 or 125 kW if the
modulation level is consistently high. The input power is thus in the
neighborhood of 150 kW. Multiply that by 8760 hours/year and by 0.55 (for 50
kW-D/5 kW-N) and by $0.15/kWH. 

Dan Strassberg, Senior Technical Editor, EDN Magazine,
275 Washington St, Newton, MA 02458-1630, USA
1-617-558-4205, Fax: 1-617-928-4205, Alternate Fax: 1-617-558-4470
ednstrassberg@cahners.com, http://www.ednaccess.com