Re: WGSR (Was: 89.3 pirate goes ID-crazy)

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

Ron: No, I have not seen the pattern(s) as they would be displayed at the
Kodis site, if the Kodis site were still being updated, nor have I seen the
tabular data from which you could create your own pattern plots using Excel.
The tabular data used to appear at the FCC site, but on February 1, 2000,
the FCC "upgraded" its AM database for Y2K compliance and to add new
features. The upgrade completely broke the database, and since the Kodis
site got its info from the FCC database, the Kodis site has not been
upgraded either. Moreover the good folks at Elliot Broadcast Services who
now run the Kodis site did their own upgrade and badly screwed up the old
pattern plots. I posted a message here explaining how to use Paintshop Pro
to fix the "improved" Kodis plots, but the data is now over 15 months old
and may never again be updated. Moreover, the "improved" pattern plots no
longer include the RMS field values, which you have to get from the FCC
site. But if you can find any information at the FCC site (a questionable
proposition at best) it is almost certainly both out of date and badly
screwed up.

As for those who claim that XERF never ran 250 kW, that may be so, but the
station _did_ run a lot more than 50 kW at night back in the late '50s. Back
then, I could pick up XERF on my Zenith tube-type AM-FM table radio in the
apartment where I then lived near Inman Sq in Cambridge. That was before
CKLM first went on the air. Although CKLM has been gone lo these many years,
I have not heard hide nor hair of XERF since CKLM's demise--even using a
Super Radio III, which is probably about equal in sensitivity to the old
Zenith. From that I gather that, if XERF is currently running 50 kW at
night, it was running WAY more in the late 50s. Also in November 1962
(election night, actually), I listened to XERF coming in like a local at
night in my room at the Cherry Creek Inn just south of Denver. The signal
sounded to me much stronger than that which would have been produced by a 50
kW ND signal from a half-wave antenna. I say that because KOMA was also
booming in, but KOMA is directional at night and is hundreds of miles closer
to Denver than Ciudad Acuna is but is still far enough from Denver to
deliver the full effect of skip. KOMA's signal that night, though excellent,
wasn't nearly as strong as XERF's.

Steve Ordinitz said that the power system in Acuna couldn't deliver enough
power to run XERF at 250 kW. I beleive that statement to be true. However,
shortly before Wolfman Jack passed away, I heard him being interviewed by
Don Imus. The Wolfman appeared nightly on XERF during the '50s and, at one
point managed the station. I heard him tell the I-man that XERF had its own
Deisel generators to supply the necessary power. I think the story appears
in the Wolfman's autobiography.

--

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

-----Original Message-----
From: EM1 GITCHIER <RGITSCHIER@doyle.navy.mil>
To: 'dan.strassberg@att.net' <dan.strassberg@att.net>
Cc: 'boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org'
<boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Date: Friday, May 04, 2001 7:46 PM
Subject: RE: WGSR (Was: 89.3 pirate goes ID-crazy)

>Dan, with your mathematical prowess, did you see any numbers on the
>patterns? What does it look like? The owner is too lazy to send me any
>copies of the engineering study. I know that the night countour is figuring
>that XERF 1570 is using 250kw at night (laugh...) I'm curious about WQOP
>1600 being essentially in Jacksonville (Atlantic Beach) and a third
adjacent
>in the same county.